Authors: Claire Lazebnik
I laughed and balanced my books in one arm, so I could put my hand across his mouth. “Shut up! Or at least be quiet long enough for me to tell you I’m saying yes, I’d like to go with you. It sounds great.” I removed my hand from his mouth. “Okay, now you can talk again.”
“Well, now I can’t,” he said. “I’m speechless.”
“You?” I raised my eyebrows. “Seems unlikely.”
“How well you know me.” His long, thin face lit up with a smile. “You make me happy, Miss Benton.”
“I’m glad.”
“Where are you headed?” he asked. “I’ll walk you there. But I should warn you—it may be a little weird walking next to me right now because, thanks to you, I’m walking on air.”
“Is that faster or slower than walking on the floor?” I asked.
“It’s just better,” he said.
“Well?” Juliana said, with an eager glance when we met by the minivan after school.
“Well what?” I slung my messenger bag off my shoulder and onto the ground, not meeting her eyes.
“Did Derek ask you?”
“To the semiformal? Yeah, he asked me.”
She gave a silly little hop of excitement. “It’ll be so much fun, Lee-Lee! We can go together!” She lowered her voice a little. “I know it sounds obnoxious, but so many girls would kill to go with him, so it’s pretty nice that he wanted to ask you, don’t you think? Not that I’m surprised. You’re a million times smarter and prettier than any other girl around here.” She stopped, finally registering my silence and the expression on my face. “Wait. What’s wrong?”
I folded my arms. “You didn’t actually think I’d say yes to him, did you?”
“You turned him down?”
I nodded.
“Why would you do that?”
“Do you really need to ask me that?”
“Because of Saturday night?” she said. “Because of the party and that guy—what’s his name?”
“Webster.” I hated the way she said “that guy,” like he wasn’t worth remembering. “And I’ve already made plans to go to the dance with him.” I wondered if I should let her know what Derek had said about Mom and Layla. The problem was, knowing Juliana, she’d be all Gandhi-like and forgiving about his saying that (“Well, they were a little bit annoying that night, you have to admit”), and she’d make me question whether my anger was justified, even though of course it was. Jules was inhuman in her ability to forgive people. Better not to mention it. Instead I said, “Derek told me you said I’d be happy to go with him. Can you please not speak for me in the future?”
“Oh, Elise,” she moaned. Like
I
had disappointed
her
.
“What?”
“Nothing. Let’s just go home.” She turned and opened the car door.
“Where’s Layla?”
“She went over to her friend’s house—the one with the weird name.”
“Campbell McGill?” When she nodded, I said, “I wonder about that friendship—” but Jules closed her door before I’d finished my sentence.
I went around to my side and got in.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” I said a few minutes later, when it became impossible to ignore the silent treatment she was giving me. “Two guys asked me to go out that night. I happen to like one and not the other. So what’s the big deal?”
She twitched her shoulders irritably. “I thought you’d want to go with Derek.”
“Why? Because his mother’s Melinda Anton?”
“Why would you even say that to me?” she snapped. “Have I ever cared about stuff like that?”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re so quick to assume the worst about everyone. Even me.”
“Well, you were going on about how popular he was just a minute ago—”
“But that was only because I wanted you to feel good about being asked. Not because
I
care.” She bit her lip in silence for a moment and then burst out, “And now it’s going to be so awkward at the dance. Chase can’t stand Webster.”
“For no reason except because Derek can’t.”
“Chase said Webster’s a slimeball.” She tightened her fingers around the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, Elise, but he did. I know you like the guy—”
“You’d like the guy, too, if you spent, like, three minutes talking to him. But you won’t because your celebrity friends won’t let you.”
“That’s just mean,” she said. “And unfair. And untrue. And unworthy of you.”
“Hey,” I said. “You know what?”
“What?”
“Shut up.”
And she did, but only after muttering, “You ruin everything.”
I
have to get another job,” Juliana said later that night, as she poked through the pathetic remains of four years of babysitting and ice-cream-scooping money. She had apologized to me earlier that evening for being so angry about the semiformal, admitting I had a right to choose who I went with.
In turn, I apologized for telling her to shut up.
We never stayed mad at each other for long: we were too codependent.
“You could ask Mom to find out if anyone at school needs babysitting,” I said.
“Yeah. But that’s not going to help me right now.” She was hoping to buy a new dress for the semiformal. Mom had told her they were more than happy to help—and had proudly handed her thirty dollars. Juliana and I both knew that most of the girls at school would be wearing panties that cost more than that. Which was why we were now huddled in our bedroom, staring at the small pile of bills. “Do you think Dad would let me get my allowance early, just this one time?”
“Go ahead and ask him,” I said. “He loves giving that speech about how we’re a nation of debtors and it all begins with kids borrowing from their parents. You’ll make his day.”
“Oh, what’s the use?” She flicked at the money irritably. “I just wanted to look decent for once. Is that so wrong?”
“Dramatic much?” I got up and went over to my dresser and opened the wooden box on top. “You can get a decent dress at a thrift store for under a hundred bucks.”
“I only have forty.”
I came back to her bed and dropped the bills I had just taken out from the box onto her stomach. “Nope. You have sixty.”
She sat up and grabbed the money. “Oh, Elise! Thank you! But don’t you need it? You’re going to the dance, too.”
“It’s not like I can buy anything for twenty bucks—might as well donate it to the cause.”
“Okay, but we’re sharing whatever I get.”
“Both of us in one dress? We’ll get looks.”
“You’re an idiot.”
The next morning, Layla overheard us asking Mom if we could use her car (the answer was yes, but only if we did the supermarket shopping on the way home), and bugged us until we told her where we were going—and then bugged us until we agreed to let her come with us. As she literally danced around with delight, I felt a little guilty that Jules and I so often did things without inviting her along.
But when she ran into the garage ahead of me and grabbed the front passenger seat with a triumphant “I call shotgun!” my goodwill toward her vanished.
“I’m older,” I said, holding the door open and gesturing with my thumb. “Get in the back.”
“But I got here first.”
“We didn’t have to let you come at all.”
Juliana was climbing into the driver’s seat. She said, “It’s a ten-minute drive—not worth arguing over. Layla can sit in front on the way there, and you can have it on the way back, Elise.” I grumbled but got in the back.
Once we were on our way, Layla kept punching at the radio—“Hate this song!” “Oh, this one’s good—rats, it’s ending,” “Oh God, why won’t Taylor Swift just
go away
?”—until even Juliana lost patience and snapped at her to just leave it on one station.
The second we entered the thrift store, Layla said, “I need shoes,” and ran off.
Juliana and I were wandering up and down the aisles together when we ran into a couple of eleventh-grade girls I recognized from school. I was surprised: I didn’t think Coral Tree girls shopped at thrift stores. They greeted me by name and seemed pleasantly surprised by the coincidence.
One of the girls—whose name, I kid you not, was Copper Fielding—had a great sense of style. I’d actually noticed her at school because of it. She was a master of high-low matching—a Gap tee with a Chloé skirt, say, or Levi’s with a Chanel jacket. She was very tall, so everything looked great on her.
She asked what we were shopping for, and when I told her, she said, “I saw the perfect dress! It’s too small for me, but it would fit you guys.” We followed her to a rack of cocktail gowns, where she pulled out a dress. “It’s a Dosa, from, like, three seasons ago. I can’t believe it hasn’t been snatched up already—they probably just put it out today. This would go for, like, two hundred dollars on eBay,” she added. “I know because I sell stuff on eBay all the time.”
The dress was beautiful in a shimmery rust-colored silk, but I instantly thought,
She’ll have to wear something over it or Mom and Dad will never let her out of the house
. It was a bias-cut slip dress, very revealing, with spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline.
“Look,” Copper said, and held the dress up against Juliana’s body. “Nice, right?”
The color was beautiful against Juliana’s dark hair and pale skin. “You have to get it,” I said, as soon as she emerged from the fitting room to show me how it looked. “It’s perfect.”
She gestured to her chest. “Mom and Dad—”
“I know. You’ll wear a jacket over the dress at home and take it off when you leave.”
Copper said, “You
have
to get it,” and then she and her friends said they had to go check out the new merchandise at another thrift store—apparently shopping on the weekend was a regular sport for them, and they had a circuit to complete.
While Juliana changed, I went looking for Layla and found her over by the shoe rack. “Hey, Lee-Lee. What do you think of these?” She held up a pair of red leather booties.
I wrinkled my nose. “They’re way too beat up. Look—the heel’s coming off that one.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll re-glue them. Most of the other shoes are in much worse shape. Can you lend me five dollars, though? I don’t have enough.”
“Maybe you just shouldn’t get them.”
“But I want them,” she said, like that was all that mattered.
The night of the dance, Mom gave Juliana permission to wear as much makeup as she wanted, since she was a senior. “Just remember,” she intoned, “less is more.”
I wasn’t given the same dispensation, so I had to confine myself to my usual touch of neutral blush and a dusting of light brown eyeliner. Juliana—who looked very glamorous with sparkling eye shadow and a smoky dark eyeliner—helped me fix my hair, pulling it up and back into a little pouf.
“You guys are so friggin’ lucky,” Layla moaned from my bed where she was stretched out, watching us get ready. “I wish I had a date tonight.”
“Nylons or not?” Juliana asked, holding up a pair of pantyhose.
“Are you crazy?” Layla said. “No one in Southern California wears panty hose.”
Jules hesitated. “Mom likes us to, though.”
I shook my head. “Layla’s right—and you know I don’t say that lightly.”
Juliana put the panty hose back in the drawer.
The dress fit her perfectly, and her curled hair fell beautifully over her bare shoulders. Then she slipped on a jacket. She still looked moderately chic, just nowhere near as sexy.
“I hope I can take it off without Mom’s noticing,” she said, surveying her reflection with a sigh.
“It’s too bad she’ll be there,” I said. “But the dress looks cute either way. Really.”
“Thanks. You look good, too.”
“You think?” I looked down at my outfit dubiously—super-short dresses just weren’t in anymore, not the way they’d been two years earlier when I’d bought it.
“I love turquoise on you,” she said. “Makes your eyes look almost green.”
“You’re such a liar,” I said, because my eyes were brown, with forays into the hazel arena on good days.
“Shh,” Layla said. “Hear that? Phone!” She jumped to her feet, ran to the door, and flung it open just as Mom called my name. Layla turned. “Rats—it’s for you, Elise.”
The only two landline phones in the house were both corded because Dad had read an article about how electromagnetic rays in cordless phones fry your brain or something, so I had to go down to the kitchen to take the call.
Mom handed me the phone. “It’s your date for the evening,” she said stiffly. When I had first told her I was going to the dance a few days earlier, she had said delightedly, “With Derek, I presume?” When I said no, she didn’t even try to hide her disappointment.
I was just grateful she didn’t know that Derek had actually asked me and I’d said no—she never would have recovered from that horrific bit of news.
Come to think of it, I owed Juliana for not telling her about that.
“Hey,” I said into the phone. “Hope you’re not calling to tell me you’re sick or anything.”
I was joking, but Webster didn’t laugh, just said, “I am so sorry, Elise.”
“Oh, no. What’s going on?” I sank into a kitchen chair.
“I think I got food poisoning or something.” He sounded awful, really wiped out. “I’ve been throwing up all afternoon. I hurled again, like, five minutes ago.” He gave a weary hoarse laugh. “Sorry to be so explicit—I just wanted you to know that if there were any way I could still get myself there, I would. That’s why I waited so long to call. But . . .”
“No worries,” I said. “This stuff happens.”
“Thanks for understanding. When I’m better, we’ll make some other plans, okay?”
“Of course.” We said good-bye and I hung up.
Mom was watching me like a hawk. She was already dressed for the evening in a crimson dress that she had paired—inexplicably—with yellow shoes. “What’s going on?”
“He’s sick.”
“You can still go tonight,” she said. “Most of the kids won’t have dates anyway. I’m sure you can find someone there to dance with.”
I knew which “someone” she was hoping I’d find. “I’ll think about it.”
She looked at her watch. “I have to leave now.”
“I can get a ride with Jules and Chase.” I’d already decided I wasn’t going, but if I said so, she’d try to change my mind.
“I’ll expect to see you there.” She picked up her green purse. (With a crimson dress and yellow shoes? Sometimes I wonder if my mother is simply color-blind.) “I’m off to the dance!”
Well, that made one of us.
I wandered back upstairs and told Juliana about the phone call.
“I’m sorry, Lee-Lee,” she said with a consoling pat on my shoulder. “Come with me and Chase.”
“It’s too weird. If Derek’s with Chase . . .” Actually, my real concern was if Derek was with someone else
.
A date. I’d look like a loser showing up alone after turning him down.
“Please, Lee-Lee? We’ll have a good time, I promise. Please?” But this time Juliana’s begging didn’t work. I changed out of the dress and put my jeans and T-shirt back on.
Half an hour later, we heard Layla and Kaitlyn calling out, “The limo’s here!”
Juliana moved toward the door. “I wish you were going with me,” she said.
“Once you’re with Chase, you won’t even remember you have a sister,” I said. “Have a great time, Jules.”
She left the room, and I kneeled on the bed so I could look out the window. The limo driver and Chase had both gotten out of the car and were waiting for Juliana.
I couldn’t see into the dark interior of the limo, and I wondered if Derek were inside and if he had found someone who’d said yes.
What was I thinking? Of course he had. He was Derek Edwards.