Love, Lies and Texas Dips (13 page)

Still, her hands shook as she got into her car and held the wheel, lowering her forehead against it and gently banging.

Idiot, idiot, idiot
, she told herself, until a huge honking light went on inside her skull.

Laura lifted her head from the wheel as she realized two very important things. The first was Camie’s assumption that
Avery might have taken
her
to the Masterses’ annual barbecue. That meant he’d gone alone, or at least without the Brunette Bimbo, which had Laura grinning for a minute. Until she thought about Thing Number Two: Avery wasn’t her secret admirer. Which meant someone else out there was toying with her heart … or … maybe just her head.
But who?

Laura gnawed on her bottom lip as she started the car, an ugly thought creeping into her consciousness, wondering suddenly if she was being played for a fool by the dirtiest player of all.

If you want the rainbow,
you’ve gotta put up with the rain.

—Dolly Parton

Some days aren’t worth
even getting out of bed for.

—Mac Mackenzie

Seven

Beep, beep … beep, beep … beep, beep
.

Dragged from unconsciousness by the incessant tweeting, Mac rolled over and slapped off her alarm clock, then flopped onto her back with a sigh.
How could it possibly be Tuesday morning already?

The long weekend was history, even though she felt like she had so much unfinished business. Her picnic with Alex had turned into “three’s a crowd,” Laura had blown off her BFFs for yet another Avery chase-down, and Ginger had dropped the bomb about ditching the Three Amigas’ planned Marble Slab outing after the first Rosebud meeting tonight.

Their first Rosebud meeting.

Ugh
.

Just the thought of having to sit through their deb orientation at the Glass Slipper Club’s headquarters nearly drove Mac back under the covers.

She forced herself to get up and shuffle toward the bathroom, where she mechanically flipped on the light and stripped off her nightshirt. Eyes still half closed, she stepped
into the shower, only to find there wasn’t anything left in her bottle of Pantene. She nixed a dripping-wet trip to the linen closet to forage for spare shampoo, instead washing her hair with the unused Terressentials Organic Left Coast Lemon Body Wash that Ginger had given her for her birthday last October. It was either that or suds up her curls with glycerine soap. So Mac opted for reeking of lemon from head to toe.

She stood under the spray for as long as she could to rinse off the citrus scent and then stepped out of the glass-walled stall, wrapping herself in an ultra-plush Egyptian cotton towel (Honey insisted on them). Eyes wide open now, she padded over to the sink and wiped at the steam on the mirror to create a circle where she could see herself, only to wince when she spotted a bright red pimple smack in the middle of her chin. It was like the Zit That Wouldn’t Go Away.

Now I’ll stink like furniture polish
and
look like the “before” part of a Proactiv infomercial
, she thought, frowning.

Glumly, she searched for her Bliss spot fix, but she couldn’t find it. She must’ve run out and forgotten to reorder.

Crap and double crap
.

Mac did the best she could with a nearly dried-up cover-up stick, but the pimple merely glowed like Rudolph’s red nose. Too bad it wasn’t Christmas.

Come on, sweetie. Look on the bright side. At least it’s not permanent
, she imagined her mom consoling her, and she found herself wishing Jeanie Mackenzie was downstairs, watching the clock for Mac and kissing Daddy goodbye. Honey Potts could never fill Jeanie’s shoes, no matter how
hard she tried, Mac decided, which only made her mood worsen.

It didn’t improve even a smidge when she pulled on her last clean white button-down shirt and dropped a blob of toothpaste down the front. Though she rubbed the spot with a damp washcloth, it proved impossible to get out.

“Bugger,” she groaned as she realized she’d either have to live with the outline of a Crest blob on her boob all day, or dig out an old shirt since Honey had forgotten to do a dry-cleaning run on Saturday. Her tan Pine Forest Prep blazer would’ve covered up the stain nicely, but it was still too hot to wear it without sweating profusely. So Mac raided the storage closet for last year’s uniforms and grabbed the first white shirt she came across. When she pulled it on, she realized that it was too short in the sleeves and too tight around the bust.

Perfect
.

Mac rolled up the sleeves but there wasn’t much she could do about the straining buttons. Good thing she hadn’t had her breasts done, like half their senior class, or she would’ve literally been popping out all over.

She managed to finish dressing without further crises, but as she started to work on her tangled, lemon-scented hair, the blow-dryer gasped its last breath and died in her hand.

Oh, man, what else can go wrong?

“Mah-chelle!”
Honey trilled from downstairs in that high-pitched Scarlett O’Hara drawl. “Alex is here! He’s waitin’ for you in the car!”

Weird. Mac didn’t remember having arranged a ride this morning.

“Hurry up, sweet pea, or you’ll be tardy for class!”

She cringed as Honey shouted again, thinking it couldn’t be that late. The shampoo conundrum and the shirt change must’ve cost her precious time. So she grabbed her book bag from her desk and glanced at the clock, which showed it was already a quarter to eight.

Her black-rimmed glasses securely on her nose, she ran her fingers through the messy tangles of her hair, which had turned the collar of her old shirt damp. She looked like a drowned rat with a Texas-sized zit, but she couldn’t worry about that. Mac had never been late for school, and she didn’t aim to start now.

She flew down the stairs and sped past Honey in her pink bathrobe and orange juice can-sized hot rollers, ignoring the brown paper sack that her stepmom held out to her.

“Don’t you want a healthy lunch, sugar? It’s fresh veggies and a little Tupperware tub of ranch dressing for dipping.”

Yuck
. “No, thanks,” Mac hastily replied.

“Good Lord, what’s that on your chin?” Honey yelped as Mac opened the door and stepped out, slamming it closed behind her.

Alex Bishop’s gray Saab idled in front of the stoop, and Mac took a deep breath before flinging herself inside, mumbling an apology for being slow as she tossed her bag at her feet and buckled her seat belt so they could get rolling.

“Hey,” he said, once he’d maneuvered out of her street and onto Knipp, heading toward Taylorcrest, where traffic would doubtless be bottlenecked. “Are you feeling okay? You hardly ate a bite of your lunch yesterday, and you had this constipated look on your face.”

“Oh, gee, thanks,” Mac said dryly. “You sure know how to make a girl feel good, Bishop.”

Alex glanced at her, and a wicked smile slid across his mouth. “So I guess I shouldn’t comment on that miniature of Mount Saint Helens you’re cultivating on your chin? Didn’t that thing blow a few weeks ago?”

“Shut up, or I’ll kill you with my mechanical pencil,” Mac threatened, thinking it was shaping up to be the worst day in history.
Is the pimple
that
bad?
She flipped down the visor mirror, looked at herself, flinched, and slapped it closed again.
Yeah, it’s that bad
.

As if the Zit from Hell wasn’t enough, Alex sniffed the air like a hound dog. “Is that lemon?” he remarked, before taking his eyes off the road to glance at her again. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but did you shower in Country Time?”

Was there any way to take that
but
wrong?

Mac scowled and crossed her arms over the straining buttons on her shirt, figuring that would surely be his next target. She stared out the window, chewing on her lower lip. Normally, his candid observations didn’t bother her at all, but for some reason, this morning they seemed to sting. What was up with that? When had she suddenly become so sensitive around him? Things had been fine with him before the summer. It was like everything changed after he returned from computer camp, taller and more self-assured, yet still the Alex who’d always been there for her, especially after her mom had died.

Maybe it was just her bad mood, facing her senior year without her mother, having to go through her debut season for so many people other than herself.

“She was just about to dish on some girl who showed up and ruined their Labor Day picnic by flirting with Alex Bishop, which apparently made our little Mackie a wee bit jealous!”

Laura’s remark from yesterday came back to haunt her, and Mac cringed, thinking,
Oh, God—she couldn’t be right. Could she?

“So did you have a good Labor Day weekend?” Alex asked. “I know I had fun with you yesterday.” He shifted his hands on the wheel, not looking at her as he added, “Oh, and, um, thanks for being so great about Cindy coming to our picnic. I should’ve said something to you sooner, but I wasn’t sure if she’d show, you know.”

“Hey, no problem,” Mac said, maybe a little too quickly.

“It’s hard for her, being the new girl at PFP and all.” He shot her a sideways look and a lopsided smile. “I think she’s only just started to feel like she fits in.”

“Bully for her.” Mac turned toward him and tried to smile back, causing the seat belt to tug tightly across her chest. She ran her fingers beneath the nylon strap and loosened it so she could breathe.

Alex reached over to pat her shoulder. “You’re a real pal, you know that?” he said, and Mac felt a tightness in her chest, like the seat belt was squeezing her too tightly again. Only it wasn’t.

What was her frickin’ problem?

Her mouth went dry, and her brain felt empty of things to say.

Luckily, Alex started babbling about some new gadget he’d acquired from Newegg. “It’s a slide scanner, Mac, so I can convert all these pictures on E-six film ….”

“Sounds awesome,” she remarked when he paused for breath, though she wasn’t really listening. Her gaze drifted toward the window as they rolled down Taylorcrest toward Strey Lane. She had a pretty good idea of what was going on with her and Alex. Only she was too chicken to face it.

“Here we are … school, sweet school,” Alex joked as he pulled into the turnaround to drop her off in front of the columned facade of Pine Forest Prep.

Mac had her seat belt off, her book bag in her lap, and one hand on the door latch before the car had even come to a stop.

“You’re sure eager to get to class,” Alex remarked, catching her by the hand before she could flee. “Was it something I said?”

She turned to look at him squarely, seeing the face she knew so well, finding it different somehow. So grown up, like he was the boy next door she’d played with since they were babies, but he wasn’t a kid anymore. And neither was she. Whatever she was going through, she was going to have to deal with it. She just wasn’t sure exactly how to do that at the moment.

“Mac?”

“I’m fine,” she assured him, only half a lie. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you later, okay?” She flashed a lame smile and started out the door before she remembered to ask him a favor. “Oh, hey, could I borrow your old Caldwell annual from middle school? Ginger has some guy she wants to look up. I could pick it up before the deb meeting tonight.”

“Yeah, that’ll work,” he said and nodded.

“Great.”

She shut the door and hiked her bag up on her shoulder, rushing past a couple slow-moving students up the stone path toward the brick facade smothered in climbing ivy. She raced up the front steps and flung open the door, ducking into the building, the heels of her loafers clicking fast on the tiles. Mac was late enough that the hallways had thinned out already, and just a few stragglers remained at their lockers.

The clock in the hall showed a minute to spare as she hurried up the corridor toward first-period chemistry. The bell clanged just as she dodged through the doorway, out of breath.

“How nice of you to show up, Miss Mackenzie,” Ms. Kozlowski said by way of greeting, and Mac realized she was the last to appear.

“Sorry,” she apologized for the second time that morning, heading for her usual stool at the front-most lab table before she realized it was occupied.

“Why don’t you share the table with Miss Chow,” the teacher suggested. “I’m sure you’ll make fine partners in our experiment with hydrogen peroxide.”

“Miss Chow?” Mac repeated, and Ms. K raised painted-on black eyebrows.

“Yes, Miss Chow. Are you suddenly hard of hearing, Miss Mackenzie?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good. Then take your seat.”

Mac detected a good deal of snickering coming from the table where two of the Bimbo Cartel, Trisha Hunt and Camie Lindell, sat, and she found herself hoping the hydrogen peroxide experiment would blow up in their faces and bleach off their eyebrows.

“Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?” she heard them whispering as she passed, and Mac felt her cheeks heat. She resisted the urge to bang them upside the head with her book bag as she headed toward the back where Cindy waited.