Whip It (9 page)

Sure, the whole scenario is funny and weird and annoying, something to angrily protest against, but in the back of my mind, I know one day I will be gone from Bodeen. I will fade into pageant obscurity with this craptacular town in my rearview mirror. I’ll be free. But Brooke will still be here, still chasing the best days of her life, the ones that happened when she was sixteen.

You know how you kind of know something, like it’s always been there, but not really in focus? And then one day you
really know
—it was in the dark, and now there’s a big, fat spotlight on it?

That’s how it is with my mom.

It’s so sad, I almost start bawling right there in my pink suit. For the remainder of the brunch, I tame my inner snarling and keep the I-hate-you gestures to a minimum: only one annoyed sigh, half an eye roll, and two I didn’t-hear-you grunts.

And as a bonus (for a limited time only), I don’t even bring up my favorite familial topic—the fact that I still believe I’m adopted. A stellar performance.

School Daze

I
n an effort to shake off the pink-suit residue and reclaim my personal identity, I wear my favorite thrift-store T-shirt to school the next day: a baseball tee featuring Stryper, circa 1984.

Who’s Stryper, you ask? Only the most perfectly awful ’80s, Christian, heavy-metal rock band ever. Not that I knew this when I found my beloved T-shirt. I simply swooned over the image of five guys trying to look tough with their big, permed hair, gobs of makeup, and skinny yellow-and-black-striped spandex pants. In short, a fashion disaster of such major proportions that I had to spend the four dollars on the shirt. It makes me so happy to wear it.

Seriously. One day when you’re completely bored, depressed, or both, Google Stryper and have yourself a laugh-fest. Guaranteed.

Plus, I love wearing a real old shirt I found for chump change versus a forty-dollar “vintage tee” that Abercrombie & Fitch sells. I mean, c’mon. If you bought it at the mall, it’s not vintage. And that’s not snobbery. That’s just a fact.

Wearing my Stryper shirt keeps me in a good mood, which I need today, as I am quickly tiring of Corbi’s bitchy little shtick. Every single time she passes Pash and me in the hall, she has to give us that look, then giggle to her friends in that “I’m so obviously talking about you, and you can’t do anything about it” way. It’s such a cliché. Do they teach that in Vapid Popular Girl 101? Is it a special seminar in cheerleading camp? I’m all for taking the high road, but one can only ignore such catty behavior for so long. I have the right to suffer through my crappy education without the added harassment of Ms. Pink Sweater Normal constantly vibing me just because I exist. Letting such bitchiness reign condones it.

So, when Pash and I are walking down the hall and Corbi gives us her signature look, I have no choice but to respond. It’s not like it was planned, choreographed, or even rehearsed, but just as we pass, my hip takes on a life of its own and—
BAM!
—I knock Corbi derby-style into a row of lockers. The entire hallway falls to a hush as Corbi catches some serious air and lands in stunned silence on the floor.

“Whoops,” I say with maximum sarcasm, “I’m such a klutz.”

“Ugh! You can’t do that to me!” Corbi finally squeals.

“Um. I think she just did,” Pash says, coming in with the assist. We blithely continue down the hall, step through the school doors, and savor the little bit of after-school freedom Bodeen has to offer.

Thanks, Stryper T-shirt. I couldn’t have done it without ya.

Sometimes God Doesn’t Hate Me

W
hen we’re at work, Pash tells Bird-man all about the Corbi Hip-Check Episode. Pash does a hilarious slow-mo reenactment of the fall, complete with the facial expressions Corbi emoted as she took the hit. She ran the gamut, from superior-bitchy to shocked-bitchy to embarrassed-bitchy.

Bird-man is so taken with Pash’s performance, I can feel his crush-meter tipping in her direction. Good, because I could use the break.

It is at this moment I look out the window and spot a car parked outside. It’s lime-green, 1970-something, with a black racing stripe over the hood, and—oh, who cares what kind of car it is. What matters is that Oliver (!) is leaning against it.

Oliver! As in Señor Smolder, as in the yummy rock boy who was totally sort of flirting with me before the romantic mission was thwarted by my pukey best friend.

My jaw drops. I can practically feel my chin hit the floor. I feel like I have to pee and throw up all at once. And yet I’ve never been happier.

Oliver gives me this wave—oh my God, the best wave you’ve ever seen in your life—that somehow says, “Hey, I’m here, but I kind of feel like a dork even though I know you know I’m not really a dork.” How could you fall in love with someone just by the way he waves? But I’m pretty sure I do.

Despite all the thoughts running through me like juice in a Krazy Straw, I remain quiet. Pash snaps her fingers in front of my face.

“Your shift is now over. I’m covering for you. Go,” she says, shoving me toward the door. “And call me later.”

I can hear Bird-man protesting as I walk to the door.

“So, what? That guy shows up here with his cool car, and we just let her go with him?”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Pash tells him.

“But what if he’s dangerous?” Bird-man protests.

“Duh. That’s kind of the point,” Pash says. I love her.

I step out of the Oink Joint and walk toward Oliver. The painfully perfect forever it takes me to cross the parking lot, he stands there watching. I concentrate so hard on traversing the asphalt without tripping, falling, dropping my bag, or any other romance-ending display of public humiliation that I forget to think of anything to say when we are actually standing face-to-face, which we suddenly are.

Not that I can look him in the face. My heart is beating way too fast. I’m too nervous to look at him directly, so my eyes wander to his threadbare T-shirt. There’s a hole in the seam near his shoulder, revealing a sliver of pale skin and a single freckle. I suddenly feel the urge to kiss, bite, and nibble that piece of skin taunting me with its yumminess. I want to move in, colonize, and live the rest of my life on that adorable little freckle.

I quickly move my gaze to his shoes before I cause a scene. Or at least I try to. But that Oliver is a tricky one. He manages to catch my eye and half laughs, like, “Hey, isn’t this a funny coincidence except for it’s not because there’s no way in hell anyone in their right mind would ever end up in Bodeen, but let’s just pretend it is.”

We start to talk. Well, sort of. I know, on paper it looks like the single-dumbest conversation in the history of all conversations, but I assure you the mental dialogue between us is profound.

OLIVER
:So . . .

BLISS
: So . . . (tucks her hair behind her ear like a dork)

OLIVER
: Umm . . . (smiles dreamily)

BLISS
: Yeah.

OLIVER
: I, uh . . . (shoves his hands in his pockets)

BLISS
: Are you, umm, stalking me?

OLIVER
: No. Maybe, sort of. Do you mind?

BLISS
: No. I kind of always wanted my own stalker.

We laugh the way you laugh at your favorite joke, when all someone has to do is mention the punch line and you’re off and running. It’s scary, but it’s also so comfortable.

Eventually our convo segues to a more direct line of questioning. He looks at my shirt. “Are you really wearing a Stryper shirt?” he says with impressed excitement.

“Wait,” I say, suspiciously. “Don’t even act like you know who Stryper is.” I mean, sure, he’s hot, but this shirt is a private joke between me & me. Oliver doesn’t get to just show up and carve off a piece for himself. Does he?

He looks me right in the eye and says, with taunting intelligence, “Stryper—’80s, Christian heavy-metal band. Their lyrics were bad, and clearly their fashion choices have survived only for your ironic amusement. But, for the record, their guitarist—Oz Fox—that dude could shred.”

Oliver gives me a wicked grin, opens the door of his car, and says, “Hop in, ironic girl.” And right then I know that I will have sex with him.

I mean, not right here, right now, in the Oink Joint parking lot (give me a little credit). But eventually.

Stampede

I
’ve heard tales of urban legends such as these—where a girl gets a ride from a luscious boy in his car—but it has never happened to me personally (woo hoo, inner high five). To mark my girl-rides-with-boy-in-his-car devirginification, I am taking serious notes, quietly cataloguing everything in the car: CDs scattered on the floorboard, an empty bag of Funyuns, an explosion of guitar picks, and a yellowed picture of Siegfried & Roy where someone has written “Oliver, we want to tame you like a tiger” tucked under the passenger visor. It’s pretty hilarious.

Oliver has his stereo cranked, playing a homemade mix that bounces between Voxtrot, Be Your Own Pet, early Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and a bunch of stuff so hot off the MP3 press, I’ve never heard it before.

The windows are down, and the wind tangles my hair into a mess I know I will pay for later, but right now I can’t be bothered. I am in his car. It will be worth every second of the three hours it will take to untangle this rat’s nest.

One CD catches my eye like a golden egg in an Easter hunt: the Stats.

“Can I borrow this?” I ask, trying to sound casual. Somehow the words come out of my mouth boldly. Not only do I desperately want to hear what his band sounds like, but I am keenly aware that if I borrow a CD, it means eventually I will have to give it back, which means we will have to see each other again. I may not know much about this relationship stuff, but I do know seeing each other again is the key part of it.

“Fine. But if I see it in the used bin at Waterloo, there will be hell to pay.” He waves an angry fist like a grumpy old man, and I laugh much harder than I probably should.

I look at his hoodie balled up next to the clutch. It’s dark gray, except for orange iron-on letters on the front like some code: 3,585,000.

“So, what’s with the numbers?” I ask.

Oliver seems a little embarrassed. “Oh. That’s my high score from this random pinball game me and my bandmates always play. It’s pretty much the stupidest game ever invented. We’re totally obsessed.”

“Sounds fun. I mean, I love weird stuff like that.”

“Really? Wanna check it out?”

I nod, and Oliver hits the gas.

We cruise into Austin, and Oliver weaves his way to a neighborhood called Hyde Park, where all the houses are great-great-grandparents-old and, quite frankly, awesome. Not like the blah ’burbs of Bodeen.

We park in the postage-stamp-sized lot of Hyde Park Pharmacy. It’s a total relic, like something from a
Leave It to Beaver
rerun your dad makes you sit through when he’s got control of the remote. There’s a soda fountain in the back with a turquoise counter and next to that sits the object of Oliver’s entertainment affection: a pinball game called Stampede.

Oliver wasn’t kidding. It really is the most awful pinball game ever conceived. Stampede has a tacky old-school Western theme with silly illustrations of cowboys, steers, and horses set off by flashing lights. After several games, I still have no idea what’s going on, except I love the feeling of Oliver casually leaning against me as he guides my hands over the buttons to work the flippers at just the right moment.

I hit one perfectly, and the pinball sails into the game’s sweet spot. A million lights start blinking, the whole game shakes as the thundering sounds of a thousand horse hooves back a silly cowboy voice that shouts, “Yeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaw! Storm’s a-coming! Stampede!”

The audio assault is so overwhelming I want to hide under a nearby table. “Oliver! That is the most awful thing I’ve ever heard,” I squeal.

“I know,” he says with a wicked laugh. “I want to sample it in one of our songs.”

Somehow we manage to waste two hours playing the stupid Stampede game over and over, evidence of how I’ll happily suffer just to feel his hands on mine. Plus, it seems like only two seconds have gone by, when I realize I have ten minutes to get to Roller Derby practice.

Ring My Bell

W
hen Oliver drops me off at the Dollhouse, I’m so nervous that I jump out of his car like a bandit fleeing the scene of a crime. Then it occurs to me that I didn’t even say good-bye, so I run back to Oliver’s window and poke my head inside.

“So, um, thanks for the ride,” I say.

“No prob,” he says, looking at me. And not just looking at me, I mean
looking
at me, like he can see right through to my soul.

I can feel my nerves rise, and before I have time to flee again, his yummy lips are on mine. Okay, it’s not like I’m the queen bee of kissing skill, but when someone as hot as Oliver gives me a little lip time, I’m a quick study. I make that kiss last—long, lingering, and sweeter than molasses.

That is, until I feel a firm slap on my ass and hear Emma shout “get a room!” She giggles with a few of my teammates as they head inside for practice. Whoops. I got so into my Oliver lip-lock, I completely forgot about the blatant PDA. Oh well. That boy is so worth it.