What Happens Next (22 page)

No. I will not be that girl. I won’t.

Aaaaaannnnd
now he’s pulling the truck over to the side of the road, and in true lunatic fashion, I actually do start crying. Restrained, but enough to where I can’t turn around now. He puts it in park and we sit in silence for a few seconds. This is too much. Too much for a simple ride. I’m hitchhiking to school from now on.

Finally, after what seems like forever, he speaks. Softly.

“I’m sorry. Please, Sid, don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying!” I bark, and my words are immediately followed by one of those involuntary double sucks of crying breath.

“Okay. Okay. You’re not crying,” he says.

I squeeze my eyes and pray really, really hard for something epic to unfold in the next two seconds—an earthquake fissure or a Lake Erie tidal wave, anything to take the heat off the fact that I just started crying in front of Corey Livingston for no apparent reason.

I open my eyes. Nothing. Just me and Corey, sitting in the truck on the side of the road contemplating Sid Murphy’s lunacy. I think about how at some point in the very near future, I’m going to have to turn and look at his face and he will know. I squeeze my eyes shut again and two swollen tears roll down my cheeks. The cards that I keep pressed tightly to my chest at all times, that I keep hidden under a shroud of sarcasm and tough-girl bullshit, have in one instant spread themselves out onto the table, wide and plain for him to see. He will know that I care for him now.

“Just run your errand,” I say. “Then take me home.”

He says nothing, just pulls off the side of the road and merges into traffic. We drive for a while in silence until he pulls into the pharmacy parking lot, the one where the Drugstore Madonna works.
Greaaaat.

He puts the truck in park.

“You coming in?” he asks. I look out my window, turned away still. I shake the back of my head no; I still can’t look at him.

“Need anything?”

I don’t answer. He pauses for a long while.

“I’ll leave the keys so you can run the air and radio.”

I nod, my head still turned away. I sigh with relief when he steps out of the truck. I fast-forward the White Album and listen to the song “I’m So Tired” and feel, to my very core, every single word of it. The mortification drains out of me.

I am so incredibly tired.

As I chew on my thumbnail and listen to John Lennon lamenting his woes and telling me, through a song, exactly how it is that I feel, I look down at a mess of french fries in the empty parking spot next to the truck. Some litterbug dumped them out of his car. The song “Blackbird” comes on next, and at the very moment that it does, a bird flies down to snatch up a fry. Not a blackbird, but a sparrow. I roll down my window and watch it fly off to a nest in the huge neon sign above the pharmacy entrance. The nest is tucked into the hole that forms the number four in the
Open 24 Hours
part. I press repeat and listen to “Blackbird” three times while I watch my own bird flitting back and forth, going from her number four home to the pile of spilled, mashed fries. Every so often, she perches on the tip of the number four and sings her little sparrow heart out, like she is in the middle of a fairy-tale garden. She is happy and making a life out of what she’s been given. I listen to the song and watch my little bird.

After a while, Corey comes walking out, swinging a thin, white plastic bag. He reaches in and grabs something small from it before he tosses the bag into the truck bed. He climbs in, clutching something in his hand. I force myself to look at him. I need to smooth things over. I’ll blame my mental collapse on PMS.

Yes, PMS.

Cliché? Maybe.

Low down? Totally.

I never said it was a good idea, but it’s the only one I can think of. What other card do I have to play? Plus, guys don’t know what to do when you play the PMS card. I’ve seen my mother do it a million times with Vince, and it always leaves him scratching his head.

“Hey, listen…” I say.

He interrupts me.

“I got you a present.”

My eyebrows lift.

“Close your eyes and open your hand.”

I hesitate but then close my eyes and hold out my hand. He presses something inside my palm. I open my eyes and look.

It’s a single piece of Dubble Bubble.

A smile slides out of me.

“Now. How about that peanut burger?” he says, starting the truck and putting it in reverse.

“I’m buying,” I say, sitting up straight and popping in my gum.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” he says.

I just shake my head and roll my eyes. I don’t argue. I’m done arguing, for today anyway. I look one last time at my sparrow sitting on the tip of her number four nest, still singing like she’s the luckiest, happiest bird ever hatched. Corey presses repeat on the CD player and we listen to “Blackbird” from the beginning.

“Ah, you didn’t tell us he was funny, Sid. What gives?” Kirsten says on the phone later that night.

“I know, isn’t he?”

No use denying it any longer—my infatuation with Corey Livingston is out there skipping through the butterfly fields. The girls thought we weren’t coming to Bearden’s because we took off in the other direction and then took so long getting there. The four of them were sitting huddled at a table, completely engrossed in whatever four jackass girls talk about when the fifth jackass isn’t there. Corey walked over and snuck up on them, making them scream. I thought Paige was going to wet herself when he poked his head in between her and Kirsten at the table and said loudly, “Soooooo… how are your peanut burgers, ladies? Everything satisfactory?”

“I think you might be on to something,” Kirsten says to me now. “I’m paying more attention to who’s coming out of the woodshop from now on.”

“We’re just friends, Kirsten.”

“Not for long. I saw the way he was looking at you when you were walking to the bathroom. His eyes never left your ass.”

“Because he probably can’t believe how damn big it is.”

“Your ass is not fat, Sid. It’s
joo-say
!”

“Whatever.”

“Has he made a move yet?”

“What? No!”

“One week. I give it one week.”

“Well, your car’s fixed so I don’t think so. Unless he actually asks me out, there’s really no—”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? When you were in the bathroom, I told Corey my car is kaput. He’ll be picking you up for the rest of the year.”

“What?!”

“ ’Bye.”

Click.

I dial her back but she won’t answer. She is on the line with Paige for sure.

I text her:
pick up bitch!

She texts me back:
make me uberbitch!

Im going 2 kill U

SM + CL = <3 <3 <3. TTFN!

After a few moments of shock, I feel glad.

21

It is the third Sunday
of May, and Liam’s seventh birthday is today. I’m in charge of retrieving the balloons and cake and organizing the games for the afternoon. I have commissioned a top secret banana-flavored Spider-Man cake from Corey and plan to pick it up after I get the balloons from the grocery store. My mother doesn’t know anything about Corey, so she suggested I get a cake from the grocery store bakery. I’ve tasted their cakes, and they’re like eating a kitchen sponge dipped in Crisco. I’ve seen Corey’s work, and he’s really quite good. He showed me how to make a rose out of icing once and then swore me to secrecy. If his friends in woodshop ever saw him decorating a cake, they would murder him cold.

I’m still waiting on my balloons. I’m running short on time, and the Slowest Salesgirl in the Free World is only half done with the order ahead of mine… an all-white, three-dozen-balloon wedding bouquet. I call the bakery and tell Mr. DiRusso that I’ll be a little late picking up the cake. About two minutes later, my phone rings. It’s my mom.

“Balloons-R-Us,” I groan, watching Balloon Lady and her sloth-like progression.

“Hey, Sid. Don’t worry about picking up the cake,” Mom says. “The bakery called, they’re going to deliver it. Isn’t that nice? Free of charge.”

And my brain goes:
Wheh?

“Wait a second. Who’s delivering it?” I say.

“The bakery.”

“But
who
from the bakery?”

“I don’t know, some teenage boy who works there. Why? Is that a prob—”

“I gotta go, I’ll be right home. Just, don’t… I mean, I gotta go!”

I hang up and hurry up to the counter.

“Hey, let me give you a hand,” I say to the balloon girl. “There are two tanks and I can make my own balloons.”

She eyes me suspiciously. “No, that’s not a good idea. This is complicated and you don’t know how.”

I slide behind the counter and grab a handful of blue balloons from the blue bin.

“Wait, you can’t do that,” she says. “You don’t work here. You can’t—I’m gonna get in trouble.”

I pull one of the balloons around the helium spout and press it down; it fills up, stretching the rubber.

“Hey!” she says, and her white balloon slips from its nozzle. It farts and flies around in a big circle and then plops to the ground. I pull off my filled blue balloon, tie the end off, and wrap some red ribbon around the knot.

“Stop that!” she says.

I stare her down, cut the string, and loop it around the wire ribbon holder. The balloon floats up and I start on my next one. I lean in while making another balloon and give her my most threatening glare, really working my Medusa eyes at her.

“Listen,” I say, “there are about twenty-five people waiting at my house for a dozen balloons and a cake that I have
yet
to pick up. The only trouble you’re gonna have is if you try to stop me. I’ve watched you blow up exactly twenty-six balloons already. I think I can handle it.”

She snatches another balloon from the white bin and huffs at me.

When I’m done and paid up, I hightail it out of the grocery store with my gaggle of blue balloons waving about madly. I stuff them into the backseat of my mom’s car and peel out of the parking lot. When I arrive home, Corey’s truck is parked on the curb, but there are no other cars on the street or in the driveway.

That woman has done it again.

She has told me twelve o’clock when the party doesn’t really start until one.

She’s done this to me my whole life—setting clocks fifteen minutes fast, having me standing outside for the bus twenty minutes earlier than necessary. She doesn’t trust me to be punctual, which I almost always am, thank you very much. In usual circumstances anyway. But I guess in this one instance, her annoying little motherly habit has paid off, because I’m five minutes late. Score one for Katherine.

I look at Corey’s truck and then at my front door. Corey Livingston is inside my house. He is inside the place where I live.
Fack.

I wrestle the balloons out of the car and one pops in my face, making me shriek, while another slides out of the bunch and escapes altogether. There are ten kids, so I’m still good.

I clamber up the steps and into the house, releasing the balloons into the living room. I hurry through the house, past the kitchen where the table is dressed up with the cake displayed in the middle of it. A genuine likeness of Spider-Man doing his web-slinging pose is emblazoned on it with blue and red icing.
Happy 7
^th
Birthday, Liam!
is written underneath. The guy really is a culinary artiste.

I look around, but the house is empty. I look out the kitchen window and see them. Corey is up in our maple tree, hanging a Spider-Man piñata for my mother. She is standing below him, chatting and smiling up a storm. A swell of anxiety starts in my toes and works its way up through my legs, gut, and neck, where it ultimately plants itself into a flaming blush on my face.

I head to the bathroom and sit on the edge of the bathtub to obsess.

What are they talking about out there, and why am I freaking out about it? Who cares if Corey helps out with my brother’s birthday party? He’s just being nice. But knowing both my mother and Corey, they’ve chatted each other up and she now knows he’s a friend from school. And what’s worse, he is right up her alley. Unlike most moms, Katherine likes the long, moppy hair on guys and has always been a sucker for brown eyes. By now, she’s probably invited him to stay and has visions of prom dresses in her head. The worlds that I keep carefully separated into manageable little circles are converging, and I don’t like it. Compartmentalization, that’s how I roll. First Bearden’s with the girls, now this. I have the Corey-Bakery-Truck circle. I have the Mom-Liam-Ronan circle. I have the Kirsten-Paige-School cir—

And then my mind pulls a fast one. It sneaks up behind me and asks:
What about the eating disorder–ski trip circle?
I push the question away and tell myself I don’t have an eating disorder. I don’t have an eating disorder because I’ve only done that Urge thing a few times. My mind counters,
You’ve done it seventeen times. And add a P. You mean PURGE. It’s called bulimia. B-U-L—