My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters (16 page)

"I called in sick all last week." Megan pulled her hair over her face. "Plus, they saw me today so they won't believe me."

"Tell them your mom is sick."

"What, and my dog ate my homework too?" Megan brushed all her hair back. "We're going to Tony's. I'll sober up in the pool."

Tony pulled into the condo parking lot, and Megan jumped out of the van before I'd even stopped all the way.

"Let's swim!" She yanked her blouse up, exposing her stomach.

Tony pushed her shirt down. "Not here. I've got a suit you can borrow inside."

I glanced at my watch. If I left right now, I could get back to Katie's with a few minutes to spare. Megan followed Tony into his condo, where he gave us the official tour: faux leather sofa, recliner, basic TV setup, clean kitchen, small glass-top table with four chairs, unmade bed, socks and underwear on the floor. Box of condoms on the bedside table!

"You can change in my room." Tony handed Megan a bikini and headed into the bathroom to change into his suit. "I wish I had another—"

"That's okay, I'm not much of a swimmer." My gaze caught the clock on Tony's microwave. Ten minutes. Should I call?
Sorry, Katie, but I took an executive lunch with a couple of promising lawyers. Sorry, Katie, just had to take a swim break after an hour-long lunch. Sorry, Katie, but I've got to make sure my drunk friend doesn't get date-raped by her coworker.

Why didn't Reno have more traffic? I should just leave. Megan deserved everything coming her way, right? But I thought about the frat party and how Hannah had appeared like an angel down in that smelly basement.

Megan came bouncing out of the bedroom, twirling around in the skimpy bikini. What kind of creep keeps a spare swimsuit handy? And who'd worn it before Megan? And what kinds of diseases did she have?

"What do you think?" Megan's long hair fanned across her back.

"Fits like a glove." Tony looked her up and down. "Just your size. Amazing."

"I'll be right out." My voice cracked. "I've got to make a call."

My stomach tightened into knots as I watched Tony and Megan jump into the pool, holding hands. Megan bounced back up, laughing and adjusting her skimpy top. Tony didn't take his eyes off her, or his hands.

I had no choice. I dialed Katie's number, even though part of me considered dialing 911, or Megan's mom, or even
my
mom.

"Hello, Katie? I am so sorry, but there's a horrible accident blocking traffic. I'm stuck right behind it so I'm going to be a little late."

I felt my nose growing with every word.

CHEERS AND CHEETOS

I
lay on my bed, paging through my July magazines for noses to put in my Nice Nose Notebook. I carefully cut around a brunette model's artfully blown hair, then pasted her into the notebook with a glue stick. Mom and Dad argued in the kitchen, probably about the Raw Food (With Pasta) Diet (day 11). Mom's knife slammed against the cutting board as she diced vegetables.

I turned my music down to listen: same old stuff.
Well, if you'd get that promotion, we could move up to one of those houses on Grubstake, Buckaroo, or Cutting Horse. Look, if I don't get that promotion, we may not be able to stay in this house. We moved too soon. Again, I bowed to your pressure so you could belong to the right book club. Speaking of clubs, you had no right to spend all that money on golf last month. That's business. Well, so is the book club. When those ladies tire of redecorating their houses, who do you think will finance their next mortgage? My social connections are every bit as important as yours.
Dad said something really low. Mom stormed off into her bedroom. Dad slammed the door to the garage. The lawn mower started up.

I cranked up the Yeah Yeah Yeahs louder than necessary and cut the numbers
1, 8, 4,
and another
8
out of the magazine. The amount of money I'd saved for my new nose. The tiny numbers stuck to my fingers as I tried to glue them near a particularly cute girl with freckles. I figured my new nose would be stuck with freckles, unless I could travel to Europe for some special skin treatment. I imagined myself as Perky Freckle-Nosed Model: I'd live in a cute townhouse somewhere with a golden retriever that I'd walk through the town square with my rugged outdoorsy boyfriend. We'd go hiking in the mountains, and I'd have a whole wardrobe of soft sweaters. What would my plaid-shirt-wearing guy look like? I flipped right past a guy whose hair looked like Tyler's. Maybe someone with dark hair...

Mom flung her bedroom door open and yelled, "I'm going to Port of Subs to get sandwiches to bring to the game. Who wants one?"

Finn and I banged into each other in the hallway.

"How pathetic is this, huh?" Finn covered the phone receiver with his hand. "I'm so desperate for real food."

Finn and I both ordered Italian combo sandwiches and chips.

"So who's on the phone?"

"Who else?" He grinned. Kayla Neal's ditzy duplicate: Emily Wellington. "Sorry, babe. Hey, let me call you back. Buh-bye."

"How long have you been on the phone?" I asked. "Did you ignore any call-waitings?"

"Who calls you, Jor? Megan's pissed at you and Hannah doesn't really use the phone much because she likes to be present in the moment." Finn imitated Hannah's little nose-scrunch thing.

"Shouldn't you be in your room grunting and talking to yourself in the mirror to psych yourself up for your little game?"

Finn grunted and made a weird face. He still looked good. Genetic freak!

Back in my room, my stomach grumbled just because I was
imagining
sub sandwiches. Fresh-baked bread. Actual meat. Crunchy deep-fried Cheetos. I clipped out a photo of a hamburger and glued it next to a skinny model with a beautiful face but an even better evening gown.

"My elegant nose and I love to eat hamburgers," I said in a dramatic voice.

"What are you doing?" Megan stood in my doorway.

I flipped my notebook closed and shoved it under my pillow. "Nothing. How did you get in here?" I sat on my pillow.
Please don't ask me about the notebook.
"What's up?"

Megan's eyes looked puffy and red.

"Fired." Megan put a wadded-up tissue to her nose and blew. "They fired me."

"Because of—Well, it was kind of stupid, right? To, you know, drink like that?" I sort of enjoyed watching her fall apart. Even her perfect hair looked messy as she ran her fingers through it again and again. Plus, she'd apparently forgotten that
I
nearly got fired for staying with her for over an hour, intervening every time Lusty Lawyer got extra friendly. I had to fake a majorly embarrassing case of menstrual cramps to get her out of his condo. And then when I'd tried to take her dripping-wet, drunk self home, she'd insisted on returning to the office. I called and called Hannah, but she never answered her cell. "You should've listened to me, maybe."

"I know." Megan flopped down on the end of my bed and sobbed into her arms. "I've completely screwed up. Now I'll never be a lawyer. They'll never give me a recommendation; they'll probably make sure that everyone knows I'm a total alcoholic screwup."

"What about what's-his-name?"

"Warning. He only got a warning."

"But he's an adult. Shouldn't he be responsible for, you know, corrupting a minor or something?"
At least
both
of them should get in trouble,
I thought.

"It's not like he forced me to drink, Jory." Megan slid off the mattress and sat with her back against my bed. "I knew exactly what I was doing. The thing is, I simply didn't care."

"I know. But he still ordered the drinks, right? And you
are
under age."

"Yeah, but I'm not a top student from the UCSF law school. Now I never will be." Tears poured down her face. "I'm going to end up living alone in a hotel room teaching piano and drinking too much whiskey every night, like that wretched Judith what's-her-face."

I moved next to Megan. "Oh, my God, Meg. That's totally my fear too."

"Really?" I watched a tear drip around her lip as she smiled. "God, that movie sucked. All during the movie I wanted Tyler to put his arm around me, or put his hand on my knee. I imagined how we would be during a movie and how afterward we would walk to the car, holding hands, and go out for nachos, or maybe walk along the river, talking and laughing about the movie. How stupid was that?"

A jealous twinge tightened my stomach.
Stop, Jory. This is Megan. Megan who got you through algebra, helped you make extra-credit
español
enchiladas from hell, and stood up for you when Zoe Locke made fun of your bra during gym in ninth grade.

"Not stupid." I took a deep breath. "He's really, you know, good-looking and flirtatious."

"Oh, Jory. And I even almost ruined our friendship. Over a stupid guy! I knew you liked him, but did I care? No! I'm a bad, bad friend." Megan blew her nose. "He's not worth it."

I looked over to my mirror at the picture of Tyler smiling. I'd cut it out of a
Caughlin Rancher
article about his charity work at the animal shelter. Megan jumped up and tore the photo off the wall. A strange sensation relaxed my stomach as I watched Megan act out my
own
feelings.

"How could I not see that you weren't interested in me?" she yelled at the photo. "How stupid am I?"

"Meg. He's a big flirt." I channeled Megan as if I were starring in one of those body-switching movies.

"And it's a big lie. I'm going to tell everyone I know. I'll take an ad out in the paper. I'll spray-paint it on his car. I'll—" She crunched the newspaper clipping in her hand and tossed it on the bed.

I picked it up and smoothed it out. Maybe he'd just been trying to let Megan down easy. Maybe he made up all that stuff and faked it, so that Megan would leave him alone and he could be with me. He had touched my knee. He
had
been flirting with me practically all summer. But I kept seeing the cold expression on his face at the lake. Right after he'd spotted Drew's ski boat.

"Meg, just give it time. He's only one guy, remember? You said something about that at the lake."

"That was before I got fired." Megan took the clipping from me and tore it into little pieces. "You've ruined my life!" Megan wadded each torn piece into a little ball and flicked it off her hand. "You big loser!"
Flick. Flick.

"Meg. I know you're upset about Tyler and all, but you're the one who decided to get drunk and go to work. Tyler really has nothing to do with the fact that you got fired." Again, I sounded like regular, sane Megan. "You did that to yourself."

"I know. I know. What am I going to do? I needed the recommendation, but I also needed the money. I don't live in a fancy house like you and Hannah. I need a scholarship."

I thought about all the overtime Mom put in at work and the fight she'd just had with Dad about money, but I didn't want to go into all that. "Getting fired doesn't show up on your transcript, you know."

"With my luck it probably will. The attorney will send a note or something to all the Ivy Leagues, UC schools— everywhere but Truckee Meadows." Megan pouted. "Jory, be honest. Do you think I have alcohol issues?"

"Meg. Until that time before the movie, I'd never even seen you drink."

"Maybe it's like meth. You can get hooked the first time!" Megan's mouth twisted into a frown. "I'm just so sick of being a high school girl and losing the popularity game. I wanted to have a couple of drinks like a mature adult."

"I don't think it's working."

"Oh, God. It's totally not." Megan squeezed her head as if suppressing memories. "You should've seen me standing in front of Barnes with wet hair, getting a lecture that I totally would've given myself if I'd been sober. It was the worst thing ever." Tears fell down her cheeks as she told me the rest of the story—packing up her box of things while Lusty Lawyer ignored her. Refusing Tyler's help. Calling her mom out of a summer school class because she wasn't sober enough to drive. Refusing Tyler's help. Facing her mother's major wrath. Refusing Tyler's phone calls. More motherly wrath.

Megan wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "I'm grounded forever. But my mom really wanted me to apologize to you."

"Thanks," I said, surprised that I actually felt Hannah's silly freedom-of-forgiveness thing.

The door to the garage flung open. "Let's go!" Mom shouted. Megan and I walked out into the kitchen. Grocery bags hung from Mom's hands. A frosted sugar cookie dangled in her mouth.

"Megan, dear!" she mumbled through a mouthful of cookie. Charming.

Mom's eyes had lit up like she had always secretly wanted Megan for a daughter; she'd probably even accept Megan's alcohol issues because they came with shiny hair and a beautiful classic nose.

Mom popped the rest of the cookie in her mouth and sneaked another one out of the package. "Won't you come to Finn's game with us? I bought subs and plenty of snacks." She put several bags on the counter.

Dad walked in. A look of shock froze on his face.

"Cookie?" Mom asked with her mouth full.

Megan and I sat on the ground next to my parents and their dedicated-and-experienced-soccer-mom-and-dad foldup chairs, umbrella, and cooler. I enjoyed the feeling of the cool grass against the backs of my legs. Megan ate only half a small sandwich, not even touching her Cheetos, while I ate an entire jumbo sub, picking every scrap of limp lettuce off the paper and popping it into my mouth. I also wet my finger and zapped up every little fragment of sour cream and onion potato chip in my bag. Who knew how long the junk food trend would last. Mom devoured her sandwich, plus another three cookies. Dad watched warily, as if some creature were about to erupt from Mom's body like in that old alien movie.

"Way to go, Finn!" Mom yelled as Finn scored a goal.

Megan waved when Finn looked in our direction. "Your brother is so amazing."

"Trust me. He's disgusting." I considered sticking my tongue into my chip bag and licking it clean but caught the gooey look on Megan's face. Did Megan like
Finn?
What did she mean by
amazing?
Soccer? Or looks? "Meg, he prides himself on belching the alphabet. And sometimes he and his buddies hold farting contests."