Ella's Twisted Senior Year (15 page)

With Toby’s help, I design a shirt for his mom’s daycare kids. She wants something cute and kid-like for their summer field trips so every kid can wear a matching shirt. Drawing cartoon kids holding hands on a merry-go-round isn’t my typical style of artwork, but in the end, it looks pretty good. Definitely like something you’d see on daycare kids.

I set the price as low as the vender allows that way she can order a lot of them for cheap.

After, Toby watches on while I sketch up a few more ideas I’ve had brewing in my head for a while. I try to stick to pop culture and things that are popular around the school, although weirdly, one of my most popular designs is what I call the Street Signs collection. I’d sketched this green and white street sign on a pole, giving it a retro vibe and then I made one for each street in the town. People buy them to represent their neighborhood and a few Homeowner Associations have commissioned me to make custom shirts for them.

Boring shirts like that aren’t exactly my favorite thing to do, but it brings in money and as a future business owner, I’m learning that a steady income isn’t dependent on what makes you happy.

Now if only I can convince my dad that I know what I’m doing and don’t need to focus on freaking football forever.

When Toby finally leaves, I’m dying to hang out with Ella. She’s been back from dress shopping for a few hours now, but she’s been cooped up in the rec room working on her political shark president project.

I head down to the kitchen and make two root beer floats in Mom’s fancy glasses, using the real ice cream Mrs. Lockhart keeps in the freezer. When I tap on the door with my knuckles, Ella calls out, “Come in.”

I find her sitting on the window sill that overlooks her old house. The black solar-blocking curtains that keep the room dark enough for good movie watching have been pulled back, letting in all of the evening sunshine.

“It’s all gone now,” she says, gazing out at the empty slab that used to have a house on top of it. The cleanup crews have done an excellent job of removing all traces of the old house.

I rub my hand over her back, resting my chin on her shoulder. “Wait, is that a real estate sign?”

She nods.

“Your parents are really selling the land, then?”

Another nod. “As soon as they find a house, we won’t be neighbors anymore.”

I kiss the back of her neck and hand her a root beer float. “That doesn’t mean we won’t get to spend all our time together.”

She peers down at the glass. “Is this real sugar or some kind of tofu dessert?”

“It’s real.”

“You’re the best.” She sets her phone down on the window sill and I notice the screen is still on.

“Is that you?” I ask, grabbing the phone. She’s in a fitting room wearing a beautiful dress. She’s smiling but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Damn, you look hot.”

She shrugs. “It’s the dress, not me. It’d make anyone look hot.”

“I disagree.” I hold the phone closer, zooming in on her face. “Did you get this dress?”

She takes a sip of her float and shakes her head. “Nah. Can’t afford it.”

“What does it cost?”

“Too much.”

I follow her to the couch. “I’ll buy it for you.”

She chokes on her ice cream. “Nope. No way.”

“Why not? I don’t mind. In fact, I want to.”

“No. I’m not some charity case, Ethan.”

“Do I look like the Red Cross?”

She peers at me over the rim of her glass, then licks off the ice cream mustache on her upper lip. “No.”

I bump my knee into hers. “If you’re my girl then you’ll need to accept that I’m going to do nice things for you. It doesn’t make you a charity case, it makes you
my girl
. Besides, you used to make me buy you ice cream every time the truck came to our neighborhood, remember?”

She grins. “SpongeBob sherbet.”

“It didn’t bother you back then so it shouldn’t bother you now.”

“Ethan, a prom dress is a lot more than a SpongeBob ice cream.”

I stab a chunk of ice cream with my spoon and bring it to my lips. “And we’re a lot older now. It’s like inflation. It all evens out.”

She shakes her head. “I’d still rather buy it myself, but thanks for the offer. I’m not even sure I want to go to prom.”

“I don’t really want to go either but after seeing that photo, I think it’d be a crime to prevent the world from seeing you in that dress. Plus, it’s like a high school rite of passage.”

Her lips tremble as she holds back a smile. “Aren’t you worried about being prom king with your ex? How is
that
going to work?”

I shrug. “The guys on the team say Decker Graham has a better chance of winning than I do. So we’re good.”

She leans forward. “So dating me has dropped you from hero to zero, huh?”

“Dating you didn’t do anything to my popularity. Any popularity I had was beaten to death by Kennedy revealing that I’m not a horny man slut willing to hook up with anyone.”

She gives me this little puppy look. “Aww, but I
love
that about you.”

I laugh. “I’ve been called a pussy so many times that the word has lost all meaning.”

“You know, I’m not a fan of using a woman’s vagina as an insult to a weak man.” Her nostrils flare. “I mean,
babies
come out of there. Vaginas are strong and resilient and they happen to be the one thing that men love more than anything else so why the hell is that an insult?” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “You should be honored to be called a—well, I don’t want to say it.”

“You make a good point,” I say, straightening my spine. “I’ll wear the nickname as a badge of honor from now on.”

She grins and takes another sip of her float. “Good.”

As kids, Ethan had this chore list his mom created out of a magnetic dry erase board and stickers. Every day after school he had to check the list on the fridge for all the things to do before he was allowed to play or watch TV. One of the permanent chores was to put his dirty dishes in the dishwasher.

Mrs. Poe has this obsessive hatred toward dirty dishes being left on the counter and in the sink. I’d forgotten all about it until Ethan takes our empty root beer float glasses and runs them down to the kitchen. I guess some things never change. You can grow and age, and fill out with muscles and drive a tall truck, but underneath it all, you’re still the same kid who follows your mom’s rules. He’s still the Ethan I cared about all those years ago.

I take out my notebook and turn it around to face him. “So here’s my plan.”

He casts a confused look at the page. “You’re writing her a letter? Or . . . a recipe?”

“No, this is a prototype. I had the idea when April and I were making the poster in the hallway.” I give a sly nod across the room to where my blank poster board and markers wait. “I’m going to draw this as a big poster and sneak it into the school. It’ll be tricky, but I’m pretty sure with your help that we’ll be able to hang it right in front of the cafeteria by that huge wall clock.”

I grin and wait for his reaction. “It’s brilliant, right?”

His lips slide to the side of his mouth. “I dig the concept,” he says, tapping on my paper. “But a poster can be removed and thrown away in two seconds. Kennedy attacked us virtually and it went viral, so to speak.”

I shrug. “Okay, so we’ll post it online?”

Ethan’s eyes glimmer with an excitement I haven’t seen in years. “No. We’ll do one better. We’ll make it into a T-shirt.”

In Ethan’s room, he powers up his computer and shows me the glass thing called a graphics tablet that he uses to draw his images. It’s a cool device that lets you draw on the glass with a stylus and the image appears on the computer. I keep getting little giddy ripples of excitement as we work. Kennedy will be so pissed. This might make me kind of a bad person, but I don’t care. She messed with me, and she messed with Ethan. It’s time she’s spoon fed a bottle of her own damn medicine.

I sit on the bed, watching Ethan work his graphic design magic. He sketches out my idea, making it look professional and hip because he’s insanely more talented than I am. Even his normally chicken scratch handwriting becomes a cutesy font on the screen. In under thirty minutes, he’s turned my rough draft sketches into a professional looking T-shirt design.

“I wonder if anyone would actually buy this,” I say, leaning on my hands. “I mean,
I’m
buying one for sure, but that’s because it’s my awesome idea. I think I’ll sleep in it every night.”

“I like those satin pajamas a lot better,” he says. My thoughts get all tripped up when he flashes me a wink. “But you’d be surprised. People buy all kinds of stuff.” He adds a finishing touch to the title of the image and then leans back to admire his work. “Besides, since we took her name off the original design and changed it to say ‘human girl’, this shirt kind of works for anyone. People all over the country could order one to represent the mega bitch in their lives.”

“Awesome. I wish selling cupcakes were as easy as uploading them online,” I say with a frown.

Ethan’s brow creases and I can tell he’s thinking of something. “Well you need a website for starters. Then people can order them online and you can bake them. I’m telling you, the internet is the key to being successful in business these days.”

I shake my head. “I can’t get a website until I have my own kitchen. Besides, there’s all kinds of health code regulations for business kitchens. I can’t do that out of your house, or even my own apartment after college.” I sink my face in my hands, staring at the floor. It’s so easy to get caught up in the idea of working for yourself, starting a bakery and making people’s confectionary dreams come true, one vanilla cupcake with buttercream frosting at a time. But in reality, that’s going to be even harder than surviving a tornado attack while sitting next to your mortal enemy.

“Ella, no frowning,” Ethan says. He rolls his desk chair across the floor and wraps me in a hug. “We can have a career crisis freak out after we graduate. Right now let’s bask in the glory of ruining Kennedy Price. Would you like to click the final button?”

He motions to his computer, where the mouse hand hovers over the button that says
List Item for Sale
. I only feel a little bit like a terrible person as I reach over and click the button, making the shirt go live for purchase on Ethan’s web store. I mean, we
did
leave her name out of it, after all.

For all anyone knows, this is just a generic T-shirt for generic bitches.

“Hey, you know you’ll be keeping any money this earns, right?” Ethan nudges me with his knee.

“What? No, it’s your drawing.”

“But it’s your idea. The shirts earn about five bucks each, so any sales are yours.” His eyes light up. “Maybe you’ll get enough money to buy your prom dress.”

I snort out a laugh. “That would be the ultimate irony . . . ugh, I kind of feel bad about this.”

He puts the graphics tablet back into its protective case and joins me on his bed. “She told everyone my thing is small. She deserves payback.”

I nod. “And she called me a
slut-nado
. This is deserved. I just feel a little bad for stooping to her level.”

Ethan’s phone dings. “You just sold your first shirt, Ella Lockhart.” His eyes sparkle with mischief. “Do you still feel bad?”

I take the phone and look at the notification email. “How’d they see it that fast?”

“All new designs are posted to all of my social media sites, remember?”

I bite my lower lip. His phone dings two more times while it’s still in my hand. Two more shirt sales. I can almost imagine Kennedy’s fury when she sees the new shirt design. Maybe it’ll finally be the tipping point to make her realize what a selfishly rude person she is. Maybe it’ll change her life and make her access the part of her brain that isn’t a belittling bully. Or, even more likely, it’ll just fuel the war that’s started between us, giving her more motivation to unleash all of the ammo in her arsenal. Does she have more embarrassing texts from Ethan to share with the world? Or—god forbid—pictures?

There are too many unknowns in the world of combat with Kennedy Price. The only thing I know for sure is that our new T-shirt demonstrates exactly the kind of person our enemy is at heart. I glance back at Ethan’s computer screen, admiring the stock photo of our design on a navy blue T-shirt. My cupcake baking days might be on hiatus, but that doesn’t mean I have to stop inventing recipes.

The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Recipe

Ingredients needed:

1 heaping cup selfish bitch

5 cups jealousy

2¾ cup narcissism

17 years spoiled (preferably rotten)

1 bottle blonde hair die

2 mediocre boobs in desperate need of a push-up bra

A pinch of social media

1 human girl

Directions: Mix ingredients with human girl. Add a heavy dose of self-importance and entitlement before serving to your enemies.