Getting Caught (10 page)

Gavin appears by my side a minute later, though I’m not sure how he got there. When I turn to him, he grabs my wrist and says, “There it is.”

I try to follow his line of sight to figure out what he is talking about, but he’s just staring into the air, at nothing in particular. “Huh?”

“Your pulse.”

Chapter Thirteen

Peyton

As I study my stepmom’s latest attempt at art, I can’t help but wonder if I’m supposed to be seeing something other than a blob of McDonald’s wrappers held together with toothpicks and chunks of brightly colored clay.

She calls it
Decay of a Nation.
I call it garbage.

“This is making me hungry,” Bryn whispers in my ear.

I nod. “I know. Ever since
Ode to a Pizza Box,
I’ve had a pepperoni craving.”

We move down the wall a little bit, and I look at a white paper plate with a fly strip on it and a few gummy bears stuck to the strip instead of flies.

I so don’t get art; science, math, English, and history—all of that makes sense. There are basic rules and facts to memorize. But art? Definitely not my forte. My dad, though, couldn’t be more proud of Tina.

I stuff another brownie in my mouth as I look over at my brother. He’s leaning against the front counter, looking casually confident in baggy green cargo pants and a plain ARMY T-shirt. A tiny blonde is laughing at one of his jokes, bent over like her sides hurt. I never knew my brother was so funny. At least one of us is having a good time.

“I think Jess totally bought that the scoreboard was your real prank,” Bryn says. She’s staring at a Chinese takeout box, her face all scrunched up. Then she looks up at me and points at it, like “What the…?”

I shrug. “I have no idea,” I mouth. Tina isn’t looking at us—she’s schmoozing with another artist across the room—but I still feel paranoid that she’ll see me and think I’m making fun of her, when I’m totally not. It’s not her fault art makes no sense whatsoever. Seriously, she could be Picasso and I’d never know it.

“I can’t believe he just went up to her, point blank, and asked her out. I mean, I thought you told him to take it slow and stretch it out until prom.”

It takes me a long moment to swallow another bite of brownie. “I did, but it’s been two weeks since he agreed to this, and he hadn’t done anything. I bet he just got tired of fending off my dirty looks, so he decided to go all out first time out of the gate. You know how those football guys are.”

I think about how weird it was to see the two of them rolling around on the gym mat that one week, Jess giving him such pathetic puppy-dog eyes that it was laughable. She was so into it, I almost felt bad knowing that he wouldn’t date her for real if she were the only girl on the planet.

Almost.

The Harvard interview… She’d gone too far. She’d been the first person I told about Harvard, after my brother. She said I’d get in for sure. She hadn’t known about SATs or extracurriculars or admission processes, but she’d been so sure. She gave me the kind of unquestioning support you can only get from someone who really believes in you. From a real best friend.

It’s sad now, looking back. One day she was supporting me, pushing me to take those extra classes and study harder, wanting me to get in. And the next she was hating me and acting like everything I did was wrong and stupid, and she was so much better than me. She made fun of me the first time I auditioned for the school play. She laughed when I confided in her that I thought the Chess club actually sounded like fun. She said anyone who liked bubblegum pop music must have had a hole in her head.

Part of me wishes I’d never gone to that summer academy, also known as the kiss of death to our friendship. Things had been a little off before that; it felt like we were drifting a little bit, but then I’d just been so busy, planning my high school schedule and path to Harvard. Jess and I had the kind of friendship that we didn’t have to be together every single day to know we were still best friends.

I’d tried to get Jess to come too, but she’d just laughed at me. It wasn’t her style, and I knew it, but I felt bad leaving her behind. We’d been so inseparable neither of us had ever really tried making other friends. I knew Jess would be spending the summer alone in an empty house, since her parents were usually MIA even back then.

Valley Prep academy had been grueling. Not a single moment was left unplanned. I’d learned thousands of new SAT words, crafted dozens of perfect admissions essays, and studied the history of every Ivy League school in existence.

Somehow in the middle of all that, I lost the time, lost Jess. She’d sent me probably a dozen letters. I sent her one post card. I started other letters but never got more than three sentences in before something came up.

I didn’t think it mattered. Our friendship had never been like that. It was okay if we were off doing our own things once in a while. We supported each other. How was I supposed to know her world was crumbling? She didn’t
say
that. Why didn’t she just say it? Why didn’t she say, “
I need you?”
I couldn’t have known.

When I got back, Jess came over to my house…only to see Bryn sitting on my bed. I’m sure she thought I’d been goofing around all summer, blowing her off to hang with Bryn. But Bryn had just showed up while I was still unpacking, before I could go talk to Jess.

I could tell from the way her face fell that she thought she was being replaced. She used to be the kind of person whose every emotion was written on her face. The next day at school, she posted this awful picture of a chimpanzee in my locker, saying that I was a princess and that I was becoming “too big for my britches” or something. And though it was really rude, I figured,
she may be right
. Jess and I could tell each other anything, so we’d never hesitate to let each other know if we were getting out of line. And I didn’t want to lose her as a friend.

To smooth things over, I invited her to have an old-fashioned sleepover, some one-on-one time with my best friend. That was the weekend Evan got drunk with his friends and got into that huge fight with Mr. Weber, who lives across the street. Mr. Weber always gave him dirty looks and would park his shiny Beamer right in front of his skate ramp. So that night, Evan and his friends got out of hand and threw rocks and bottles at his car, and did some pretty serious damage. I remember Evan coming in, raging like crazy, and I had to calm him down. My parents weren’t home, and neither was Mr. Weber, so it was only Jess and me who’d witnessed it. I thought she knew that that type of behavior wasn’t like Evan, that he was a good guy. I told her if anyone found out, he’d get in big trouble, and she swore up and down she’d never tell. Then she made some excuse about having “something to do” and just ran home. I bet she was dialing 9-1-1 before her front door even slammed shut.

The next day, bright and early, the police came—to
her
front door. Evan and I watched as she stood on her front porch and pointed right at our house. Evan completely panicked, but there was nothing we could do about it. He was in tears as they headed in our direction. He knew he’d been stupid the night before.

He’d already decided to go talk to Mr. Weber and pay for the damage. But Jess made that impossible.

The cops crossed the lawn between the houses and knocked on our front door, and WHAM, they toted Evan off to jail. He was eighteen by then, an adult, and Mr. Weber was so pissed he wanted to press maximum charges. Maybe if Evan had been given the chance to ‘fess up like he’d planned, things would have turned out differently. Instead, he was sentenced to pay a fine and do community service. And since then, every time he’s applied for a job, he’s had to check that little box that says, “I have been convicted of a crime.” That box seals his doom. Who is going to hire a twenty-one year old with little work experience and a criminal record?

And it’s all because of Jess. She ruined him. And she calls
me
the goody-goody.

Maybe I went a teeny bit overboard pushing her into the pool two days later, but I was pissed off. I didn’t even create that National Geographic thing—the other people at the party did it and put it on her locker. I guess they thought they were defending my honor after I told them about the Princess Peyton poster Jess had put on my locker. And just when I was feeling the tiniest bit bad, she quickly shot back at me with another prank.

So instead of becoming strangers, we became enemies.

She filled my locker up with tampons, along with a note that said
Sorry you have PMS you stuck-up bitch
. But before she could really relish in the glory, I stole her street clothes during
gym
and she had to walk around in her PE sweats for the last three classes. The best part? She’d forgotten her normal PE clothes and had to wear the loaner set—the ones that say LOANER in huge block leaders across the front. People called her a loner for a week straight after that.

“Hi, sweetheart!”

I snap out of my walk down memory lane to see my dad standing next to me.

“This is pretty cool, huh?” He points to the piece of food-slash-art I’d been staring at, my eyes completely unfocused for the last ten minutes. He thinks I’ve been enraptured by one of Tina’s weird pieces of “art.” Ha.

“Yeah, of course.”

“It’s so original,” he says. He leans over and reads the nutrition facts on the side of a bag of Oreos, as if she created that part too.

“Yeah. It’s definitely unique.”

He nods enthusiastically. He’s so supportive of Tina and all of her art endeavors I don’t think he could come up with a flaw in it if he tried. He’s at every art show, and he always acts like she must have spent years perfecting each project. Sometimes it bugs me because I wish he’d get this excited about me and my goals. He’s never put my report card on the fridge or gone to a debate or an honor society induction. On the other hand, he’s hardly ever this excited anymore—this clear-eyed and happy—so I can’t really hate it, either.

Tina is probably the best thing that ever happened to my dad. Even I know it.

I don’t know how I ended up in this family. I don’t fit in. I’m like the black sheep, only the opposite—my entire family is black sheep and I’m the white one, the one who wants to conform and succeed and climb the ladder. I hate feeling like no one gets me.

When I’m at Harvard, I’ll fit in. I’ll be around thousands of other overachievers and finally, life will make sense. I’ll probably find a ton of other people use their neuroticism to help them succeed. I won’t have to help my brother fill out job applications or my dad come up with new slogans.

For now, though, it’s just me and my family.

My dad looks up at me and smiles, and for once I don’t see the bags under his eyes. “We’re all going to get some burritos after to celebrate Tina’s success,” he says, like she’s just won the Pulitzer prize. I can almost
see
the pride in his voice, like it’s a tangible object.

“Why? Is she out of art materials?”

My dad looks confused. “What do you mean?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, just wanders off again, leaving me surrounded by a bunch of empty Snickers wrappers and pipe cleaners.

If this Harvard thing doesn’t work out for me, I am so screwed.

Chapter Fourteen

Jess

When Dave mentions something about getting a bite to eat, I assume we’re heading toward Charlotte’s Diner. Though I’ve never been there, I know it’s the school’s hangout, and thus it’s
Dave’s hangout
. Instead, we pass right by, heading out of town. For a few bewildering moments, I almost believe Dave is going to drop me off in the woods and leave me for dead.

After a fairly uncomfortable half-hour drive, I see a “Welcome to Stewartsville” sign. We pull into a place called “Shiner’s Diner.” I’ve never heard of it, and evidently, neither has anyone else, because the lot’s empty.

When we walk inside, the smell of cigarette smoke nearly suffocates me. Are we really supposed to eat here? The only clientele are a couple of balding old men on barstools, hunched over their coffees. The waitress looks up from the classified section of a newspaper and takes in my army jacket, destroyed denim mini, and rose-printed tights. Then she looks at Mr. Clean Cut, and though we look like the embodiment of the old saying “opposites attract,” her expression doesn’t change. The silence is eerie.

Dave motions to a booth nearby, and as I slide in, one of the grizzled men blows his nose so loudly into his handkerchief I nearly jump.

It hasn’t been a great date, and this diner is proving to be the icing on the cake. The whole night I’ve been on edge, and it’s obvious I’m not the only one. In gym, tossing one-liners to each other had been easy. But with a date there are certain expectations. Dave picked me up late and has been acting nervous—he hasn’t attempted to say more than ten words to me all night. Everything is just plain weird.

I order a big plate of French fries and a root beer, figuring now is the time for real conversation. Instead, Dave just meddles with the sugar packets.