Swoon at Your Own Risk (12 page)

Grace pushes past me, screaming at Buster. "He's killing Peanuts! Bad, bad dog!"

Buster stops in front of me, jaws clenched around Grace's stuffed elephant, shaking his head, and sending clouds of stuffing into the air.

Maybe going to work won't be so bad. It's Thursday. Xander almost never shows up on Thursdays, not that I'm keeping track of his schedule or anything.

Dear Miss Swoon:
My mother just doesn't understand me. It's like we're different species! She's a cave dweller, always staying home and watching television. I want to fly—go out to parties, movies, shopping with my friends. What can I do to convince her that I'm old enough to go out?
—Trapped In The Cave

Dear Trapped:
Prove to your mother that you're responsible enough to have a more evolved social life. Offering to clean the cave every now and then couldn't hurt.
—Miss Swoon

Clouds
Pink as an open palm
An invitation.
—
X.C.

I'm standing in a discarded pile of skirts, shorts, skorts, minis, T-shirts, tank tops, tube tops, and even stuff from the Career Woman department.

Jane peers over her shoulder at her reflection in the mirror. "I'm beyond help. I need a complete butt makeover."

The cropped pants strain and bunch across her thighs. "I think you look cute in those, but like I said about ten miniskirts ago, you've got great legs," I say. "Play up the legs."

"But Rowdy's a butt man."

"Okay, I
so
didn't need to know that. And I don't even want to know how you know that." I flip through a few skirts still on hangers while Jane strips off the pants.

"
Matrix
Marathon."

"Why didn't you tell me? I would've picked up a few robes and Gor-tex body suits for you to try on."

Jane shakes her head."Stop being funny."

I push aside a pile of tops in various shades of blue-green, Rowdy's favorite color—because, you know, he made a comment during
The Lord of the Rings.
I perch on the little dressing room bench. Jane is beyond saving. And frankly, if things weren't so tense at home, I would be there instead of at the mall on a Friday night. Attending Grace and Amy's stuffed-animal picnic sounds appealing at this point.

"Don't let me forget to buy that Webimal."

Jane looks at me. "You've reminded me a million times. Now, what do you think? Hide the butt with a blousy top or wear this?" Jane holds up a superlong, flowing skirt that looks like it belongs in a 1960s documentary.

"Jane, my dear, we're living in the twenty-first century."

"Maybe my butt isn't. Maybe my butt belongs back in the eighteen hundreds or something. It's like a vestibule organ or something."

"It's a vestigial organ."

"Whatever." Jane slips the skirt over her hips. "You know people hate it when you do that, don't you? Correct them all the time. Sawyer once told me it makes him feel stupid, before you broke up."

"God, Jane! What a thing to say. I hardly
ever
corrected
him. Only when I absolutely couldn't help it. What are you going to tell me next? That I had a booger hanging out my nose three weeks ago? There's nothing I can do about it now."

"You could stop correcting people all the time. That's something, isn't it?"

"So what, I'm supposed to let people go around sounding stupid?"

"So, I sound stupid, huh?" Jane frowns and takes off the skirt.

I toss a sparkly green top at her. "Try this one; it'll totally show off your you know." I motion toward her chest.

"And you always do that, too!"

"What? Recommend fashion combinations? I thought that's what I was here for." I fold a few T-shirts into neat squares, feeling nervous. Why is she attacking me? I'm the one giving up
my
Friday night to help her shop for her big amusement park date with Rowdy and ten thousand other yearbook people. It's not like it's even a real date. It's more like a field trip, and those kinds of group excursions totally don't count. Even though at the time I thought the spring break Nature Club trip with Gareth counted. Maybe it didn't.

Jane holds up the top, making a face. "I don't want to come on too strong." She tosses the shirt onto my lap. "Polly, you're
always changing the subject when I try to talk about something real."

"Real? So talking about clothes equals 'not real' but talking about my apparently numerous flaws is 'real'?" I decide to hang blouses back on hangers. That way I can't see Jane grimacing at me in the dressing room mirror.

"I'm only talking to you like a friend," Jane says.

I lean down and pick up a see-through blouse thing. "I don't know why you even deigned to take this one off the hanger."

"See, you're doing it right now." Jane shimmies into a pair of snug white jeans.

"Oh, so I can't talk about the clothes at all. That's going to make it pretty difficult for me to offer advice, you know. Maybe we can work up some kind of code. That five-four-six looks good with the seven-four-three. Is that better?"

"Grr." She growls, but she's not even looking in the mirror, so she might be growling at me. "Polly. Sometimes I want a confidante, someone to talk to about serious stuff."

"Yeah, so? I've been a totally good listener. I'm even supporting your misguided decision to pursue Rowdy."

"Yeah. That's real supportive." Jane finally glances in the mirror, tugging at the fabric clinging to her thighs. "The thing
about being a good listener is that you need to be a good talker, too."

That's so not grammatically correct, but I don't say anything. See, I
am
learning.

Jane pulls off a navy blue T-shirt and exchanges it for a powder blue one. She tilts her head in the mirror. "What do you think?"

"I think it's a finalist."

"Me, too." She quickly disrobes and adds it to the meager maybe pile. I think about sneaking a quick peek at my cell phone to check the time, but that doesn't seem very friendlike so I don't. Besides, I'm just going to return home to a dinner of rejected hamburgers, a stuffed-animal party, and a grandmother who refuses to talk to my mother. Where's the positivity in that?

"And the nominees are..." I hold up the three outfits that have made it through the incredibly boring selection process.

"I think I'll get all three. That way I can change my mind tomorrow morning if I want. And if the weather—"

"Hot and sunny. That's the weather. You just want to be hot, right? So go with the"—I make a drumroll sound on my thighs—"supershort mini."

"I've got my mom's credit card, so..." Jane picks up the clothes without even looking at the price tags.

"Hey, you might as well get a couple of the reject outfits, too, in that case."

Jane eyes one of the reject blouses. "It's not like I can spend
tha
much."

I peek at the price on the jeans: worth about fourteen hours of Lazy River duty. "Hey, if you've got it, spend it, right?"

"You should get something, too, Polly. What about that blue top? It totally makes your eyes pop."

"It's kind of scratchy." Jane convinced me to bring a few items into the dressing room, so I did, just to be in the spirit of things. But if there's one thing all the home-front awkwardness has proven, we're having serious financial issues. I'm pretty much saving all my money, except for a few bags of groceries now and then. Jane would never consider buying groceries with her own money; she doesn't even pay for her own gas.

"Plus, I'm trying really hard not to attract guys, you know. So I think if I'm going to purchase something, it had better be this." I hold up a really ugly, orange stretchy top that I'd picked up just to be funny. I talk in a gravelly smoker's voice. "Hey there, fellas. Wanna party?"

"See, there you go again. I was trying to be serious."

Oh no. I did not want to return to the subject of me. And my personality flaws. "Ten minutes ago you thought this shirt
was totally funny. That's what you said. I'm just referring to an earlier joke. It's not like I'm condemning the future of our friendship. Have a sense of humor, Jane."

"I do. But here's the thing. Why should I always be the one sharing my secrets? Sometimes I want to hear yours, too. It's like equity or something."

Equitable. The word is equitable. But I don't say anything. I pluck a green T-shirt off the discard pile, put it on my head, and lurch toward the mirror, growling. Jane sighs, but then I make her laugh.

She slides the T-shirt off my head. "I kind of liked that one. I think I'll get it, too."

We finally leave the dressing room, and Jane goes to pay for her clothes. She spends more than what I make in a month working at Wild Waves. And then she wants to head over to the shoe department. But first she stops at the cologne counter to "catch a whiff of Rowdy's scent." He hardly seems like a signature scent kind of guy, but I can't say anything because Jane has endured many stops at this same counter so I could smell various ex-ex-ex-ex-ex aromas.

"Come on, Polly." Jane waves a cologne sample in front of her nose. "You love doing this."

"Not tonight." I play with the shoulder strap on my purse,
wishing I had a shopping bag to hold. "No need to go letting my olfactory complex trigger any scent-related memories."

Jane giggles. "You are such a doofus! You accuse me of hanging out with a bunch of dweebs when you're the biggest one of all—always spouting off with your big vocabulary and all."

"I am not! I'm totally channeling my inner bad girl. After work I purposely dropped an armload of kickboards just so that I could catch a glimpse of Sexy Lifeguard's crack when he bent down to help me."

She smirks. "That's, like, so junior high, Polly. A real bad girl would've had her hands all over that boy's—"

"Hey, it's a start. I'm trying."

She breaks into major guffaws, but I'm sure she's just high off sniffing too much Rowdy cologne.

Jane drops me off early, saying she needs to get her "so-called beauty sleep," but really I saw her checking her text messages and getting that syrupy, reserved-for-Rowdy smile on her face.

"Have fun tomorrow!" I shout. "But don't fall in love; it will only lead to your downfall."

"Very funny."

I wasn't trying to be funny.

The house looks normal from the outside, but it's all chaos when I step through the door. Amy and Grace chase Buster
around the living room, screaming about murder. Buster stops and shakes his head—a killer whale flopping in his mouth, tufts of white fluff on his wrinkled lips.

"You did this!" Grace yells. "You owe me a new killer whale plus interest." She learned that last part listening to Mom and Grandma arguing about money.

I toss the crinkly pink plastic bag with the new Webimal inside to Grace and make an attempt to trap Buster. He jigs to the left, kind of impressive, really, and races past, leaving a trail of unstuffed white whale guts. And Grace's tears. Amy moves in to comfort her. I'm disgusted with myself for allowing yet another male to leave me in the dust.

I follow the sound of teeth shredding fabric to Grandma's room. I half expect to see her typing away, but the room is empty. I frown at the dark computer screen. I had hoped to talk to her about Jane. The whole I-deserve-loving-and-supportive-friends affirmation just isn't cutting it. I need something more substantial.

Grace and Amy run into our room, slamming the door. I sit down at Grandma's desk, twisting in her new ergonomic office chair. I can't stop thinking about what Jane said about me always using humor to avoid talking about things. There's nothing wrong with being funny, right? Friends are supposed
to laugh with each other. But she's right about me not telling her stuff. I haven't mentioned Xander; I haven't talked about Mom's feud with Grandma; I haven't told her that my dad hasn't invited me to the cabin for even a long weekend this summer. The last time Dad called, we spent ten minutes talking about the weather. Our temperature zones—we're only talking about thirty miles here—differed by two degrees Fahrenheit, not taking in relative humidity. I almost envied Grace's stuffed-animal-based conversation.

Jane with her happy little family, I'm sure, doesn't want to hear about all the drama in mine. Plus, it's completely embarrassing. Whose dad doesn't want to see her? That makes me a total reject, right? Plus, Jane will only try to make some pseudo psychological connection between Dad and Kurt. Unfortunately I made the mistake of breaking up with Kurt three days after she turned in her psychology essay on Freud. She only got a B minus, but that didn't dissuade her from diagnosing me.

"Do you think you maybe went for a car-obsessed guy since your dad, like, abandoned you after buying you a car? Like maybe you associate cars with father figures?" Jane's eyes had grown wide. "It's, like, so Freudian or something."

"Um, no. I went for Kurt because he revved my engine, if you know what I mean."

"Polly, you really should talk about this. I can tell you're upset."

"Not really. If there's one thing I've learned, relationships crash and burn like stock cars. Just look at my parents. And my grandma. She gets
paid
to give people marital advice, but she can't stay married."

"My parents have been together since like college."

"So go study them. They're the freaks of nature. Not me." But then I made the mistake of bursting into a humiliating display of emotion. I had tried so hard to make Kurt like me. Her reactions to my other breakups got exponentially more analytical, so that I didn't even tell her about Hayden until I'd recovered enough to turn it into one big joke. I told Jane he'd vetoed me. She didn't laugh. But at least I didn't cry. Much.

I flick on Grandma's computer, thinking that maybe reading a section of her book might give me some direction. I open the word processing program and click on the recent documents list. I find only Miss Swoon columns. Reading about people whining about boyfriends isn't going to help. I open a few more documents—affirmations, quick quips, chapter ideas—but I can't find her actual book anywhere.

Eventually I click on the Internet browser. It opens to a site called Golden Oldies. Ick! The stuff Grandma has to read for
research. She did tell me the other day that she'd thought about doing a special series of columns about senior citizens. "Uh, gross. No," I said. "Besides shouldn't old people have it all figured out or just forget about it?"