You Wish (16 page)

“Sure you do, babe, it’s a pink convertible. Did you leave it at your beach house?”

Despite my nerves, I snicker. “Okay, now I
know
you have me confused. I don’t have a beach house.”

I’m walking faster and faster, and this weirdo is just keeping pace, gliding along in his yellow convertible. Even idling, the engine is loud, rumbling, vibrating the air around us.

“Don’t be silly, Barb. You don’t have to walk. Jump in!”

I stop and spin toward him. “My name is
not
Barb. Just get lost!”

He rolls his eyes just a little. “Of course. Sorry,
Barbie
. I know you hate it when I call you Barb.”

I open my mouth to fire back at him, but the words die in my throat. I snap it shut and step back, away from the curb. Suddenly the roar of that ugly sports car is deafening, ringing in my ears over and over. My hand feels a little shaky as I cover up my gaping mouth.

I pull it away so I can ask him a question. “What’s your name?”

He laughs. “Oh, come on, honey pie, you know my name!” “Tell me your name,” I say, through gritted teeth.

“Ken.”

Oh boy, my life just took a serious southward turn.

Ken. Freaking Ken. As in, Barbie and Ken.

And he thinks I’m his girlfriend.

He thinks I’m
Barbie
.

WTF, when did I wish for
this
?

I TRY
really, really
hard to get Ken to leave me alone, but he keeps coasting along near the sidewalk, calling me various pet names and trying to convince me that I am, in fact, Barbie.

Right.

It must be my cascading blonde hair that has him confused. Or my pink ruffled shorts and tank top . . . or the fact that I’m walking around on my tippy toes. At least I
do
have these great hooters. I’m like one for five at best.

I can barely deal with a real-life Raggedy Ann. What am I going to do with Ken? At least he doesn’t think we live together. And he
does
have a car.

“Come on, sugar, hop in!”

I stop and put a hand on my hip and glare at him. “If I let you drive me to the library, will you at least leave me alone to study and go . . . play beach volleyball or whatever it is that you do?”

His lips curl into an all-encompassing, all-American smile that shows off his dimples and artificially white teeth. Seriously, if we were in a room with a black light, I bet his whole mouth would glow.

I groan and roll my eyes but decide to give in. If that will get him off my back for the rest of the day, it’ll buy me some time to figure out what to do about all this.

Ken jumps out of the car and runs around and holds the passenger door open for me. He stands there as I get in and then clicks the door shut as I buckle up.

So Ken is a gentleman. Go figure. I thought he’d be more of the football-meathead type, the sort who doesn’t notice if he spends a whole afternoon talking about himself and crunching cans against his forehead.

“Go anywhere cool lately?” Ken asks, leaning on the center console and giving me a cocky eyebrow raise.

“Uh, no?”

“You always say that. I think you take your stewardess duties too seriously. You ought to have more fun.”

Stewardess duties?

I rack my brains. There must have been a Barbie stewardess. Also, he must not know that
stewardess
is no longer PC, and you’re supposed to call them flight attendants.

I turn to watch the trees dance in the autumn breeze, and a smile starts to play at the edges of my lips, until it becomes too much and I grin to myself.

There’s no way I can miss messing with
the
Ken.

“Have you seen my zebra lately?” I ask, turning to Ken in all seriousness. One of my favorite Barbie play sets had been the safari one, where Barbie is wearing khaki shorts and hiking boots and she comes with a slew of animals. I imagined myself going on all kinds of African adventures. “She seems to have wandered off. With my . . . lion cub. And panda bear.” I’m actually not entirely sure Barbie has a panda bear, but the zebra and the lion cub ring a bell. “Those three, I swear . . . ”

I wag my finger like a stern librarian or something.

Ken wrinkles his brow. “That’s terrible. Do you know where they went?”

I shake my head. It’s getting harder and harder not to laugh. “Nope. One minute they were in my dream house, and the next . . . gone. I took out the Jeep to go find them, but no luck. Madge and I looked all day long.”

Madge. Did I get that right? Or was it Midge? Hmm. My Barbie days were so long ago. For good measure, I blink my eyes, wide and innocent-like, and pout a little bit.

Ken furrows his brow even more, looking so entirely sympathetic to my plight that I have a hard time not losing it right then.

I decide to go for the gusto. “And since I decided to be a veterinarian instead of a pediatrician—you know, after I lost my bid for president and then my NASCAR career fell through—I’ve just really renewed my love of animals. Especially since I opened that pet shop.”

I grab Ken’s hand and really ham it up. “And poor Skipper, she’s been so upset. She really loved that tiger. Er, lion, I mean.”

I bat my eyes at him. “And I need to spend all day studying for . . . veterinarian finals. So would you mind looking for them for me?”

Perfect. Send him on a wild-goose chase and he’ll forget to hang out with me. If only it was this easy to ditch Ann.

“You got it, babe,” he says as we’re pulling up at the library.

Before I can duck out of the car, he leans forward and kisses me, his gigantic lips—perfectly soft and moist, which seems gross for some reason—pressing into mine.

“Thanks!” I shout, even though he’s like an inch from my face, and then I leap from the car. I slam the door to the yellow convertible and am halfway to the sidewalk when I see him.

Ben is standing on the sidewalk, near the glass doors, seemingly frozen with fascination as Ken backs out of the parking stall and heads out to the street. Presumably to find my lost zebra, panda, and lion cub.

“Ben,” I say, surprised, as I sling my backpack over my shoulder. “Uh, how are you?”

Why the heck is he at the library at nine a.m. on a Sunday?
He
can’t be avoiding the life-sized doll hanging out in his bedroom.

“Good.” He seems fixated on watching Ken pull out of the lot, the exhaust on his sports car revving up as the tires chirp on the asphalt. “Who’s that?”

Ben turns to look at me, and I study his eyes, trying to gauge his emotions. Is he jealous?

I grit my teeth. I’m not supposed to
want
Ben to be jealous.

“Um, K—” I stop. I can’t possibly admit that his name is Ken or it’s going to be mega-obvious that the guy has some complex and thinks he’s a doll. “Carson.”

Carson was his last name, wasn’t it? All the Barbie-details are pretty foggy.

I move toward the library door, and Ben steps to the side and sweeps his hands to the side, as if he’s personally escorting me inside, even though the doors are automatic.

“Thanks,” I say, staring at the ground as I rush past him so he won’t see my cheeks warm.

So I’m a sucker for chivalry. Even with my pessimist nature, I can admit there’s something charming about a simple gesture. Ben follows me as we step inside the library, where I inhale the scent of paper and books. Something about this place makes it feel like the outside world doesn’t exist.

“Are you guys together?”

I look up, surprised, both at the question and at the slightly edgy tone in Ben’s voice.

“Why?” I ask, before I can stop the word from slipping past my lips.

He follows me past the spinners with the paperback romance novels, past the children’s section, past dozens of tall shelves of reference books to a couch in the back corner of the library, where a big window splashes the place with light. We plunk down on opposite ends of the sofa, a full cushion between us.

He shrugs. “Look, we’re friends, right? I just thought the guy was a little odd. You can do much better.”

I scrunch my brows and try to pretend like it takes all of my attention to dig through my backpack.

“So
was
he your boyfriend?”

“Yes, he’s my boyfriend,” I say, my annoyance growing. “He’s totally awesome. Very . . . athletic. Awesome at volleyball. And of course he has his own car and everything, which is awesome . . . ”

Why, for the love of pizza, do I keep saying “awesome”?

That’s something California Ken would probably say.

Even as the
awesome
words flood out, I want to hit reverse and reel them back in, but I can’t stop it. It’s like I need to convince Ben I have a boyfriend in order to make myself feel better about this whole thing.

“Sorry, sorry. I know it’s none of my business,” Ben says. “I was just surprised. You never mentioned a boyfriend, that’s all.”

“Oh.” I deflate a little. “How are you and Nicole doing these days?”

Ben rubs his hands together and takes in a deep, slow breath. He looks . . . I don’t know how he looks. But something is off.

“You guys aren’t breaking up, are you?”

“What? No. Of course not.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“It’s just—”

I stop fiddling with my backpack. “It’s just what?”

“Never mind.”

“Are you sure? Because if you want to—”

“No. Everything’s fine,” he says, with conviction.

“Okay. Well, anyway, I need to work on my bio homework, so . . . ”

I pick up my biology book and wave it around, a little too enthusiastically.

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

Ben grabs his own book and yanks it open. A few sheets of paper fly out and flutter to the ground. One of them slides under my foot. I lean down to pick it up—recognizing Nicole’s handwriting by the time my fingers are just gracing the page—but Ben grabs it before I can see what it says.

“Ow!” The paper slices my pointer finger as it slides out from under my hand, and a bright crimson drop of blood lands on the knee of my jeans.

“Oh, wow, sorry.” Ben digs a tissue out of his backpack and hands it to me, and I hold it to my fingertip.

“Thanks.”

I hold it to my finger as the throbbing eases.

But even when it stops bleeding, my heart still hurts.

21

WHEN NICOLE
walks up to me the next day at school, all I can do is stare at her. Even from a few dozen feet away, I can tell she’s wearing darker mascara than usual, and the edges of her eyes have an obvious smudge of eyeliner. Her hair is curled yet again, and today she’s got on a—dare I say it—
cute
destroyed-denim mini, plus a black V-neck with a lacy blue camisole underneath. She’s got on a pair of boots, too, different ones than she wore last week. They’re black, with adorable little straps that zigzag all over the toe.

Last year she dressed more like me, in lots of hoodies and jeans, and she almost always wore Converse. I mean, it’s not like I expected her to consult with me before she went back-to-school shopping, but it’s just kind of . . . weird. To see her transform right in front of me and to have her not even say anything or make a big deal of it.

I’ve been sitting on one of the weird carpeted cube-like benches in the hall, flipping through my bio book. There’s a quiz tomorrow and I can’t seem to absorb anything in this chapter.

It probably has to do with the fact that I’m trying to hunch over and hide my giant boobs. Crossing my arms is out—it actually makes them look bigger. Smooshes them together. Not a good idea.

I spent fifteen minutes this morning with Ann, trying out the Ace bandage idea. It didn’t really work. I mean, it basically added a few layers to my already-oversized chest, so it essentially just made them bigger. I gave up and went with the sports bra.

So now I just keep sitting cross-legged, kind of leaned over my book, hoping no one notices. I see Janae walking down the hall, and I hunch further. I’m hyper-aware of everyone around me, totally convinced every one of them have taken note of my magically enhanced assets.

“Hey,” Nicole says, plunking down next to me. She has a new purse, too. It’s gigantically oversized, sea-foam-green leather with a bunch of extra buckles. Who is this girl and what did she do with my totally untrendy BFF?

“Hi,” I say, sighing as I snap the book shut. “I can’t figure this out.”

“Really? Do you need help?” Nicole is amazingly smart, probably because she spent her formative years indoors reading books thanks to a bevy of acne meds that caused sensitivity to sunlight.

I widen my eyes and throw myself at her feet.
“Si. Si. Si . . . ”

I stop when I realize I’m answering her in Italian. “I mean, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, a million times yes.”

Nicole giggles and pulls me back onto the bench next to her. Her eyes dart around for a second.