Autumn's Wish (14 page)

Then Carrie laughs. “Just kidding. I'm taken. Keith's a cutie, though. You should work that thing.”

Mariah sighs but dutifully stuffs and labels her Scare Pair envelope, then shoves it in place among the others.

“Zander Grigsby's coming?” Swoozie Lyman says a little later. “I didn't think he did school dances.”

“Who's he paired with?” Brody asks.

Carrie's on her way back to her seat from the pizza table and looks over Swoozie's shoulder. She grimaces, then looks at me. “It's Ames.”

Crap. No. No way. I've worked too hard to fix Amalita's future. She's avoided Zander since the football game—hasn't called, hasn't texted, hasn't anything. Not a chance I'm letting this dance push them back together.

“Ooooo,” Gus singsongs a little bit later. He dances a card in my direction. “Someone else got a dream date.”

“Is it me?” Meegan asks.

“Am I looking at you?” Gus retorts. “It's Autumn. And she's with dreamy Sean Geary!”

“Seriously?” I blurt.

“What? He's hot,” Gus says. “And weren't you guys a thing last year? Now's your chance to get him back.”

“Sean
hates
Autumn,” Carrie informs him, then lowers her voice. “Didn't you hear what happened at the football game last week?”

“Carrie, I'm eight feet away from you,” I say. “I can hear you.”

“I can't,” Gus says. “The minute you say ‘football,' my ears shut off.”

With two hundred envelopes to stuff, the party will go on for a while. That's good. I need the time. If I do everything at once, people will get suspicious. The helpful thing is that all of us are constantly up and down, moving between the printer, our chairs, the snacks, and the plastic bins. We're also all continually riffling through the two bins of envelopes to get everything in alphabetical order. Added bonus? The movie at the front of the room means everyone's attention is partly distracted up there. So here's what I do. All Brody's computer papers are super-organized in a bunch of baskets in a far back corner. In one trip around the room when no one's looking, I snag a sheet of blank label paper and stash it in my backpack. During another trip I grab a few extra blank cards and envelopes and shove them in the backpack as well. My next tasks are harder, but Tim Burton's totally in my corner. Everyone's so loving the end of
Edward Scissorhands
that they don't even notice me sift through the finished Scare Pair envelopes, grab the ones I need, and stash them in my backpack.

When all the stuffing's done and the movies are over, we clean up Brody's office and load the bins of Scare Pair cards into Carrie's car so she can keep them safe until the dance.

“Autumn!” she calls out the window once she's in her car. “You need a ride home, right? I'm going that way anyway.”

Of course she is. She's going to see J.J., which is the last thing I want to think about tonight. I was hoping to get a ride with a different member of the sisterhood, but I can't exactly say no now.

“So,” she says once we're on our way, “tonight's the anniversary of J.J.'s and my first kiss.”

“Really?” I say, then quickly change the subject. “So decorating the gym'll be fun tomorrow, right?”

“Our first kiss from the
first
time we dated,” Carrie clarifies, totally ignoring my question. “Back in freshman year.”

“Got it,” I snap. “So…decorating.”

“His parents are going to be out late tonight,” Carrie says, “so we'll get to do something special to celebrate.” She smiles, and her eyes dance with anticipation. “I even bought a costume.”

I'm dying to clap my hands over my ears and scream
LA-LA-LA-LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!,
but I grit my teeth and control myself.

“Sounds…fun,” I manage. “Ooh, I love this song!”

I crank up the radio and sing along as best I can to some hip-hop song I've never heard in my life. I leap out of the car while it's still rolling toward my curb and run.

Immediately, Erick and some girl spring away from each other on the couch.

“Ew,” I groan. “Where's Mom?”

“At the new site,” Erick says.

“Hi!” The girl waves. She's cute and blond and disturbingly disheveled. I can't even. I nod to her but keep talking to Erick.

“Does Mom know you're here with her?”

“It's Lori,” the girl says. “Lori with an i. And the o's really a heart.”

“Okay, you need to stop talking,” I say.

“She thinks we're at the movies,” Erick admits. Smart kid. He knows if he hadn't said it I'd have found out later and totally blown his cover. “You won't tell, right?”

“Not if you do me a favor.” I turn to Lori-with-an-i. “I'm borrowing him for a minute. If you take the opportunity to reconsider your life choices and run, I totally understand.”

“Autumn!” he whines.

“Come on!”

I drag him upstairs to his room, where I leave the door open and immediately fling open every window. It doesn't do much to mitigate the body odor/body spray combo, but every little bit helps. I swing off my backpack and pull out the label sheet, blank Scare Pair cards, and envelopes. When I explain what I need, it doesn't take him long. The hardest thing for him is finding the drippy-blood font, but then it's a snap. He prints me out eight new Scare Pair cards, each of which I seal in an envelope and label. Mariah Amhari and J.J. are now a pair, and I've put Keith Hamilton with Carrie Amernick. Yes, the girls will totally know the pairs somehow changed, but ideally they won't suspect me.

I also have cards for Jack and Tom, pairing them with each other. Jack's original card, which I didn't know till I opened it, paired him with Denise O'Bryan, and Tom's original card paired him with Steve Consuelas. Now Denise and Steve will still have Jack and Tom and things might get confusing, but I'm doing the best I can. At least maybe I can get Jack and Tom talking, and they can take it from there on their own.

I had a similar but different problem with Ames and Zander. I needed to give them new dates, even though the dates are already paired with other people. For Zander I chose Corbin Foster. No doubt. She's tall, dark, and so gorgeous she could be a model. I feel pretty confident that if Zander sees her name on his card, he'll follow her around like a puppy all night. As for Ames, I give her Michael Watley, and Ames is usually a sucker for athletes. It'll totally work.

With everything printed out and ready, I release Erick to Lori-with-an-
i
-and-horribly-low-standards and stash the envelopes in my room. Then I plop onto my bed and yank the locket chain, pulling it from under my shirt. I'm not going anywhere; I just want to look at the
zemi
carved onto the case. “I'm doing it, Dad,” I say. “I'm making the future a better place.”

I stare at the
zemi
a little longer; then I tuck it away. I suppose I should go to sleep, but I keep thinking of what Carrie said about her and J.J.'s anniversary. Ugh.

I'm relieved when my phone rings and blasts the image out of my head. It's Taylor. “Tell me you want to pick me up and do something fun,” I beg as I answer.

“I do!” she cries. “Boca Community College, midnight showing,
Macbeth.
”

“Is that a movie?”

“Macbeth,”
Taylor reiterates. “The play. By Shakespeare?”

“Never heard of him.”

I'm lying, of course. I just like to make Taylor crazy by not getting ninety percent of her theater references. Of course, eighty percent I genuinely
don't
get, but this isn't one of those.

“It's supposed to be seriously dark and bloody,” she says. “I saw pictures on Instagram. Actual beheading.”

“
Actual
beh—”

She doesn't let me finish. “Actual
stage
beheading. Right in front of the audience. And we're up close and personal, in bleachers on the stage. Tell me you want to go!”

“I totally want to go!” I say. “Pick me up in five.”

I hang up, fluff my hair, put on a little makeup, and head outside just as Taylor pulls up. We have some time before midnight, so we stop and get late-night breakfast food first. I'm dying to talk about J.J., but I have no idea how I'll explain what's going on with me. No one even knows J.J.'s hanging out with me for tutoring. If I tell her how I feel, she'll think I'm insane.

So I don't bring it up. We talk about other stuff, take goofy selfies we post to Instagram, and then go see the play.

I'm not a theater person, but the play is seriously cool. Taylor wasn't exaggerating. We sit right onstage with the actors. Everything's dark and shadowy, and there's this freaky music that makes me feel like something terrible's about to happen any second. By the time intermission comes, my heart's pounding so hard I feel like I've run a marathon.

“This play totally counts as aerobic exercise, right?” I ask Taylor, but her head's in the program.

“The guy who plays you-know-who is incredible, isn't he?” she asks.

“Voldemort's in this play?”

She glances out of the side of her eye. “Are you messing with me?”

I assure her I seriously have no idea what she's talking about, and she tells me you're not supposed to say the name “Macbeth” in a theater. Which seems kind of ridiculous when you're
watching
Macbeth and want to discuss the lead character, which Taylor does.

“Drew,” she says.

Immediately, my ears perk up. Drew is the name of Taylor's dream man. The guy I saw her with in my first jump forward.

The guy she's supposed to meet senior year of high school!

“Drew?” I echo curiously.

“The guy who plays”—she looks at me, then rolls her eyes—“Voldemort. His name's Drew.”

I stare at the fuzzily xeroxed picture in the program. “Yes! It
is
him! I didn't recognize him with all the blood spatter!”

“Recognize him?” Taylor echoes. “You know him?”

“No!” I quickly correct myself. “I just mean I didn't recognize him…in the show…as this guy in the picture.”

Taylor looks at me like I'm a complete fool. “But it says his character name right there. It says he's Mac—” She stops herself and makes a face at me. “You're just trying to get me to say it, aren't you?”

“Totally,” I lie, then quickly get back to what's more important. “But this Drew guy…you're right, he's really good. And cute, too, don't you think?”

Taylor blushes. “
Ridiculously
cute.”

“You should talk to him after the show! The actors will come out after, right? Like when we wait for you after your shows?”

“I guess,” she says, “but why would he want to talk to me? He's in a college production. I'm just this high school fangirl.”

Among the many things I love about Taylor is she has no idea how gorgeous she is. Reenzie might get all the hot-girl cred, but it's only because she knows how good she looks and struts around like she expects everyone else to know it too. Honestly, though, Taylor's even prettier. She's like the definition of classic all-American beauty—tall, long blond hair, blue eyes, fit but curvy. If she weren't my friend, I'd find her annoyingly perfect. And it's not like she's not confident or doesn't know how to dress herself. She is and she does. She just has zero clue of the effect she can have on people.

I don't try to convince her. “You're like the
opposite
of a fangirl; you're a fellow actor. You can talk to him intelligently about theater. He'll love that.”

“Maybe,” she says, but she looks dreamy and chews on her lip and I know she's pretty much convinced.

The second half of the show is even bloodier than the first. I'm sure I'd love it if I were paying attention, but I'm not. I'm watching Taylor watch Drew. She looks smitten, and even though I'm sure she thinks it's just because he's amazing-looking and super-talented, I know it's more. They fit together, but right now I'm the only one who knows it. I have so much energy I can't wait for the show to end, and when it does I'm the first to pop up and give it a standing ovation. Taylor's the second, and I totally see Drew do a double take when he notices her in the crowd.

“He's looking at you!” I tell her. “You see that? He's smiling right at you!”

“He's smiling because we're giving him a standing ovation,” Taylor says. “I'd smile too.”

Whatever. I make it my business to ask around and learn where the actors are coming out; then I drag Taylor outside to the stage door, where we wait to accost him.

He comes out so quickly, I have a sneaking suspicion he's racing to try to catch Taylor.

“Hey!” I shout. I wave my arms obnoxiously and flag him down. There's no room for subtlety when you're building someone's future. He shoots me a weird scrunched-faced glance, but when he sees I'm with Taylor his whole face opens in a wide smile.

“Hi,” he says in a deep, mellifluous voice. I don't even care that he's talking right to her when I was the one who waved, because this is clearly history in the making.

“Hi,” Taylor says breathlessly. “I'm Taylor. You were…magnificent out there.”

“Thank you,” Drew says, not ripping his eyes from Taylor's for a second. “Thanks for coming. I'm Drew, by the way.”

“I know.” Taylor giggles; then she bites her lip before adding, “I hope you don't think I'm a pretentious theater geek or anything, but the choices you made…I love the way you stalked the stage, like a wild animal caught in the cage of your fate.”

She sure sounded like a pretentious theater geek to me…but Drew eats it up. He smiles even wider and nods with his full body, like he can't contain his excitement in one appendage. “Yes! That's exactly what I was going for!”