My Little Phony - 13 (7 page)

In times of crisis, Claire usually sought out sugar. Mike and Ike had gotten her through the road trip from Orlando to Westchester. Reese’s Pieces were the official sponsor of her short-lived Cam breakup. And gummies had eased the stress of life in the public eye as a (former) member of the PC. But as she and Layne stepped out of the snowy Westchester tundra and entered the humid mock-jungle of Karma Chameleon, she knew her current situation required more than a Blow Pop.

It required bugs.

Claire stomped the excess snow from her Keds onto the peeling linoleum floor and looked around. The store smelled like a mixture of the bottom of Todd’s sock drawer and old, crusty peanut butter. Glass aquariums filled with mossy water were stacked everywhere, and she had the uneasy feeling that thousands of moist, shifty eyeballs were watching her every move. Posters papered the steamy walls like a who’s who of creepy crawlers. A lizard in a Santa hat with a leering expression yelled,
ALL I IGUANA FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU
. Next to it was a cobra wearing a New York Yankees hat with
SNAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME
printed under it. And next to that was a gecko sitting on a waffle that had popped out of a toaster.

“Gecko my Eggo.” Layne’s laugh came from behind the
netting of her boxy white beekeeper hat. “Ooooh! Wook how kuh-ute!” She pulled Claire past a row of oversize snakes to a python tank the size of the Lyons’ old minivan. As Layne cooed and tapped the aquarium, one of the python’s olive-black eyes blinked lazily. Then its tongue shot out of its mouth to snatch an unsuspecting beetle. Claire thought of her lunch that day and wondered if she was about to see it again.

“Mwah!” Layne blew the python a kiss. “I IGUANA him for my very own.”

“Um, Layne.” Claire pointed to a sign affixed to the habitat. A neon sticky said:
I’M CANDY! I LIKE TO BE FED CRICKETS AND MICE
.

“Deal breaker.” Layne spun in a circle, her coattails floating out around her like a tutu. She grinned. “Maybe I should take that one home instead?”

Claire followed the direction in which her friend’s gnawed fingernail was pointing, but instead of finding a reptile, she saw a lanky boy wearing a faded Phoenix T-shirt and a pair of dark-wash denim skinnys.

“Layne,” Claire whispered, the moldy scent of brackish water clogging her nostrils. “He’s in violation of rule number 21. I think that grasshopper weighs more than he does.”

“It’s unlawful to discriminate based on age or weight,” said Layne, beelining toward the boy like a hawt-seeking missile.

“Hi, there,” he said when they reached the counter. His name tag read ART, and up close it was impossible to miss just how much his dark, round eyes resembled Candy’s. Claire shuddered.

Layne curled her oversize foot around her left leg, then tilted her head in her patented cute-boy shuffle. The beekeeper hat shifted back, and she lost her balance. Claire grabbed her friend’s shoulder to steady her.

“I love your hat,” Art said. “It’s for bees, right?”

Layne adjusted the netting like a traditional bride trying to conceal herself. “None of your
beeswax
.” She giggled.

Art grinned. “So what can I help you with?”

Layne leaned her elbows on the distressed wooden counter. Clustered around the register were pink bottles of Natural Chemistry Healthy Habitat spray, Tetrafauna Baby ReptoMin food sticks, and bags of shredded wood bedding. “We’re having trouble deciding. But we don’t want to
bug
you.”

“No problem.” He blinked quickly, still looking remarkably like the shifty python they’d just encountered. “My mother always
toad
me to be kind to strangers.”

Claire rolled back on her heels, the way she always did when she was annoyed and anxious. “We just want some smaller bugs,” she said, hoping her brisk tone would help move things along. “Like, some bedbugs.”
To go in a certain alpha’s bed,
she added silently.

“I know just the thing!” Art said. He slunk around the counter, then loped down an aisle of bright yellow saltwater fish. Layne’s eyes followed him, and she licked her half-eaten wax lips. She’d been feasting on them since they had left the candy store—their second visit that week—and they looked half digested.

Claire elbowed Layne through her puffy coat. “Don’t forget the mission,” she hissed.

Layne ignored her, following close behind Art’s doodled-on yellow Converse as he led them past a wall of turtles, then through a dark room with tanks lining the walls. One tank let out a long hiss. It sounded like
I know what you’re doing!
A second later, a bunch of frogs in a grimy aquarium chimed in with a chorus of
Mean! Mean! Mean!

“She deserves it!” Claire hissed back. “What would you do if someone scared off all your friends?” The frogs blinked back at her and tilted their heads.

Normally, Claire wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. Everyone made mistakes sometimes—she knew that. But when she looked back over her year and three months of “friendship” with Massie, it was all the bad times that stuck out. Counting the list of Massie-caused grievances was easier than making slice and bake cookies. She started ticking them off on her fingers.

She insulted the friendship bracelets my friends in Orlando made me, by pretending to think they were from kindergarten.

She left me in the trunk of the Range Rover on the first day of seventh grade.

She told me OCD stood for
Orlando Claire = Dork
.

She asked me if I was invited to her barbecue, and
then when I said no, she asked me why I was up in her grill. This was the first of many, many, many, many, MANY similar insults. Too many to list. Just know: IT STARTED HERE.

She put red paint on my pants so it looked like I got my period. (Okay, Alicia actually did that, but she wouldn’t have done it if Massie hadn’t decided she hated me.)

She kicked me out of their first sleepover (practically, by being mean).

She said my brown sweatshirt looked like a hooded poo.

She said my pink belt made me looked like a pink boa constrictor had wrapped itself around my face and then died from shock at how bad my outfit was.

She threw
salmon
at me!

She told everyone that our joint Halloween party was just
her
party.

She said my geeky-loser costume was very convincing and asked if I was celebrating Halloween early that year.

She said my green apple gummies looked like alien sneeze.

She told me that just because matchy-matchy wasn’t in, it did nawt mean clashy-clashy was.

She called me stupid for not knowing that some dressing rooms use super-flattering skinny mirrors.

She threw out my favorite pants on Earth Day as part of the Beautify Our Planet campaign.

She told me my favorite sweater was making Bean sick because Bean was allergic to ugly.

She said she would’ve tossed my red sweatshirt in the fire, but she didn’t want to release toxic fumes when the synthetic fabric and puffy-paint melted.

She asked if I was getting extra credit in Abnormal Psychology for being friends with Layne.

She said my legs looked like they had Candy Cane Disease when I tried on a pair of striped tights.

She planted Oxy, Jolene face bleach, Depends undergarments, Rogaine, dandruff shampoo, athlete’s foot medicine, jock itch cream, and super-plus-sized tampons in the garbage in my trailer on the set of
Dial L for Loser
—and then videotaped a segment about it for
The Daily Grind
to try and convince everyone I had zits, a mustache, bladder control issues, female baldness, dandruff, athlete’s foot, jock itch, and a giant period!

She sent Cam a picture of me kissing Connor Foley on the set of
Dial L for Loser
to make him think I was cheating on him. (Which I wasn’t!)

She kicked me out of the Pretty Committee. At least eight times.

She wouldn’t speak to me for an entire week when I accidentally thought Bean was a French bulldog instead of a pug.

She wouldn’t speak to me for two hours when I mentioned that her nut “allergy” only comes out when she doesn’t want to eat something.

She wouldn’t speak to me for three days when I decided to hang out with Cam instead of watch
Gossip Girl
with her.

She replaced my bag of licorice whips with red rubber bands.

She called my eyebrows the “Bush twins” when I had to wear fake brows for
Dial L
.

She said my bangs looked like the top of my head was throwing up hair.

She called me Clarence when I wore work boots outside to help my mom garden. (There is no such thing as cute, girly gardening shoes!)

She recommended that I see a plastic surgeon because my right ear lobe is a little bigger than my left one.

She recommended that I walk around with weights
on my legs to prevent cankles, because she thinks my mom has them.

She cut up my very favorite BDG hoodie because she ran out of plastic baggies and needed something to pick up Bean’s poo with.

She threw out an entire stash of gummy lobsters when she decided she was allergic to shellfish.

She insulted my overalls, even though she complimented the ones that Dylan wore.

She made fun of my mom’s mom-jeans. But what else is she supposed to wear? She’s a mom!

She locked me out of my own room when I didn’t vote for her in the Miss Kiss pageant.

She hit me with a remote control when she thought I was flirting with Dempsey (her then-crush) while on the boy fast.

She tried to force me to upgrade Cam with a new ninth-grade crush. She thought having a crush on a guy with an asymmetric haircut and a crush on a guy with one blue eye and one green eye would be the same thing. As if!

She got mad at me for having ninth-grade friends, even though she’d been telling me that I needed to grow up!

She shaved my little brother’s head to get back at me.

She tried to make my new friends think I had a lice infestation.

Claire shook her head at the length of the list. And those were just the highlights. Massie had smacked down Claire more times than her AmEx. Claire pulled a gummy worm from her pocket and popped it in her mouth. The sugar calmed her stomach and reignited her hunger for revenge. Massie had bug-bombed Claire’s friends out of her life; it seemed only fitting that Claire would bug-bomb Massie’s bed in return.

Art finally stopped in a room with a sign that said
ARTHROPODOGIE
.

“These are your best bet,” he said, gesturing to an aquarium with a sandy bottom. A log ran through the center, surrounded by a smattering of rocks and pinecones. Multilegged creatures with antennae and exoskeletons scurried around the tank. A cricket stood on a twig like a general at arms, while four ants carted a fallen comrade back to their anthill.

“Ew. Those are worse than ugly,” cracked Layne. “They’re BUG-ly.”

“We’ll take two of each,” Claire said. “Two crickets, two beetles, two centipedes, and two of those pincer-looking things.”

Art pushed up a sleeve, showing off a tattoo of a tree frog on the inside of his forearm, and produced a small plastic
box from behind the shelf. Inside, he placed a few sticks, a tiny patch of grass, and some dirt he scooped from an empty aquarium nearby.

With a green mesh net, he scooped the requested creepy crawlies into the box. When he was finished, he clamped the habitat shut and handed it to Claire. The bugs crawled all over one another, scratching at the walls like they were trying to get out.

“These latches are secure, right?” she said warily, staring at the box. She handed it to Layne.

They followed the lanky insect lover back to the front of the store, where a pin-thin man in a Sherlock Holmes hat had just entered. Art looked at him over his shoulder. “Be right there, Mr. Harbinger.”

Layne cleared her throat. “You know, I should probably get your card. In case I need advice on insect care or, like, a new job.”