The Art of Lainey (30 page)

“I have a killer headache and I’m really tired,” I say. “And nauseous,” I add for good measure, giving her my best queasy face.

“You’re not pregnant, are you?”

“Mooom!” I blush, even though I know it’s not a possibility. “Not a chance.”

“Are you certain? Those birth control pills aren’t 100 percent effective, you know.”

“Positive,” I assure her.

She kisses me on the forehead. “Good. I suppose you can stay home today, but I hate the fact that I’m not going to be here to take care of you.”

“I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” I say. “I’m just going to go back to sleep.”

Her face crinkles up. “Okay, sweetie, but call your father if you need anything. I’ll be in meetings but he could always slip away from the shop for a few minutes if he had to.”

“Sure, Mom.” I roll onto my side so I’m facing away from her. The reality is, I’ve already been asleep for close to ten hours. More shut-eye is not going to happen. I wait until she
leaves and then sit up in bed. For the first time all summer, I’m actually bored.

I send Bianca a text.

I start texting her about what happened last night but then give up and call her. She listens quietly while I run through the whole disastrous evening. Micah and Amber dancing. Micah and me on the patio. Amber catching us. Kendall going psycho-bitch on Micah. Me losing it.

“I blew it, Bee.” My voice cracks. “I said all that stuff so Kendall would shut up, but the way Micah looked at me.” I shudder. “It was like I was dead to him. And he and Amber looked pretty cozy leaving together.” It takes everything I have to choke this last sentence out.

Bee sighs. “Oh, Lainey. You
really
like him, don’t you?”

I grab a tissue from my nightstand at blot at my eyes. “Yeah, but I messed everything up.”

“First of all, quit letting Kendall get to you,” Bianca says firmly. “And second, just go talk to him. You told him you liked him and he said he liked you too.”

“Yeah, but then I basically told half the school that he meant nothing to me.”

“He’s been hanging out with you for how long?” Bee asks. “I’m sure he knows how you get when you’re upset. Just apologize.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “I’ll think about it.” After we hang up, I reread all of my text conversations with Micah, smiling at some of our sarcastic exchanges. But each time I start to type out an apology, I end up deleting it. Maybe I should just leave not-well enough alone, quit while I’m behind, save both of us the awkwardness of having to talk about what happened. What would be the point? Micah chose Amber. I should respect that, even though it hurts.

And then my phone rings. I’m praying it’s Micah, that he received my messages telepathically or something, but it’s my brother.

“Hey, Steve,” I say.

“I heard you’re sick. I just wanted to check up on you after our little chat last week. Still upset about Jason?”

“Believe it or not, he wanted me back and I turned him down.”

“That’s my girl,” Steve says. “Plenty of other guys out there.”

“Yeah, I kind of had one, but I managed to mess that up already.”

“Holy crap.” Steve chuckles. “You move fast. When I told you to find a better guy than Jason, I didn’t mean in one day. You don’t want to rush into a rebound thing.”

“You’re probably right,” I say. “Maybe the best thing is to just spend some time alone.”

Saturday, my dad really needs me at Denali. I go in, praying that Micah isn’t working, even though I know he’s scheduled.
My heart sinks like a rock when I see the Beast parked in its usual corner spot. I sit in the Civic for a few seconds, making extra sure there aren’t any tears near the surface.
Stay in control. Stay in control. Stay in control
. I’m good. I can do this.

I breeze through the front door like everything is fine, like I’m coming off the most epic night of my life. Ebony and a new part-time girl are working the front. Neither of them even look up as I head to my locker in the back. I have to walk past Micah in the prep area to put my purse away. He’s buried up to his elbows in bread dough, humming along to the music on his headphones.

Ebony gives me her spot at the cash register. For once I’m glad to be trapped out front. The new girl’s name is Piper. Apparently she’s one of my mom’s former students. Whenever we need anything from the back I send her to go get it. The longer I can go without facing Micah, the better. Eventually Piper is in the middle of ringing people out and I have to go back and ask him for some peanut butter cookies. I can barely choke the words out but he seems completely fine as he plates up a dozen for me, like he’s coming off the most epic night of
his
life.

He doesn’t go off on me
or
ignore me the whole day. Instead he does something that manages to hurt even more. He goes back to treating me the way he did at the beginning of the summer: distantly, politely, like I’m a customer—one who orders a lot of blended drinks and doesn’t tip. If he had any feelings for me, he’s managed to turn them off, like flicking a switch. I wish I had that power. My whole summer
would have been different if I could have gotten over Jason in a nanosecond.
But then you wouldn’t have gotten to know Micah.

Okay, maybe I don’t want that power after all. But I want the pain to go away.

Leo doesn’t seem to know what happened so he’s still talking to us like we’re all friends. “You read
The Prince
yet?” he asks, smearing tomato sauce on one of Micah’s hand-tossed pizza crusts. “Deceit. Betrayal. Totally your thing.”

Totally my life.

“No, I’m done with strategizing.”

Leo sprinkles the pizza with shredded cheese. “So you gave up on your ex too?”

“Yeah. Turns out we’re not as compatible as I thought.” I swear I can feel Micah’s eyes on me, but I’m too afraid to look up, too afraid I’ll see him staring straight through me. “But thanks for all your help. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, let me know.”

Leo furrows his brow as he tops his pizza with sliced mushrooms and green peppers. “There is one thing.” He puts the pizza in the oven. “Bianca. She’s one of your best friends, right?”

I’m thinking right about now she’s my only friend. “Yeah,” I say, not really understanding where Leo is going. “She’s off today.”

“Is she dating anyone?”

“Oh.” I force myself to smile. “So Bee is the girl you’re interested in?” Now I get why Leo was so anxious to plot
warlord style with us. I steal a peek at Micah. He’s, like, four feet away but his music is so loud I can hear the tinny echo from his earbuds. He might as well be four miles away. “No. She’s not.” I struggle to stay focused. “You know, she’s really smart like you. She wants to be a doctor. You should totally ask her out.”

Leo looks mortified. “Is there any way you could maybe find out if she’d be interested?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” I say. “But remember. We’re talking about Bianca. If she’s not interested, she’s going to be so nice about it that you’ll walk away feeling even better than if she’d said yes.”

“I know. But I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. Especially since we have to work together,” he says.

“Right,” I agree. “You wouldn’t want things to be awkward at work.” My eyes flick over at Micah again. He’s scooping out cookie dough with an ice-cream scoop. The dough balls land neatly and evenly spaced on the warped, silver sheet pan. If he feels awkward, I sure can’t tell.

A
fter work, I convince Bianca to meet me at Hallowed Grounds, Hazelton’s
other
coffee shop, the one where no one knows me.

“So what do you think of Leo?” I ask, trying to be coy. Bee has never had a serious boyfriend. She’s definitely been asked out, but she always refuses and ends up going to school dances with friends. I don’t know if it’s because she’s so focused on getting a scholarship or because her overprotective family scares off any guy who shows an interest in her.

“Leo?” Bianca pulls the chopsticks from her bun and sets them on the red lacquer tabletop. She shakes her head once and thick waves of black hair cascade over her shoulders. She looks down at her iced chai. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Because he likes you.”

She giggles. Seriously a giggle, like we’re back in sixth grade and the cute boy from Massachusetts who sat behind
her just pulled on her braid. “Why would you even say that?”

“Ohmygod. You totally like him.” My jaw drops a little. “How did I not know this? You loooooooove him!”

“Shh.” Bianca’s honey complexion is rapidly turning red. She takes a long swill of her drink. “I do not
love
him.”

“But I can tell him you’re interested?”

She looks up from her drink. “Are you sure he likes
me
?”

“Why? Because you’re so hideous and unlikable?” I tease. “Of course I’m sure. He told me.”

“I figured he probably . . . you know.” She twirls her straw violently. The ice cubes clink together in the environmentally unfriendly plastic cup.

“What?” I feel like we’re having a conversation in a foreign language where I can only translate every other word.

She looks up at me. Her eyes are soft and dark. Nervous. “Liked you,” she finishes.

I almost choke on my drink. “No chance. He’s a really cool guy,” I say. “But it’s not like that with us.”

“What if it’s not like that with you, but it
is
like that with him?” Bee asks. “I don’t want to be the girl who gets used so some guy can get close to her popular friend.”

“I swear, Bianca. He has never even flirted with me. Apparently he has liked you for weeks but is too shy to do anything about it.”

“Really?” Her face lights up like a stained-glass window. Right then I know I will kill Leo if he ever hurts her.

“Yeah, really,” I singsong. “If I had known you liked him sooner I would have let you be his pseudo-date. How come
you never told me?”

“Well, I knew he was trying to get back with Riley. And also, I knew you’d pressure me into talking to him, even if I wasn’t ready.”

“Why would you say that?” I ask. I remember Kendall forcing me to talk to Jason during our freshman year, how terrified I was that day. Bee is making me sound exactly the same, which is not cool.

“Because that’s your style, Lainey. And you think it works for everyone.”

“That’s not true.” I am stunned that Bee feels like this. I had no idea.

Bianca’s eyes narrow. “What about Shaun Demetz, sophomore year? You sent him a carnation-invitation to the Turnabout Dance and signed my name to it.”

“You told me you liked him and I
knew
he would say yes.” I huff. “Come on, Bianca. He does other people’s math homework for fun. Were you really worried about getting rejected?”

“He gets paid for that,” she says. “And it wasn’t rejection I was worried about. I just wasn’t ready to have a boyfriend and I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. I didn’t want to have to blow him off afterward.”

I try to remember what happened after the dance. “But didn’t you guys go out for a while?”

“Yes,” Bianca says. “Because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But eventually I had to. Not everyone is always moving at fast-forward like you.”

“Moving at fast-forward? I feel like I’m the one stuck on
PAUSE
while everyone else makes these epic future plans. You’re going to Mizzou to be a doctor and Kendall wants to go back to New York. I’ve got nothing except soccer, maybe. I’m going to end up as that girl who peaked in high school.”

“You’ll have epic future plans someday too,” Bee says. “You just have to figure out what you want to do. And if you don’t get a scholarship, then you can play wherever as a freshman and try get a scholarship somewhere bigger the following year.”

“You think?” I never thought about doing it that way, working my way up from a small school to a larger one. And then I realize I’ve made this conversation all about me. I have a feeling I do that a lot. “Forget it. What about Leo? You want me to tell him to hold off? He’s a good guy. I don’t want to see him get crushed.”

Bee giggles again. “I’m not sure if it makes sense for me to start dating someone now, but I’ll talk to him next time we work together. You know, if you and Micah would just admit you’re still crazy about each other, then the four of us could all hang out.”

“Micah is not crazy about me.” I shudder. “He won’t even look at me. He looks
through
me now. I’d say he even hates me, except that would require actual emotion on his part, and I’m pretty sure I don’t rate that much.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t believe it. I bet he’s miserable too. But if you want him, you might have to fight for him.”

I let my head fall to the tabletop. “For the love of all that is dead and Chinese, please, no more fighting. This army needs a break.”

“Forget
The Art of War
,” Bee says. “Use ‘The Art of Lainey.’”

I peek up at her. “I’m pretty sure that book will not be getting published anytime soon.” But she’s right. It’s like I told Leo. I need to work with what I’ve got . . . even if I don’t know exactly what that is. The good news is I can’t really mess things up worse than I already have. “But what if I can’t fix things?”

I fully expect Bee to go into cheerleader mode, to tell me I’m being dramatic, that everything is fixable. She definitely takes a Disney-movie view of the world most days. But today she surprises me. “At least you’ll know you tried,” she says. “And then we’ll go run until you’re too tired to hurt. And then we’ll get ice cream.” She smiles again. “But only one scoop.”