Hot Mess (25 page)

“Put them on,” Jayla demanded. “Since this is your last weekend in New York, I thought we’d do everything this town has to offer. You know, tourist-style. Like see a Broadway show and eat at one of those stack-’em-high delis and go to Chinatown and do whatever Asian stuff you’re supposed to do down there.”

“And see the Sears Tower?”

That made me smile, ending my afternoon-long sourpuss. I might be bad at boys but I had really lucked out in the friendship department. “That’s still in Chicago, Rach.”

“Whatever. Let’s go do something fun now. It’ll cheer you up.”

I kind of wanted to stay in, wade in the aforementioned puddle of self-loathing, and try to will a text from Colin into my phone.

“Em, you are so not staying in tonight.” It was like Rachel could read my mind.

“Uh, no way. Plus,
Law & Order
is a rerun. I checked. And we don’t have any ice cream left. There’s absolutely no reason for you to stay in,” Jayla said, hands on hips. “So, get yourself into the T-shirt I so lovingly crafted for you and get ready to have fun.”

I went into my room and pealed off my business-casual clothes. I threw my outfit on the floor and slipped on my homemade belly shirt and some jeans. Just as I was starting to feel less awful, I saw the
Little Miss Sunshine
DVD that Colin left the very first time he came over. Just days earlier that boy was in my room and everything was right with the world. My knees gave out and I sank to the floor, wailing into the sheepskin throw rug.

At the sound of my body thunking onto the floor, Jayla appeared in my doorway. “Oh, honey, no!” she said, rushing in and scooping me up, propping me against my full-length mirror. “Now think about this. Say things had worked out fine, he was cool with it, blah blah blah. Do you have any idea how miserable your senior year would be? He couldn’t come to homecoming, prom, Sadie Hawkins, anything. And worse, you’d sit home every party, every weekend trip, just to call him and then obsess about whether or not he was cheating on you.”

“No I w-w-w-ouldn’t!”

“Yes you would! Remember my friend Chloe? I’ve known her since boarding school and our senior year she was dating this guy Jason who played for the Rangers. Her
entire life
revolved around talking to him or trying to fly out to see his games. Like, yeah, it was kind of cool, but looking back, she says she regrets that more than getting a perm in sixth grade. A
perm,
Emma!”

I laughed against my will and tried to picture the sophisto Chloe with poodle hair.

Jayla hugged me reassuringly and looked into my eyes. “Now, are you ready to have some fun now? Not a lot, just a little?”

I sighed with resignation. It didn’t look like I was getting out of this easily. “All right, lady. Let’s do it.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with me talking about this?” Jayla asked over a trough of Serendipity’s frozen hot chocolate.

I shrugged back at her, not able to speak, my mouth so full of chocolate.

“I just don’t want you to act all grossed out and leave like you did last time.”

I swallowed. “Omigod, Jayla. He’s my cousin! I knew him back when he wore holiday-colored rubber bands on his braces. It’s just that I kind of don’t want to hear sexy stuff about him.”

“I do though!” Rachel butted in. “Spill it, spill it, spill it.” She banged her spoon on the table and Jayla looked at me for clearance.

“Fine, I’ll suppress all gag reflexes.” I dug back into the goblet of chocolate we were sharing.

“All right, well, three words for you: lots of tongue!”

“Yeah?” Rachel egged her on. I had no idea how I managed to keep down the few bites of dessert.

“Like, I know it sounds gross. But it really makes him, like, the best person I’ve ever kissed.”

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I said as I scootched my chair out.

“What, Em? I thought you said you were cool with this,” Jayla said, hand poised so she could demo Jake’s kissing abilities on it.

I never really said I was cool with this at all. But that’s not why I was leaving the table. “Um, hello! I’m going to barf up my dessert because I want to be skinny, not because of Jay and Jake,” I teased. But the sad truth was that I couldn’t stop thinking about Colin. Gooey chocolate desserts are normally the Neosporin to my emotional wounds, but the Colin debacle was so traumatic that even dessert couldn’t help me. What I needed was closure, a chance to offer an explanation or at least a real apology.

As soon as I was out of sight, I fished my cell out from the gum wrapper depths of my purse. I waited through the five rings I knew were being screened and then his voice mail message. He sounded normal, warm, I could tell he was smiling just from listening; so different from the shrill shock of this afternoon and the deep anger in the lobby.

I took a breath at the sound of the voice-mail beep and then launched into my final plea. “Hi, it’s me. Listen, I know I don’t deserve to ask you for anything. But I’m leaving New York Monday morning and I really can’t bear to end with you like this. Can’t we just talk once before I go? Call or text if you feel like it, okay?”

I flipped my phone shut. There, at least I felt a little better making an attempt to end this like the adult I’d been pretending to be all summer. That was pretty much all I could do for now. I guess it was up to Colin now to decide how we were really going to leave things. I tried to forget about this drama and plastered on a happy face to head back to our table.

“Seriously, it’s like so long,” Jayla was saying to Rachel.

I rolled my eyes. “Please tell me you are not talking about anything having to do with Jake. Pretty please.”

“No, Em. That’s sick.” Rachel was shaking her head. “Jay was just telling me about that line in Times Square where we can buy tickets for a Broadway show. I definitely want to go to one tomorrow.”

“And as I was saying, the line is, like, ridiculously long. And by the time you get to the front, the only thing that’s left is, like,
Tarzan the Musical
.”

“That’s cool, I’d see that,” Rachel said, unaware that Jayla meant the show was awful.

True, at that point I may not have been at my best. But mark my words, Emma Freeman will never know the kind of low it would take for me to willingly see
Tarzan the Musical
.

“Um, why don’t we try to get student tickets to
Wicked
or
Avenue Q
or something else that’s a lot less Phil Collins,” I offered.

Jayla nodded eagerly.

“Okay, whatever.” Rachel shrugged. “But that’s tomorrow. What about the rest of tonight? We’re done with this.” She pointed to our spoon-scraped bowl.

“Okay, so I was thinking we could either go up to the top of the Empire State Building or go home and watch all of my
Sex and the City
DVDs and rest up for a day at Coney Island tomorrow.” Coney Island? I remembered one time when she said that East Brooklyn was where store-brand douchebags go to die and she would rather spend three months in Guantanamo Bay than spend a day lying on a beach full of Guido trash. But the new, loved-up Jayla was in total tour-guide mode.

“I’ll sleep when I’m in the suburbs. Let’s do both!” Rachel cheered.

Twenty-three

T
he next morning, I woke up to the sound of Rachel’s voice.

“Wakey, wakey! Rise and shine! Get out of bed, it’s breakfast time! Are you up, Emma Freeman?” she boomed, and then bounded out of my room.

“Oh my God!” I yelled with sleepy contempt. “I am not one of your little campers, Wolfe. I’m the same size as you and I will beat you like I own you if you ever wake me up like that again.”

I normally wasn’t a morning person, but I was especially hurting today. I felt like I had an emotional hangover from all of yesterday’s drama.

“Get up! We got you a New York breakfast,” Jayla hollered from somewhere outside my room.

How could both of them be awake? I don’t think that I’d seen either of them up before noon on a Saturday this entire summer. I shuffled out of my room, barely able to open my eyes. Jayla and Rachel were hustling about, already in beach gear and hot to go.

“How long have you little morning spazzes been up?”

“Like, since seven,” Rachel said. We’d gone to bed at four a.m. the night before after watching two entire seasons of
Sex and the City
. How those two were up and bouncing around, I had no idea.

“Yeah. Sit, eat, then get ready, ’kay?” Jayla pointed to one of those huge deli cuts of New York cheesecake sitting on the kitchen counter. Half of the cake and almost all of the fruit topping had already been forked away.

“Thanks, ladies. But there’s no way I’m going to eat that and then put on a bikini. I already have this”—I slapped my newly acquired four pounds of office butt—“from sitting down all day, every day this summer. I’m just going to get ready.”

I shimmied into my swimsuit and packed a beach bag with a towel, sunscreen, and enough back issues of
Us Weekly
and
People
to keep me busy for a month.

The energy radiating off of those two must have been contagious, because suddenly I was pumped. I jumped from my bedroom doorway into the living room. “Ta-da! World’s fastest getter readier is ready!”

With bikini bow ties sticking out the back of our tanks, we headed out of the apartment and into the subway station.

“Ms. Jayla St. Clare, I thought that you’d sworn off public transportation and all its germ-ridden horror,” I said as I squeezed myself between Rachel and a sweaty man in a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off.

“Whatever. We’re doing a New York tourist weekend and real tourists don’t call their daddy’s car service to chauffer them around. But”—she put her hands up—“I’m still definitely not going to touch anything.” She lurched back as the train started moving, almost falling into a baby stroller.

A forty-five-minute ride through Brooklyn later, we stepped out into the blazing heat of Coney Island. The place was so packed, it felt like a mosh pit, only with fanny packs.

“Yowzah,” Rachel said, looking at the mass of people milling around. “Looks like the rest of Manhattan had the same idea we did.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “And all of Jersey, too.”

I was expecting Coney Island to be like a mini Disney World, but it was more like Disney World’s long-estranged, heroin-addicted second cousin. The ground was covered in a potpourri of cigarette butts and fast-food wrappers. The rides looked so rickety and not up to safety code that I assumed everyone on them had a suicide wish. And it seemed like there was a strict dress code for the beach involving at least seventy-five pounds of pure blubber, a highly defined T-shirt tan, and some variation of a mullet.

We finally managed to push our way through Nathan’s-hot-dog-eating crowds. From the boardwalk, we scanned the towel-strewn beach for an open piece of sand and found nothing. Even with Rachel’s nine a.m. wake-up call, we hadn’t made it there early enough. Apparently, freakazoids were all morning people. We decided to walk around and see if there was anything else aside from overcrowded beaches and hairy men in tank tops that Coney Island had to offer.

In the mid-August heat, we strolled along a street lined with water game booths and meat-on-a-stick vendors. Rachel’s eyes widened at something she saw in the distance.

“Airbrushing! Let’s all get matching T-shirts that say something sassy!”

Jayla and I shot her uncertain looks.

“Oh my God, you guys. Yesterday we wore I Heart NY shirts. There’s nothing we could possibly put on these shirts that would be any lamer than that. Plus, what do we care what these people think of us?” She motioned to the swarms of sweaty people. “Most of them are probably too learning disabled to even read what we write anyway.”

I looked around. She was right. “Okay, so what are we getting on the shirts?” I kind of wanted to suggest something like “Never leaving Manhattan again!” but thought that might get us knifed.

“Something really fun and New York. Like…New York Gals?” Rach suggested.

“It needs to be way more glamorous than that. Plus, only grandpas say ‘gals,’” Jayla responded, rolling up her tank to try and get some color on her stomach.

“‘Sex and the Summer’? ‘30B Ladies’? ‘New York 4-Eva’?” I listed off totally jacked ideas.

“I said glamorous, Em. We need something hot…” Jayla trailed off in thought.

I looked down at myself, sweat seeping through my tank top and feet muddied from a combo of perspiration and the short walk on the dusty street. I could even feel my cover-up and mascara melting off my face. “Ugh, well, right now I feel like a hot mess.”

“That’s it! ‘Hot mess’!” Rach squealed, clapping her hands. “That’s so what this summer was. So many boys. So much drama. So much fun. A total hot mess.”

Rachel sounded just like the final scene of a chick flick, but she was so right. No two words could sum up this summer better than “hot mess.”

“Done!” Jayla said, slapping her twenty bucks down on the counter.

As I hunted for my wallet in the black hole that was my bag, I felt my cell vibrating. Abandoning the wallet search, I found the phone and my heart jumped into my throat. I mouthed “It’s Colin” to the girls and moved away from the airbrush booth crowd.

“Hello?” I asked, attempting to sound like I didn’t know who was calling.

“It’s me.” His voice was so serious.

“Oh, hi there. Ummm…” I let it drift into an awkward pause that neither of us was quick to fill.

“You said you wanted to talk, Emma. So talk.” His voice was still just as angry as it had been in the lobby the day before. And I was frozen. There was so much that I needed to say to him, but I couldn’t squeeze anything out.

“I’d rather talk in person. What if you come over tomorrow and we can really talk?” My voice was squeaky with how nervous I’d suddenly become.

“I don’t want to come over to your place ever again.” I was taken aback by his harshness.

“Okay, then let’s meet out, somewhere between our places,” I offered.

“Fine, there’s that place on Spring and Lafayette. Let’s meet there tomorrow at eleven.”

“Okay, that sounds good. We can get coffee or something and talk.”

I was worried about how to end the conversation.
“Talk to you later”
?
“Have a good day”
?
“No, you hang up first, silly”
? Nothing felt right. Apparently, Colin wasn’t having the same struggle. “Bye, Emma.” Click.

I found Jayla and Rachel back at the paint booth, Rachel already wearing her new hot-pink graffiti T-shirt and holding Jayla’s tank top down while she slid hers over her head.

“How’d it go?” Rachel tossed me my shirt.

I bit my lip and put on my tee.

“That bad?”

“Yep,” I said as my head popped out the neck hole. If I let myself think any more about how cold Colin had been, I probably would be shivering even in this boiling weather.

“Are you going to see him before you leave or anything?” Rachel asked, her eyes filled with worry.

“Yeah, tomorrow.” I looked down at the ground, trying not to cry. “You know, I’d rather not talk about it now. Let’s just focus on having some fun in this freakfest.”

Jayla looked around and gave a dramatic sigh. “I think these T-shirts are all the fun we can squeeze out of this place. Let’s get someone to take a pic and then get out of here and back to the motherland of Manhattan.”

She tapped a somewhat normal-looking girl on the shoulder and gave her a minitutorial on how to point and shoot with her iPhone. The three of us wrapped our arms around each other and posed as the stranger clicked a shot. We wriggled out of each other’s hold.

“I think I dripped a whole pint of sweat on you guys, sorry,” Rachel apologized. I wiped off her sweat, telling her it was no biggie, and I felt my purse vibrate again. Thank God—Colin was calling back to apologize for being such a dickface. I opened the phone sans caller ID check.

“Baby, I’m so glad you—”

“EMMA MARIE FREEMAN!” my dad’s voiced roared. “I just opened my credit card bill. Eleven hundred dollars?! This card was for emergencies only!”

“Daddy, I—”

“And just what in the hell is ‘Anthropologie’? You spent three hundred dollars there alone!”

“Uh, it’s kind of like the Learning Tree,” I stammered. I’d totally forgotten about my spending sprees on my dad’s dime and I’d kind of hoped the credit card company would, too. “You know, like for people who are interested in learning about New York culture.”

I held my breath and prayed he’d buy that ridiculous lie. I thought I’d gotten away with it until I heard my mom in the background.

“Isn’t Anthropologie where I bought you those hundred-and-fifty-dollar jeans for your birthday last year? I don’t think you ever did wear them.”

“So you used the emergency credit card on clothes?” my dad fumed. “Are you serious? We send you to New York this summer, pay your rent, give you a more than generous allowance, trust you to be out there on your own, and this is how you behave? Young lady, I expect to be paid back. And if that means you getting a job and working through Labor Day and having to miss our family trip to the Renaissance Festival, fine. No one’s going to feel sorry for you.”

A summer away from parents and you forgot what total Nazis they could sometimes be. Obviously I didn’t care about missing the Renaissance Festival, but God, at least give me a chance to explain before launching into punishment central.

“Dad, I’m so sorry! I needed clothes for work and I’ve been really good with my budget here. I take the subway all the time.” Saying it aloud made me realize how lame my summer financial strategy had been.

“Would you say you’ve saved over a thousand dollars on public transportation? I’d guess not. And what is all of that hullabaloo in the background?”

“We’re at Coney Island.”

“Oh, I see, a weekend vacation? Is this also going to pop up on my Visa bill?”

“No! Dad, Coney Island is in Brooklyn and it’s totally ghetto. It’s not a weekend trip.”

“Emma, you have lost the privilege of calling people ‘ghetto,’ since you’re currently in debt to your family.”

And then he hung up on me. Is anything worse than your own father hanging up on you? Yes, knowing that he’s probably going to charge you for the cell phone minutes you used while he yelled at you.

I put my phone away and buried my face in my hands. Things had gone from crappy to ultracrappy in under twenty-four hours.

“What’s wrong?” Jayla asked, pulling the bottom of her “Hot Mess” shirt out so she could look at the airbrushed unicorn that she’d paid an extra five dollars for.

“Everything!” I moaned. “My dad’s mad at me, Colin hates me, and I’m so sweaty that this stupid spray paint is staining my bathing suit.”

“Yeah,” Rachel mumbled. “We should’ve just gotten key chains.”

“Look, I need to get out of here or I’m going to freak the heck out, okay? Can we just go home or something?”

“Fine by me,” Rachel sighed, twirling her finger and scowling at the Guidos. “Let’s get some hot dogs for the train ride home. Who knows how long it will take to get back to civilization?”

“Forty-five minutes on the subway or four minutes of whining to my dad until he agrees to send a car to pick us up,” Jayla said, and winked at us as she pulled out her phone.

A few minutes and a lot of sweet-talking later, we were on our way back to Manhattan in leather-seated, air-conditioned luxury.