It's a Mall World After All (4 page)

I told everyone about T.J.'s jeans, and how Reese had tried to steal shoes for his mother, but she'd returned them so he could have shoes instead. There had to be so many kids at St. Matthew's Elementary like T.J. and Reese. Kids we could help have a good Christmas. I finished my appeal holding my hands out. "What do you think?"

Colton studied me with unblinking eyes. "You want us to give up our dance to buy presents for a juvenile delinquent?"

"He's not a delinquent. He's a little boy," I said.

"You said he almost stole some shoes. He tried to break the law."

I let out a sigh. "Well, yeah, but that isn't the point. The point is he did it for his mother."

Colton rolled his eyes. "Fine. He's a terrific kid, and one day he can grow up to steal a Mercedes Benz for her."

The rest of the group laughed. Colton shot them a smile to let them know they were together in this, and I was obviously out of my mind.

"This wouldn't just be for Reese," I said. "It would be for all the needy kids at St. Matthew's. You know, a service project."

Colton leaned toward me across the table. "Yes, we know what service projects are," he said, "because you keep making us do them. This year alone we've bought books for the library, done a canned food drive, and volunteered at a soup kitchen, where—I might add—some homeless women tried to hit on me."

"She was a harmless old lady," I said.

"She told me I was the reincarnation of her dead husband, kept calling me Phil, and tried to follow me home."

I held up one hand. "So she liked you. Most people would take that as a compliment."

"Not if most people had a crazy woman running after their car screaming, Thil, baby, I'm still here for you!'"

Harris, the NHS treasurer, tapped his pencil against his notebook while he looked at me. "And then there was the stint at the Esperanzo Centro de Los Ninos you made us do."

Colton nodded in agreement. "How could I forget about Los Ninos?"

I leaned back in my seat with a thud. "What was wrong with that? We gave out treats and taught little kids some games."

"All of whom spoke nothing but Spanish," Harris said.

"So?" I asked.

"Charlotte, you're the only one of us who speaks Spanish."

"That's not true." I turned to Colton. "You've taken Spanish class for four years."

"Yeah, and apparently they've taught me a completely different language because I couldn't understand a single thing anyone said that day." He let out a sigh and shook his head as though reliving the memory. "I kept telling those kids to quit jumping on me, but none of them knew what I was talking about."

"They knew," I said. "They just didn't want to listen to you."

Colton put his hands on the table. "Yes, well, that's just one more reason why I'd rather have a winter dance than do a service project, but let's put it to a vote to make sure."

Before everyone could completely vote down my idea, I tried to come up with a compromise. "Okay, let's still have the dance. We can do that. But do we have to spend so much money on it? I mean, couldn't we cut back on some of the things and still do a service project for the kids at St. Matthew's?" Harris lifted up a list detailing our budget for the dance. "What did you want to cut?" I held my hand out to him, and he grudgingly forked over the budget. I scanned it for areas to chop. "The decorations. We don't need to buy those. The theme is Walking in a Winter Wonderland, and we all have extra stuff sitting around at home. Between us we probably have enough Christmas trees to create a small forest. And the deejay—do we really need to pay a guy to pick out songs for us? We can do that ourselves."

"We don't have the sound system," Harris said.

"I bet we could find someone at school who does." I turned to Colton. "Don't tell me that a guy who drives a convertible doesn't have a good stereo."

"Yeah," Colton said. "And I'd be thrilled to haul it to the auditorium so half the school can mess with it."

"No one will mess with it. I'll personally guard it, okay?" I sent a pleading look to where most of the girls sat, especially Kelly. We sat at the same table at lunch and therefore she had to support me. "Don't you remember how excited you got about Christmas when you were little? Don't you want to give that to someone else who might never have the chance to experience it?"

"It is the season for giving," Kelly said.

"Giving to others," I added. "Not squandering on a deejay."

Colton glanced over at the guys at the table, silently prodding them into action. Ben, a guy so tall he'd be great at basketball if he could only master that dribbling thing, shook his head. "We can't let the rest of the school down by putting on a crappy dance."

Wesley shrugged. He was the silent type who hardly ever said anything, but when he did, Kelly hung on his every word. She has, as we say at the lunch table, been Weslified. "Don't they have the Paper Angels program to take care of the poor kids?" he asked.

The guys nodded in agreement. "We vote for the dance," a couple of them said in unison.

I turned to the girls at the table in a plea for support.

Kelly shrugged. Most of the girls just looked at the table. Preeth, who sat on my other side, grunted and said, "I never go to the dances. I don't care what we do."

Preeth is one of those girls with an attitude.

Colton smiled benevolently at me. "So it looks like we spend our money on the dance."

I didn't reply. I also didn't say anything while Colton organized committees. Colton put Preeth and me in charge of refreshments, and then added, "Make sure you okay the menu with me before you buy anything so I can approve it."

Like maybe I'd be tempted to hand out popcorn and water to save money.

Which, now that I thought about it, wasn't such a bad idea. Popcorn was a holiday food. I mean, why else did people string it and put it on Christmas trees? And who liked drinking punch anyway? Punch is liquid sugar with food coloring. Water is refreshing, healthy, and free. Well, free if we got it from the cafeteria sink.

I smiled at Colton. "Sure. We'll let you know." In large letters in my notebook I wrote, "Popcorn & Tap Water."

Colton glared at me, but he didn't bring up refreshments again.

The meeting went on, but instead of listening, I thought of T.J. and Reese. I'd told them I knew Santa. I'd told them to come to the mall on Christmas Eve day. Would they tell their friends about this? I knew the answer to this question without even considering it. How many kids were going to show up at the mall, and how in the world was I going to find a way not to disappoint them?

We went to the mall look for a Christmas present for Brianna's older sister, Amanda—only Amanda had recently decided everyone should call her Trinity. Not because she was Catholic, but as a protest that had to do with an atomic bomb site somewhere. I didn't really understand her reasoning and didn't want to ask, because Amanda/Trinity could go on about those sorts of things way past the time you stopped caring.

Despite her request for a name change, half the time Brianna called her sister Amenity, which means "pleasantness" and which really ticked off Amanda/ Trinity. I suggested calling her Enmity, which means "animosity" and actually fits Amanda's personality better, but in the end we both just called her Amanda behind her back and "Hey, you" when she was listening.

Brianna and I walked through the mall looking for gift inspiration, but we mostly just saw the latest fashions, which Amanda wouldn't wear anyway. She bought all her clothes at Goodwill as a protest against overseas sweatshops. Brianna and I went with her to a thrift store once and were both happily surprised to find designer jeans there. I mean, I just figured that anybody who paid that much for jeans would be buried in them; but apparently no, some people give them to Goodwill. Brianna and I both bought a pair, and then Amanda lectured us all the way home that we had missed the whole point of shopping at a thrift store and that designer jeans were a blatant sign of materialism.

So probably Amanda wouldn't want anything from the Gap, but we went in anyway because they had a killer sale going.

"You could just tell her you got it at Goodwill," I said while I took a shirt off a rack. "Probably all the people in sweatshops around the world wouldn't hold it against you."

Brianna tilted her head one way and then the other, looking at the shirt. "I don't know. I really don't. What do you get someone who hates capitalism?"

"A plane ticket to the third world?"

"Don't tempt me. I'd rather have her somewhere in South America than at home for Christmas."

I didn't answer, because I wasn't sure whether she was joking or not. Sometimes Brianna and Amanda fought long and hard over the silliest things. Brianna hadn't seemed sad at all when Amanda went off to college, which always bothered me. When I go to college next year, I expect my younger sisters to mourn for days before they start fighting over who gets to move into my room.

We left the Gap and wandered into a T-shirt shop. I flipped through a rack of shirts. "Maybe we can find one with an anticapitalism logo." "Yeah, I'm sure they sell lots of those." She sorted through decals on a table, then held up some iron-on letters. "Hey look, if I buy these and a plain T-shirt, Amanda will be able to make her own statement. She can write something like, Nukes make me puke."

"Or, I shop at Goodwill."

"Oh, she doesn't need a sign to tell people that. They know just by looking at her." We both laughed then, even though we shouldn't have, since Brianna was wearing her thrift store designer jeans at the time.

"You'd better buy her more than one set of letters," I said. "You know how Amanda likes to talk. She'll never be able to stop at one sentence."

Brianna picked up a stack of the letter decals, a red T-shirt, and then two more red T-shirts. "You know, I could make matching shirts for Bryant and me to wear to the winter dance."

I stiffened at his name, but tried not to show it. "What kind of shirts?"

"Like they could say, Two Turtle Doves."

Which just goes to show you that Brianna can be delusional at times because even I knew there was no way you would ever get Bryant, Mr. Superjock, to wear a shirt that read, Two Turtle Doves. "Cute," I said. "Or his could say, Naughty, and mine could say, Nice."

Which at least would be truth in advertising.

"You might want to ask him about it before you buy anything," I said.

She put the shirts under her arm and turned toward the cash register anyway. She shrugged as she walked. "If he doesn't like either of those two sayings, I can come up with something else."

I followed her up to the register and didn't make any other comments. Suddenly I felt like I couldn't say anything about Bryant that she didn't want to hear.

Chapter three of my mall dissertation: "Relationships with guys are a lot like shopping." Your purchase might look good at first, but this is often because when you step into a mall, you start to delude yourself. You want to believe those pants make your stomach look flatter, but no. You still look like you're smuggling a punch bowl out of the store. Reality hits sometime after you've lost the receipt.

Likewise, the typical teenage girl doesn't buy a guy what he wants. She buys him what she wants him to have. For some whacked-out reason she thinks these two things are the same.

When Brianna and I left the store, we ran into another group of girls from school. They weren't my friends, but they were Brianna's—because she is way more social than I am—so we all went around together. We looked at jewelry and shoes, and assessed the winter fashions. Pure, thoughtless mall shopping. Female bonding time. Only, I guess I don't know how to do it right, because I kept wondering if any of the girls would have spoken to me if Brianna hadn't been around.

Probably not, because they didn't talk all that much to me while Brianna was there.

Yeah, come to think of it, I learn a lot of stuff at the mall, but it's not necessarily good stuff. I may become one of those depressed college students when I write my dissertation.

Finally, after we'd tried on way more clothes than there were days left in the season to wear them, we bought what we needed. I went home with a cashmere sweater to wear to Candy's party. It not only felt soft against my skin, it felt full of potential, like it knew what I had to do on Saturday and wanted to make me look good while I did it. Even though I'd have to work for two days just to pay for it, I couldn't return it to the rack. After all, you have to buy a piece of clothing that understands you.

And no, this purchase, or any thoughts about using clothes as courage will not make their way into my dissertation.

four

A
t school, Bryant sent me the occasional scowl and suddenly wanted to talk to Brianna privately whenever I was around. She'd giggle and go off with him. She couldn't even see he was just trying to drive a wedge between us.

It was enough to make me wish the Two Turtle Doves shirt on him. In fact, I started helping her come up with more cute Christmas sayings.

Brianna asked me if I wanted to do something together on Saturday night, but I told her I was helping my mother put up crown molding in a client's house. I couldn't tell her I was going to Candy's party without her realizing I was trying to catch Bryant in a lie. I was not about to put myself in that situation again until I had cold, hard proof.

It's difficult for me to keep things from Brianna, partially because I'm used to telling her everything, and partially because I'm lousy at keeping secrets. My mind just doesn't function in secret mode.

At Brianna's house after school on Friday, I helped her with her Spanish homework and nearly spilled the beans half a dozen times.

ME: Right. Hey, do you know what a pashmina is?

BRIANNA,
snapping her fingers like this will rally her
brain cells into production:
Is it a tense of
pasmarl?

ME: No, it's not a Spanish word; it's a piece of clothing rich people wear.

BRIANNA: Then why do I have to know it for the vocab test?

ME: You don't. I just uh . . . never mind.

When I arrived, a valet insisted on parking my minivan—which I hadn't expected, and which did nothing to make his day, I'm sure. After all those Mercedes and Cadillacs he probably went into shock sitting in my minivan surrounded by Taco Bell wrappers and lipstick tubes.

I walked into the club. It was so ostentatious, it seemed to be a caricature of wealth. You know, the polished wood floor, gilded paintings of horses, and chandeliers so big that in a pinch they could be used as wrecking balls. A man in a suit—I'm not exactly sure what his official function was—directed me to the Condor Ballroom, where a hundred or so of Candy's close friends hung out.

In one corner of the room, a large Christmas tree stood decked out in as many lights as the Milky Way. On another wall an enormous bay window looked out over a golf course. I could see the dark shapes of couples walking across well-lit walkways. Everyone else stood around tables where fruits, veggies, and other unrecognizable stuff lay on large silver platters.

I didn't see Colton, Bryant, or, for that matter, Candy anywhere, so I wandered over to the tables. After picking up a few stuffed mushrooms and an artichoke heart that looked like a flower, I circulated around the room.

No one paid any attention to me, which was simultaneously nice and depressing. I hadn't come to make new friends or pick up guys or anything; but still, after a few minutes I began to feel like I had leprosy, or at least a serious lack of pashminas.

Brianna says my good looks intimidate others and so sometimes people are afraid to approach me, but I don't buy it. If this were true, movie stars would be the loneliest people on earth. People would shun them in droves. Plus, if Brianna's theory were right, unattractive girls would be the least friendly in high school because they'd be afraid to approach anyone. But it's the opposite. Plain girls are the most likely to say hi to you in the hallway. Just try to get the time of a day from the last homecoming queen.

I think it's more likely that people are friendly in direct proportion to how little money they have. This is why a panhandler is more than willing to relate his whole life story to you while simultaneously telling you that you look like Nicole Kidman. And rich people, well let's just say, right then I'd entered one of the un-friendliest places in California.

I picked up a cracker with some sort of bland chunky stuff on the top and tried to look natural while I waited for Bryant and Shelby to appear somewhere. The cell phone lay in my jeans pocket, and I kept fingering it to make sure it was still there. Everyone seemed to be in pockets of groups. The only single people in the room were me and the three waiters who kept swooping over to the tables to replace trays of food or take away used plates. They all wore black tuxedos, which struck me as ironic. I mean how often is your nicest outfit the one you wait tables in?

I peered out the window, trying to see if I could recognize any of the people strolling around outside. They moved about, too far away to see clearly. I dragged my gaze back inside and finally spotted Candy in a circle of girls. Greg was nowhere in sight. Candy looked too busy to approach, so I stayed by the refreshment table deciding what to eat next. The artichoke thingy had been a disappointment—too salty—and I've never been crazy about mushrooms. I mean, they have the same texture as used gum.

On either side of a punch fountain stood miniature pine trees covered with cherry tomatoes. They looked like ornaments on little Christmas trees. I popped one into my mouth while I considered the punch fountain.

Pink liquid ran over lighted crystal shelves until it fell, churning, into a frothy bowl. Very pretty, although I doubted it did anything to improve the flavor of the punch. I picked up one of the already filled glasses on the table and tried a sip. Nope. Still tasted just like punch. See, rich people spend far too much effort on frivolous details. Putting punch in fountains. Putting tomatoes on pine trees.

I ate another tomato, enjoying how good it tasted. Whoever discovered tomatoes knew what they were doing, but that mushroom thing should have been a passing fad.

I took another cherry tomato. Then another. After about my fourth, Candy and friends came up to refill their plates. She saw me and gave me a quick Hollywood hug—you know, the type you imagine movie stars give each other before they say, "Dahling, we must do lunch sometime."

"Char, so good to see you." Candy glanced at the tomato on my plate with a forced smile, then turned back to her friends. "This is Charlotte, one of Greg's old friends. From Hamilton."

Three girls smiled in my direction, but they looked more incredulous than friendly. One of them giggled. Without ever letting her smile falter, a second girl elbowed the first to be quiet.

Candy turned back to me. "Greg is coming later. His flight from Honolulu was delayed." She gave an airy laugh. "You know how that is."

I didn't, but I nodded anyway. "Make sure he finds me to say hi."

Candy leaned closer to me. "Have you talked to Colton yet? He's looking especially good tonight."

"Colton? No." I peered around the room trying to find him. "Where is he?"

Candy gazed around casually. "He was here earlier. I think he went out to the golf course with his friends—oh, there he is." She nodded in the direction of the door. "He's coming in now."

Colton walked into the room and it struck me—even though I saw him every day—how pleasantly tall he is. I appreciate tallness in a guy, since I'm only a few inches shy of six feet. I also appreciated his broad shoulders just on principle. Anyway, Colton looked nicer than usual, like he was both dressed up and casual at the same time. Like he fit in here with these people, which I suppose he did.

All three of Candy's friends and I simultaneously turned toward the door to look at him. It was the equivalent of waving a flag to get his attention. He glanced over, smiled at Candy, and then stopped when he saw me. The smile dropped from his face. He said something that I couldn't hear, but judging from his lip motions, he either swore or commanded an invisible dog to sit. I smiled back at him.

I waited for Bryant to come in behind Colton, possibly with a girl in tow, but Colton crossed the floor to us alone. He smiled again, but it lacked enthusiasm.

"Charlotte," he coughed out. "What are you doing here?"

"Talking with Candy and enjoying the appetizers." I took the tomato off my plate, holding it up as proof. "And you? Are you here with Bryant? Or Shelby? Or both?" I popped the tomato into my mouth, enjoying the feeling of victory.

His gaze traveled from my lips to the refreshment table and back. He took a step closer to me and lowered his voice. "Charlotte, those tomatoes are part of the centerpiece. You're not supposed to eat the decora­tions."

There is only one thing worse than being told you've just eaten the centerpiece, and that is choking on it. I gasped halfway between chewing and swallowing, and managed to breathe the thing in.

I stood there coughing. All eyes were riveted on my reddening face—watching, I suppose, to see whether I needed the Heimlich to recover.

All of the hacking made the punch in my glass swish around violently, and I knew I was one cough away from spilling it onto the club's polished floor. This would do nothing to enhance the moment, so I shoved my glass at Colton. He took it wordlessly, then smacked me on the back a couple of times. This didn't dislodge the tomato from my lungs but probably gave him a wicked pleasure anyway.

Candy's eyes grew wide. "Are you all right?"

I nodded, finally feeling like I could breathe again. "Sorry. I think I just need some fresh air." Because now I knew why Candy's friends were all smirking at me, and I didn't want to stick around and make small talk with them. Besides, Bryant was somewhere on the golf course, and I would bet money he wasn't alone. My hand went to the cell phone in my pocket. "I'll see you guys later."

Colton grabbed my arm and handed me my punch.

"You need to take a drink. It'll help clear your throat."

"I'm fine," I said.

He didn't let go of my arm but kept propelling my glass back at me. He was stalling. "You need to take a drink. I know about these things. My father is a doctor."

"Your father isn't a doctor, Colton. He's a CEO." Colton didn't let go of my arm. "Okay, but he plays golf with doctors, so he still knows this stuff. Take a drink."

I took a drink of the punch just so he'd let me go. "There. See, I'm fine. I'll go outside now."

He tugged me back toward him. "I don't think you should. You're still flushed, and all that coughing makes a person light-headed. You can't go out by yourself. You might pass out or fall in the pool or something." He turned to Candy, "Don't you think she should sit down for a while?" I tried to pull my arm away from Colton. "I'm not light-headed."

Candy tilted her head and gave me a playful smirk. "I don't know, Char. You do look pink, and you're short of breath. It must be hyperventilation or love, so either way you shouldn't be left alone. I think Colton should sit with you until you've completely recovered."

"I don't need to, I mean. .." But I didn't get to finish before Candy and her friends waved good-bye to us. Colton pulled me off to the side of the room where a couple of chairs stood on either side of an antique Bombay chest. Not the comfortable kind of chairs that invite you to sit down on them, the ornate kind that are there purely as decoration. Even I knew this, despite the fact that I'd just eaten a portion of the centerpiece.