Cupcake Girl (2 page)

2

Rescued

It’s weird, but when I look back on that experience, my memories of bobbing around in the lake during a torrential storm are so much happier than the memories of getting rescued. Yeah, it was a huge relief when we finally saw the lights of a boat moving toward us in the rain. It was even better when we recognized it as one of my dad’s biggest fishing boats.

I was relieved to see Dad and Jake on board. Relieved and a little scared—I didn’t know what my dad would say when he saw his damaged Hobie. He’d specifically and repeatedly warned me not to sail
Bob
in bad weather, and this weather was pretty bad. I sweated it out while they helped us into the boat. That’s figurative sweat, since I was so cold I couldn’t imagine ever sweating again.

Dad and Jake helped Lexie into the boat first, wrapping her in a thick wool blanket. Jake started in on me the second they pulled me on board. “Dude, what were you thinking? How could you miss those clouds? We thought we’d find you marooned on the shore somewhere, not floating in the middle of the lake! And you totally trashed
Bob!”

“Shut up,” I muttered under my breath before facing my dad. “Dad, I’m so sorry. I—”

The wind whipped off the hood of his poncho, and I saw deep lines carved into his face, concern and disappointment in his eyes. I fumbled out another apology, but didn’t get far before he pulled me in for a hug. He held me long enough that my teeth stopped chattering. “When we saw
Bob
overturned in the water,” he said, his voice muffled by the rain, “I thought we might be too late. I thought—” He exhaled and squeezed me a little tighter. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” When we broke apart Dad used both hands to wipe the water from his face, and for a second I wondered if it was just rain.

His kindness made me feel even worse about wrecking the kayak, and before I knew it my teeth were chattering again. “You two need to warm up,” he said. “We’ve got dry clothes and lots of towels down there. Jake, you go with them in case they need help.”

Lexie and I took turns in the tiny bathroom, and when I came out, she was wrapped in another blanket and sitting close to Jake. I didn’t blame her for wanting to take advantage of his body heat at a time like this, but it still made me jealous.

“The weather just changed so fast,” she said, still visibly shaking. “We were way out on the water before we saw how dark those clouds were, and then it was too late.”

Jake pulled her into a long hug. “It’s okay, you’re going to be all right. I probably can’t say the same for
Bob,
but you’ll be just fine.”

I sat on the padded bench across from them, rubbing my arms while Jake helped Lexie warm up.

He got a little gleam in his eye but mostly kept a straight face and said, “And you know, the
truth
is that when you don’t pay attention to the skies, there are always
consequences.”

“Seriously, Jake? We just got fished out of the lake, and you’re making dumb T or C jokes?” I asked.

Since our minuscule hometown, the City of Elephant Butte, was just five miles north of the equally odd-named but slightly larger town, Truth or Consequences, we had an ongoing challenge to see who could work the crazy names into normal conversations. When we were kids we’d turned it into a competition. You received five points per word, and we kept a tally to see who could use “Truth” and “Consequences,” and “Elephant” and “Butte,” the most.

Jake raised his eyebrows. “Hey, I’m just trying to lighten the mood a little. And it’s not my fault you two bit off more than you could chew.”

He was being kind of annoying, so I had to beat him to the next stupid punch line. “’Cause if you’re going to eat an
elephant,
you should do it one
butte
at a time, right?”

“I was going to suggest that if you are going to eat an
elephant,
” Jake said, “you should start at the
butte,
but that works too.”

Lexie grinned. “Wow, Jake. You just scored, like, thirty points. Impressive.” I couldn’t believe she was falling for his pathetic attempt to be funny.

He looked my way with a triumphant little smirk. “See, she’s got beauty and brains.” Lexie flushed and pulled slightly away, but he didn’t seem to notice. He brushed the wet hair from her face and kept his hand over her ear, exclaiming, “But man your ears are cold.”

Jealous anger rushed through me when he touched her hair, and it intensified when he pulled her head against his chest, his hand still warming up her ear.

“Ten of those points are mine!” I snapped with great maturity.

Lexie started to agree, but Jake announced, “Max has spoken the
truth,
but that one puts me at twenty-five.”

Her giggle reminded me of the ever-present fact that she’d had a crush on Jake since forever. And why wouldn’t she? He was only a year ahead in school but almost two years older in age because of the way our birthdays fell. He was the guy who was good at everything—sports, school, friends, everything. And he wasn’t just good, he was really good. It shouldn’t be legal for the same kid to be the star quarterback of the football team, the power forward on the basketball team,
and
a student body officer, but that was my brother Jake.

I always looked up to him, literally and figuratively, and spent most of my childhood trying to catch up in height. At six foot three and almost two hundred pounds, Jake was even bigger than my dad. I kept hoping I would be taller than my dad too, but he and I still stood head to head at five eleven. And no matter how much I worked out, Jake had a good forty pounds worth of muscle on me. While his eyes were sky blue, mine were mud brown. No wonder Lexie and every other girl in the school had a crush on him.

Even though I was still freezing, I couldn’t just sit there and watch Lexie cuddle up to Jake. I threw a heavy-duty rain poncho over my hooded sweatshirt and went on deck to see if Dad needed help getting the kayak in. He had somehow already righted
Bob
and attached the tow rope to the bow. The sight of the damage made me cringe—the broken mast was dangling by the lines to the sails, which were also in shreds.

The image of the boat is still etched in my memory, but the rest of the day was mostly a blur. I remember my dad telling me how restless Mom had felt all afternoon, and how she’d asked him and Jake to look for us before the rain even started. I remember she was waiting for us at the end of the pier, even though rain still poured. She had towels warm from the dryer and steaming mugs of coffee waiting for us at home, and kept hugging Lexie and me again and again.

I also remember how frantic Mrs. Duncan looked when she burst into our living room a few minutes later. She was overjoyed to see Lexie, but not nearly so happy to see me. She treated Jake like the hero who saved Lexie from hypothermia, while I was the jerk who dragged her out in the middle of the lake on a boat with only one seat.

And I guess I could understand that, since Mrs. Duncan’s life pretty much revolved around Lexie. Lexie’s dad, Alexander Robert Duncan, was killed by a drunk driver before she was born, and Mrs. Duncan never got over losing him. She named her daughter Alexa in his honor and kept a huge picture of him in their living room. I kept remembering how close that mast came to hitting Lexie, and couldn’t imagine facing Mrs. Duncan if anything bad had happened to her. Maybe facing myself would have been worse, though.

Things felt so crazy lonely when Lexie left with her mom that afternoon. Though Mom didn’t want to let me out of her sight, I finally convinced her to let me go running.

I laced up my Altras and started jogging up the slope toward town, shocked at how quickly the storm had blown over. The air was still and the sun was shimmering across the water and onto the sandstone hills guarding the lake’s edge. Other than a line of billowing clouds in the distance, you could hardly tell from the skies that there’d been a storm at all.

The desert land surrounding the lake was another story. You  would  think  the  thirsty  ground  and  scrubby  tufts  of weeds would gratefully drink in every drop of moisture, but the parched desert land couldn’t absorb that much water. The fallen rain was gathering, carving its way through the dirt in small rivulets and rushing streams down to the lake.

I was in such a weird state of mind that I felt like that rainwater. But instead of rushing toward the lake, I wanted to run as fast as possible to wherever Lexie was.

And I couldn’t shake the memory of that moment when I had almost kissed her. My stomach did that same weird twist whenever I thought about it, so I tried really hard not to dwell on it. So I mostly just thought about kissing her when she smiled, or laughed, or said hello or goodbye, or “Hey, Max, what’s up?” So it was just once or twice a day for the next year. I know, I know—I’m hopeless, right?

But before you think I’m the biggest coward in the world for not just telling Lexie I like her, I should explain why I never made my move. Her huge crush on my older brother was a big part of it, but it wasn’t all. She had always been my best friend, yet somehow that day in the storm I realized she was the best part of my life. I wasn’t really me without her.

That probably doesn’t even make sense, but I just knew I didn’t want to lose her. I didn’t want to change things or make them feel all awkward and weird because I got lightheaded when she smiled. So I pretended nothing had ever happened, which I guess was the truth, and tried to hide the way I felt every time she looked my way.

3

The Power of
X

For the most part, I did a pretty good job of concealing my feelings for Lexie and only had occasional relapses. One of these took place just a few months into our junior year, at our last home race for the cross-country season. I was warming up when I saw her walk over to the field, carrying a bakery box to the refreshment table for our potluck party after the race. When she popped open the lid and started arranging frosted cupcakes on a plate, I couldn’t suppress a grin. Memories of superhero comic books and endless summer days of playtime washed over me.

About the time Lexie and I learned how to read, we discovered we were bound together by the letter
X
. We were the only two kids in our entire class, and possibly the entire school, that had an
X
in our names. We were convinced the letter gave us special powers. We spent the whole summer after first grade pretending we were X-Class superheroes. We ran around yelling, “We stand for truth, justice, and the power of X!”

Our game was a shameless rip-off of the X-Men comics, though at the time we thought we were totally original. It gave me good teasing material over the years, since Lexie was Cupcake Girl. Yep, Cupcake Girl, which meant she could shoot frosting from one hand—really sticky frosting that could turn a person into a statue when it hardened. She could make small cupcakes that contained healing powers, which always came in handy when we were wounded by imaginary villains. She also made big hollow cupcakes that could be a shield for her or a trap for her enemies.

I’ve teased Lexie about being Cupcake Girl many times over the years, but I usually have to shut up when she reminds me that I was Strong Man. Yes, I did come up with that name myself, but hey, we were like seven years old.

Anytime we weren’t playing out at the lake, we were inside creating our own X-Class comic books. Lexie is an amazing artist, so she drew the illustrations while I did the writing. Whenever we finished a comic, instead of high-fiving, we made an
X
with our index fingers.

It had been a while since I’d bugged her about being Cupcake Girl, but I couldn’t resist that day at the cross-country meet. I caught her attention with a quick wave and she smiled back. I did my best to keep a straight face as I limped toward her, hopping a little as I went.

“Max! Are you okay? Did you twist your ankle?” Her face was creased with worry, but I still grimaced as I approached her. “Don’t worry, it’s okay. At least I
will
be okay, if I can just get—”

“Ibuprofen?” Lexie suggested. “Or I can go grab an ice pack from the coach . . .” Her voice trailed off as her eyes scanned the field, no doubt looking for the first-aid kit and cooler.

“No, don’t leave. What I actually need is . . .” I bent down and massaged my ankle. “A cupcake.”

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped slightly before she smirked. “Oh, really?”

“Come on, Cupcake Girl—one bite of that enticing cupcake and my ankle will be good as new.”

Lexie narrowed her eyes. “But how do I know you’re the real Strong Man? I mean, Strong Man would never limp—he’s much too powerful for that. How do I know you’re not the evil Dr. X-Out, trying to destroy the powers of truth, justice, and the power of X?”

“Oh, I’m definitely Strong Man,” I boasted, reaching both arms behind my head and flexing my biceps obnoxiously.

She rolled her eyes. “Then prove it.” She moved the cupcake from hand to hand in an obvious invitation to play keep away. We laughed as I followed her movements, swiping at the cupcake until she hid it behind her back.

My arm circled around her waist. “Only Strong Man would be able to do this!” I reached under her legs and swept her into my arms.

“Hey, no fair!” She laughed as I lifted her and lowered her down a few times, counting like I was doing reps with a weight. “Put me down or I’ll shoot you with my super sticky frosting!” she ordered.

I must have swung her down just as she moved the cupcake in my direction, because a gooey mess of frosting suddenly splattered my face, sticking to my lip and chin like some lopsided goatee.

Lexie’s eyes widened as she watched my expression, stifling her laugh.

I slowly licked the frosting from my bottom lip and frowned. “Wow, my ankle feels better already.”

We both laughed as the frosting slowly started to slide off my chin.

“Here, let me help before that gets all over your uniform.” She  stepped so  close I  worried she  would  hear my heart thudding in my chest. She gently scooped the frosting from my face, catching a big glob in one hand before reaching with the other to wipe off the rest.

When her finger brushed the edge of my lip, the need to kiss her was almost overpowering. I almost forgot about her crush on Jake, almost forgot about all the people milling around us. I held her gaze for a second, but then she turned her head and the moment was gone.

I mentally shook myself back to reality and saw Lexie’s friend watching us from a few feet away. Meri Morrales had her arms crossed and was looking at Lexie with a hint of annoyance.

Lexie glanced down at her messy hands and backed away from me. “I guess I should go wash up.”

“Yeah you should,” Meri said. “I was just on my way back to the locker room. I’ll go with you.”

She steered Lexie away, but after a few steps Lexie turned back and offered the squashed cupcake. “Hey, Max, do you still want this?”

“Heck  no—I’ve  got  a  race  to  run.”  I  winked  as  she suppressed another grin and walked away with Meri.

My head still buzzed from the close contact with Lexie, so I threw myself back into my warm-up routine, trying to get my head back in the race. I jogged for a few minutes and then settled back into stretching. The afternoon heat was intense, and sweat was already pricking on my back when announcer gave the ten-minute warning for the boys’ race. Wanting to find a cooler place to finish stretching, I made my way to the lengthening shadows cast by an empty sunshade tent. I plopped down on the grass behind the tent and started to stretch my thighs and hamstrings, trying to push out the memory of Lexie touching my face.

I’d leaned all the way into a stretch, my nose inches from my knee, when I became vaguely aware of voices on the other side of the tent. I perked up when I recognized Meri’s voice. “Uh, this sunshine’s giving me a headache. Let’s just sit down here for a minute so you can finally admit the truth.”

Though I knew this was the moment to either announce my presence or walk away, I stayed frozen in my stretch.

“No, let’s not talk about this right now. Our race is going to start—”

“After the guy’s race,” Meri interrupted, “which doesn’t even start for ten minutes. We’ve got time. Besides, your head will be clearer for our race if you just admit the truth already.”

“Uh, what do you want me to say?” Lexie asked with a slight groan. “I know he’s really cute, but it’s not like that.” “I don’t get it—why not?” Meri asked.

“I’m just not that into him.”

“Because you’ve had a crush on his brother for forever,” Meri said. “Come on! Just admit it already!”

“All right, all right. I like him—I
really
like him,” Lexie confessed.

She liked Jake. No, she
really
liked Jake.

I had heard enough and got up as quietly as I could. The blood rushed through my ears so loud I can’t believe I heard the call for the boys’ race. Adrenalin already coursed through my blood when I lined up at the starting line, and I could hardly steady my breath.

I started faster than I should have, but I had to get away—as if distancing myself from the pack would help me escape that awful conversation. As my feet slammed against the pavement, Lexie’s words about her crush on my brother rang through my head: “I like him—I
really
like him.” I kept remembering Meri’s words: “You’ve had a crush on his brother for forever.” It was true—Lexie had always liked Jake. I ran until my lungs burned, until my legs ached, but I just kept pushing, running from the words echoing through my mind.

I hardly noticed the off-road course until we were back on the track for the final loop. I had been in the lead so long that I also didn’t notice the guy pounding up behind me until it was too late. He kicked into a sprint as we got to the final fifty yards, and though I picked up my pace until my legs burned, I didn’t quite have the steam to catch him, crossing the finish line a shoulder length behind him.

I was still struggling to regain my breath when Lexie reached my side, glowing with excitement. “Wow, Max, that was amazing! Did you hear your time? You beat your personal record by almost twenty seconds!”

“Thanks,” I said between gasps, using my cool-down stretches to avoid meeting her eyes.

The megaphone blared the start of the girls’ race, and Lexie said, “Oh, that’s me—gotta go.” I glanced up and saw her ponytail swinging as she jogged over to the starting line. I didn’t really want to watch her race, but I couldn’t resist those long, graceful strides. She ran well and finished fourth.

But even though I didn’t walk over to congratulate her, it wasn’t long before she found me. “Hey, good job,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “That was awesome.”

“Well, I wasn’t in the top three, but I guess it wasn’t bad.”

“Yeah, you did great.” I still didn’t look at her.

Lexie sat beside me on the bleacher. “You seriously aren’t upset about taking second, are you? I mean, you beat your personal record and everything.”

“Nah, I’m not mad about that.” I waited for her to ask what was really wrong, but she didn’t. Almost before I could stop myself, I said, “Come on, I grew up with Jake as an older brother—I’m used to taking second place.”

I wondered if she would get my slight barb, but she confidently said, “You’ll get it next time. And hey, do you want something to eat? I could go grab you a cupcake.” The smile had returned to her voice.

“Thanks, but I’m not really in the mood,” I replied. “I’m actually heading home now. Could you catch a ride home with someone else?”

“Oh, yeah. No big deal.” She hesitated for a second before reaching over and lightly touching my arm. “Really good job today, Max.” She turned to go.

My heart ricocheted at her touch, and I wanted to stop being an idiot and go after her. Would I really sulk around and shut her out because she had a crush on Jake? She had always liked him, so what was the big deal?

“Lexie, wait!” I called.

She spun around and waited while I jogged to catch up with her. “Actually, cupcakes sound great,” I said.

Her smile made me glad I’d swallowed my pride. Because in the end, I knew it was okay to be second best to Jake—even where Lexie was concerned—since second best was still first- best friend.