Curse of the Wickeds (The Cinderella Society, Episode 2) (9 page)

WillCheer4Food: sure

I grabbed my cell and went into my closet, camping out on the floor so I wouldn’t disturb the parental sleeping beauties. I answered it on the first vibrate. “Hey.”

“Hey, beautiful.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Am I crazy to be calling?”

Calling this late? Calling this soon? Calling at all? Why were guys so cryptic???

“I’m glad you did,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I had fun tonight.”

“Me too. Our dates are so different.”

“Well, yeah, unless you save people’s lives every time.” I said it without thinking and smacked my forehead for being such an idiot. “Sorry. I know you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I do.” He sounded sad. “I just can’t. Not right now.”

“No problem.” I changed the subject, and we started talking about football and school and summer jobs.
 

“Why do you work so much?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, it’s great, but . . . you know.”

“Know what?”

How could I say it without sounding snobby? “Well, I mean, I’ve been to your house. I figured kids who live in houses like that, and whose dads are doctors, wouldn’t have to work two jobs.”

Ryan considered that. “I don’t have to, I guess. But I want to. I need to. For me, I mean. I’m saving up for something.”

“A car?” Now, that I could understand.

“Sort of, yeah.”

“Me too. Though at the rate I’m going, I’ll be out of college by the time I scrape together enough for something that’s not a complete embarrassment.” I settled back against the wall, propping my feet on the shoeboxes I’d lined up neatly along the floor. “What kind of car do you want? Isn’t the Escape yours?”

“They’re more like community cars in my family, but I usually get dibs on it. The one I’m saving for is a vintage Mustang. My mom’s favorite.”

I couldn’t fathom what it would be like to lose my mom. All the attention she was heaping on the twins’ arrival might’ve been getting under my skin, but I couldn’t imagine life without her. “Do you miss her a lot?”

“All the time.” I heard him shift and figured he was on his bed. “She painted a picture right before she died. I have it in my room, so it’s the last thing I see every night.”

“The dandelion,” I said, as much to myself as to him.

Long pause. “How did you know?”

Oh, flip!
I almost did another forehead smack but heard a grin in his voice. “Have you been in my room, Jess?” he teased.

“It was maybe a teeny-weeny little peek at the overnight,” I said, feeling my face flush. “I didn’t go in or anything, but your door was open, and—”

“It’s okay.” Ryan chuckled. “It’s kind of cool, actually. Now I can lie here on my bed and imagine you standing in my doorway.” I heard the mattress squeak and visualized him stretched out with his arms behind his head. “Oh, yeah. I can see me getting a lot of mileage out of that image.”

That was way too intimidating to think about.

“What does your room look like?” he asked. “I want to picture it.”

I leaned around the closet door and took in the apple-green walls, obnoxious flowered comforter from fifth grade, and ancient white wicker furniture. Even
I
didn’t want to picture it.

“It’s very girly.”
And babyish.
“It doesn’t really fit me anymore, but I haven’t gotten around to updating it. With all the moves, redoing my room was never a big priority.”

“Yeah, I can see that. My mom was big into decorating. She’d make our room a project with us every few years to make sure it reflected our personality. She was big on ‘the space makes the person’ and all that.”

I bet I would’ve liked her.
“What does your room say about you?”

I pictured him looking around his room, taking it in with fresh eyes, as I’d done with mine. “It’s calming. Just like she was. I can be sort of intense, so it works. I shut down when I get overwhelmed.”

“You’re hard to get to know.”

“Am I?”

I nodded as though he could see me. “I feel like I catch these glimpses of you, but most of what I come away with is surface.”

“Maybe it’s better that way.”

“Safer, maybe, but not better.”
Wasn’t it?

“You really get to the heart of it, don’t you?”

I cradled the phone on my shoulder and picked lint off my pink chenille robe. “I’m not big on games, I guess. Probably why I haven’t dated.”

“You haven’t dated?”

I could
not
believe I’d said that out loud! The exhaustion and easy conversation had lulled me into a false sense of security, wreaking havoc on my brain. “Well, plus, I move a lot, so it’s hard to get to know people.” Plaster that neon loser sign to my chest, thanks.

“Wow.” This news clearly blew him away. Nothing like clueing in a potential boyfriend that no one else wants you. At least I hadn’t mentioned that I’d pseudo-dated once. That debacle was the last thing Ryan needed to know about.
 

“Wow,” he said again. “That’s—”

Loserish.

“—pretty cool,” he finished. “We’re going through this together.”

In what universe?
“You’ve had a million girlfriends. And that’s just since I moved here.”

“That was harsh. I’m not a player, Jess.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. But you’re a lot more experienced than I am.”

“Not when there’s a connection like this. That’s a first for me. It’s like . . .”

I thought of that scene in
Sleepless in Seattle
that always made Mom cry. “Magic.”

“What?”

Had I said
that
out loud too?! “Huh? Nothing. Just a yawn.”
Must shut mouth!

“Magic,” he said, trying it on for size. “Yeah.”

My skin tingled all the way to my toes.

I heard Ryan yawn, which made me yawn for real this time. “I’m glad you were still awake,” he said. “I never get tired of talking to you.”

“Same here.” I could talk to Ryan for hours. “I’m glad you called.”

“Me too. I have to get up early for work, so I’d better get going,” he said, his reluctance obvious enough to make me smile through my disappointment. “But Jess?”

“Yeah?”

“I hope you dream about the lake.”

Chapter Fifteen

After a long night spent beating myself up for admitting I was the Dateless Wonder to the first guy to take an interest in me since Dan had shown up in our old backyard for a game of Frisbee, I was pretty much the walking wounded by the time Mom and I waddled into the yuppie-mom heaven known as Babies ‘R’ Everywhere. Things had been going so great until I’d spilled about my lack of dating savvy. Why couldn’t I be smooth with guys? Just one time?

To top it off, now I was stuck in my personal version of Hades. The land of babies and pregnant women with impossible to predict mood swings. Yes, I’d been the one to suggest the outing as a bribe for not making it home for dinner in the early days of my
CMM
work. But now . . . now I could see the error of my ways. I’d thought it would just appease her. Instead, she saw it as me taking an active interest in preparing for the babies.

The fatal flaw in my plan had been revealed.

First, we hit the ever-important rocking chairs. Two full rows of them lined up like an assembly line for moms-to-be, putting mine over the edge. A woman who was once famous for her brilliant snap decisions was reduced to an indecisive mess.

“I like the blue and the beige,” she said, running her hand over the twill cushions. “But should we get two of the same or one of each?”

This is my penance.
“Whatever you want,” I said, forcing a smile. I propped my feet up on a footrest and discovered it moved just like the glider. Cool, not that I’d point it out to Mom.

She walked halfway down the aisle in the other direction. “I like the natural wood finish, but I don’t know if it’s too light. They don’t make a rocking chair that coordinates with the other furniture I chose, so I’m not sure if I should coordinate or go with something that’s different.”

“They’re babies, Mom. Do you really think they’ll care?”

“Of course they won’t. But other people will see it when they come to see the babies.”

“Like who?”

As soon as it was out there, I regretted it. Nan had been trying to convince Mom to move back to Mt. Sterling for years, but Mom’s high school days were something she’d rather forget. Her friends had been kids like her, the ones totally rebelling against their free-spirited parents. Just like Mom, they scattered to the winds after graduation. Unlike Mom, they hadn’t returned twenty years later to raise a family in their hometown when—surprise, surprise!—they ended up pregnant with twins at age thirty-nine.

Talk about a major life shake-up. Mom and Nan might not always get along, but when you’re closing in on forty with two babies on the way, I guess you need all the help you can get.
 

So here we were, in the house Mom grew up in so Nan could downsize into something that required less upkeep. And here Mom was . . . pregnant, not working, and trying to put down roots for the first time in her adult life. She’d been trying so hard to make the house feel like home (a real and true
home
, which was a novelty for our transient ways) that she hadn’t gotten out to meet people. I could count on one hand the number of visitors other than Nan that we’d had since we’d moved here.

“I mean, how many people are going to go into the nursery?” I said, trying to cover. “Don’t you usually bring the babies down to show people?”

“Not if they’re sleeping.”

“If they’re sleeping, the lights will be low. Who’s going to notice if the rocking chairs coordinate?”

Logic was still the best way to get Mom back on track when hormones got in her way. She thought that over. “So you think one of each in the darker wood?”

“Sounds groovy.” Mostly, it sounded like a decision that put us one step closer to getting out of there.

We wandered over to the changing tables. She’d already chosen one, so that saved us time. But now she was considering the options for covering the changing pad. Knit fabric or terry cloth? Or maybe a cute yellow gingham? One gingham and one stripe?

All for something the babies would end up rubbing their bare butts all over.

I was counting the minutes until I could get back to the Club and figure out how in the heck to defeat Lexy and the Wickeds while saving Heather at the same time. But yeah, let’s debate the pros and cons of poly-cotton knit over cotton terry.

Mom seemed to sense my waning enthusiasm and shifted her attention to me. She brushed my hair out of my eyes. “I like how you’ve been keeping your hair down,” she said. “These lights really pick up the highlights in it. Where did you say you got it done?”

At a place you can’t get into without a gold coin you definitely don’t have.
 

I knew it wasn’t her fault she wasn’t a Cindy. But it didn’t make it okay. Innocent questions and no way to answer them without being vague were turning me into a very stressed girl.

“It’s this place where Sarah Jane goes. Do you have everything you need here?” I rolled the shopping cart out into the main aisle as a hint. “I think the lights are giving me a headache.”

She put her hand on my forehead. “Do you think you’re coming down with something? Maybe you shouldn’t go in to work today.”

“It’s just a headache. Fluorescent lights do that to me sometimes.”

Mom went back to the rocking chairs and pulled tags for the ones she wanted. I used the lights as an excuse to wait outside in the sunshine. My head did hurt, but the lights weren’t to blame.

I found a wooden bench in a courtyard and planted myself there to wait. They’d probably installed it for all the soon-to-be-dads who had to escape their pregnant, hormonally insane wives while they discussed the merits of the Diaper Monster versus the Diaper Annihilator.

Ten long minutes later, the stock guy was helping us load up the minivan with this week’s haul. I’d survived, and I even managed to finagle a lunch out of it at my favorite chain restaurant across the parking lot.

We walked over, much slower than normal because of Mom’s sore back, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement behind the bushes. I circled around to Mom’s other side and saw Leah Michaels crouched down behind the row of hedges lining the restaurant sidewalk. She was staring at Corrine Duncan, one of the nicest Reggies I knew, as Corrine got into the car of someone who was definitely not her boyfriend.

I told Mom I’d just seen a friend and would meet her inside the restaurant. She nodded, muttering to herself about swollen ankles and being on her feet all day. I waited until she rounded the front of the building before slipping around the other side.

I watched Corrine’s date open her car door and help her into his Camaro. He went around to his side, and as they drove away, I saw Corrine lean her head on his shoulder. Just as Leah held out her phone and snapped a picture.

With the car safely out of sight, Leah got up from hiding and dialed a number. She paced along the sidewalk in the rear of the restaurant as she talked quietly on her cell. She made a couple of nervous gestures with her hands, then settled a bit as she listened to whoever was on the other end. Visibly relieved, she said a few more words and disconnected.