Revenge of the Cheerleaders (14 page)

Which still didn't make sense. I leaned against my locker and surveyed him. "Your car keys were on top
of
the entertainment center?"

"Yeah, Tanner threw them up there after I chucked them at him."

"Why did you chuck your car keys at Tanner?"

Even behind his sunglasses I could see Rick roll his eyes. "Use your imagination, Chels. We were fighting. Do you need to ask what we fought about or are you pretty clear on that?"

I wanted to think that Rick was mad at Tanner for insulting Adrian, but I wasn't sure. "What?" I asked.

Rick shook his head and laughed at me. "You're the kind of girl that likes it when two guys fight over you. Well, I'm sure it wasn't the first time for you, was it?"

Uh, what planet was he living
on?
When had guys ever made it a habit of fighting about me? It's not like there was a line forming to ask me out or anything. Especially since his stupid "Dangerously Blonde" had become the school's unofficial theme song.

Rick took a step toward me so he was nearly touching my locker, and lowered his voice. "This is your way of spreading more joy in my life, isn't it? It's not enough that you made Adrian break up with me, you had to make my brother hate me and my grandmother insist that I play the classical guitar."

Which was really too much. "I didn't do any of that," I said. "You did." I slammed my locker door, hard. So hard that it bounced back open and hit Rick right in the face.

His glasses flew off, now in two pieces. He staggered backwards, groaned, and put his hand over his eye.

"Oh no," I said, and then, "I'm so sorry!"

He kept his hand pressed over his face. "Sure you are."

"You don't think I did that on purpose?" I stepped over to him, trying to check for bleeding or swelling. "Are you all right?"

He didn't move his hand away from his eye. "I'm probably blind now."

"Let me see it."

"I don't want you to see it."

"Stop being a baby, Rick. Let me just check to see if you're hurt."

With one eye he glared at me. "I'm pretty sure I can tell on my own if I'm hurt. It got me right where the ceiling fan did."

I pried his hand away from his face and held onto it with my own while I peered at his wound. It did look worse, more swollen, and his eye was red and watering. "Can you see me?" I asked.

"Adrian," he said.

Which meant it was bad if he couldn't even tell who was standing in front of—wait a minute. I spun around and saw my sister, her hand on her hip, staring at us.

Her eyes narrowed, and she shook her head disdainfully. "I can't believe you." Then she spun around and stalked off down the hall.

Rick pulled his hand away from mine like my touch burned. "Thanks," he spat out, and trotted down the hall after her. I watched him catch up to her. He tried to speak to her, but she hurried on, not looking at him.

Yeah, this was all going to translate into another great evening at home.

I walked slowly out to my car, and even waited for her, but Adrian never showed up.

Chapter 14

W
hen Mom came home at 5:30 Adrian still hadn't appeared. I had to tell Mom what happened. She looked at me skeptically after I'd finished the story. "Were you flirting with Rick?"

"No," I said. "I don't usually do that by smashing my locker door into a guy's face."

"But it looked like you were flirting?"

"Well, maybe if you consider me examining a guy's facial wounds while he's crying flirtatious . . ."

"But you stood close together and held his hand," Mom accused.

"I was checking his vision. I said, 'Can you see me?' Those aren't words of endearment or anything."

Mom tapped her fingers against the counter and looked off in the distance. "Adrian might have thought you meant, 'Can you see me' as in 'Let's start seeing each other.''

What? I threw up both hands. "Why would I want to see Rick? She knows Rick and I don't like each other. It's been months since Rick and I said two civil words to each other."

Mom turned back and stared at me, her gaze accusing again. She didn't say anything else.

"Don't bring that up," I said. "This isn't the same."

Mom turned her gaze from me to the phone. "I'll try her cell phone again."

I'd already tried it a dozen times, but I didn't argue.

When I'd finished up the dinner dishes and Adrian still hadn't come home, new waves of worry spread over me. What was she doing? Why was she so mad? Certainly Rick had explained what happened. She had to know he wasn't lying. He had the welt to prove it.

I shouldn't be so concerned.

But I was. To look at Adrian you wouldn't think of her as fragile. Fragile people didn't wear black leather. Yet Adrian seemed to continually run along the edge of destruction, to always be putting one foot far enough over to feel the air on her toes.

I took my cell phone into my bedroom and fingered it while I paced back and forth between my bed and dresser. Finally I called Tanner. Our fight didn't seem important now, and he'd know Rick's cell phone number. Rick probably knew where she was.

Tanner answered the phone, his voice cautious. "Hi Chelsea."

"Hi Tanner." I couldn't just blurt out that I wanted Rick's phone number, and besides, hearing his voice made my heart skip in an unexpected and aching way. I decided to start at the beginning. "Rick apologized to me at school today. He said you told him to. I wanted you to know I appreciate it, even if immediately afterwards I did smack him in the face with my locker door. That was an accident. It really was."

Tanner's voice turned incredulous. "You hit him with your locker door?"

"Accidentally. And um, have you seen Rick since school? I mean, I couldn't tell how badly he was hurt. Do you have his cell phone number?"

A hint of suspicion crept into Tanner's voice. "You want my brother's number?"

"For Adrian."

"Adrian already has his number."

"No, I mean, Adrian walked up while I was checking Rick's face and she thought . . . well, I think she thought that Rick and I were doing something."

Tanner's suspicion turned to alarm. "Exactly how were you checking his face?"

I let out a sigh. Not this from Tanner too. Were Rick and I the only ones who'd noticed that we didn't get along? "I was just looking at his eye. That's all. But I had to pull his hand away from his face first, so I was sort of holding it in mine, and Adrian saw us and stomped off. She hasn't come home yet." My throat clenched and I could only get the rest out in a whisper. "I'm worried and I need to talk to her. I need to explain."

Tanner's voice turned soothing. "I can give you Richard's number. That's easy enough, but if he is with her, wouldn't he have explained everything to her?"

"I guess, but she doesn't trust me. She . . ." My voice came out in an uneven rhythm. "See, there was this thing with this other guy . . . " I didn't want to tell him. I knew he'd think less of me for it, but at the same time I wanted him to understand why Adrian acted the way she did. In halting phrases I explained about Travis.

He listened quietly and I wished I could see his face to judge his reaction, to judge how awful he considered my confession to be. What did he think of me now that he knew I'd stabbed my own sister in the back? Perhaps it was better that I couldn't see him, after all.

"I just thought you should know," I finished up, "so you'd understand why I got so mad at you yesterday. Adrian isn't white trash. She wouldn't be this way if I hadn't messed things up for her."

"She's told you that? She blames you for the state her life is in?

"Not exactly in those words, but yeah."

He paused for a moment to let out a grunt. "That must be a power trip."

I didn't answer because I wasn't sure what he meant. Was it a power trip for me because I had the ability to mess up my sister's life or did he mean it was a power trip for her because she could lay this huge guilt trip on me?

I stood staring at my dresser but not seeing it, trying to work it out in my mind.

He spoke again, this time his voice sounded almost businesslike. "I'm sure Adrian's fine, Chelsea. I'll call Richard for you and see what I can find out, then I'll call you back."

I guess he didn't think I was coherent enough to talk to Rick right then, which was probably true.

I
sat on the corner of my bed waiting for my phone to ring and thinking over what he'd said. Between Adrian and me, who had the power? Was there a balance? Where had it shifted to? Was it wrong for me to want it back again? After a few minutes the phone rang.

"I called Richard," Tanner told me. "He tried to talk to Adrian at school, but she wouldn't listen—just kept calling him a hypocrite and stormed off. He doesn't know where she is."

"Oh." The word left my throat hollow.

"Do you need help looking for her?"

I wasn't sure whether he was volunteering Rick's help or his own, and I didn't want Rick's help. "We haven't checked with her friends yet. But thanks for the offer."

"She'll be okay. She's probably just blowing off steam somewhere."

"Probably," I said.

"Look, I've got to go work right now, but I'll talk to you later, okay?"

I wanted to keep talking to him. In fact, I wanted to lean up against him like I had on our first date. But he wanted to hang up.

I tried to force some cheer into my voice. "Right. Thanks. Talk to you later."

We hung up and I walked out of my room to tell Mom that Adrian wasn't with Rick. Before I'd even shut my door, I heard Adrian come in. I could tell by the way Mom laid into her. "Where have you been? I've been calling you for the last half an hour."

Adrian answered defiantly. "I was thinking."

"Well, next time you can answer the phone while you think."

"I didn't feel like talking."

A pause and then Mom's voice softened. "Chelsea told me about school. She was just checking Rick's face. Nothing happened between them."

"She was just checking his face?" Adrian nearly spat out the words. "Is that her new excuse? I admit it's better than, 'It just happened,' but only slightly."

"You saw Rick. Chelsea said she hit him with her locker door."

"Yeah, I saw him, and yeah I believe that Chelsea hit him with her locker door." I could tell that she meant it, and I stood in the hallway shaking my head. If she believed me, then why was she so upset? I took a step toward the living room to ask her.

"But what was he doing at her locker in the first place, and since when did she start holding his hand, even in sympathy?"

"You don't really think that Chelsea is going after Rick, do you?"

I stopped, still hidden by the hallway, waiting to hear Adrian's answer. It might change if she saw me. Her answer wouldn't be the truth then, just whatever she thought would bother me the most.

"Do you know what first attracted me to Rick?" Adrian asked, bitterness lacing her voice. "He was the one guy I knew who would never choose Chelsea over me. Everyone else likes her best. Chelsea walks into a room and—poof—I become invisible. Do you know what it's like to live your life always second-best?"

"You're not second-best," Mom said. "If boys can't see that—"

"It isn't just the boys. She's pretty, she's popular, and she gets whatever she wants every time. When people find out I'm Chelsea's sister, I always get the same reaction: a look of surprise on people's faces, the look that says, 'How can you be Chelsea's sister? You're not blonde and gorgeous. What a disappointment. We wanted another Chelsea.' "

"Adrian, you're fine the way you are—"

"I don't want to be fine. I want to be noticed, and loved, and better than Chelsea at something."

I couldn't have moved if I'd wanted to. My insides felt like they'd been shredded. It's not my fault, I wanted to say. Why can't you see that none of this is my fault? How can you hate me for being pretty and popular? What did she want from me? Misery? And at the same time I understood everything she said, and I hurt for her.

The living room was quiet for a moment and I knew my mother had wrapped her arms around Adrian. "Honey, you
are
loved. Very loved."

"Chelsea could have any guy she wanted but she went after Rick. She had to prove she could take anything she wants away from me."

Mom's voice was still soothing. "You don't really think there's anything going on between Rick and Chelsea, do you?"

"Who did she go out with last night?"

Mom paused. "I don't remember his name, offhand."

This was because I'd been purposely vague about the matter. I hadn't wanted her to realize I was dating a college guy.

"Exactly," Adrian said as though offering evidence in a court. "Chelsea never told us his name, but she came home in Rick's brother's car."

"Are you sure?" Mom asked.

"I'm sure. I guess they thought I wouldn't figure it out if Rick didn't drive his jeep."

I went back into my room then. I knew Mom would momentarily be storming in to question me and I didn't want to let her know I'd eavesdropped on the whole conversation.

I sat on my bed, picked up a novel, and stared down at the pages. I couldn't have read it if I wanted to. My hands shook too badly.

It would be so easy to tell both of them the truth. I just had to explain that I'd gone out with Tanner and I would be cleared of all charges. Mom would rejoice that I hadn't stabbed my sister in the back again. Adrian would forgive me for holding Rick's hand. Everything would be fine.

For the first thirty seconds I sat there, I planned on doing just that.

But then I thought one step further. After Adrian learned the truth, she would also forgive Rick. She'd probably even apologize to him for calling him a hypocrite at school. And then they would get back together. I could see it happening as clearly as I could see the book in front of me.

I had—in effect—sent Adrian to Rick when I'd betrayed her the first time. She said the only reason she'd chosen him was that he was the type of guy who didn't like me. So when she'd come to high school, she had just looked through the assortment of boy burn-outs in order to find someone to mend her ego.

Rick had worked, but he wasn't good for her. He didn't really love her. Rick was like my father, the kind of person who only cared about himself. If she stayed with him who knew where she'd end up.

But I could save her. And I could redeem myself from my mistake with Travis. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and let her stay mad at Rick. Indefinitely if possible. So what if she was mad at me too? That had been the constant in our relationship for over a year.

Mom opened the door without knocking. "I need to talk to you."

I put down my book and waited. All I had to do was to hide Tanner without it looking like I was hiding Tanner.

"Adrian said you went out with Rick yesterday. Did you?"

My sister was probably somewhere nearby, listening. I waited a second to make my answer less convincing. "No."

"He didn't bring you home in his brother's car?"

"No." All the truth.