Mia the Magnificent (3 page)

“Jeez, when I said to go out back, I didn’t mean for you to swallow each other whole,” Zoë said, suddenly appearing on the patio.

I jumped at the sound, sending my teeth straight into Eric’s lower lip.

“Zoë! What are you doing out here?” Eric said, grabbing hold of his mouth. “I thought you said you’d give Mia and me some time alone.”

“I gave you, like, ten minutes. It’s not my fault Preppy doesn’t keep a clock in the back of her throat,” Zoë replied. “Plus, Pretty Boy is here. He said his mom is taking us to driver’s ed, so we need to hit the road.”

“Pretty Boy?”
Tim said as he walked out onto the deck. “I’d like to request a different nickname. Maybe something along the lines of God’s Gift to Women?”

“If you’re God’s Gift to Women, then there’d better be a liberal return policy,” I said, thinking there were definite drawbacks to having your ex-boyfriend live next door to you—like the fact he could drop by at the most inopportune moments.

“Sorry, once you use the merchandise, you can’t return it,” Tim said with a wink.

“Even if it was defective?” I retorted.

“If you two would shut your traps for a minute,” Zoë said, “you’d see that someone’s bleeding over here.”

I looked at Eric and saw blood trickling down his lower lip. “Eric! Are you OK?”

Tim clicked his tongue. “Man, your kissing skills have really deteriorated during the past two months, Mia. When we used to make out, I never needed a tourniquet.”

“I think the words you need to focus on in that sentence are
used to,”
I said through gritted teeth, “because the second you cheated on me, my kissing skills were no longer any of your concern.”

“Good thing,” Tim said, “because the last thing I need is a big old fat lip.”

Eric’s eyes opened wide. “I’ve got a fat lip?”

“Yeah,” Tim replied. “It’s swelling up pretty fast.”

“It is not,” I said. “It’s just bleeding a little.”

“That’s good.” Eric licked the blood off his bottom lip. “Auditions are coming up and I’d hate to have anything mess them up.”

“Then you might want to stay away from Mia,” Tim said, patting Eric on the back as we headed to the driveway. “Because I know from experience, she’s an accident waiting to happen.”

I rolled my eyes. If I was an accident waiting to happen, I hoped Tim would be the first casualty.

Fifteen minutes later, Mrs. Radford dropped Zoë, Tim, and me off in front of the bright yellow A-OK Driving School building. As we walked through the lobby, I lingered to stare at the gory posters plastering the walls. With gruesome accuracy, tons of pictures pointed out what would happen if I didn’t buckle up, go the speed limit, or drive sober. As I gawked at the photos of mutilated, mashed-up,
and mangled cars, I hesitated. Maybe getting my license wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Then I came to my senses. What was I thinking? Freedom was worth any price. When I got my license, I could finally cut the umbilical cord my parents had wrapped around me. I could go where I wanted to go, see what I wanted to see, and do what I wanted to do. There’d be nothing holding me back—except for the fact that I didn’t actually have a car to drive. But when and if my parents ever let me drive their car, I would be completely liberated.

After we checked in, the school receptionist pointed to a door on the opposite end of the lobby, “Your car is out in the parking lot. So is the other student riding in your car. Your teacher, Mr. Bodey, will be out in a minute.”

Following the direction of the woman’s French-tipped nail, we headed out to the parking lot and I groaned.

“What’s up, Princess?” Zoë asked. “You look like you just found out sweater sets went out of style fifteen years ago.”

Resisting the sudden urge to clean out my bedroom closet, I said, “I’m groaning because of him,” and pointed at the familiar form of Jake Harris slumped against the door of our driver’s ed car.

Jake Harris had been my reason for living ever since we’d shared a chunk of Play-Doh in kindergarten—OK, “shared” might be a bit of an exaggeration. In reality, Jake had grabbed my hunk of Play-Doh and then run off to build a tower with his friends. But the feeling I had when our fingers touched was perpetually etched in my memory. Of course, it was also etched in my finger—Jake had mistaken my pinkie for part of the lump of Play-Doh. But all the pain I endured from the stitches—and the infection I got from the dirt under his fingernails, which required a daily dose of antibiotics for the next ten days—was worth it when Jake asked me out last year. It was like a dream come true. My first date and my first kiss were with my first boyfriend, Jake Harris.

But, sadly, lust only lasts so long, and then you have to make
conversation. And after a few miserable attempts of actually trying to talk to Jake, I realized I had to break up with him. Unfortunately, he caught Tim and me in a compromising position before I was able to officially end our relationship, so, needless to say, our break-up was less than pleasant.

“So you’re telling me you’re going to be stuck in a compact car with both of your ex-boyfriends?” Zoë asked.

I glumly nodded, and Zoë chuckled. “And I thought driver’s ed was going to be a drag.”

As we approached the car, Jake glanced up from his cell phone and swore. “Aw, snap. Don’t tell me I’ve gotta jeeves Homer and his breezy ’round while you’re gettin’ up in each other’s bizness.”

Zoë looked at me. “Didn’t the Pope send out a decree letting everybody at St. Hilary’s know you and Tim broke up?”

“What?” A small smile crossed Jake’s lips. “You fools ain’t hangin’ no more?”

Not knowing whether I should shake my head at the fact I wasn’t a fool or nod to confirm Tim and I weren’t dating anymore, I simply shrugged.

“Boo-yah!” Jake’s smile widened into a full-fledged grin. “So, who dogged on who?”

“Um,” I stammered, a little unnerved by the pure pleasure plastered across Jake’s face, “Tim cheated on me while he was in Maine, so I broke up with him.”

“It wasn’t that simple,” Tim explained to Jake. “There were some extenuating circumstances.”

“What extenuating circumstances?” I retorted. “You can’t call the fact that you’re an immoral, indecent idiot an extenuating circumstance.”

“I am not immoral, indecent, or an id—”

“I don’t care what you are, dude,” Jake said, pumping his fist in the air before launching into a series of celebratory dance moves. “I’m just pumped that you both got dogged! Like the saying goes—
what is around is around.”

“I think you meant to say, ‘What goes around comes around,’” Zoë said.

“Whatever,” Jake said with a shrug. “I’m just totally crunked they got to go to the desert.”

“You mean they got their just desserts,” Zoë said with a twinge of annoyance.

Jake grinned. “Yeah, they ate some cake and bought some, too.”

“OK, seriously,” Zoë said. “You really need to shut up now.”

Looking closely at Zoë for the first time, Jake said, “No way! You’re the lead chick for the Barf Bags!”

“What’s it to you?” Zoë asked.

“Because ‘You Really Need to Shut Up Now’ is, like, one of my favorite songs. It’s totally awesome tunage.”

A rare smile passed Zoë’s red-painted lips. “You listen to my band?”

“‘Soap on a Rope Shoved Down My Throat’ was the whole reason I started my band,” Jake said, pulling a baseball cap out of his back pocket, shoving it onto his head, and twisting it sideways. “Me and my boys have been tryin’ to kick-start a band for like six months, but we still suck. I’d give anything to have a babe like you singin’ for us.”

“Maybe I could come hear you play sometime and give you some pointers,” Zoë said.

I resisted the urge to bend down and feel the soles of my shoes. Zoë letting some guy get away with calling her “babe” could mean only one thing: Hell had just frozen over.

“Slammin’.” Jake reached into his jean pocket and pulled out a gum wrapper. He scribbled his number down and handed it to Zoë. “Call me, dude. Maybe we can jam sometime.”

Zoë pocketed the wrapper as a man who reminded me of a bald King Kong thundered toward us. He checked his clipboard and boomed, “You must be Tim, Jake, Zoë, and Mia. I’m Mr. Bodey. I’ll
be your driving teacher.”

“Whoa,” Jake said, pulling off his baseball cap so he could push his long blonde hair out of his eyes. “This is outta hand. I get to meet the lead singer for the Barf Bags and Jim ‘The Barrier’ Bodey all in one day?”

A smile broke out above Mr. Bodey’s incredibly square jaw. “You must be an Iowa Hawkeye fan.”

“I totally bleed black and gold,” Jake said. “And you were the freakin’ best linebacker Iowa ever had.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Mr. Bodey said, his massive face turning pink with pleasure.

“I would. It must’ve totally sucked—your knee going out the last game of senior year,” Jake said with a shake of his head. “If that hadn’t happened, you’d be in the NFL right now. You’d be, like, a millionaire, livin’ in a mansion and makin’ Gatorade commercials. I bet you’d have hot babes, fast cars, and—”

“I get your point,” Mr. Bodey said, his smile dropping faster than an empty high-speed elevator in a skyscraper. “But I really don’t like to talk about that part of my life, so let’s move on to driving. Does anyone have any questions before we start?”

“Yeah, I got a couple of questions about road signs, dude,” Jake said. “Like, how do they get deer to cross at all those yellow deer-crossing signs, and will I, like, be breaking any laws if I drive past a sign that says, ‘Do Not Pass’?”

I shook my head in dismay. If the expression “What you don’t know can’t hurt you” had any truth to it, Jake was practically invincible.

Later that night, my brother Chris sat down at the dinner table wearing a pair of oversized sunglasses.

“Oh, no,” I said, groaning. “Don’t tell me it’s another stupid multicultural dinner. The last time we wore sunglasses, it was Hawaiian night and Mom stuck an apple in the mouth of a roasted pig right at the table.”

My mom set a bowl of pasta in front of me. “I’ll have you know, it took me seven hours to roast that pig.”

“Yeah, but it took me seven years to get that image out my head,” I replied. “And it totally ruined
Charlotte’s Web
for me.”

“And it’s obviously not multicultural night,” my dad said, holding out his hand to Chris, “so you need to lose the sunglasses, now.”

As Chris reluctantly slipped the glasses from his head, Mom exclaimed, “Chris! What happened to your eye?”

Chris slumped back into his seat. “I got hit with a baseball.”

“Does it hurt?” I asked, grimacing at the purplish blue swirl surrounding his left eye.

“What do you think?” Chris retorted, glaring at me with his one good eye.

“I think I’m not stupid enough to get hit in the eye with a baseball,” I replied, scooping a spoonful of pasta onto my plate.

“Just tell us what happened, Chris,” my mom said as she knelt next to his chair to examine his eye more closely.

Chris winced as Mom probed his eye with the tip of her finger. “It all started when I called Gina Carlson an Amazon at gym today.”

“Nice,” I remarked, stabbing my fork into a ravioli.

“Yeah, she didn’t think it was too funny, either,” Chris muttered.
“But I only said it because she grew like a foot over the summer. Then she said I was just jealous because she was taller than me. And I told her it didn’t matter who was taller because I was stronger. So she challenged me to a baseball-hitting contest after school. Whoever could hit the ball the farthest was the winner. What was I supposed to say? All the other guys from my class were there. So we met up at the field after school, and I told Gina she could have first bat, since she’s a chick and everything—”

“Girl,” my dad said.

“Fine. I let her have first bat because she was
a girl,
and I moved in real close because I thought she’d whiff the ball. But the next thing I knew, I was laid out in the middle of the infield.”

“You moved in when Gina Carlson was hitting the ball?” I asked incredulously. Gina lived down the street and had been playing softball since she was old enough to walk. “Her softball team won Nationals this summer!”