The Catastrophic History of You And Me (14 page)

CHAPTER 24

losing my religion

W
e rode along in the back of Sadie’s mom’s Jetta for ten minutes.

“Driving a little fast, are we?” I stole a glance at the speedometer. “Seems like you’re breaking the law all over the place these days, aren’t you, Russo?”

“Dude, it is not
actually
illegal to steal your best friend’s boyfriend.” Patrick gave me a look that said I was losing it.

“Maybe not,” I replied. “But it should be.”

We passed Sam’s Chowder House on the right and the Half Moon Brewing Company on the left. Then Artichoke Farm and Frenchman’s Creek.

“Town hasn’t really changed all that much in twenty-seven years, has it?”

My mouth dropped open. “Wait, what? You’re from here too?”

He let out a massive groan. “Are you serious, lil’ lady? Wow, remind me not to hire you the next time I need a private investigator. What did you think? I was just hanging out at Slice for all eternity because the pizza is
that
good?”

“I, well, I—” I stumbled over my words, suddenly embarrassed. But Patrick was right. I’d had no idea we were from the same town. How could I have forgotten to find out this very crucial piece of information? “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m an idiot.”

He gave me a small elbow in my side. “Buy me a Frosty and we’ll call it even.”

“Frosty?
Where?
” I looked up and realized Sadie had turned off the highway and pulled into the Wendy’s parking lot.

“Mm,” said Patrick, breathing in the smell of burgers and fries. “It has been way too long since I’ve had the real thing.”

“How old were you?” I asked. “I mean, when you—”

“Died?” he said. “Seventeen. Well, almost eighteen, I guess.”

I did the math in my head, taking his ’80s outfit into account. “So all this time . . . you’re saying I’ve been hanging around with a forty-five-year-old?” I giggled. “My mom is going to
kill
me.”

He smiled. “At least I don’t act my age.”

The sound of a car door slamming from across the parking lot caught our attention. We jumped out after Sadie before she could close her door, and I braced myself for what I knew was coming. In about three seconds, I’d be seeing Jacob’s dark green Saab, which I’d nicknamed Wasabi.

I’d be seeing
him
. And her. Together.

Blech
.

I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d take it. The last time, it had nearly destroyed me. Six months wasn’t really that long. I hoped I’d be able to keep it together.

Control,
I told myself.
Control
.

But the car Sadie approached wasn’t dark green, and it most definitely was not a Saab. It was a light blue Honda.

Emma’s car? What’s she doing here?

“Hey, girl,” she said to Sadie. I gasped when I saw that her hair was cropped super-short. Tess got out of the car and joined them. She looked even taller, if that was possible. She was already almost five ten. Her long, copper-penny hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. She looked amazing. Prima ballerina.

Sadie crossed her arms, facing them. “Well? You guys wanted to see me?”

Emma and Tess exchanged looks.

“Uh-oh,” said Patrick. “I have a feeling this is going to be good. I so wish Wendy’s sold popcorn.”

I shushed him, not wanting to miss a word.

Emma glanced nervously at Tess before she spoke. “I just want to say . . . I’m sorry.”

“Huh?” I blurted out. “Why is
Emma
apologizing?”

Sadie’s eyes grew wide. Clearly, she couldn’t believe it either.

“It wasn’t right, us accusing you like that,” Emma went on. “It’s just—” She paused, and glanced again at Tess. “Everyone’s been talking. And we had to know the truth.”

“We hope you can forgive us,” Tess added. “We’re really, really sorry.”

I was completely, one hundred percent baffled by this turn of events. What the hell had I missed?

Don’t apologize to HER. She’s the bad guy. She’s the liar!

Sadie stared down at her feet. “For the record, I want you both to know that Jacob Fischer and I are just friends. We’ve always
just
been friends. Even since before Brie and I met.” Her voice wavered. “You guys believe me, don’t you?”

Emma sighed. “Yeah. We do. You just have to admit—”

“I’m not stupid.” Sadie wiped her eyes. “I know what people have been saying about me. But finding out that you guys believed it too . . .”

“No! No, no, NO!” I screamed, wishing I could shake Emma and Tess. “She is ACTING. Do not believe a word she’s telling you!”

“. . . it just really hurt my feelings.”

Oh, you bitch. You complete and total bitch.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take any of it. I wound up, right then and there, and kicked the car’s back tire as hard as I possibly could, screaming from the absolute pit of my stomach.

GOD!!!!!!!!!!

The car jolted big-time and I fell over onto the concrete, gasping in pain. “Owwwww,” I cried, holding my foot. “Owwww, ow, ow, ow,
oww
.”

Patrick’s mouth dropped open. He looked at the car, then back at me, then back at the car, beaming with pride. “Go. Team. EAGAN!”

“Whoa,”
Tess said, backing away from the car. “Did you guys feel that?”

“I definitely felt something,” Emma said. She kneeled down and checked the tire. “What the hell just happened?”

Sadie scanned the parking lot to see if anyone else had noticed. “Maybe it was an earthquake or something?”

I sat up, realizing what I had done.

Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Ohmigod.

An enormous smile broke out across my face. “I did it. I did it again. I freaking MADE CONTACT.”

“
Yeah,
you did!” He nodded at the car, grinning. “Do it again.”

I focused my emotions.

Control.

I kicked again, aiming for the door this time.

“Shit!” Tess jumped back. My foot had left a small dent.

I threw my head back and yelled, “I’m on fire!”

Patrick held up his hand to give me a giant high five.

I swung. And missed.

“Well, then,” Patrick said. “Guess we’ll just keep working on those high fives.”

I laughed, not caring. I felt totally empowered and like I could do just about anything, high-fiving aside. Watching Sadie stoop to the all-time low, and having the guts to lie about it, I was officially More Than Ready to test-drive my newfound abilities. My skin was seething with an uncontrollable, desperate urge to inflict some serious damage. Because every girl knows the First Commandment when it comes to best friends:

thou shalt not steal thy bff’s boyfriend

I jumped up on the hood of Emma’s car and let loose with one more power kick. Only this time, when my foot made contact, it cracked a hole right smack into the windshield. The girls’ mouths fell wide open as they watched big, chunky shards of glass shatter onto the asphalt.

They started screaming. Emma and Tess jumped into their car and Sadie made a dash for hers. “Call you later!” Emma yelled to Sadie as they all sped out of the parking lot.

“Well, shoot, there goes our ride,” said Patrick.

I wasn’t listening. “What day is it?”

He looked up at the sun. “Using what I learned in chapter thirteen of the
D and G
—‘Expert Survival Skills’—I’d say it is approximately April twenty-eighth.”

“What day of the week, I mean.”

“Wait a second.” I saw him reach for something.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

His face erupted into a guilty smile as he held up Sadie’s phone.

Holy jackpot, Batman.

He pressed a button and the screen came to life. “Correction,” he announced a second later. “It is April twenty-
ninth
. Friday.”

Friday
.
I searched my memory. Jacob had track practice every day after school, but Fridays were almost always reserved for meets.

Patrick double-checked to make sure that nobody with a pulse was watching. Then he shoved the phone into his pocket, making it invisible to the living world. It was now officially ours. A Found Object.

“Hand it over.” I held out my hand.

“Wait a sec,” he said. “What are you up to, String Cheese?”

“Who, little old me? Why, sir, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Listen.” His voice grew serious. “I’ll go along with this for a little bit longer. But I don’t want you getting totally carried away. There are some rules you’ve gotta play by, Cheeto.”

“Oh yeah?” I challenged. “Like what?”

“Like forgetting these idiots so you can move on, and
R
to the
I
to the
P,
already. And another thing.” He looked me straight in the eye. “Soon we will have to go back to Slice. Soon you will have to leave them behind. You know that, right?”

I glared back, not saying a word. Patrick was a good guy, and I’d started to care for him. But there was no way he was ever going to understand me. How could he? He was just a dude from the ’80s who’d had some bad luck driving too fast on his motorcycle. What the hell could he know about love or loss or what it really felt like to have your heart torn apart?

A whole lotta nothing, that’s what.

I made my mind up right then that I wasn’t going back to Slice.

Not now, and not ever.

I did my best to hide the thought, just in case Patrick was lurking around inside my head. Did my best to at least
sound
like I was telling the truth.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I know we have to go back.”

I guess Sadie wasn’t the only one who could tell a good lie. Because Patrick bought it.

He smiled. “Okay then.”

I felt guilty, sure, but not guilty enough to change my mind. Because come hell or high water, there was no one who could make me go back.

Not Patrick. Not Crossword Lady. Not the devil himself.

No one.

CHAPTER 25

permanently black and blue, permanently blue, for you

I
decided to wait for Jacob exactly seven blocks from the PCH campus, right in the exact same spot he rode by every single day (Bo-Bo’s), on the exact same old bike (black Raleigh Performance Hybrid), at the exact same time as usual (2:42 p.m.).

Any minute now, I was sure of it, he’d be on his way to Belcher Field—which everyone called The Burp—where the PCH track team always held track meets. Not that I was obsessive or anything.

Au contraire, mon frere.

For the record, I would like to point out that it is NOT being obsessive to memorize a boy’s schedule so that you can accidentally bump into him. It is called being efficient. Why waste time and energy running around town trying to guess where a guy’s going to be, when instead, you can actually
know
? And then you can actually be there. Pretty straightforward stuff, I tend to think.

Um yeah, cause you’re a stalker
.

Patrick gave me a look that said he wasn’t kidding. “
Fac ut vivas
,” he spouted in Latin. Otherwise known as Get a life.”

I waved him off and scanned the block for the seventeenth time so I wouldn’t miss Jacob flying by. “It’s not like I used to jog by his house every half hour or anything.”

“Right. I’m sure once an hour was plenty.”

I smacked his arm.

A few more minutes passed and Patrick began to grow restless. “He’s not coming, Cheeto. We’re being dumb. Or allow me to rephrase.
You
are being dumb.”

I spun to face him. “Well,
you
can leave. In fact, would you? You’re messing with my concentration and I want to be ready.”

“Oh, trying to get rid of me, are you?” He leaned back against his telephone pole. “Hate to break it to you, but I’m not going anywhere.”

I shook my head, exasperated. “Stay, go, whatever. I really don’t care.”

All of a sudden—my senses on high alert—I heard the sound of bike wheels. I felt a cool, nervous sweat break out all over me. He was close. I could sense it. And then I saw the front tire of his bike make a right turn onto Mill Street.

I froze. It was really him. His hair was wild like he hadn’t cut it in months, and he looked broader across the shoulders.

He’s getting older
.

The thought stung a little. Everyone was getting older. Everyone but me.

“Ready?” I hunkered down, taking position.

“I still say you’re crazy,” Patrick grumbled.

“That’s funny, because I don’t remember asking for your opinion.”

The two of us stood opposite each other, about six feet apart—Patrick against the telephone pole and me against the window of the Garden Deli Café, where PCH seniors always came for lunch. The plan was to give Jacob a big scare right before his track meet. He was pretty superstitious, especially when it came to track, so I wanted to do something that would really freak him out and—hopefully—ensure he’d fall apart in front of the whole school. I needed to embarrass him.

No, I needed to
humiliate
him.

“Let the games begin,” I whispered.

He biked closer and closer, until finally I could see the whites of his eyes. My own personal Battle of Bunker Hill.

Uh, taking this a little far, aren’t we?

“Wait for it,” I said. “Wait for it . . . okay, now!” We jumped into Jacob’s path, using our arms to make a chain like in the game Red Rover. I squeezed my eyes shut just as Jacob rode directly
through
me.

I could hear the sound of his heart beating in his chest. I could feel his pulse traveling through my veins. I could smell the dirt under his fingernails. For half a second, I dared myself to open my eyes. It was incredible, like a real life version of Mrs. Frizzle and her magic school bus, traveling through the human body. I saw his blood and cells and arteries, all living and breathing and pumping around me in a perfect, pulsing rhythm. Everything Jacob Fischer was engulfed me all at once, and the force of it almost knocked the wind out of me.

I dug my heels in deeper. I wasn’t going anywhere.

I am strong. I am powerful. I am in control.

“Holy crap!” Jacob yelled, losing control of his handlebars. I heard the chain pop off his bike as he skidded to the left, crashing right into the pile of trash bags I’d dragged over from behind the deli. His bike went slamming into the telephone pole and into the street. An oncoming car swerved, but ran over the back wheel.

Tha-WUMP.

“Man down!” I threw my arms in the air and broke into a small victory dance. Jacob groaned and rolled over in a big pile of stale hoagies and old salami.

“Congratulations,” Patrick said. “Happy now?”

I skipped toward him and gave him a tiny kiss on the cheek. “Yup.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “What was that for?”

I smiled. “For being an excellent partner in crime.”

Jacob slowly climbed out of the trash heap and got to his feet. He looked super-confused and—just as I’d geniusly predicted—super-freaked-out.

“Hey, you okay?” A guy from the deli poked his head outside. “We all saw you wipe out, dude, that looked rough.” He nodded at the pile of trash and laughed. “Lucky fall, though. We usually don’t push the garbage out until closing. Looks like someone’s watching out for you.”

Oh, you have no idea.

“Yeah,” said Jacob. “I’m not sure what happened there. Guess I zoned out for a second or something.” He eyed his bike and the filthy sidewalk. “Sorry for the mess, man. I’ll clean it up.”

“That’s right,” I snapped. “You’ve made a big mess, Fischer. And I’m here to make sure you
do
clean it up.”

Patrick smacked his head. “Women.”

“Onward!” I grabbed his hand. And zoomed us straight to The Burp.