Love Off-Limits (3 page)

The car ride was quiet. The only noise was Jeremy mindlessly humming the jingle to that annoying ravioli commercial on TV. Singing that ravioli jingle had sort of become tradition among their circle of friends every time they were in her car. Jeremy had started it. He was the first to call her hand-me-down Rav4 the Ravioli. Then, ever since the ravioli commercial had come out with the pseudo-family sitting around a table while the mom dished up ravioli from a can, they'd begun singing the jingle every time they got in her car. At the time it was funny, but at the moment she wished he would hum himself to sleep. She flipped on the radio and Kanye and Estelle burst from the speakers. Even though she wasn't really in the mood for one of her favorite songs, “American Boy,” it was still better than listening to him hum.

She'd dated Jeremy for nearly two years, and the first year had been wonderful. She'd been so nervous and excited every time he came around. The butterflies she'd felt were unlike anything she'd ever experienced in her life. Even getting up for school in the morning had suddenly seemed exciting. What had made life so wonderful was that
she would see him. He'd wait for her next to her locker. Every time he reached for her hand and held it as they walked across campus, she'd felt her heart race. Not to seem like a dork, but she truly understood what it felt like to be giddy. She'd been so nervous about her first kiss and even holding his hand that she'd lost sleep and had stomachaches. What if he'd thought she was a bad kisser or her hands were extra sweaty from nerves when they held hands? But he'd been so sweet and patient that eventually the first kiss had come naturally. Then cuddling up to him while watching a movie was as simple as breathing. She felt so comfortable around him. However, the comfort turned to something different.

Little by little, she got tired of sitting around while he played his Nintendo Wii for three hours straight, listening to
his
favorite music blast from his iPod speakers. She didn't even like most of his music. He liked all this death rocker music with singers who sounded like they were constantly screaming. She liked singers who actually sounded like they had talent, like Alicia Keys and Jack White.

Every single person she knew would wonder how on earth she'd become bored with
Jeremy Maddox.
The
Jeremy Maddox. Not only was he unarguably one of the cutest guys on campus, but he was popular and funny and good at everything he did, which was just about anything. What was wrong with her? In the spring he was the star pitcher for the Coyotes baseball team. In the summer he competed in surf competitions and won. And then in the winter he snowboarded down triple-diamond mountains. Not to mention his charming personality, which had won over all her friends and family.

Her doubt about their relationship had started with a snowboarding trip earlier this year. They'd made the trek up to Big Bear. Natalie had hoped Jo would join them, but she had to work that morning at the bookstore. Matt was supposed to go too, but had flaked at the last minute with the flu.

It had just been Natalie and Jeremy, which was rare. It seemed like they'd always had a group of friends with them everywhere they went. Matt was practically a fixture in their lives, and then there were all Jeremy's baseball teammates and his surfing and skating buddies.

Natalie had only been skiing a few times in her life, and after a couple hours on the
slopes she'd decided she'd be okay if she never went skiing or snowboarding again. She was a warm weather person. She couldn't understand the point of putting on her body weight in puffy, uncomfortable clothes and heavy, rigid boots, waiting in line for an eternity at a ski lift only to ride with a freezing face up a mountain and soar back down within ten seconds. The thrill was not worth the work. Not to mention that after one of her ten million slips on the snow, a chunk of ice had managed to sneak up her hat and freeze her ear like a popsicle. The strangest part was that her ear didn't even feel numb. It had gotten so cold that it burned. Her ear had turned all red and chunky in places.

“You have frostbite,” a motherly woman in the ski lift line had informed her.

The only thing she had known of frostbite was from a made-for-TV movie about a couple with a baby who were trapped in the snow for days on end, living out of their freezing car with a dead battery and eating ice while begging God for searchers to find them. In the end, they were rescued and taken to a hospital, where their black frostbitten feet were amputated. So she'd sat by herself in the ski lodge looking in the
mirror every ten minutes to see if her ear was turning black. Jeremy had left her to snowboard and, honestly, hadn't seemed all that concerned about her ear.

As she sat by herself in the ski lodge, she couldn't help but wonder if Jeremy would still love her if she had only one ear. It would be pretty easy to conceal the flaw with her hair and everything, but would Jeremy be able to overlook this freakish quirk? She figured he'd be able to live with it, but there was still a tiny part of her that just didn't know how he would react.

Ever since that day the wheels had been turning in her mind. Maybe he wasn't the right guy for her. She took it as a bad sign that she even had to ask herself if he would care if she had one ear. How could she even think that he wouldn't care? Wouldn't you automatically know your boyfriend would still love you if you had only one ear? It shouldn't even be a question, right? Maybe they always had so much fun together because they were with all their favorite people—all their friends. But when left alone they really weren't right for each other. She'd debated asking him for a break—just some time apart from each other so they could figure things
out. But then his parents had separated. The change had been hard on him, and in his own Jeremy way he'd confided in her. It hadn't been like he spilled his guts with tears and everything. He was a guy, after all. But he seemed like he really needed her.

She pulled up in front of his house. Instead of getting out of the car, he sat for a moment. “Look, I'm sorry I snapped at you about my shades.”

“It's okay,” she said, even though she sort of felt like reiterating that she hadn't broken his shades to begin with. But at that point she was hungry and had homework and didn't really feel like arguing again over who broken his shades.

“Well, I don't want us to say good-bye and be mad at each other.” He leaned in and pecked her on the lips. It was a quick kiss and his lips felt soft. “You want to go to the movies tomorrow night?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Sure. Let me just see how homework goes.”

“All right.”

They said good-bye. After he closed the door, she glanced in her rearview mirror. The flower he'd given her lay crunched beneath her purse.

After she'd come home from dropping off Jeremy, she was pleasantly surprised to find that her little brother Thomas had finally fixed whatever technical issue that had caused her computer to completely wig out for the past few days. He'd attempted to explain in detail what had gone wrong, and she found herself more excited by Jeremy's new skateboard. As he rambled on about hard drives and other words that sounded like they belonged on spaceships, she zoned out.

She gave Thomas a brotherly pat on the back. “Thanks. You saved my life. Now go get me a Diet Coke and the bag of Doritos.”

“Brandon ate all the Doritos again, and Grandma Jones had the last Diet Coke.”

Figured. There was never enough food in the house with two boys and her grandmother, who ate out of boredom.

“All right, a glass of water and one of those protein bars that Mom eats.” She assumed they were the only things left in the house to snack on because they tasted like cardboard, and no one except her mother ever touched them.

He quickly scurried away.

Thomas was the good twin. He helped with the occasional computer repair and often went for snacks. Probably the only things her brothers had in common were that they were both twelve and idolized Jeremy. Natalie often felt so much older and different from them. Thomas, the computer geek, spent most of his afternoons inventing things. Brandon, the rebel of the family, spent most of his time trying to figure out how to blow up Thomas's inventions. They were both completely banned from Natalie's room and bathroom unless Thomas was fixing her computer or figuring out a way for her nail polish to dry faster.

She spent the remainder of her time before dinner working on her column. The
whole dog-costume-in-the-newsroom ordeal had set her back.

She'd barely finished a rough first draft of the column when her mother's voice reverberated from every corner of the house.

“Dinner!”

Natalie often wondered how her mother had managed to keep her vocal cords intact with all her dinner yelling every night.

“Everyone wash hands!”

Downstairs Natalie found her family standing around two large boxes of Round Table pizza.
Yes!
Pizza night was always welcome.

“Grab yourself a drink,” her mother said before she handed Natalie a paper plate. Ever since her mother had taken a part-time job teaching sociology at the local community college, her family had enjoyed several pizza nights. Her mother passed out paper plates before everyone gathered around the kitchen table.

“What is this on my pizza?” Grandma Jones asked. She scrutinized the display of ham, green onions, pineapple, and bacon that covered the cheese.

“It's dog barf,” Brandon said.

Her father shot him a look. “Brandon,
not at the table.” Her father was fresh from work also. He worked for a home loan company, and his job had taken quite a hit with the economy and real estate doing so badly in California. So last year her parents had made the decision for Mom to go back to work and Grandma Jones to move out here to “help” with the kids. Natalie didn't really think they needed help. Her brothers were twelve. She was sixteen. It wasn't like they needed a babysitter. Not to mention Grandma had no control over the boys and spent most of her hours watching
Nancy Grace
and movies on Lifetime.

The only one who needed help was Grandma Jones. She was always hitting up Natalie for rides to T.J. Maxx and Dollar Tree.

“This is a Hawaiian-style pizza, Grandma,” Natalie said.

“Well, if I wanted a Hawaiian pizza, I would've gone to Hawaii. Whatever happened to the basics? Some good pepperoni. Maybe some black olives.” Grandma Jones had tried to dye her hair last week, and it had turned out sort of blue. She didn't seem to mind, though, or maybe she didn't even notice. Natalie wasn't sure. No bigger than
Natalie's little brothers, Grandma Jones made up for her small size in personality. Her opinions were large and loud. Everything Grandma Jones did spoke in volumes. She wore loud colors, painted her nails red, and gossiped without whispering.

It was sort of interesting to listen to Grandma Jones talk about the neighbors and about Natalie's uncle with four divorces and a bad gambling habit. Grandma Jones always kept it real—there was no pretending with her. But it drove Natalie's mother insane.

They spent the remainder of dinner listening to her brothers belch and Grandma Jones tell stories of the days when there was better, more practical pizza available. Natalie stuffed herself with pizza and soda before returning to her room.

She spent another hour working on the column before deciding it was the best she could do. A bad feeling had been haunting her ever since she'd returned home, and not because of her fight with Jeremy or her dislike of the newspaper column. It was the same feeling that haunted her when she ran out the front door late for school and wondered if she had left her straightening iron on.

She figured she just needed a visit to Romeohelpme. The website was the only place she could share her true feelings about love and relationships. Romeohelpme was an advice website where teens could post questions about love and then their peers posted replies on a message board. There was a FAQ section with common questions like “How do I ask a girl to a dance?”—questions like the ones Natalie got for her column. She'd never been able to find any of her own personal questions in the FAQ section, but she'd made a few loyal cyber friends by posting her curious questions about love and relationships.

She looked at the disk with her latest column sitting next to her computer and couldn't believe the fact that the “expert” behind Coyote Courtship was a regular on Romeohelpme. She felt like a character on one of Grandma Jones's Lifetime movies. Soccer mom by day, stripper by night. It was a double life.

In the column she'd written everything everyone wanted to hear. She thought about the latest piece she'd written about the dance.
Now is not the time to worry about dropping subtle hints. If the guy you want to ask to
the dance sits next to you in one of your classes, don't be shy. Maybe he's hoping you'll ask. Or if the girl you want to ask you hasn't made a move, let her know you're available. If you let fear get in the way, you may be missing the biggest opportunity of your life—your biggest shot at love.
She couldn't believe they were her own words. She felt like such a hypocrite. Why? Because fear would always get in the way of her love life. But was it fear or obligation? And how had she ended up with all these crazy feelings? Most of these feelings she couldn't even share with Jo. Really, the message board on Romeohelpme was her only outlet. She had to ask the world.

She called herself Up All Night, and the only information she ever shared about herself was that she was female. The website was made for teens, but these days everyone had to be careful of cyber creeps.

She logged off and decided to begin her nightly ritual of taking a shower before
Grandma Jones invaded the bathroom they now shared. It would give her some time to wait for posts to come in on Romeohelpme. After she finished, she spent a good hour with her hair dryer and flat iron. Everyone always marveled over Natalie's perfect black bob, but the truth was she'd never be able to make it as precise and sharp as she did without her flat iron. The iron had been a birthday gift a couple years back, and it hadn't been cheap. Her mom had special-ordered it from her hairdresser. But it was one of her favorite possessions. After she was finished with her hair, she sat in her bathrobe in front of her computer.

Her heart always skipped a beat when she realized that people had replied to her posts. Sometimes she'd get ten replies. She loved the conversation between her peers, even if she had no idea who any of them were.

Interesting, she hadn't thought about a fake ear. Nowadays, prosthetics probably came in all varieties. Even though a fake ear wasn't the point, Natalie still saw some symbolism there. If she had to get a fake ear to make her boyfriend love her, would that mean their whole relationship was a facade?

It was the next response that was the most interesting.

Natalie knew deep down what Ralph London meant. And she knew that whoever
Ralph London was, he was probably right. She looked at the name Ralph London and wondered where her cyber friend had come up with the code name. Were they references to something? Or was it like the pen name thing, where you take your middle name and combine it with the first street you lived on? Like, for instance, if she were to take a pen name, she would be Frances Rockhurst because her middle name was Frances and the first house she ever lived in was on Rockhurst Street. But she hated her middle name, and she wasn't about to give any details about herself that could reveal her identity on this website.

She caught a whiff of something bad and instantly recognized the scent of Prints William. Why her grandmother's dog had formed an obsession with Natalie's room was a mystery. She looked under her bed skirt and, sure enough, there he was, his underbite prominent beneath his glassy eyes.

“Prints William, what are you doing? C'mon. Get out of there.”

Sometimes she felt kind of sorry for him. He was so ugly, and he had to hide from Taffy, the family cat. Taffy was totally capable of kicking Prints William's butt.
Natalie felt torn between love and hate for the dog. When her grandmother had first come to live with them last year, Natalie had been excited that they were going to have a dog. Prints William was a friendly but strange-looking little dachshund with his terrible teeth and protruding belly. But his rancid breath and overall dog stench had sort of changed her feelings about him. His breath alone could wilt a palm tree.

What made it worse was that her grandmother took the dog everywhere with her—even the doctor's office. Natalie's parents were always getting into fights over Prints William because Natalie's mom didn't think it was a big deal that Grandma Jones took the dog to church and the mall, while Natalie's father couldn't stand it. Really, Natalie thought there was much more behind their Prints William argument, and the dog might just be a scapegoat for all her father's pent-up tension over having Grandma Jones move in with them in the first place. Ever since Natalie had heard the term “scapegoat,” she'd liked using it. It meant that an easy target was blamed for something more significant. Jeremy had first mentioned the term after telling Natalie about the family counseling he had to attend
after his parents had decided to separate.

Natalie wished she could say her grandmother was cool enough to name her dog after the hottest royal in the world. But Grandma Jones had picked up the dog at the animal shelter near her retirement community eight years ago, and that was the name he'd come with. Apparently, the clever little Prints part of it was that he'd been leaving paw prints all over his kennel. The dog resembled nothing of the real Prince William.

Out of pity, Natalie almost decided to endure the dog's fish-breath odor a little longer. But when she heard her grandmother quietly calling for him, she thought it best to send the dog back to Grandma Jones, who had apparently lost her sense of smell sometime within the last decade.

She couldn't sleep and decided to text Jo. Even though she knew her alarm would feel like an electrocution in about six short hours, she craved a “Night-Light Chat.” That's what they called their late-night conversations.

 

U still up?

 

She propped herself on a pillow while she waited to hear from Jo.

Her eyes started to feel heavy, and just as she thought Jo had probably retired for the evening, her cell phone rang. It was Jeremy.

“You awake?” he asked. He never called her this late unless something was on his mind. But ever since his parents had split up, he'd chatted on the phone more. He'd never been the type to plunge too deep into his feelings. He barely scratched the surface with Natalie when discussing his troubles. She figured he called just because he was feeling a little lonely and probably insecure. A lot had changed in his life, and maybe Natalie was the only steady thing he had to rely on. The whole frostbite thing had raised a lot of questions about his commitment, and he'd seemed like he wanted to do more things with his friends—without her. Now suddenly she had become like a light in the darkness for him.