Swoon at Your Own Risk (9 page)

I'm looking out the kitchen window, peeling a cucumber into the sink, when Mom's car pulls into the driveway. She's still wearing her Hamburger Heaven halo, as if she's completely surrendered her last shred of dignity. She climbs out of the car, looking stiff and tired. And then she reaches into the back seat for those familiar white and gold Hamburger Heaven bags. Not again! I notice that her stretchy white uniform pants have grown snug this week.

Mom puts the To Go bags on the kitchen counter. "Your angel has arrived from heaven with a Chinese Chicken wrap that should have been a Chipotle Chicken wrap and some other goodies." Mom lifts a lettuce leaf out of the bowl. "What is this strange lifelike substance?"

I toss diced cucumbers into the salad bowl. "I thought we could, you know, eat a little lower on the food pyramid."

"You mean I've been getting it backwards? Focusing on the fried food group?"

"It's not funny, Mom."

Mom picks up a jagged tomato slice. "Who had it in for this poor tomato? You cut them, not step on them."

"Maybe if our knives weren't so ancient."

Mom laughs. "Yeah, well, I'm holding on to them so I can sell them on
Antiques Roadshow
." And then she riffs on her paring knife being worth thousands of dollars.

I don't laugh.

"I need a more enthusiastic audience. Where's Grandma?"

"Sleeping."

Mom glances back toward my room. "Really? I hope she's not coming down with something."

Grandma swings into the kitchen, with freshly applied lipstick shining on her lips. "No need to worry about me! I was simply storing up some creative energy. I've decided to add a chapter called 'Quick Quips.'"

"That's a great idea, Grandma! You have so many great old columns to quote." I nod at Mom as if to say,
Look, here's a good example of how to use your skills, your brain
. "I'd sure love to read them again."

"You don't need to read them in a book. You've got
me
." Grandma peeks into the To Go bags. "Oh, I love that Chinese Chicken wrap. I get first dibs."

Part of me wishes that she noticed my salad, but maybe she's just trying to make Mom feel good, and every thing. That's kind of like her job, right? "Hey, Grandma. Maybe we could talk sometime?"

"No time like the present!" Grandma pops a cold french fry into her mouth, and I try really hard not to think about all the columns she writes about treating your body with respect.

"I'll finish up with dinner prep," Mom says. "Grace is having a sleepover at Amy's."

"Again? Mom she's practically living over there this summer."

"I thought you'd like to have some time to yourself."

"Yeah, kind of, but..." What I really want is a deep, share-your-inner-secrets friendship without, you know, the danger of actually sharing your deep inner secrets. I met Jane for a frappuccino on Wednesday night, but all she wanted to do was talk about different ways to run into Rowdy accidentally. She hardly said a word about starting her new journalism class. When she wanted me to analyze what went wrong with my past relationships, I pretended to receive an emergency text message from Mom and got out of there quick.

Jane hasn't called since. Thus, I'm left without weekend plans.

"Don't frown, dear," Grandma says. "You don't want to create wrinkles." Grandma stretches her eyes wide and pats her face as if she can press out the fine lines. "Let's talk about what's bothering you." I follow Grandma into the living room.

Where to start? "Jane. She's changing so much! She's practically obsessed with this guy, and he's not even her type. Jane's serious and studious, and this guy is a total goof." I think back to the other night. "The kind of guy who prides himself on catching popcorn in his mouth."

"Oh, honey. You're jealous because Jane's got a new beau?"

I try to relax my body and not look jealous. "No. I want to help her avoid making a huge mistake."

"Love is about balance. A serious girl like Jane may need a silly boy. It creates harmony of the heart." Grandma crosses her hands over her heart, splaying her jewel-studded fingers, and does the patented Miss Swoon swoon. She mostly does it when she's interviewed on the local news and morning talk shows.

I crinkle my forehead, thinking that not only is she doing her theatrical swoon, she's repeating word for word what she wrote in a recent column.

Grandma presses her fingers to my creased forehead. "No grumpy faces allowed."

"I don't know, Grandma. Don't people need to have stuff in common? That's what you wrote to Birds of a Feather."

"Naw! Sometimes it's about natural attraction. Like Jerry and me."

"You divorced."

"Aw." Grandma flaps her hand. "We had some good times. You can't deny that opposites attract; it's simple chemistry."

"Physics. But maybe you have a point. Today Sawyer flirted with Sonnet like a living example of the good guy going for the bad girl cliché!"

"It can be a lot of fun, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah, well, he's certainly thinking with his reproductive organs, not his brain, if you know what I mean."

"Don't knock reproduction. If your father hadn't found my flighty daughter so irresistible, I wouldn't have you and Gracie Pie."

"That's sweet, Grandma. But Sonnet's just trying to collect encounters with blond boys this summer—she's even blogging about it."

"Sounds better than all the baldies I've been collecting lately. Really. I'm finding that a man with more than six strands of hair turns me on."

"Ew. Grandma."

"Although with my luxurious auburn locks, maybe I do need to give those baldies a break. There's that cutie over at the bookstore." Grandma giggles. "He could be night to my day, spring to my fall, north to my south."

I hold up my hand. "Okay, Grandma. Enough."

And then it hits me: if I am going to avoid hooking up with apple-stealing skateboarders who flaunt toned obliques, maybe I'm going to have to become a bad girl, too.

Maybe I
will
take Sonnet up on her offer to hang out this weekend.

Dear Miss Swoon:
I'm a straight-A student and totally focused on my future. So why am I falling for the class clown? Shouldn't I be going for the valedictorian instead? What's wrong with me?
—Unfocused

Dear Unfocused:
Love is about balance. A serious girl often needs a silly boy. It creates harmony of the heart. Go with the flow. Give it a try!
—Miss Swoon

Looking straight into my eyes, bold as a blast of winter, she blushed the color of autumn leaves.
—
X.C.

We're headed up to some amazing party at a house that looks more like a hotel sprawling along the mountain ridge. Even from this distance I can tell that ten of my house could fit inside it. The street curves above the sparkling town lights.

Sonnet takes the last corner too fast, not downshifting, not acknowledging the stop sign, speed limit, or the whole driving-on-the-right-side-of-the-road thing. I'm trying not to think about her brakes sounding like they can use a tune-up. Bad girls don't worry about auto maintenance. Bad girls drive fast to get to parties.

The brakes grind as Sonnet slams to a stop, barely missing the bumper of the car in front of us. As she yanks the key from the ignition, I realize that this counts as parking. We're sticking out into the street at an acute angle, but that doesn't seem to matter. My cell phone rings and a goofy picture of Jane
flashes across the screen, but I ignore the call. Just like I ignored her text this morning about a
Matrix
marathon at Rowdy's house. Bad girls don't go to movie nights with the yearbook staff. I will focus on my friendship with Jane at a later date.

Tonight I'm Sonnet's "pardner in crime." All the way here we've been making fun of Sawyer's stupid sayings and inventing new ones that are kind of, um, X-rated, but hey, it's all in fun. Sonnet has brought a whole new meaning to Sawyer's twenty-yard-line reference.

"Okay." Sonnet applies a thick coat of lip-gloss. "Rules?"

"No running by the pool. No communicable diseases. Appropriate swimwear only."

Sonnet laughs. "I love hanging out with you. You're hilarious!" She adjusts her top, creating more cleavage. I do the same. Bad girls = boobs. "So, rule number one: no going for the same guy. Rule number two: no letting each other go for a total loser guy. If you have information, share it. Rule number three: we go home together. Unless we've found true love. Oh, and I've got a midnight curfew—a total double standard. My brother, who, I might add, is only a sophomore, does not have one, but since he can't get pregnant ... Whatever." Sonnet rolls her eyes. "Now, let's make a memorable entrance."

"Like a back flip off the high dive."

"I'm loving you, Pol." She reaches over and tugs
my
top down! "That's better."

Sonnet stumbles through the front door, pulling me along after her, laughing like she's been sucking on a helium balloon. Several guys look our way. So do the girls. And let me just say, it's a good thing that looks can't—how do you say it?—kill. Sonnet insisted on coming over an hour early to get me "party ready." I'm wearing really snug jeans, a skimpy tank, strappy sandals, and enough eye makeup to star in a soap opera.

The house is crowded with people; I recognize a few kids from school, but it's not exactly the AP credit—collecting crowd I usually hang out with. I spot a guy from my French class, who looks at me like I've just used three adverbs in a single sentence. Not that he would know an adverb from a noun in any language, but whatever. So what if I don't usually show up at these kinds of parties?

Sonnet wiggles through the crowd, keeping the beat with the techno dance music blaring from the surround-sound speakers. All the furniture has been pushed to the edges of the room. A plasma-screen TV mounted above the fireplace plays
The Matrix.
I stop and stare for a moment.

"I thought that's what you were trying to avoid," Sonnet says, yanking my arm so hard, I stumble and turn an ankle.

"Just contemplating the irony," I say.

"Rule number four: no four-syllable words."

I follow her into the kitchen. She starts talking to a football player who's eating Lucky Charms right out of the box. "Hey, there," she says. "You know you're supposed to drink milk with those, right?"

Not exactly a great line, but the guy's not exactly listening to her words; he's far more interested in what her boobs are saying. I cross my arms over my own chest. It
is
kind of cold in here, in spite of the, you know, body heat, leering gazes, and sweaty football players.

Lucky Charms says, "You could get me some milk."

Sonnet dips a cup into a large bowl filled with pink mystery punch. The kind every drug awareness pamphlet warns against. "Mmm," Sonnet says. "This is way better than milk."

I search the countertop for a plastic cup that looks less, um,
used
. Smudgy lipstick marks most of them. I find one that might be clean, stuck to the bottom of another cup.

"Watch this!" Lucky Charms tosses a handful of cereal into his mouth.

"My turn!" Sonnet opens her mouth wide. Lucky Charms tosses a whole handful of cereal at Sonnet, most of which lands in the punch bowl, adding a little too much—what would you call it?—texture. I set my cup down. Maybe I can just take a few baby steps toward bad-girldom?

Sonnet, picking a few pieces of cereal from her cleavage, changes the subject to the various marshmallow shapes. "Oh, I think the pink hearts are my favorite."

"What about the green clovers?" Lucky Charms asks.

Suddenly discussing the physics of the Matrix seems like a far more appealing way to spend an evening, even if I would have to watch Rowdy snuggle up with Jane all night. I sneak a peek at my cell phone. No calls. Sonnet and Lucky Charms have moved on to the topic of cold cereals in general.

I wander over to the French doors leading to the backyard. Outside, people mill around in the dark, talking in small groups near the glimmering, lit swimming pool. In the shadows I think I see a familiar tall, slender someone. He glances through the glass at me.

Oh no! This is exactly what I'm avoiding. He's not part of the jock crowd. How can he be here? Well, about a thousand people are here, but whatever. I turn and leave the kitchen. Mainly to comply with rule number two: he's a total loser, right? In seventh-grade cooking class he poured water on his crotch and walked around pretending that he'd peed his pants. So what if he's suddenly grown all tall, dark, and handsome? Now he flirts too aggressively, eats other people's apples, carries that weird little notebook around, and looks way too good without his shirt.

I follow a group of girls down a carpeted stairway. Girls = safe. The girls crowd into the small downstairs bathroom, talking about lip-gloss flavors. What
is
the collective IQ at this party? I've been so nervous that I've licked the cherry (a total cliché, apparently) sheen off my lips. The posh basement is a gamer's paradise. Several guys lounge around on supersized beanbags, playing video games on a huge TV. There's also air hockey, a pool table, pinball machines, and a couple of vintage arcade games. Oh, crap: Donkey Kong!

I glance around the room. No one's looking. Just a quick fix. I've got the little man leaping barrels, jumping up and down—and I'm totally in the zone, watching my score click higher and higher.
I'm so good.

"Hey, if it isn't P.M. Polly Martin. Looking good." And something about his voice suggests he's not referencing my impressive score. I spin around, ignoring the angry yell from the little ape. I swear the little primate's saying, "Don't do it, Polly," in his mechanical voice, but whatever. Ex to the fourth power, Jack, holds a bottle of beer by the neck, takes a swig, and smiles at me out of the corner of his mouth. "Haven't seen you around this summer."

"Yeah, well, I've been working, you know, outside. Sunshine versus fluorescent lights."

Still holding the cold beer bottle, he rubs a finger along my shoulder. "It shows. Nice tan, P.M." I'm
not
noticing how the tips of his callused fingers feel ticklish; I concentrate on the fact that in this dim light
everyone
looks tan.
Don't fall for it
! The game makes a dying sound.