“Who?” Casey asked.
I’d been dreading that question because I knew the reaction I’d get. “Wesley Rush.”
Two swoony, girly sighs followed my answer.
“Oh, come on,” I fumed. “The guy is a man-whore. I can’t stand him. He sleeps with everything that moves, and his brain is
located in his pants—which means it’s microscopic.”
“I doubt that,” Casey said with another sigh. “God, B, only you could find a flaw in Wesley Rush.”
I glared at her as I turned my head to back out of the parking lot. “He’s a jerk.”
“That’s not true,” Jessica interjected. “Jeanine said he talked to her at a party recently. She was with Vikki and Angela,
and she said he just came up and sat down beside her. He was really friendly.”
That made sense. Jeanine was definitely the Duff if she was out with Angela and Vikki. I wondered which of them left with
Wesley that night.
“He’s charming,” Casey said. “You’re just being Little Miss Cynical, as usual.” She gave me a warm smile from across the cab.
“But what the hell did he do to get you to throw Coke at him?”
Now
she sounded concerned. Took her long enough. “Did he say something to you, B?”
“No,” I lied. “It’s nothing. He just pisses me off.”
Duff.
The word bounced around in my mind as I sped down 5th Street. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my friends about the wonderful
new insult that had just been added to my vocab list, but when I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror, Wesley’s assertion
that I was the unattractive, undesirable tagalong (more like dragalong) seemed to be confirmed. Jessica’s perfect hourglass
figure and warm, welcoming brown eyes. Casey’s flawless complexion and mile-long legs. I couldn’t compare to either of them.
“Well, I say we hit another party, since it’s so early,” Casey suggested. “I heard about this one out in Oak Hill. Some college
kid is home for Christmas break and decided to have a big blowout. Angela told me about it this morning. Want to go?”
“Yeah!” Jessica straightened up beneath the blanket. “We should totally go! College parties have college
boys
. Won’t that be fun, Bianca?”
I sighed. “No. Not really.”
“Oh, come on.” Casey reached over and squeezed my arm. “No dancing this time, okay? And Jess and I promise to keep all hot
guys away from you, since clearly you hate them.” She smirked, trying to nudge me back into a good mood.
“I don’t hate hot guys,” I told her. “Just the one.” After a moment, I sighed and turned onto the highway, heading for the
county line. “Fine, we’ll go. But you two are buying me ice cream afterward. Two scoops.”
“Deal.”
There is nothing more peaceful than quiet on a Saturday night—or very early Sunday morning. Dad’s muffled snores rumbled from
down the hall, but the rest of the house was silent when I crept in sometime after one. Or maybe I’d been deafened by the
thudding bass at the Oak Hill party. Honestly, the idea of hearing loss didn’t bother me too much. If it meant I never had
to listen to techno again, I was all for it.
I locked the front door behind me and walked through the dark, empty living room. I saw the postcard lying on the coffee table,
sent from whatever city Mom was in now, but I didn’t bother reading it. It would still be there in the morning, and I was
just too tired, so I dragged myself up the stairs to my bedroom instead.
Stifling a yawn, I hung my coat over the back of my desk chair and moved over to my bed. The migraine began to subside as
I kicked my Converse across the room. I was exhausted, but my
OCD was totally calling. The pile of clean laundry on the floor, by the foot of my bed had to be folded before I’d ever be
able to sleep.
Carefully, I lifted each piece of clothing and folded it with embarrassing precision. Then I stacked the shirts, jeans, and
underwear in separate sections on the floor. Somehow, the act of folding the wrinkled clothes soothed me. As I made the perfect
piles, my mind cleared, my body relaxed, and my irritation from the night of loud music and obnoxious, rich, sex-obsessed
pigs ebbed. With every even crease, I was reborn.
When all of the clothes were folded, I stood up, leaving the stacks on the floor. I pulled off my sweater and jeans, which
stank from the sweltering parties, and tossed them into the hamper in the corner of my room. I could shower in the morning.
I was too tired to deal with it tonight.
Before crawling under my sheets, I took a glance at the full-length mirror across the room. I searched my reflection with
new eyes, with new knowledge. Uncontrollable wavy auburn hair. A long nose. Big thighs. Small boobs. Yep. Definitely Duff
material. How had I not known?
I mean, I’d never considered myself particularly attractive and it wasn’t hard to see that Casey and Jessica, both thin and
blond, were gorgeous, but still. The fact that I played the role of the ugly girl to their luscious duo hadn’t occurred to
me. Thanks to Wesley Rush, I could see it now.
Sometimes it’s better to be clueless.
I pulled a blanket up to my chin, hiding my naked body from the scrutiny of the mirror. Wesley was living proof that beauty
was only skin-deep, so why did his words bother me? I was intelligent.
I was a good person. So who cared if I was the Duff? If I were attractive, I’d have to deal with guys like Wesley
hitting on
me. Ugh! So being the Duff had its benefits, right? Being unattractive didn’t have to suck.
Damn Wesley Rush! I couldn’t believe he was making me worry about such stupid, pointless, shallow bullshit.
I closed my eyes. I wouldn’t think about it in the morning. I wouldn’t think about Duffs
ever again
.
Sunday was fantastic—nice, quiet, uninterrupted euphoria. Of course, things were usually pretty quiet when Mom was away. When
she was home, the house always seemed loud. There was always music or laughter or something lively and chaotic. But she never
seemed to be home for more than a couple of months, and in the time that she was gone, everything grew still. Like me, Dad
wasn’t much for socializing. He was usually buried in his work or watching television. Which meant the Piper house was pretty
much silent.
And, on a morning after I’d been forced to withstand all the racket of clubs and parties, a quiet house was the equivalent
of perfection.
But Monday sucked.
All Mondays suck, of course, but this Monday
really
fucked up everything. It all started first block when Jessica slumped into Spanish with tear-stained cheeks and running mascara.
“Jessica, what’s wrong?” I asked. “Did something happen? Is everything okay?”
I’ll admit it; I always got really freaked out on the rare occasions when Jessica came to class looking anything less than
perky. I mean, she was constantly bouncing and giggling. So when she came in looking so depressed, it scared the shit out
of me.
Jessica shook her head miserably and collapsed into her seat. “Everything’s fine, but… I can’t go to Homecoming!” Fresh tears
spewed from her wide chocolate eyes. “Mom won’t let me go!”
That was it? She’d gotten me all freaked out over
Homecoming?
“Why not?” I asked, still trying to be sympathetic.
“I’m grounded,” Jessica sniffed. “She saw my report card in my room this morning, and she found out I’m failing chemistry,
and she flipped out! It’s not effing fair! Basketball Homecoming is, like, my favorite dance of the year… after prom and Sadie
Hawkins and Football Homecoming.”
I tilted my chin down and looked at her teasingly. “Wow, how many favorites do you have?”
She didn’t answer. Or laugh.
“I’m sorry, Jessica. I know it must suck… but I’m not going either.” I didn’t mention that I considered the whole practice
of school dances degrading or that they were just giant wastes of time and money. Jessica already knew my opinions on the
matter, and I didn’t think reminding her would help the situation. But I was pretty happy I wouldn’t be the only girl skipping.
“How about this: I’ll come over, and we’ll watch movies all night. Will your mom be cool with that?”
Jessica nodded and wiped her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. “Yeah,” she said. “Mom likes you. She thinks you’re a good
influence
on me. So that’ll be okay. Thanks, Bianca. Can we watch
Atonement
again? Are you sick of it yet?”
Yes, I was getting very sick of the mushy romances Jessica swooned over, but I could get over it. I grinned at her. “I never
get tired of James McAvoy. We can even watch
Becoming Jane
if you want. It’ll be a double feature.”
She laughed—finally—just as the teacher made her way to the front of the room and began obsessively straightening the pencils
on her desk before calling roll. Jessica tossed a glance at the scrawny instructor. When she looked back at me, her dark brown
eyes sparkled with a few fresh tears. “You know what the worst part is, Bianca?” she whispered. “I was gonna ask Harrison
to go with me. Now I’ll have to wait until prom to ask him to a dance.”
Because of her sensitive state, I decided not to remind her that Harrison wouldn’t be interested because she had boobs—big
ones. Instead I just said, “I know. I’m sorry, Jessica.”
Once that little crisis was behind us, Spanish went by smoothly. Jessica’s tears cleared up, and by the time the bell rang,
she was laughing giddily while Angela, a friend of ours, told us about her new boyfriend. I found out that I’d made an A on
my last
prueba de vocabulario
. Plus, I totally understood how to conjugate regular present subjunctive verbs. So I was in a pretty damn good mood when
Jessica, Angela, and I walked out of the classroom.
“And he has a job on campus,” Angela rambled as we pushed our way into the crowded hall.
“Where does he go to school?” I asked.
“Oak Hill Community College.” She sounded a little
embarrassed, and she quickly added, “But he’s just getting his associate’s degree there before he goes to a university. And
OHCC isn’t a bad school or anything.”
“That’s where I’m going,” Jessica said. “I don’t want to go too far from home.”
Jessica and I were such polar opposites, it was sort of funny sometimes. You could always predict what one of us was going
to want to do just by picking the reverse of the other. Personally, I wanted to get the hell out of Hamilton as soon as possible.
Graduation couldn’t arrive soon enough, and then I’d be off to New York for college.
But the idea of being so far away from Jessica—not seeing her bounce by me every day or hearing her jabber about dances and
gay boys—suddenly scared me. I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d handle it. She and Casey kind of balanced me out. I wasn’t sure
anyone else would be willing to put up with my cynicism once I left town.
“We should get to chemistry, Jess,” Angela said as she shook her long black bangs from her eyes. “You know how Mr. Rollins
gets when we show up late.”
They scampered off to the science department, and I started down the hallway heading toward AP government. My mind drifted
to other places, to a future without my best friends to keep me sane. I’d never considered that before, and now that I was
thinking about it, it made me really nervous. I knew they’d tease me for it, but I would have to find a way to keep in constant
touch.
I guess my eyes lost contact with my brain, because the next thing I knew, I ran smack into Wesley Rush.
That was the end of my good mood.
I stumbled backward, and all of my textbooks slipped from my arms and crashed to the floor. Wesley grabbed me by both shoulders,
his large hands catching me before I had the chance to trip over my own feet and slam into the tile.
“Whoa,” he said, steadying me.
We were standing
way
too close to each other. I felt like I had bugs crawling under my skin, spreading from the places where his hands touched
me. I shivered with disgust, but he misread it.
“Wow, Duffy,” he said, looking down at me with a cocky grin. He was really tall—I’d forgotten that, sitting next to him at
the Nest the other night. He was one of the only boys in our school who was taller than Casey—at least six two. An entire
foot taller than me. “Do I make you weak in the knees?”
“As if.” I twisted out of his grasp, fully aware that I sounded like Alicia Silverstone in
Clueless
but just not caring. I knelt down and began to gather my books, and to my intense displeasure, Wesley joined me. He was playing
the Good Samaritan role, of course. I bet he was hoping some hot cheerleader, like Casey, would walk by and think he was being
a gentleman. What a pig. Always looking to score.
“Spanish, huh?” he said, glancing down at the scattered papers as he grabbed them. “Can you say anything interesting?”
“El tono de tu voz hace que quiera estrangularme
.” I stood up and waited for him to hand over my papers.
“That sounds sexy,” he said, getting to his feet and handing me the stack of Spanish work he’d swept together. “What’s it
mean?”
“The sound of your voice makes me want to strangle myself.”
“Kinky.”
Without another word, I jerked the papers from his hands, tucked them inside one of my books, and stomped off to class. I
needed to put as much distance between myself and the womanizing bastard as possible. Duffy? Seriously? He knew my name! The
egotistical jackass just couldn’t let me be. Not to mention my skin was
still
itching where he’d touched me.
Mr. Chaucer’s AP government class consisted of only nine students, and seven of them were already in the room by the time
I walked through the door. Mr. Chaucer gave me a dirty look through his squinting eyes, impressing upon me that the bell would
ring any second. To be late was a felony in Mr. Chaucer’s opinion, and to be
almost
late constituted a misdemeanor. I wasn’t the last one to show up, though. That helped a little.
I took my seat in the very back of the room and started to open my notebook, hoping to God that Mr. Chaucer wouldn’t call
me out on my near tardiness. With my current mood, there was no guarantee I wouldn’t start cussing at him. He didn’t, and
we were both saved the drama.