Take Me There (11 page)

All I want to do is be in my room listening to music and clearing everything out of my head until it’s all about him. He’s the only thing I want to think about. And he doesn’t even know it. But it’s hopeless, because Mom is in one of her chatty moods and I can’t get rid of her.

When she gets all
let’s sit around and share about our lives because we have such a good relationship
about it, the whole thing comes off as kind of desperate. We’re supposed to talk for fifteen minutes every day as part of our family-therapy homework, and if we don’t our shrink can totally tell. There’s no way to avoid it. I guess it’s good for when I’m actually in the mood to talk about my problems, but that’s hardly ever. Especially now.

So it’s partly what we have to do for therapy. But it’s also partly Mom being suspicious about where I just was and who was there and what I did. Not that she would actually come out and ask all this. She’s just checking in her own sneaky way that I’m not drunk or doing drugs or pregnant and it’s totally annoying that she doesn’t trust me, and I don’t want her in my room. I’ve told her a thousand times that I’m not going to mess up my life, but she doesn’t believe me. So every time I come home from a party, she attacks me to make sure I haven’t suddenly decided to throw my life away. It’s infuriating.

She’s like, “How was the party?”

And I’m all, “Fine.”

And she goes, “Who was there?”

So
annoying.

I’m like, “Mom. You know who was there. I told you who was going before I left.”

Then she just stands in my doorway leaning against the wall while I try to find my iPod. This could take a while. It’s not that I’m morally opposed to cleaning my room or anything. I just don’t see the point. Like, you clean it but then it gets messed up again, so why bother with something that’s just going to disintegrate anyway?

Mom offers up the brilliant idea to check the closet. So then I have to explain to her that my iPod wouldn’t
be
in the closet because I would never put it there.

And she’s like, “How do you know?”

Here’s the thing. Questions like that? Irritate me. Because she’s basically saying that I have no clue about where I put things. So I ignore her and keep searching around, and why does she have to keep standing there if she’s not even talking?

According to my shrink, my need for lots of alone time has to do with being an only child. It’s supposed to be normal, but sometimes I feel like a freak when I’d rather be alone than hang out with my friends. I don’t know how people deal with brothers and sisters. It must be so weird to live with another person your age like that, someone sharing the bathroom and listening to their music all loud so you can’t hear yours and all of the drama that comes with having another kid in the house. I just can’t imagine having someone in your face all the time like that. I can never relax completely when I’m with someone else, even if it’s just one person hanging out in the same room. It’s like I can’t be myself unless I’m by myself.

I know. I have issues.

IT TOTALLY ROCKS
when you wake up from a really intense dream and you still have that really intense dream feeling going on. Love that. And I’m way into the whole dream-interpretation thing. I used to have this dream notebook where I’d write down all the details of my dreams. I kept it right by my bed, and the first thing I’d do when I woke up was write down everything I could remember from my dreams that night.

But then it was like the more I got into it, the more dreams I’d have. Which made everything really complicated, because then I’d have to record what happened for like three different parts of just one dream. Or I’d be writing for over an hour and show up late for first period and dreams were kind of taking over my life. I also noticed that once I started recording all my dream details, I started having dreams with way more details, and every night was like this crazy complex movie screening. So I had to stop it with the notebook.

But whenever this happens with the really intense dream feeling, I try to remember everything about the dream for the whole rest of the day so it can be like it’s all still happening. And like it happened with him for real. Instead of only in my dreams.

So I’m digging through my tees and figuring out what to wear today, and I can’t decide if I feel more like vintage rainbow or edgy statement. Which are on two extreme ends of the spectrum, so it should be easy to pick, but I’m all kerfuffled. That’s what really intense dreams do to you.

I decide on edgy statement. So I’m going through the pile, and I pick out one that’s folded up all the way at the bottom. And it turns out to be the black one that has BAD KITTY in sparkly silver with the spastic cat that looks like he’s being electrocuted. It’s the shirt I was wearing when Danny started talking to me.

He’d never said anything before that day. But it was like all of a sudden, something triggered him and I noticed him notice my shirt from the next table over in the caf. And when it was time to go, he came up to me and he was like, “Nice kitty.” And I was so caught off guard all I could say was, “Thanks.” Because the truth is, I had been crushing him for months. But that’s the thing about me. Everyone thinks I’m super confident and like I could go up to anyone and say anything I want, but actually no.

So the next day I dressed even more extreme. I had my choker with the spikes and my skirt with the severe slit up the side with my ripped spiderweb fishnets and stiletto boots. And at lunch I had zero appetite—which is like a serious event in my world—and I could feel Danny watching me the whole time. And when it was time to go, Danny came up to me again the same way he did the day before and he said, “Nice boots.”

I was stoked. But then later I got called into the assistant principal’s office and he chewed me out for violating the dress code. And I was like, “
What
dress code?” Because as if it’s even
enforced
. As if Leanne doesn’t come in every day with her shirt cut so low you can see every freaking thing and nobody says anything to her. But now all of a sudden
I’m
a problem? I mean, yeah okay, today I’m on the subversive side, but most days I tone it down for school so I can get away with floating just under the radar.

It’s such a joke because when the AP tries to talk to some girl about the dress code, you can tell there’s this whole huge struggle going on for him over trying not to look at her breasts. I guess that’s why he avoids Leanne. So all that happens is you go in, he yells about how what you’re wearing is inappropriate and threatens to take away your activities or whatever, and then two days later he forgets all about it because he’s completely scattered and overworked so you can go back to wearing whatever.

Like this one time? He conferenced or whatnot with Joni, and then she shows up two days later with her jeans cut so low that she had major butt cleavage hanging out all tacky. It was so extreme that boys kept getting up to sharpen their pencils just to get a look at it. And she totally got away with it.

So when I’m expecting the meathead AP to just yell at me for a while and make some of his infamous empty threats but instead he makes a big deal out of it and writes me up, I can’t believe it’s actually happening. He never does this. Maybe he got in trouble for not doing his job.

Anyway, the next day I toned down my outfit just to be safe. Danny didn’t even wait until the end of lunch to come up to me this time. He just came over and pulled up a chair, and the girls I sit with at lunch immediately stopped talking and snuck looks at him.

Danny was either oblivious to all the swooning or was excellent at acting oblivious. He was like, “How’s it going?”

And I was like, “Oh. It’s
definitely
going.”

Then Danny went, “I heard you got reamed yesterday.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“From Heather.”

“How did she know?”

And he said how she answers the phones when the AP’s secretary goes to lunch so she knew. And then she was talking about it eighth period.

So I told him what happened and, being Danny, he got all agitated and lecturing how that’s selective discrimination and everyone knows the dress code is a joke.

He was all, “Dude. They never even enforce the dress code!”

“I know!” I yelled.

“Do you even know what it says?”

“No!”

“Me neither! So how are we supposed to follow something that wasn’t even given to us?”

“I think they assume we all have the same concept about what’s appropriate. Which obviously doesn’t work for me.”

But then Danny was like, “It works for me.” And he leaned in a little. And the tone of everything changed.

And the whole time we were talking, my friends kept sneaking looks. Danny has that effect on girls. He mesmerizes them with his opinions and theories and ideas. But it’s not just about how smart he is or how hot he looks when he’s all wound up about some issue. It’s like he’s a natural leader. He’s got this irresistible quality.

The next day, Danny whisked right into the AP’s office and defended me. I didn’t even know what he was doing until he told me at lunch. He did all this research and found out that our school doesn’t even have a clearly defined dress code. There’s all this nebulous language in the Department of Ed guidebook, like how attire should be “appropriate for a classroom setting.” But it’s up to each individual school to create a specific dress code, like how skirts can’t be more than two inches above the knee or whatever, and our school never did. Or there was some committee a few years ago that was supposed to do it, but then there was this whole scandal and nothing was ever resolved. So the meathead AP was forced to remove the report he wrote from my file and that was it.

Danny called me that night and asked me out.

“Next guest step down!”

It was a total miracle that I snagged a table at this Starbucks on a Sunday afternoon. But instead of getting homework done, I’m listening to the fight the couple at the next table is having and writing in my spy notebook and getting distracted by what everyone’s ordering. I have this theory that the drinks people order say a lot about their personality.

Like this Mr. So Busy and Important Guy who’s ordering his freaky drink all, “Venti macchiato no whip half caf French Blend caramel swirl.”

And the Starbucks dude goes, “Did you want foam or—?” but Mr. I Can’t Just Order a Coffee Because It’s Not Original Enough interrupts with, “I said, no
whip
.”

I finish my apple fritter and pack up my stuff. Trying to concentrate here is useless. And on my way out, I hear Mr. Annoying Complicated Drink Guy bitching about how this wasn’t what he ordered. I’m not entirely convinced that he even knows what he ordered. Or that he’s ever going to get what he wants, with such complicated demands. He’s in some serious need of yoga. Or at least a hot-stone massage.