The Poison Apples (23 page)

It was time to execute my Master Plan.

I ran over to my suitcase and started pawing through my clothes. I had to focus. Still, I kept picturing Jamal Chapman asking Alice to dance, and it distracted me from the task at hand. I wanted the best for Alice—I genuinely did—and yet there was something about the timing of her good luck that startled me. I was forced to stand there and watch her, without warning, cross from the land of childhood into the land of adulthood, and I wasn't prepared. One second the three of us were standing there in the corner, comrades in loneliness, and the next second she was off dancing with one of the cutest guys in school. Just some kind of warning would have been nice. Because right when she took Jamal's hand and stepped away from my side I got this sinking feeling that made me feel like I was a little kid getting left behind by my mother.

I took a deep breath.
Focus,
I told myself. Tonight was going to be a lucky night for me, too. Tonight I would move out of the world of fantasy and into the world of mature, adult romance.

Tonight I was going to kiss David Newman for the first time.

I unearthed a long, white satin nightgown that Katie had given me for my fifteenth birthday. I scrutinized it. Risky. But gorgeous. And Katie had always said that it made my skinny body look more curvaceous than it actually was.

I slipped out of my red party dress and into the nightgown. I unwound my bun and let my hair tumble down my shoulders. Then I stared at myself in the mirror.

I was disappointed by what I saw.

I looked pretty—there was no doubt about that—but I looked
young
. Younger than I imagined. Whenever I pictured myself kissing David Newman, I pictured a sophisticated, older version of myself, maybe with a throaty voice and reading glasses perched on the end of my nose.

The person in the mirror looked … well, she looked fifteen.

I sighed and threw back my shoulders. There was nothing I could do about it. I had to Keep My Eyes on the Prize. I had to Stay Goal Oriented. After all, things were already working out pretty well—I hadn't wanted Alice and Molly to know about my Master Plan (they would have laughed at me or given me a long, serious lecture about teacher-student relationships), and Jamal asking Alice to dance had been the perfect opportunity for me to make a getaway upstairs. And then there was the conversation I'd overheard earlier that day between David and one of the other teachers—I'd distinctly overheard him say that he was going to spend the evening correcting papers in his room instead of chaperoning the dance.

That only made me love him more. He hated dances, too!

I squirted a little jasmine perfume on the back of my neck, and smeared the black eyeliner I'd been wearing so it looked like I'd been taking a nap. (I had to have some kind of excuse for wearing a nightgown.)

I brushed my teeth three times in a row, and then I sat on the edge of my bed and maniacally sucked a cherry Jolly Rancher. After all, I wanted my breath to smell clean, but not too clean.

And then I was ready.

I hadn't realized how nervous I was until I quietly exited our room and started padding in my bare feet down the hallway toward the teachers' wing. At one point I was so overcome with fear that I considered just turning around. But I kept going.
Paruchuris do not give up,
I kept telling myself.

I reached his door. 422. I only knew it was David's because I'd snuck a peek over Agnes's shoulder while she was reading the room assignments out loud. I stood there for a while, breathless, listening to hear if there were any sounds coming from inside. At one point I thought I heard the creak of a chair. I leaned in a little closer and tried pressing my ear to the door. I thought that I could hear someone turning the page of a book.

And then the door flew open.

I gasped.

David Newman was standing in front of me, wearing a rumpled flannel shirt and sweatpants. He was holding
Zen Ventura
in one hand and the door handle in the other.

“Reena?” he asked disbelievingly, as if he couldn't quite believe I was standing there.

“I was going to knock!” I yelped.

He furrowed his brow. “What are you doing here?”

“Um…” I cleared my throat and smoothed out my nightgown with my hands. For some reason I wasn't been expecting that question. I thought that when David Newman saw me, and saw the smoldering Look in my eyes (although now I was so mortified I was staring at my bare feet), he would just fold me into his arms and …

“Why aren't you at the dance?” he asked. He actually sounded a little annoyed.

“I … um…” I finally looked up at him and made eye contact. I put my hands on my hips and attempted to appear confident. “I thought you might want to see me.”

“Do you have a question about the final?”

I blinked. “What?”

“Do you have a question about the Humanities final?”

“Um … no.”

There was a long pause.

“I just thought the two of us could hang out and get to know each other,” I whispered. Although wasn't it obvious? I was standing in front of him in a white satin nightgown. Why wasn't he inviting me in, sitting me in front of the fire, and pouring me a glass of burgundy?

Now David was staring at me, his eyes filled with something that I can only describe as … pity.

It made me feel about two years old.

“Reena,” he said softly, “what are you doing? And why are you wearing that nightgown?”

Why?
Why?
Because it was
sexy.

“Um,” I said. I couldn't stop saying “um.” But maybe he still didn't understand? Maybe I needed to make things absolutely one-hundred-percent clear.

“I really like you,” I added. “And you said that you're not, like, a get-off-the-couch type of person, and I thought maybe you wanted me to—”

He interrupted me. “
What?
When did I say that?”

“When we were talking about
Zen Ventura
? After class…?” My voice was starting to falter.

David closed his eyes and began kneading the space between his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Oh, Reena.”

The “Oh, Reena” did me in. It was like a death sentence. It was like the cherry on top of the worst year of my life. Even though I hadn't cried all semester at Putnam Mount McKinsey, my eyes started filling with tears for the second time that night.

“Reena,” David said slowly, “I have no interest in you. You're fifteen. You're a great kid. But I … I have a girlfriend, and even if I didn't … you are way, way too young for—”

“My stepmother is twenty-eight years younger than my dad!” I yelled. Then I froze, shocked. I hadn't even been thinking about my dad and Shanti Shruti. But suddenly the words just flew out of my mouth.

David reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. The warmth from his palm coursed through my body. “I'm so sorry, Reena,” he said. “I didn't know.”

“And they're married,” I finished feebly.

“I'm so sorry,” he said again.

Then I couldn't stand it anymore. His pity, the comfort of his hand on my shoulder, his sad eyes, his rumpled shirt … all I wanted to do was crawl into his lap and scream and cry for hours.
I don't even want to kiss David Newman,
I slowly realized.
I just want him to hold me and tell me everything is okay.

And since he couldn't, and since I'd just humiliated myself more totally and completely than I'd ever humiliated myself before, I covered my face with my hands and ran down the creaky wooden hallway, back to my empty room.

*   *   *

“Reena?”

Molly's voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance.

Probably because I was lying in a fetal position under one sleeping bag, three blankets, and an oversized pillow.

“All the lights are out,” I heard her say. “Are you there? This is creeping me out.…”

I made a small, moaning noise, just to let her know it was me, but it must have frightened her, because she screamed and flipped on the lights.

I lay still underneath my snowdrift of blankets. I heard Molly's feet tiptoe in my direction, and then a hand reached forward and ripped back the pile of bedding in one swift motion. I shivered and squinted in the cold, bright light.

“It is you!” Molly yelled. “You abandoned me, you jerk!”

I grabbed a piece of my tangled, sweaty hair and covered my face with it.

“Reena!”

“Please leave me alone,” I croaked.

“No, I will not leave you alone! You totally betrayed me out there on the dance floor! You left me high and dry!”

I began to snuffle and sob again, still shivering. Then I lifted up the hem of my nightgown and blew my nose into it.

“Oh my God!” Molly shrieked. “Ew! You are disgusting!”

I didn't respond.

After an exasperated silence, I heard her unzip my suitcase and paw through my clothes.

“Here,” I heard her say, “lift up your legs.”

I lifted up my legs. She slid a pair of flannel pajama bottoms onto my body.

“And put this on.” She tossed me a soft, worn-out Polartec vest. “It's mine. You can wear it. It's really warm.”

I finally sat up and put on the vest. I tucked my hair behind my ears and stared at Molly through my gooey, tear-filled eyes.

“You look pretty,” I whispered.

With a resounding thump, Molly collapsed next to me on my bed and smushed her face into the pile of blankets. “I want to die,” she murmured.

I shook my head. “No. I want to die.”

“No. Me.”

“No, Mol. There is no way you possibly, possibly humiliated yourself as badly as I just did.”

She shook her head, her face still muffled. “You're wrong.”

I reached over and grabbed her shoulder, flipping her onto her back.

“Did you just appear at the door of your teacher's room in a skimpy nightgown because you thought he wanted you to make the first move?” I demanded.

Her eyes widened behind her thick glasses.

“That's right,” I told her, “top that.”

“Oh, Reena,” Molly said, and covered her mouth with her hand.

“No. No. I don't ever want anyone to say ‘Oh, Reena' ever again. Worst phrase in the English language.”

Molly propped herself up on one elbow and gazed thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “Well, the name Reena isn't technically a
word
in the English language, so it can't really be a phrase or else you'd—”

I pushed her and she toppled back down again.

We lay on our backs and stared at the ceiling for a while.

“Reen?” asked Molly after a long pause.

“Yeah?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Sure. Anything.”

Another long pause.

“I'm in love with your brother,” she said.

It took me a few seconds to absorb the information she'd just communicated to me. At first I was shocked. Then, strangely, I felt a little grossed out and offended. As if Molly had just told me that she'd been using my toothbrush for the past two months, or wearing my underwear. But a few seconds later I thought:
Of course she's in love with Pradeep.
And a few seconds after that, I thought (and I felt like my heart might break right after I thought it):
There's no way he's in love with her.

“Do you hate me?” Molly whispered.

I turned on my side and looked at her. Her blue eyes were swimming around anxiously behind her glasses. I reached over and pushed a tendril of hair back from her forehead.

“Of course I don't hate you,” I said. “But I have to warn you, Mol, Pradeep is very weird when it comes to—”

She shook her head. “You don't have to say anything. He's dancing with Kristen Diamond right now. I'm an idiot.”

I stared at her. “Kristen?”

“Yep. She's wearing some kind of swan dress. I don't want to think about it.”

I shook my head. The tragedy of it all—of existence—was really starting to get to me. I hadn't understood it when I was younger. Life was easy then. My parents were married, we all lived together in one big house, I'd known my friends for years, school wasn't that hard yet … but now I was starting to get it. Life was about bad luck. Bad luck and mistakes. Other people mucked up things around you, and then you went and mucked up things once they were done.

Molly was clearly thinking similar thoughts, because after we lay there and stared at the ceiling for a while she announced: “Everyone is in love with the wrong person.”

I nodded. “I guess so.”

A second later we said in unison: “Except Alice.”

“Except Alice,” Molly repeated. “Gosh darn Alice. She must be doing something right.”

We lay there for a while, brooding. Then—as if jolted by an electric shock—I leapt to my feet.

“Molly!” I shrieked. “What are we doing? We're being passive! We're not taking fate into our own hands!”

Still lying on her back, Molly cocked an eyebrow. “I don't know. You put on a satin nightgown and marched right up to fate's door. And look where it got you.”

Slightly wounded by that remark, I plowed on anyway. “No. I'm not talking about romance. I'm talking about the Poison Apples. I mean, think about it. When did your life start going to pieces?”

Molly thought. “I guess … I guess when—”

“When Candy Lamb came into your life, right?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“And my life started going to pieces the day I met Shanti Shruti at that stupid yoga class.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I'm saying our stepmothers are the root of the problem! That's why I formed the Poison Apples in the first place, right?”

Molly sat up on my bed and cupped her chin in her palm. “Yeah. I have to say, though, Reen, I'm really glad David Newman didn't want to kiss you. No offense, but I think that would have been pretty creepy.”