Games of Fire (9 page)

“Aw, honey.” Jessie rubbed Sophie’s arm lightly. “That was so long ago. Grown boys aren’t like that!”

Lauren snorted, walking over to a rack of jean skirts short enough to be headbands. “Oh they still try to lift your skirt.” She glanced over and grinned. “Only they try to get under it now instead of laughing at your frilly
knickers.”

Still burning from the memory, Sophie glared at her friend.

“Don’t tease, Lauren!” Jessie chided, still gripping Sophie’s elbow. “I can understand how that would be upsetting, but you want to look nice for the party don’t you? We’ll get you a very pretty dress and I promise no one will dare do something so horrible.”

With Jessie’s sweet reassurance, Sophie reluctantly agreed to seriously search for a dress. Four hours and about a thousand dresses later, Sophie slid listlessly into Lauren’s mom’s beat up
Mini Cooper with two shopping bags. One held a dress both Jessie and Lauren agreed on, which was both modest and sexy, and the other a pair of matching shoes.

She loved shopping as much as the next girl, but
she was almost certain Lauren was a borderline shopaholic. That girl could sniff out a sale from the parking lot. If they’d been the same size, Sophie would have just borrowed one of the many, many dresses Lauren owned. But Lauren was six feet of willowy curves in all the right places … a supermodel with a supermodel face. Sophie was five-five with an athletic build, a heart-shaped face and some reasonably decent curves. Anything of Lauren’s Sophie tried on only made her look like a child playing dress up in her mother’s clothes. Jessie was the same height as Sophie, but slightly on the rounder side and a lot of her taste ran toward floral printed dresses and frilly tops. Sophie was the only one of the group who loved her jeans and vintage t-shirts.

“We’ll
rendezvous at your house tomorrow after school and get ready for the party together,” Lauren said from the driver’s side as she dropped Sophie off at home. “What are you going to tell your mom?”

Sophie glanced over at her friends. “What do you mean?”

Lauren shrugged. “Well, is she going to let you go to the party?”

Maybe because she’d never been invited to a party before
, but the thought of telling her mother hadn’t crossed her mind.

“I think she will
…” But even she wasn’t sure of that.

“Find out and text me
?” Lauren said.

“What about you guys?”

The two exchanged glances.

“I told my mom yesterday I was spending the night at Lauren’s,” Jessie murmured quietly, almost with a hint of guilt. “And Lauren told her mom she was staying over at my house.”

Sophie frowned. “Why didn’t you guys tell me? I could have—”

“No!” Lauren interrupted. “Your mom actually calls and confirms! You would have blown all our covers!”

“We’re sorry!” Jessie said hurriedly.

Sophie
threw open her door. “Don’t worry about it,” she grumbled, throwing herself out of the car. “I’ll think of something.”

With a wave, she slammed the car door and jogged up to the house.
Her mom had left the porch lights on even though the sky still held a soft blue hue fading into darkness. Sophie pushed open the door and stepped inside. She shut it behind her and turned.

“Mom! I’m
…” Her words dissolved into nothing as she stared at the two sitting in her living room watching her with a look of polite interest and mild surprise, like she’d startled them by entering her own home. For a second, she wondered if she’d walked into the wrong house and had to glance around. Everything looked familiar and in the right place, except her mother wasn’t there and these two were. “Uh, hi!” she said uncertainly.

Jackie
’s unpainted lips bowed around the teacup she held to them. “Hello, Sophia!” She set the cup down on its saucer with a delicate
clink
. “Your mom said you’d gone shopping. Did you have fun?” She eyed the bags in Sophie’s hand.

Sophie
glanced down at them as well, having forgotten them for a moment. “Yeah, I bought a … a … dress?” The oddity of it had her nose wrinkling and her response coming out as a question.

Jackie laughed.
“You’re not sure?”

On the sofa beside
Jackie, Spencer said nothing nor did he seem interested in doing so. He was intent on polishing off the platter of chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies.

“My friends
kind of made me,” Sophie said. “I don’t like dresses.”

“You bought a dress?”
Her mom entered the room, hair bouncing on her slim shoulders with every excited step. Her face was a mask of elation, doubt and mild surprise. It was a wonder how anyone could pull of so many expressions all at once.

Sophie held up the bags
as confirmation of her mild loss of insanity. “Lauren kind of twisted my arm about it.”

Her mother clapped her hands
like a little girl told she was about to get a present. “Let’s see!”

Sophie snapped the bag to her chest, gripping it tight. “I, uh, kind of would rather not!”

Her mother’s smile slipped into a pout. “Why not?”

“Because
you’re just going to get all excited and weird.”

“
Well of course I’m going to get excited!” Her mother turned to Jackie. “Sophie absolutely refuses to let me take her shopping and Lauren has impeccable taste when it comes to clothes!”

Jackie’s eyes brightened. “Oh then I must see!”

Sophie tightened her hold on the bag, all the while edging toward the stairway, not trusting the two watching her like she had the last pair of shoes at a mass shoe sale. “It’s not a big deal. It’s only a dress.”

“Well, what is it for
if you won’t at least show us?” her mother pressed.

Sophie stiffened. “What?”

“What is it for? You never buy a dress so it must be for something.”

It was impossible not to hesitate, not to shift and avoid her mother’s eyes. It reminded her of the time she’d been invited to
Jason Ward’s birthday party in sixth grade. Her mother had spent three hours on the phone with his mother, making sure the children would not be left unsupervised, especially since boys and girls were invited. To ask permission to attend a house party with no parental supervision, alcohol and boys would insure an immediate phone call to Roy’s parents and bars on Sophie’s windows. 

“Well,” Sophie began, talking to the patch of carpet at her feet. “There’s this thing happening tomorrow night and I was hoping to go.”
Way not to sound cryptic or guilty!

“What kind of thing?” There was an edge to her mother’s voice now.

Sophie fought not to fidget. “A date?” It wasn’t really a lie. She really did have a sort of date with Brian, but now she had everyone in the room’s attention, including Spencer, although he was still nibbling on a cookie, his gray eyes were fixed on her, waiting for her to continue.

Her mother’s eyes widened. “A date? With whom?”

The question threw her. She should have expected it, but at the same time, she hadn’t expected it at all. Her mother would never let her go out with a boy that wasn’t picking her up at the door, or a boy her mother had never met or even heard of. Brian had never been a topic of conversation in the Valdez household, not because Sophie hadn’t wanted to, but because the hassle just wasn’t worth it when she’d been so sure nothing would ever happen in that department. But her mother would ask too many questions, possibly even call to talk to him like Sophie was five and not seventeen. The last thing she wanted was Brian to realize how lame she was.

“Uh
…” Out of sheer desperation, her gaze flittered to Spencer. “With Spencer?”

He stiffened. His
eyes widened. The cookie he’d been in the process of eating hung half in and half out of his mouth. It would have been comical, except in two seconds flat, his expression hardened. He broke the cookie and chewed the half still in his mouth, all the while staring Sophie down like he wanted to vaporize her with his eyes.

Jackie
turned to her son. “You didn’t tell me you were taking Sophie to the party this weekend.”

It was a
toss up who was more surprised by this, Sophie or her mother. They both stared at the pair.

“Are you going to the same party?” Her mother caught herself much quicker. “Where is it? Will there be someone there to supervise? Will there be drinking?”

It’s not a Church gathering!
Sophie wanted to snap, but she was more focused on silently pleading with Spencer. She stared into his eyes, trying not to flinch at the fire leaping out at her.

It was risky taking such a huge gamble. The guy wasn’t her biggest fan
and possibly already had a date, probably with Maggie Chow, but she wasn’t asking him to go with her, just to cover for her so she could go, too. He didn’t even have to hang out with her or talk to her.

He got to his feet, seeming very tall in the suddenly
small room. He moved slowly until he was nearly on her toes. His words blew over her like glacial winds when he spoke, spitting each word out as if they were bitter. “Play your games with someone else.”

Humiliation
vaulted up her body in a flood of boiling water. It consumed her until she was certain she would burn from the inside out. Angry tears welled up in her eyes. She bit a hole into the inside of her cheek to keep them from falling. If he noticed, it was impossible to tell when he was storming past her as if being there made him want to kill someone. Her entire body jolted with the slamming of the door.

Jackie
was on her feet in a flash. “What on earth?” She turned towards Sophie’s mother. “I’m so sorry, Mary!”

Her mother shook her head. “
No! No, no, we can do dinner another time.”

The two women exchanged hugs. Jackie grabbed her purse and jacket off the armrest of the sofa and hurried towards the door. Sophie didn’t budge when a hand rested lightly on her shoulder and squeezed.

“I’ll talk to him,” Jackie said softly. “If you guys had plans I’ll make sure he keeps them.”

When Sophie didn’t respond, Jackie left, closing the door quietly behind her.

“Sophia—”

Sophie didn’t wait to hear what her mother had to say.
Self-loathing fueled her legs. She bolted for the stairs and barricaded herself inside her room. The bags in her hands sailed into the closet, knocking over hangers and falling to the closet floor in a spilled heap of material. She left them there as she locked herself in the bathroom for the hottest shower in human history.

It served her right, she concluded
twenty minutes later as she dried off and stepped into sweats and an oversized t-shirt. Had she really expected him to just go along with her stupid plan? What on earth had possessed her to even turn to him for help? Of course he would turn her down. She was the idiot for hoping he would do this one decent thing for her, when he’d been nothing but a jerk from the start. It wasn’t as if he’d ever given her the impression he was a good guy.

Okay maybe that held no truth. The guy had saved her life, even if she had to admit it grudgingly and there was a moment t
he morning he’d given back her umbrella where she’d seen something in him, a softness that made him appear to be a sweet, normal, gorgeous guy with a funny side, who didn’t hate her. It had been so fleeting she wondered if it actually happened. A trick of the light, she decided bitterly. She was clearly losing her ability to read people.

Pushing away thoughts of Spencer Rowth, she dug out her phone and texted Lauren, telling her there was a possibility she would be unable to go to the party.

Lauren must have been waiting for her, because the response was almost instant.
“Plan B!”

Sophie tried to recall what plan A had been, but decided not to ask.
“I’m game.”

Again, fast-typer Lauren replied within seconds
.
“Talk 2morw @ lch.”

They said goodnight and Sophie climbed into bed.

That night, Sophie had a dream about walking into school naked. Everyone laughed and pointed. The teachers yelled at her for not being prepared, while she insisted she’d been dressed. Spencer was in the background, not joining in her humiliation, but doing nothing to stop it either. She called to him, asking him to give her his jacket, but he ignored her. She woke up with a jolt, clammy with cold sweat and breathing hard.

In a single jerky motion, she swiped back the blankets and tumbled out of bed. Her joints ached as she shuffled to the bathroom for a shower.

The dream, minus the nudity, followed her into reality when she got to school and walked into her first class late. Then she dozed in her second class and was caught snoring by the teacher. By her third class, she was ready to just go home sick and throw herself at the mercy of her mother. It was only because lunch was right after that she even bothered to stick it out. But then she got to Algebra II and remembered too late she’d forgotten her textbook in her locker and they had an open book quiz.