The Pretty One (7 page)

I nod as I follow her over, putting my hand on my purse, ready to pull out my wallet. Lucy puts her hand on mine and shakes her head. “Put that away,” she says, stopping by a table filled with guys.

“I thought we were going to get something to drink.”

Lucy locks eyes with a guy at the table and smiles. “We are,” she says.

“I don't know about this, Lucy,” I say nervously. “Maybe we should just find a place to sit by ourselves.”

“There aren't any seats,” she proclaims, still maintaining eye contact.

“But I don't know how to do…to do…
this,
” I say, stepping out of the way as a studious-looking guy with braces leads a pretty brown-haired girl to the dance floor.

“All you have to do is talk to them,” Lucy says. “Ask them questions about themselves. All guys
love
to talk about themselves.”

“Questions,” I repeat. “Like where they live and stuff?”

“Anything at all. They love it. And you just need to sit there and open up your eyes really wide and nod your head, as if you're interested.”

“Really? That works?”

“Definitely. Oh—and guys love to be teased. They eat it up.”

“This seems like a lot to remember.”

“And if you really like them, you touch them.”

Um, excuse me? “What do you mean, I
touch
them?”

“Just like a little flirty touch, like if they have something in their pocket you lean over and pull it out, something like that.”

“What?” I am utterly and totally confused.
“Hey, what's THIS in your pocket…why…it's a…a RABBIT!”

“You girls want to sit down?” eye contact guy asks, waving us over.

“Sure,” Lucy says to them. She gives me a little smile of encouragement as she nods toward the table.

Gulp. It's showtime.

“What if I say something stupid?” I nervously whisper as I hover behind Lucy.

“Hah! Like they'd even notice.” Lucy turns back toward the guy-filled table. She motions for me to take the seat next to her, right smack next to the cutest boy in the group.

“What's your name?” she immediately asks the one sitting next to her.

“Alex Neumer,” he says.

“Alex Neumer,” she repeats, offering him her hand. “I'm Lucy Fletcher. And this is my sister, Megan.”

“Hi, Megan,” he says, giving me a wave. “That's Ben, John, and Ron,” he says, pointing around the table.

“John and Ron…cute,” Lucy says, and they all laugh. “You guys aren't brothers, are you?” This is how my sister memorizes names. Right after she meets someone, she makes a little comment about his or her name and just like that, poof, it's committed to her memory for life. She could run into them ten years later and she'd be like, “Hey, Ron, remember me, Lucy Fletcher? We met at that club back in…blah, blah, blah.” I, however, had none of those skills and had instead committed this to memory: right next to Lucy, “pouffy-haired cute guy” next to him, “red-haired guy” next to him, “braces guy” and next to me, “cute, skinny guy.”

“No,” red-haired guy chuckles.

“I guess that would be a little much.” Lucy grins.

They all seem to lean a little bit closer to her, as if hanging on her every word. It has taken Lucy about one second to have them eating out of her hand.

“Do you guys want something to drink?” braces guy asks.

Lucy shrugs and looks at me. I can tell it's my turn to speak.

“A Diet Coke,” I mutter timidly.

“Make that two…
John,
” she says. Braces man blushes (as if flattered she remembered his name) and the rest of the table laughs as if she just cracked a joke. “So where do you guys go to school?” Lucy asks.

Question. Always ask them questions.

“Gilman,” pouffy-haired cute guy says.

“Cute boys school,” Lucy whispers to me, just loud enough for the guys sitting on either side of us to hear. I know she did this intentionally, but I can feel the heat rise up my cheeks as my hands start to get a little sweaty.

“What about you?” Pouffy asks, responding to her compliment by putting his arm over the back of her chair.

Lucy nudges me under the table.

I'm up again? Already? “CSPA,” I spit out.

“Chesapeake School for Performing Arts,” Lucy explains.

“I've heard of that school,” red-haired guy says. “I saw that dance movie that was filmed there.”

“So in a couple of years you're going to be famous?” cute, skinny guy asks.

I laugh nervously. I've never received attention like this before and I'm baffled in a total fish-out-of-water sort of way.

“What time is it?” Lucy asks suddenly. “Is the game still going on?”

“You mean the Orioles?” braces guy asks, returning to the table and setting Diet Cokes in front of Lucy and me.

Lucy nods and takes a sip of her free Coke. Even though the stadium is about four blocks from our house and we could see it from our rooftop deck, until this moment I would've sworn Lucy didn't know who the Orioles were, or even that they had a game today.

“Four nothing, bottom of the seventh,” cute, skinny guy says, putting his hand over the back of my chair and leaning over me.

“Yes!” Lucy says enthusiastically, clapping her hands, as if she actually gave a crap.

“Are you a baseball fan, too?” cute, skinny guy asks me. He has blue eyes, like Drew, but even though they're a similar color, they don't have nearly the same intensity and depth of Drew's.

“Nah. What a waste of time.”

Cute, skinny guy looks stunned and a little offended, like I just made a joke at his mother's expense.

I make a face at Lucy. Oops.

I think about what Lucy instructed:
Ask questions.
“What about you?” I ask.

I wonder if I can remember all of this for when I see Drew.
Questions, tease, touch, questions, tease, touch….

“Orioles and Ravens, baby,” he says.

“My dad says the Ravens are a bunch of thugs,” I volunteer. “No, wait, I think he calls them hoodlums.”

He gives me a blank look. I give him a blank look.

I glance back at Lucy. I'm stumped.

But Lucy's not paying attention to me. “Oh my God! Is that a Popsicle stick in your pocket?” she asks, touching Pouffy's back pocket.

“This?” he asks, leaning forward as he pulls out his wallet. “It's my wallet.”

No offense to Lucy's technique, but there's no way that wallet looks like a Popsicle stick. Claiming that she thought it was a Popsicle stick had to be, hands down, the most idiotic, obviously stupid thing anyone had ever said.

Lucy nudges my leg under the table and I know she wants me to say something.

“I thought it was a Popsicle, too,” I announce. The whole table begins to grin and smile right along with us, which is all I need for encouragement. “I was like, why does that guy have a Popsicle in his pants!” I exclaim, inwardly wincing since it came out sounding way more perverted and stupid than I had intended.

But Lucy is right. No one seems to mind. I look around the table as they all continue to laugh, not
at
me, but
with
me. I rest my eyes on my sister, who's smiling at me, sending me a look of pure and total adoration. And suddenly I realize that this is right out of my fantasy moments. Cutting in front of a crowd, free drinks, a ratio of four boys to two girls, being able to say any stupid thing at all (to cute boys who would never have even noticed me before), and still have everyone think that I'm great…it makes me feel powerful, as if I can do anything. And it's all due to my new face. I once again remember what the doctor said as he handed me the mirror for the first time: “You're beautiful now, Megan. Everything is about to change….”

I turn to the boys and say, “Everyone thinks Yo-Yo Ma is such a great cellist. I think he's just a total spaz.”

They look at me, smiling, like I've just told them I want to go skinny-dipping with them. It's almost too good. It's like a reality show made just for me. So I say, “Why do you think they call it plutonium? What's wrong with Goofy? Why didn't he get his own element?” I'm thinking about saying something nasty about Harry Potter, but I decide to quit while I'm ahead. I take a sip of my drink, then I say, “Why do superheroes always wear underwear outside their pants?”

As the guys start to laugh, I give Lucy a big smile and toast her with my glass.

seven

curtain time (noun): the time at which a play or other performance is scheduled to begin.

It's my first day back at school. I've been up since five, so excited that I'm practically hyperventilating. The potential effects of my new appearance hadn't really registered until the other night at the club. But ever since then I've been feeling like a kid counting down the days until Christmas. I'm ready to burst into school and embrace my new life. Megan Fletcher, admired, adored, and appreciated.

I shower and blow my hair out straight and go back into my room, where I dress in the outfit I picked out weeks ago (with Lucy's help, of course)—short-sleeved, snug-fitting bright pink shirt, one-hundred-dollar jeans (size two!), and black flip-flops that have sparkly sequins glued to the top.

We always walk to school but since it's hot (and neither Lucy nor I want to risk pit stains on such a big, important day), my mom drives us. Mom pulls up directly in front of the school and Lucy and I climb out of her Buick Lucerne. She beeps the horn and blows a kiss as we walk away.

We're about a foot away from the steps leading up the main entrance when I stop dead in my tracks.

“What's wrong?” Lucy asks.

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for her. All I know is that I can't feel my toes. Or my legs. Or my hands. All I can feel is my heart racing in my chest and the Cheerios I had for breakfast bubbling in my belly.

“Come on,” Lucy says, encouraging me. She loops her arm through mine, practically pulling me toward the school. I'm walking with a stiff-legged gait I associate with the Boris Karloff Frankenstein. “I'm so excited for you,” she says. “Wait till Simon sees you. He was so miserable without you last year.”

Simon. Just the mention of him makes my knees unlock. I've missed the little bugger. Although he visited me whenever he could, I was in New York a lot over the past year, and even when I wasn't, a lot of the time I was just feeling too sick to be social, even if being social just meant watching
Battlestar Galactica
DVDs. The last time I saw him was right before he left for camp in June. I still had my braces on and a huge bandage on my nose from surgery.

Lucy and I walk past Ali Hankey, a wannabe stage designer I've known since middle school. She's sitting smack in the middle of the steps, drawing a skateboard on the cover of her notebook. “Hi,” I say.

“Hi, Lucy and um…hi,” she says, looking directly at me.

“Ali,” Lucy says, as we stop. “You remember Megan? My sister?”

Ali's mouth drops open.

Her reaction makes my heart beat even faster. Lucy grabs the door for me and motions for me to enter. A group of her friends (obviously alerted by Lucy that we were on our way) are waiting for me and begin clapping as I walk in the door.

As I step inside the clapping quiets down almost immediately as Lucy's friends take me in, inch by inch. There are stunned gasps and a lot of
“Oh my God. Look at you…you look amazing…you look totally different….”

Through the crowd I see Simon (who undoubtedly was alerted of my impending arrival by Lucy as well). He's standing at the end of the hall over by the production studio, staring directly at me.

“Megan?” he mouths, as if he's not quite sure.

I'm so happy to see him I break through the crowd and run to him, nearly knocking him over as I throw my arms around his neck. He laughs nervously, and jams his hands in his pockets as he takes a step back.

“I'm here!” I announce, just in case he hadn't noticed.

“I see,” he says, still staring at me.

“I look weird, don't I?” I whisper.

“Not weird,” he says. “Just different. Holy crap.”

“Exactly,” I say with a nod and smile. Standing before him, being so close to him, makes me feel one hundred percent better.

“I, ah…” He stops talking.

“I'm totally freaking out. I wish you could just stay with me all day.” I glance at the familiar cowlick flipping over his glasses. The black T-shirt that says “Joey's Bar.” The purple Bermuda shorts. The red socks and silver sneakers. It all combines to make me so happy that I throw my arms around his neck once again and rub my nose against his sawdust-smelling T-shirt. But he doesn't return my hug. He stands stiff as a board.

My sister puts her hands on my hips and leans around me. “I better get going,” she says happily. I can tell Lucy is thrilled to have me back in school again. “Call me if you need me.”

“I guess I should get going, too,” I say to Simon, checking my watch.

“Sure,” he says. “Maybe we can get together for lunch—unless of course you have other plans, which I completely understand…”

“Of course I want to have lunch with you,” I say. “Who else would I eat lunch with?” I suddenly remember that Simon has practically a year of solo lunches without me under his belt. Maybe he has a new crowd he sits with. “I'll see you before lunch anyway, remember? Lucheki's class?”

Last year Simon and I had almost all of the same classes. Although I have kept up with my academic courses while I was out, I still have to make up the set design classes that I missed last year, which, according to the deal my parents had worked out with the school, was going to entail summer school at NYU, which was totally cool and exciting. In the meantime, though, Simon and I only have one class together, Mr. Lucheki's Sound and Light Management.

“Yeah,” Simon says grinning from ear to ear. “Right.”

I do a double take, looking at him an extra moment, wondering why he's so smiley about a class where you learn how to point spotlights. I climb up the marble staircase, smiling at everyone even though there's a ton of people I don't recognize. I can't help but feel I'm in the twilight zone. I hadn't really had a chance to get to know the freshman crowd before my accident, and with the graduation of the seniors and the arrival of the new freshman class, there's been a lot of turnover.

From across the hall I see a familiar face: Catherine Bellows, the lumberjack who was so thrilled to help my sister decorate for the fall festival. She's wearing her trademark oversized overalls with her dirty brown hair pulled back in a plaid bandanna.

“Hey, Catherine,” I call out, giving her a friendly wave. She looks at me, and although she nods, acknowledging me, I can tell she's confused.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the rodent walking toward me, his eyes shifting nervously back and forth as he clutches his backpack to his chest. “Hey, Herbert!” I say cheerfully. He glances in my direction as he walks smack into an open locker.

“Are you okay?” I ask, helping him up.

“Uh, great,” he says, staring at me.

“It's good to see you again,” I say. And surprisingly enough, I honestly mean it. Not that I have missed the rodent, but I'm happy to be back, happy to see at least some people I recognize, happy to get back to life as normal.

“Do I know you?”

The rodent doesn't recognize me either.

Even though Lucy told me that no one would recognize me, I'm still surprised to find that it's true. “It's me,” I say. “Megan.”

“Megan?” he repeats, searching my eyes for some familiarity.

“Fletcher,” I add.

“Wild,” he finally murmurs. “Megan Fletcher.”

I leave the rodent and head to my locker. I must admit that all this excuse-me-do-I-know-you crap is beginning to wig me out. I open up my locker and discover that someone, namely Lucy, has been hard at work. All of my old pictures of Lucy and Simon and me have been taken down and in their place is a big “Welcome Back—We Love You” red Sharpie–printed sign that runs down the length of the door and is signed by so many people the signatures all blend together.

My first class is history, so I pull out my eight-hundred-page
Essential World History
book and brand-new spiral notebook and slam my locker shut just as George Longwell turns the corner. I stare straight ahead, determined to avoid rejection on my first day back. But this time, instead of ignoring me, he stops in front of me.

“Whoa there! I'm George,” he says, smiling at me and sticking out his hand. “George Longwell.”

He's introducing himself?

“Now's when you shake my hand,” he says as he continues to smile. I stick out my hand and he takes it in his. “Let me guess. Drama major, right?”

I shake my head. “Tech.”

“Tech?” he laughs. “Well, you'll certainly be a stand out.”

Oh crap. Does he not know who I am either?

“I just wanted to tell you that if you have any questions or anything, well, I'd be more than happy to help. This school can be a little intimidating at first. Do you know how to get to your first class?”

Well I guess that answers my question. “I'm not a freshman,” I say.

“Transfer student?”

And then I see him.
Drew.
My heart slams against my chest as he turns the corner, heading right toward me. As per usual, he's dressed in black from head to toe. His black, licorice-colored hair is just a tad longer than I remember, but his deep blue-green eyes are every bit as mesmerizing.

“Hey, Megan,” he says, nodding in my direction. “Welcome back.”

“Megan?” George says. “I love that name!”

But I don't acknowledge his compliment. I'm too distracted by Drew, who continues down the hall as if everything is exactly the same as it was before my accident. As if I still have the same old face and body.

And that, I decide, is not so good.

After school, Simon and I go to Spoons, our favorite coffee shop. Before my accident, Simon and I used to come here almost every day. Everyone, even the part-timers, knew that Simon always ordered a hot black tea and I had an iced mocha cappuccino and a chocolate chip cookie. But today, I don't recognize the person behind the counter. Not that it makes any difference. As I'm beginning to realize, she probably wouldn't have recognized me, either.

“Here's to your first day,” Simon says, toasting me with his cup. I gently knock his cup with mine. “Did it get any better?” he asks.

Simon is talking about a comment I made at lunch, when I told him that the hubbub over my new face was driving me crazy. It was nothing like my night at the club. For one, the only person I had hoped to wow by my new appearance (Drew) barely noticed me, and everyone else made me feel like a three-eyed monkey at the zoo. All day long people kept telling me how different I look and what an “amazing job they did.” After the fifty-millionth ohmyGodyoulookamazing I couldn't help but start to feel a little defensive because no one, not a single person, seemed even mildly upset by the fact that they would never
ever
see the old me again.

“Welcome to the Megan Fletcher freak show,” I say.

“What are you talking about?” Simon asks. “You're not a freak. Look at you! You're, well, incredible.”

“You look so different,”
I imitate in a high-pitched, annoying voice.
“You were so awful-looking before. Were you even human? You were like this twisted creation of monkey parts and cadavers, but now you look like a million bucks. The sight of you used to make my eyes bleed. Want to be my best friend?”

“It wasn't like that. Seriously. The whole school was talking about how hot you are now.”

I give him one of Lucy's big, dramatic sighs. “I'm not fishing for compliments. It's just, well, today wasn't exactly what I expected.”

“What'd you think would happen?”

“I don't know. When Lucy and I went to the club I felt, well, pretty. No one saw me as a former warthog made pretty by mad scientists. They didn't realize what everyone at school knows. That my parents didn't give me this face, the doctors did.”

“Megan,” Simon says. “No one was looking at you like a freak today. Believe me.”

I take a sip of my iced mocha cappuccino, my first one since my accident, and let it linger in my mouth before swallowing. But surprisingly, it doesn't taste as good as I remembered. It's more bitter than sweet.

“I'm just glad you're as good as new again,” Simon says. “Even better.”

“I may look different, but I'm not exactly better than I was before. I have to take that nose spray every day so that my nose doesn't run. And even then it still runs when my eyes water and stuff. And I have to sleep with a nose stent for the rest of my life.”

“A what?”

“I showed it to you before. It's that little thing that looks like a piece of rigatoni…the thing I have to stick in my nose at night.”

Although my nose before was extra large, most of the tissue was so embedded with gravel it was unusable. They had to cut out all the damaged parts and make do with what was left, pulling the skin so tight that I have to stretch out my nose every night just to make sure it keeps its shape. Otherwise my nostril will just close up tighter than an unroasted pistachio shell. I'm thinking about sharing all this with Simon, but I just don't feel like saying the word
nostril
out loud. Or
pistachio.