Pride & Princesses (17 page)

The Missing Page

   
‘Of course not, you can’t count an audition as a proper date...well maybe just this once,’ Mouche said.

   
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Then it’s your turn next.’

   
‘Of course, I’ve already put myself out on a limb through a series of texts that have resulted in the Fall Fling that can totally count as date three...’

    
‘Ahhh! That’s so exciting. When’s date two?’

    
‘Ah... Jet and Mark want to meet us this afternoon near Santa Monica Pier to go swimming before we drive home...’

   
‘Are you serious? What should we wear?’

   
‘We should go shopping for swimsuits after lunch. I still have my emergency fund from working during the holidays.’

    
‘...mmm...I have exactly ten dollars...but, I have my dance leotard in the car...’

    
‘Okay, perfect. We’re meeting them at 1pm.’

    
So, I’m standing at the foot of the escalator, adjusting my boot zipper, checking to see if I’ve developed blisters and thinking it will be a warm day in the South Pole before I get a movie part, since it’s pretty obvious I didn’t get this one. Moving right along though, I’m all excited about the impending date when I see Teegan’s face (upside down) as she brushes by me near the cinema complex.

    
Then, when I stand up I bump into Matt and his boyfriend. I say, ‘sorry’ and they say ‘hi’ and Mouche giggles.

   
‘You know, Phoebe, men rarely humble themselves. It says here in
How to Date the Undateable @ p8;
‘Men rarely apologize...apologies display weakness.’
So remember that.
’

    
Mouche and I decide to go to a healthy looking cafe for lunch before checking out
Victoria’s secret
and
Macy’s
.

    
We add extra detailed notes, in the cafe, on all the boys in our diary.

    
‘I can call this
The Seduction Cafe
in my notes next week...’ Mouche says. I flicked through the previous entries. At that stage we were reading more guides to dating than actually dating but all of that was about to change.

     
‘
Always be pleasant and eager – how else do you get what you want?’
I can hear Mouche’s voice reading from
The Good Girlfriend
(page 19) in my mind as we both collapsed in peals of laughter under the pile of titles such as,
’A Woman’s Guide to Blissful (and Married) Love’
(our mother’s mothers gave them that when they were teenagers). That particular title fell out of Mouche’s tote when the waiter brought us our chicken burgers and fries.

  
‘I thought we were supposed to be eating healthily...’

  
‘This is not so bad, as long as we add ketchup. Ketchup has lots of lycopene which is good for you,’ Mouche said.

   
While we were munching away, Freya and Teegan entered the cafe - just to put us off our food. Mouche hurriedly scrunched her notes and stuffed them into her bag.

   
‘Hi Girlfriends,’ Teegan said. ‘I think I nailed it.’

   
‘Two auditions in one week,’ Tory added.

   
‘Mmm...’

   
‘Busy pretending to be friends again?’ I asked.

   
‘Well of course you nailed it, Teegan,’ Mouche added. ‘Isn’t your cousin the casting assistant?’

    
Teegan looked quite put out. ‘
Older sister,’
Freya added with a slight giggle and Teegan looked at her and rolled her eyes.

   
‘Well, we gotta go. Meter’s running...’ This was something Mrs Mouche always said when she was trying to get away from bad boyfriends. Mouche thought it might work just as well with frenemies.

   
‘Hey, we thought we could all have lunch together. We noticed that you were...really popular last week with the boys...I mean they were talking to you and we noticed you are both wearing really hot clothes and someone told us you are going to Fall Fling with Jet and Mark...’

   
‘We’ve gotta go,’ Mouche said. ‘C’mon Phoebe.’

    
I got up to leave.

    
We weren’t ready for a truce just yet. Not when we had planned the year to our social advantage already.

   
We grabbed our stuff and left, hastily putting our burgers in their napkins.

   
As we were driving into Santa Monica, I realized we had lost something.

  
‘Oh, no!’ I said as Mouche rounded the corner towards the pier.

  
‘What?’

   
‘A page of our notes – they’re missing...the page with the plan about how we should turn the teenage boys from
undateable
to
dated...’

   
‘But you still have the rules, right?’

   
‘Yeah, they don’t know the rules.’

    
Mouche just looked at me in horror. She knew the page had been left in the cafe with Teegan and Freya. It was as if we had armed the enemy with the perfect ammunition: a page of our thoughts about dating the guys at Sunrise High and the back story to each of those guys -
 
the prequel to the list of rules detailing just enough of our thoughts to lead them to
the plan.

   
‘We have to focus,’ Mouche said

   
‘Yes, focus,’ I replied.

   
‘There’s nothing we can do right now,’ Mouche assured me.
 

    
Jet was waiting at the pier with two snow cones when we arrived in Santa Monica. Mark was nowhere to be seen.

   
‘Hey Mouche, hi Phoebe,’ Jet smiled in the most affable manner and I could tell Mouche smiled extra wide when she noticed the t-shirt he wore advertised a band that she liked.
 

   
‘Mark had to go...park the car but he said he’d meet us here in ten minutes.’

   
‘Great,’ Mouche said. ‘Hey, I love your t-shirt. That’s my favourite band,’ she added, sounding just a little over eager if you ask me.

    
We walked down to a sandy area reserved for ‘safe swimming’ where Jet had arranged to meet Mark. The weather had turned a little and it seemed our beach party idea might have to prematurely end before it started as the sky went from bright to cloudy all in the space of a few minutes.

   
Mouche and Jet seemed to be having a great time though, splashing each other in the shallow water, as I read over my script sitting on a blanket. Mouche wore an eye-popping pink, polka dot bikini. I’d managed to find my regular navy blue leotard, which could double as a swimsuit. I’d left it in a school bag in the glove compartment of Mouche’s car. It was a pity not to wear it. Besides, as the afternoon wore on, it seemed the other half of the date wasn’t going to happen.

   
I looked up from my script when some little kids on the beach kicked sand in my face. I considered the benefits of changing into my regular clothes and waiting in the car instead of being the third wheel. As Mrs Jones said,
‘being the third wheel on a date is a form of torture. I’d advise any girl being forced to witness the budding romance of her friend up close and personal...to go shopping.’

    
Jet and Mouche were laughing in the shallows and although it was good to see them having so much fun, I was becoming a little exasperated. Feeling thirsty, I stood up, pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and yelled out, ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes!’ to Mouche.

     
‘What?’ Jet replied, until both he and Mouche seemed to understand.
 

 
    
Go shopping
. It was the one piece of Mrs Jones’ advice I maybe shouldn’t have taken. I was suddenly extra thirsty and wandered up to the boardwalk to buy a drink. As I was turning to pay, I felt a tug on my purse strings. Not just a tug, a pull and in the time it takes to scream, a small boy ran off with my bag.

     
He was as fast as lightning but I was also pretty quick and followed him for what seemed like minutes, through a tiny maze of backstreets until I was thoroughly confused and the boy seemed to have disappeared. I was desperate for a phone to call my mother but I didn’t want to worry her. Besides, what could she do all the way out in Sunrise? It was darker, later, and I’d been away from the beach for at least half an hour. Mouche would be starting to get worried.

    
I dusted my jeans off then sat in the curb for a few minutes. Searching for a friendly face to ask for help was probably not the best idea. There was only one business open in this particular side street, and no people. The store looked dark and cramped, but beggars can’t be choosers or so the saying goes. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty.

    
Meanwhile, Mark had arrived in Santa Monica. He was late after attending the last of his ‘counselling’ sessions. Mark was required to visit a psychologist after crashing his car into a shop window two years ago and driving without a licence. No one had been hurt, but still, it was a requirement for him to be able to drive without restrictions or Mark never would have attended the ‘sessions’, he later told me. He didn’t generally discuss his problems with strangers.

   
The psychologist’s office was not far from Santa Monica but he’d been stuck in traffic.
 
Thoughts of the planned afternoon in Santa Monica were making him impatient. He really did want to get to know Phoebe and Mouche better. He wanted to introduce them to Petra as well. His sister had hardly left her room, except for school, since they’d arrived.

   
When he’d asked Petra about her first day, she just burst into tears and ran up the stairs.

   
‘That bad?’ said Jet, ‘I told you those HSYL girls are nasty...’

   
‘If my aunt and uncle weren’t such snobs she could’ve just come to Sunrise with us.’
       
Mark was thinking about all of this when he noticed a girl who looked a lot like me, running up from Santa Monica beach after ‘a little street urchin.’ This alarmed him because he knew the area was not safe if you were by yourself. He knew it was later than expected, but he followed his instinct that all was not okay and tailed me into the laneway.