Frogs & French Kisses #2 (4 page)

I should have looked at his ring finger before getting excited. Oh, no. What if these men are all married? Or if they all live in Florida?

I can handle Florida. I’m not opposed. New school, perma-tan, Disney World . . . But my mom’s being a high-priced mistress? Not so much. Too much drama. I’d see the other woman’s kids at school and would have to pretend I didn’t know where their father was spending his nights. What if I fell in love with his seventeen-year-old son? Would it be my ethical duty to tell him, even if it would tear his soul apart?

I snap back to attention just as my mom is being introduced to Adam, the hot guy in the Yankees jersey, Florida Man’s single brother-in-law (no ring). Much better. “I live in Jersey City,” he’s saying. Oh well, no tan for me, but being nearby will make their courtship easier. Fewer flights.

“I’m a travel agent,” she’s saying.

“One of the best in the city!” I pitch.

The apples of her cheeks redden.

“Isn’t she cute when she blushes?” I add, and she inserts her thumbnail into her mouth and is about to take a nibble when I gently yank her hand away. Must she gross them out?

“Very cute,” Lex says, startling me. Enough, old man! Stop stalking my mom!

“I was thinking of planning a trip down to visit Jimmy, my sister, and the kids,” Adam says, sidling up closer to her. “Do you think you could give me advice?”

“Actually,” she says as she picks at her fingers behind her back, thinking I won’t notice, “I specialize in honeymoons. . . .”

I quickly step on her foot. Is she that clueless? “Mo-ther, I’m sure you could help him out. Why don’t you give him your
business
card. And then he could
call
you.” I try to use my nonexistent telepathy to help her get it. Card . . . phone call . . . date . . .

She nods and then stops picking long enough to reach into her purse and pull out a card.

Adam smiles as he reads it. “Thanks.”

“I need to book some trips too,” pipes up Lex. “Is there one for me?”

Sigh. How transparent can you get, old man? I thought cowboys were supposed to be suave.

Smiling, my mom starts handing cards out like candy canes at a mall in December.

“Where do you recommend this time of year?” Lex asks, once again hogging the conversation.

“France is beautiful in the spring. . . .”

Where you should go, Lex, so you can leave my mother alone! Just as I’m about to interrupt, a new hottie, a blond hottie with big green eyes, butts in for me. “Are you a travel agent? I could use some help with my miles. . . .”

Wink, wink. Sure he can.

Twenty minutes later, we’re back in the car and Operation HM
³
(Help Mom Meet Men) was a smashing success. What can I say? I’m brilliant.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Mom says giddily. “I gave out eleven business cards!”

“You took forever,” Miri moans. “It’s freezing in here. Can you start the car already and turn on the heat? I’m going to catch a cold.”

I turn on the heat and then the radio and do a little seat groove to the beat. Maybe I’ll become a matchmaker. I’m like a puppeteer, commandeering the emotions of unsuspecting innocents. Who needs magic? All I need are clever strategies. Fine, we needed the magic to stop the bus, but otherwise it was all me. I can do anything I set my mind to, just like my mother always told me! Well, not anything. There’s nothing I can do about school tomorrow. If only I could conjure up a cancel-school spell. Or at least a freak snowstorm.

I
cannot
face going to school tomorrow. Is it possible the JFK kids have forgotten about the fashion show fiasco? It’s been an entire week.

Yeah, right.

Even if the masses have forgotten, there’s no way the fashion show horribles have. London has probably spent the entire week preparing ways to torture me. After all, I did knock her off the stage and thus break her leg. Oh God. I need to go into hiding. Maybe my bruised chin will act as a disguise? No, I’m pretty sure it will be gone by tomorrow. The red has already started to fade.

But Miri had the right idea. If I catch a cold, I can stay in bed the entire day.

I turn off the heat.

“Are you crazy?” Miri asks. “It’s freezing in here. Do you want to get sick?”

“Yup.” I roll down the window and inhale.

4

Not Quite Gone, Not Quite Forgotten

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

Nononononononononooooo. It’s seven a.m. Monday morning and my throat doesn’t hurt at all. How is that possible? I inhaled bitterly cold air. I showered last night and walked around the block—without blow-drying! I purposely didn’t take a vitamin before bed! (Don’t tell my dad; he’s obsessed with vitamins.) Also I didn’t have my evening glass of fresh orange juice. And I love my evening glass of juice. The rush of vitamin C gives me sweet dreams.

Maybe I have a fever. I
am
feeling pretty headachy. I could have at least 101, maybe 102. My throat isn’t sore but I’m burning up. Might have to be hospitalized. Maybe the kids at school will feel guilty about bad-mouthing someone who’s sick and send me flowers and one of those life-size cards that everyone signs in different colors. In fact, they’ll probably realize that my horrendous fashion show performance was a result of this sickness, and I’ll be forgiven, because you can’t be mad at someone who’s sick. A-list, here I come! Plus I’ll have a superhot doctor nursing me to health. Yes!

I hurry to the bathroom, park myself on the edge of the bathtub, and shove the thermometer under my tongue.

“Oh, give it up. You’re perfectly healthy,” Miri says, barging in and flipping on the faucet.

“ ’et ot!” I mumble, which translates to “get out” in non-thermometer-speak. “I’m thick. Pwobably contaios.”

She applies toothpaste to her brush. “Suck it up and go to school. You’ll be fine.”

I will not be fine. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and gasp. My chin has completely crusted over and seems worse than ever. It looks like a beard. Isn’t this all Miri’s fault to begin with? Losing my dancing skills, bruising my chin . . . I’m about to tell her where to get off but decide to try to calm myself down instead. I shouldn’t be getting so emotional when I’m deathly ill.

The thermometer beeps and reads . . . 98.2?

What? That’s impossible. How could I not have a fever? I’m perfectly healthy. How can this be? Hmm, isn’t normal body temperature 98.6? Perhaps there’s a dangerous medical condition that causes your temperature to drop. Maybe by noon it’ll be down to ninety, by this afternoon eighty, and by this evening I’ll be a frozen Popsicle, unable to move without my fingers snapping off like ice-capped branches.

Miri grabs the traitorous thermometer from my hands. “You’re fine. Go get dressed.”

Speaking of ice, maybe it’s snowing outside. Then the school will call a snow day and I’ll get to stay home. I sprint back to my room and hurl open the window blinds.

Sunny. A beautiful sunny day. Shouldn’t the weather know that it’s supposed to reflect my mood?

“Mom!” I holler. “Can I stay home today? Pleeeeeease?”

“No!” she yells back through the walls.

I flop onto my unmade bed and pull the covers over my head. “But I’m going to be a social outcast! And I have a beard!”

“I told you, if you’re mature enough to use magic, you should be mature enough to face the consequences. Besides, you can’t hide away forever.”

Not forever. Just until my classmates graduate. So I’ll be a few years older than the others when I finally go back. At least my body will have caught up to them. Hopefully. Even my own little sister has me beat in that department, with her B-cup breasts. How unfair is that? “But I look like a man!”

I can hear her laughing. Ha-ha. “It’s not that bad, Rachel. Get ready for school.”

Get ready for social mortification is more like it.

If I make my steps really small, I’ll be late. Because I don’t have a note, I’ll get expelled. And then I’ll never have to go to school again! Although then I won’t get into college. I’ll never get a good job and the only place that will hire me will be McDonald’s and all I’ll eat will be Big Macs and fries and one day my neighbor will find a five-hundred-pound me unable to squeeze through the front door of my cat-infested apartment.

I make my steps
slightly
bigger. And tighten my puffy black coat. The bright sun deceptively makes the weather look warm when it’s actually even colder than yesterday.

As I approach the last few blocks before school, something seems off. Like a silent Times Square. A crowd of students have gathered outside the building. Jeez. Are they
all
waiting for me so they can mock me? Am I so famous?

“This rules, man,” a passing senior says. “I’m going back to bed.”

I’d like to go back to bed. I’d like to go back to middle school. I sprint toward the mob and try to eavesdrop on a cluster of sophomores to hear what’s going on.

“. . . cows in there. How funny is that? It was so the senior prank,” one of them says.

Cows?

“Best prank ever,” someone else comments. “How did they do it? Get fifty cows into the school gym without anyone seeing?”

Fifty cows?

The words and noise around me swirl, like I’m on a merry-go-round.

“. . . doubt any of the seniors were smart enough to pull this off . . .”

“. . . probably those jerks at Brentwood High . . .”

“. . . classes are going to be canceled . . .”

“. . . major property damage . . .”

“. . . health officials have to decontaminate . . .”

I feel instantly light-headed, like I just gave blood. They couldn’t be Miri’s cows. The Sammy’s cows? No. Maybe. Did Miri wish them into the school gym? Why would she wish them into
my
gym? She doesn’t even go to this school. She’s still in middle school.

Am I partly responsible for the destruction of school property? I feel sick. On the other hand—no school! How sweet and sour. And then I spot Raf.

My cheeks heat up despite the cold.

Even though he’s not facing me, I can tell it’s him by his camel leather jacket. It’s his fall/spring jacket, the one he wore when I first spotted him back in September and thought he was cute. For the rest of my life I will think of Raf whenever I see a boy in a camel jacket. Or anything camel colored. Like caramel sauce. Which is just as delicious.

Raf is not wearing his gloves. He dropped one of them at my apartment the night he came to pick me up (unsuccessfully) for Spring Fling. Since a piece of clothing is the key ingredient in a love spell, of course I asked Miri to whip one up for me. Unfortunately, she’s still scarred from the mess caused by the love spell we put on Dad and isn’t quite eager to get back in the fake-affection saddle just yet. (Small disaster involving us trying to break up my dad and his fiancée’s wedding. Obviously we sorted it out, since they’re currently honeymooning in Hawaii. Long story, but let’s just say our stepmother turned out to be not as bad as we first feared.)

I hope his hands aren’t cold. I guess, since it’s April, there isn’t much point in buying a new pair. Although he could probably find a fantastic sale.

Did he see me? Does he hate me? Should I duck or apologize again? You’ve got to make things happen, I remind myself. If I can fly on a broomstick with no seat belt, I can talk to a guy who used to like me.

First I need to hide my chin. I unroll my turtleneck so that it covers the lower half of my face. Much better. Okay, now I’m going over. In ten. I tap my feet against the ground and count.

Nine, ten.

Ten more seconds.

He’s leaving. My knight-in-camel is disappearing into the horizon like a setting sun. I know I should run after him, but my new shoes are stuck to the ground like lumps of pink clay. I wallow in my own pool of sadness until I’m snapped out of it by the sound of snickering.

I look to my right and see Jewel Sanchez, Melissa Davis, and Stephy Collins standing in a semicircle, all smirking at me. With their brown, red, and blond hair, they remind me of evil Charlie’s Angels. They are all wearing brand-new trendy back-to-school outfits: tight jeans, designer spring coats, sunglasses perched on freshly highlighted hair. Even though I know that Melissa is the same height as Jewel, five foot six, she seems to tower over Jewel. The ego must add inches the way the camera adds pounds. Jewel’s mahogany curls are clipped to her head in a style that tries to look like she just threw it back, even though from our years of Bee-Bee (Best Buds) status I know it took her at least an hour. Stephy’s long blond pigtails are gone, and her short Tinker Bell do, along with her petite frame, makes her look like she’s seven years old. A malicious seven-year-old, the kind who steals your candy. The three of them and Doree Matson were lucky enough to be London’s chosen freshman four in the fashion show. They are therefore super A-list. Unfortunately, if their three pairs of eyes were laser beams, I would have disintegrated by now. I instantly look down at my shoes. I’ll just walk away before they can attack me. Slowly, controlled. One step, two, three. Run, run, run!

Flump.

Controlled
means not tripping over a bike rack and falling on my elbows, doesn’t it?

I see a flash of light and I hope I’ve fallen unconscious. I’ll wake up in the hospital, finally living the pitiable loads-of-flowers/life-size-card/hot-doctor scenario. But no such luck. I can hear the trinity of freshman evil cackling. I can’t believe that Jewel, my ex–best friend, is actually laughing at me. Ignoring me is one thing, but laughing? From my spot on the ground, I see my surroundings blurring, mostly because of the prickling at the backs of my eyes.

Until a familiar hand reaches to help me up.

“Hi!” says Tammy. “There you are!”

I’ve never been happier to see my new best friend’s face. “Thank God,” I say, scrambling to my feet and brushing dirt from my coat. “I missed you! When did you get back?”

“Last night at eleven.” She wrinkles her nose and gently touches my chin. “That looks like it hurts.”

“It’s fine, and you look amazing,” I cry, and give her a bear hug. Unlike me, she’s tanned and relaxed looking. “How was it?”

She drops her backpack to the pavement. “Fantastic. I went shark diving!”

“Excuse me?”

“I was in a cage underwater surrounded by great hammerheads! It was so cool.”

“Is that safe? Why would you want to do that?”

“The cage totally protects you. And what do you mean, ‘why’? Where else could I see sharks?”

I motion to Jewel, Melissa, and Stephy with my chin and then roll the turtleneck back up. Those girls are sharks in the sea of high school. “Maybe I should bring a cage to class.”

Tammy laughs and then steps on tiptoe and scans the yard. “Have you seen Aaron?”

“No. Have you spoken to him since you’ve been back?”

“No. And he hasn’t e-mailed me since I left on Sunday. Why? Do you think something is wrong? I know he was going to Mick Lloyd’s party on the night I left for the Gulf of Mexico. I’ll die if he hooked up with someone. You haven’t heard anything, have you?” She immediately rubs the tip of her nose, like she always does when she’s feeling insecure. It’s a little on the large side, and she’s convinced that its size is the reason she never had a boyfriend before Aaron.

“From who? You’re the only person still speaking to me.” Not getting an e-mail from your boyfriend for eight days doesn’t sound promising. Not that I’d tell her that. There are certain things a best friend must never say. One is “I don’t think he likes you.” Two is “Yes, your nose is big.” But the truth is her nose isn’t why she’s never had a boyfriend. She’s never had a boyfriend because boys are morons. I mean, I’ve never had a real boyfriend, and nothing’s wrong with me, right? Well, except for my extreme slobbiness and weirdo family. And my beard, but that’s new. But in any case, I think it’s bad news he hasn’t been in touch over the break. Especially since after my dad’s wedding they kissed for three hours on her couch, and that was barely eight days ago. “I’m sure he’s just busy,” I say.

She scowls disbelievingly and then yawns, covering her mouth. “I’m tired.”

“Probably because of the time zone difference.”

“It’s only an hour,” she says, and laughs.

“Students! Hello? Students?” Mrs. Konch, the principal, is shouting into a loudspeaker. She’s short and plump and reminds me of a dinner roll. “Everyone, please vacate the premises! Check your school e-mail tonight for an update!”