All the Way (17 page)

“You want to play Candyland?” David said, wandering toward the corner with all the couches and board games.

Ouch. My heart hurt at the thought. Hadn't I been aching for months and months to sit here in Murphy's playing Candyland with some cute guy I was in love with? And now, when it was finally happening, I was supposed to settle for David freaking Ulster, who I wasn't in love with at all?

Oh, well. I guess he was better than nothing, because I sucked it up and didn't let him see how many emotions were flooding through me right then.

“Sure,” I said, trying to be cheerful.

He seemed to have pulled himself together during the three-minute drive to the coffeehouse, because he wasn't quite as nervous now as he had been backstage.

I kicked off my shoes and sat cross-legged on the couch while he set up the board.

“You want to draw to see who goes first?” he said.

“No, you can go first. Just watch out in the Peppermint Stick Forest,” I teased him. “I'll whip your ass if I get there before you do.”

“Actually, the mathematical probability is that the player who goes first will reach that destination first,” David said.

No, it wasn't that bad, though. He laughed after he said it, like he knew he was being supergeeky.

“Whatever,” I said, watching him draw a blue card and move his gingerbread man to the closest blue space. “I love this game 'cause it so reminds me of my happy childhood.”

He laughed when I said that. “Yeah? I had a happy childhood, too, but don't tell anyone. It's so socially unacceptable to have a happy childhood, isn't it?”

“Not to me,” I said, grinning at him.

“So you actually love this game?” he said, squinting at me like he wondered why.

“Yeah, for about four moves. Then I always get bored because there's no skill involved.”

“Exactly!” David said, like he'd just met his soul mate. “That's why I invented Blind Candyland. You want to play my version, with my new rules?”

“Blind Candyland?” I giggled. “That sounds so vicious.”

“Yeah, that's the point,” he said.

Geeky guys can surprise you sometimes.

“Okay.”

With David's rules, you had to move your gingerbread man around the board without drawing a card first. Just move to whatever colored space you wanted to—the next red space, or blue space, or whatever. Then you drew a card and if you were right, you could go again. But if you were wrong, you had to go all the way back to the beginning.

Unless you took the double-blind option, which is too complicated to go into.

Bottom line: it was fun.

We played twice, just because I wanted to whip his ass in the Peppermint Stick Forest. (Didn't happen.) Then we put the board away.

“So,” I said, taking a deep breath. I was about to pop the question, and I just wasn't sure how to do it. I hadn't asked many guys out before, and it's funny, but now that we were having such a good time, I felt a tiny bit nervous. “So, I wanted to ask you something.”

He was so clueless about stuff like this, he didn't catch the here-comes-an-important-topic tone in my voice. Instead he got up and wandered over to the counter to get more sugar for his coffee.

“Yeah?” he called from across the room. “Ask away.”

I laughed quietly and waited for him to come back.

“Um, I was wondering . . . do you want to go to the prom with me?”

He froze, and a look of total panic spread across his face. “Uh . . . oh . . . uh . . . no, I don't think so, Carmen.”

Wait a minute. Did he just say
no
?

I was so shocked, I couldn't speak for a minute. My face felt hot with humiliation and embarrassment. I tried to process the idea that David was rejecting me, but I couldn't really believe it.

Was he
kidding
? Now I couldn't even get a date with the school nerd?

“Why not?” I blurted out angrily, like he owed me an explanation or something.

His face turned as red as mine felt. “Um, oh . . . sorry, I mean, I . . .”

He stammered around for a minute while I glared at him like I wanted to strangle him.

“I, um, I just . . . you know, prom is usually . . . I mean, you've been with so many guys . . . I mean, not that I'm judging you or anything, but I'm not . . . I mean, I haven't gone out with that many girls, so I'm not probably what you're . . .”

Oh, man. What was he trying to say? That he thought I expected him to
sleep
with me on prom night? Like
I
was going to take his poor pitiful, virginity away from him?

My mind was spinning. Could my life possibly get any more painful?

I wanted to say something so he'd stop babbling on, crushing my feelings and basically calling me a slut to my face, but I couldn't speak. Tears were welling up in my eyes, and there was a lump in the back of my throat the size of a grapefruit.

He didn't seem to notice, though. He just kept on yammering.

“You know, it's your business and everything, but I heard you and Tyler spent the night together in Cleveland, and that's just . . . I mean . . . I really like you, but . . .”

Okay, this was too much, even for me. Was Tyler telling everyone lies about me now, too?

“Just shut up,” I said, losing all semblance of pride, dignity, or self-control. I spat the words at him as tears streamed down my face. “Shut up and . . . stop talking about me and . . . and . . . just shut up about it!”

Great exit line. Smooth, Carmen.

Everyone in Murphy's was looking at me as I ran out the door, knocking over a cardboard display of coffee beans on my way.

That's it, I thought as I barreled home in my car, accidentally running a stop sign and almost knocking over our garbage cans by the curb.

I slammed on the brakes in our driveway, pounded into the house like an elephant on a rampage, and threw my jacket and keys on the bed.

That was the limit. That was as much as I could take.

With trembling hands, I picked up my phone and sent a text message to Ariel and Emily.

It said:
If everyone thinks I'm such a slut, I might as well act like one.

Why not?
I thought. I was done playing by the rules.

And besides, at this point, I had nothing else to lose.

 

 

 

“Wait a minute. If you're going to act like a slut, how does that get you revenge?” Emily asked.

The minute Emily got my text message, she'd called, like a true friend, to find out what was wrong. I told her how David had turned me down for the prom, how I'd had to run out of Murphy's in disgrace, tears running down my face, and how having him reject me was the absolute last straw.

From now on, I was going ballistic. Pulling out all the stops. Launching a guerilla attack. It was going to be a campaign of shock and awe . . .

I threw in all the badass terms I could come up with.

“I'm on the warpath,” I told her. “I'm getting revenge. On all of them.”

“I'm not following it,” she said. “Explain to me how being a slut hurts anyone else but you?”

“Trust me,” I said, twisting the phone so I could cradle it while lying on my bed. “I'll make it work.”

Poor Emily. She was so nice and trusting. She couldn't really buy into the idea that I had a dark side.

Well, okay, actually neither could I. I didn't actually have a
dark
side so much as a mean streak. I was the kind of person who could take a lot . . . just keep turning the other cheek for a really, really long time . . . but eventually I reached my limit.

Then,
ka-boom
. I exploded.

“I've had it,” I said. “I'm not going to put up with the crap everyone's been handing me anymore.”

“Yeah,” Emily said patiently. “I get that. I just don't see how you're going to get revenge on anyone.”

“I have a plan for Joey,” I told her. “He called me a slut, so I'm going to make that work in my favor. I'm going to make him sorry he messed with my rep. And my head.”

“Really?” She sounded psyched. “What are you going to do?”

“I'm not telling,” I said, because I really wasn't sure how to pull off what I had in mind. “I don't have all the details worked out, but trust me—it's going to be incredible. But I need help with Tyler. I can't think of a good way to get back at him.”

There was a long pause, then a sigh.

“I can't discuss revenge on the phone,” Emily said firmly. “If you want to talk about this seriously, I'm coming over.”

“Fine,” I said, feeling a long way from fine. “I'll be up in the studio over the garage.”

I sat at my project table working on my prom dress while I waited for her to arrive. The lights were on over at Molly's, and I tried not to look, but finally I caved. Molly was lying on her bed, writing something in a spiral notebook.

Wow—she had time to fit homework into her busy social schedule?

Bitter, bitter, bitter, I know. But can you blame me? I mean, just a few days ago, my mom actually said to me, “Why don't you try to be more like Molly? She's getting a huge scholarship to college because of her volunteer work at the homeless shelter.”

Anyway, when Emily arrived, I pulled the blinds closed so we wouldn't be distracted by the Molly Barton Show.

Emily grabbed a bottle of water from the minifridge we had in the studio, and I pushed my sewing aside.

“Okay, seriously,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“I don't really know,” I said. “I just want to think of some way to get back at all of them, starting with Tyler. Got any ideas?”

“Well, I was thinking on the way over here,” Emily said gleefully. “What if you started your own blog on a website? We could sneakily take pictures of Tyler at rehearsals. You know, show him flirting with Natalie, show everyone what a player he is.”

“No, that's not mean enough,” I said. I should have known Emily wouldn't be very good at revenge. “No, I have a better idea. What if we put up a new website and make it look like it's Tyler's own blog? You know, use his name in the title, and put all kinds of nasty comments up about Natalie. Then we just subtly spread the word. I'd be like, ‘Did you see Tyler's new blog? Wow, that dude is cold to his new bitch.' Like that.”

Emily laughed, but we both knew it was a lame idea.

“Tyler would just deny it was his,” she said, “and everyone would believe him.”

Besides, I wanted to get better revenge than that. Something major and irrefutable. Something he couldn't deny or talk his way out of.

“What about something to totally embarrass him on opening night of the musical?” I said.

“Like what?” Her eyes lit up.

“Like do something to his costume, I'm not sure what.”

“How about a big stain on his shirt?” she said.

“Yeah . . . but, no, no, on his pants!” I screamed, loving this. “A big old stain right on the front of his crotch!”

“Arghhhh! Perfect!” she screamed.

We both roared with laughter at the thought, but I wasn't sure it would work.

“If he sees the stain, he won't put the pants on, will he?” I said.

“Yeah,” Emily agreed.

The gears in my head whirred, trying to come up with something. Doing something to his pants just seemed like the perfect kind of poetic justice.

But what?

“I've got it!” I practically jumped out of my chair, I was so pumped. “You know where he has that costume change right before his big love scene with Natalie? What if I sewed up the side seams of his pants and made them smaller! So he couldn't zip them up! So he'd have to go out onstage with pants that he can't keep on!”

Emily threw back her head and laughed like there was no tomorrow. “You're a genius!” she screamed. Then her face got sober. “But we have to think this through. I mean, what if he sees that they're too small? You ought to sew them up on Thursday afternoon, right before the opening night performance.”

“Totally,” I agreed. “And you can help me that night. Like when he's changing backstage between scenes, maybe you can get him to fork over the blue pants—the ones he's taking off—so we can hide them. You know, give him no choice, make sure he has to wear the ones that are too small.”

“Or no pants at all,” she said, delighted with our evil plot.

“This is going to rock!” I said, feeling my own power again for the first time in days.

I was so high on our brilliant idea, I couldn't sit still.

“Listen,” I said, pacing around nervously. “I'm going to the prom whether I have a date or not. And you've got to come with me. We'll go together, looking hot as we wanna be, you know? No matter what anyone thinks.”

“You think so? But I don't even have a dress!” Emily moaned.

“I know! That's why we'd better go shopping for you
right now
. Come on!”

I dragged her out of the studio, ran into the house to get my purse and a jacket and leave a note for my mom that I wouldn't be home for dinner, and we dashed off to the mall.

Nothing like shopping for a prom dress five days before the big event to get the adrenaline going!

“Do you think that black dress is still there—the one with the spaghetti straps?” she said. Her face glowed just from thinking about it.