Ditched (18 page)

“Want one?” Donna asks.

I nod, even though I’m not al that hungry anymore and I’d much rather have something from Gilda’s Reese’s display.

Before I can even start explaining what happened next, Donna starts in with her advice. “Here’s what I’m thinking.” She crunches loudly. I start crunching loudly too, and she has to practical y yel because we sound like dueling cement mixers. “This Al yson girl?”

179

“Yeah?”
Crunch.

“She’s a Parasite Pal.”

“Parasite Pal?”
Crunch.
Ow. Did I just break a tooth?

“She’s the type of girl who pretends to be your friend.

And deep down she real y does want to be your friend.” I pick at the igneous rock now lodged in my teeth. “I don’t think so.”

“She does. She’s a parasite. Because she wants what you have.”
Double-crunch.

“A filthy blue dress?”

Donna shakes her head. “Captain Scumbag. Or at least someone
like
Captain Scumbag. Even if she doesn’t get him, it gives her hope that a guy like that is real to
someone
. Does that make sense?”

She pauses this time. A real pause. She
actual y
wants to know if this makes sense to me. I swal ow hard. Because it does. It makes perfect sense.

“But you have to be careful: the moment they see a crack in the armor, they charge. She’l snag him when you’re not looking.”

I clutch my stomach. I have no idea where he is right now, and al I can do is hope it’s not somewhere with her.

Did I leave a crack open? Is she charging?

Donna shrugs and pops another nut in her mouth. “But as far as friends go”—
Crunch!
—“a Parasite Pal is not an awful one to have.”

“Why?” I ask, because any phrase with the word
parasite
180

in it sounds like something one needs to quickly repel.

“She’l do anything for you. Give you anything you want.

They’re confusing. Some girls don’t even know they have one.”

I think of Eva being consoled by Brianna—who, of course, ended up in the back of a limo with Eva’s date.

Parasite Pal.

I nod. “But why doesn’t Ian see she’s trying to snag him?”

“Fol ow along, dol .” She grips the side of the counter.

“Men are scumbags. The definition of scumbag includes a Section B, which defines a scumbag as a man who enjoys having the parasite feed his ego—sucking his ego blood, so to speak.” She scrunches her face. “Is this too graphic?” It is too graphic and it also doesn’t sound like Ian. Unless I’m missing something. “It’s . . . um . . . technical.”

“I took a human psychology class at Fresno State. It’s all science.”

“What if he never figures it out? What if I’ve lost Ian to her?”

“He’l figure it out. But by the time he does, you’l be long gone. There’s nothing you can do about it, dol . It’s a biological survival instinct-type thing that al ows our species to evolve.” I was starting to question how much attention she’d paid in her psychology class. But she was on a rol . “And so the wrong people mate and then their kids are screwed up and they spend their lives in search of a perfect partner. But it never happens because the parasites move in first, so they 181

hook up with the wrong person and the cycle starts al over again. It’s how humans have survived al this time. We’re motivated by unhappiness.”

Gilda folds her arms. “You’ve had one too many corn nuts, Donna.” She snatches the bag from her. “We’re not going to depress the poor girl any more, okay?” While I appreciate her stepping in at this point, I want to hear more of what Donna has to say. “But what about what Pastor Rick said? Maybe guys behave based on how they’re treated by girls. Maybe I was the one who pushed Ian away.”

“What are you saying?” Donna squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. “Of
course
you didn’t—”

“No,” I interrupt. “This next part . . .” I pause, feeling the rush of tears as they gather with a mob mentality and plot their return. “It’s the part I don’t want to tel you.”

“Why, dol ?”

“Because I found out how Ian real y feels about me.”

“Aww, honey,” Gilda says. “We can’t control if people fall in love with us. You’re a beautiful girl. This wil fade from memory soon.”

My voice trembles. “But the words keep lingering in my head.”

“What did he say to you?” Gilda asks.

“It wasn’t him. I heard it from someone else.”

“Parasite Pal.” Donna offers.

“No, Al yson didn’t tel me.”

She squints her eyes. “Your BFFF?”

182

“It’s BFF. Two F’s. And no, it wasn’t Hailey. It was a stranger.”

“What stranger is this?” Gilda puts her hands on her hips like she’s going to kick this stranger’s butt.

“It was Fritz.” I lift my arm so they can see. “The guy who gave me this tattoo.”

183

12

Tinker Bell Tattoo

I STARED AT the closed sign on the heavy wood doors of the Olive Garden. The staff was vacuuming and cleaning tables. I had no idea it was already almost midnight. All I could think about was noodles and marinara. And bread.

And garlic. And—

“Come on.” Serenity put her arm around me as she dragged me away from the restaurant, toward a creepy-looking shop next door. “We’l find you some nuts or something.”

The Funky Monkey Tattoo Shop had a smal wooden sign and was only noticeable because of the tie-dyed flag hanging outside the front door and a candle flickering in the 185

darkened window. It was tucked in the corner of the strip mal next to a Relax The Back store. “We’re going to a head shop?” I stood stil , my sequoia tree feet rooted firmly in the asphalt.

“It’s not super you know . . .
legal
to cal it a head shop,” Mike explained. “Sure, there may be people who consider themselves potheads who frequent the establishment, but we are not such people.” He spoke loudly as he looked around, like a cop might pop out of the Michaels craft store. “The Funky Monkey is just a sticker and superfun happy store.

That’s al .”

“Superfun happy!” the girls yel ed, charging the door.

Mike led us inside, and the smel of incense, deep and woody, washed over me, causing an instant headache, the same kind I get when my mom goes crazy with the coriander; but then I get used to it. It was the same with this incense—

within a moment I hardly even noticed it.

The hardwood floors were the only bare item in the store—the wal s and ceiling were smothered with tapestries, posters, and beads. The air was dense. Thick.

“The Mikes!” A half man/half wooly mammoth with a long braided gray beard emerged from the back of the store.

“’Bout time you stoners got your asses down here. I was about to lock up.” He stopped and looked us up and down.

“Whoa. What the—”

“Prom.” Mike spun around, al proud of himself but slightly off balance. “Check out the duds.” He patted himself 186

to make sure his buttons were buttoned and his fly was up.

The guy side-hugged and fist-bumped Mike, then introduced himself to me. “I’m Fritz.” He stuck his Jol y Green Giant hand out. He was wearing a pink tie-dyed shirt, loose pants that looked suspiciously similar to pajamas, and no shoes on his pudgy feet. The long, gray, frizzy hair on his head looked like the source of how he got his name—like he’d been hit by lightning and . . .
Fritz
!

“Justina.” I extended my hand, which disappeared inside his. “I’m . . . just . . . driving these guys around.”

“No ‘just’ with these guys. Driving them around means having an
experience
.”

I nodded. “True.”

Fritz glanced around, adding up the numbers. We were obviously one person short. His eyes landed on me. “No date?” Serenity stepped up and answered before I could. “We’re not talking about him. One of those off-limit things.”

“It’s okay. I can talk about it.” I stiffened my posture. “Ian, my date, my so-cal ed best friend, left me at the dance. He’s doing something il egal. He keeps cal ing Al yson Moore on her cel phone. He is an ass,” I said, as if it were a mundane grocery list.

Fritz nodded slightly, like this was no unusual story to him, then turned to the Mikes. “What’re you guys browsing for tonight? I gotta a new shipment of glass. Beautiful pipes.”

“The girls want tattoos.” Mike tilted his head when he looked at me, like I was the goofy mascot. “I mean, Serenity 187

and Bliss want tattoos. Justina has plenty of flair going on with that psychedelic dress of hers. And matching corsage.” He shot me an I-feel-sorry-for-you-but-don’t-want-to-say-it-type smile.

I smirked. He was being funny/sweet/supportive, but I wanted to chuck both the dress and the roses down a sewer drain.

Fritz slipped on his reading glasses and dug around behind the counter for tools. “What kind tonight, girls?” They had clearly thought this through, because they both squealed, “Hearts!”

Fritz led the four of them through a beaded curtain behind the counter while I waited in the front of the store.

Witnessing the dril ing and the blood and the pain was not something my oh-so-empty stomach could handle. I could hear Bliss squeal and laugh as Fritz worked on her upper arm. She was handling the pain wel . Maybe even liked it.

I had heard
that
rumor about Ledbetter girls, too.

Funny how no one at my school ever mentioned the part about Ledbetter girls being just plain awesome.

The store was pretty standard for a head shop, or I mean, a happy fun sticker shop. There was a counter ful of hemp paper, hemp candles, hemp toilet paper, hemp, hemp, hemp.

And then there was the pro selection of lava lamps. I mental y added the green and blue one to my Christmas wish list. But I was a little surprised by the separate counter area devoted completely to carvings of dragons and gargoyles.

188

Their carved faces were gothic and gnarly. Like how I feel without proper blood sugar flow.
Man, I’m starving.

Right next to the dragons was a rack ful of clothes. They were al goth-looking shirts—black with skul s and flames.

I spotted one perfect al -black girls sweater that would’ve made Hailey proud for its skintightness, and made me happy for its al blackness.

The price tag read $65.

Yikes. That would wipe out almost ten weeks of my clothing al otment.

Ian knew why I bought al my clothes secondhand, and even though I’d told him nearly every detail of my ridiculous life, I’d never gotten the nerve to tel him why I only bought black. I guess even as comfortable as he made me feel with his old clunker of a Mercedes and love of 7-Eleven nachos, it couldn’t erase my embarrassment.

The truth was, the thrift store in our town rocked.

Seriously rocked. The majority of the clothes were donated by girls from my high school. Correction . . . their
mothers
donated their clothes after they went through their daughters’

closets and yanked out last year’s designer clothes to make room for
this
year’s designer clothes. Some people drove a long way to shop at the thrift store in my town. Oscar de la Renta for $4.99?!

But a few years ago I made the mistake of buying a Chanel print blouse on half-price orange-dot Tuesday for $1.99. Brianna Portman—sweetheart that she is—stopped 189

me in the hal with a scowl on her face. “That’s my shirt. My mom gave that away to charity. Why are
you
wearing it?” I lied. I told her my mom had bought it at the mal and that I didn’t know what she was talking about. But her eyes fel to the one little stain at the hem of the shirt—a sure indication I was a complete liar. And cheap.

So the day after Brianna confronted me about wearing her shirt, I only bought black. I used a black Sharpie marker to touch up any stains, and made sure there was nothing unusual about it—no ruffles, no prints, no intricate embroidery. No one could argue with that—a black shirt was a black shirt.

I don’t think anyone ever caught on to my black Sharpie trick. I walked the hal s of Huntington High wearing all their black hand-me-downs and they didn’t have a clue. I guess everyone just thought I was dark and emotional.

And tonight, I definitely was. Because more than anything, I missed Ian.

There had to be an explanation. I needed to talk to him.

I pushed the on button on my phone and when the display came up it said I had four voice mails.

My heart triple-flipped. The first one was from my mom.

Annoyed, I fast-forwarded through it, and the next one was from Ian. He had been trying to cal me!

—Running a little late. Where are you?

—Stil trying to get there. Don’t be mad. Get a snack.

—Oh man. Can you turn your phone on, Justina??

I listened to the messages, hoping to get an explanation, 190

but no, they were worthless. Just his soothing, even voice trying to smooth it al out—as if I were some “buddy” he might catch up with at a party later.