This Is So Not Happening (11 page)

But then I thought that would actually never happen. Because Jake was probably off with Chloe somewhere, shopping or eating or planning or just being. And just thinking about that made me feel like the decades of crud wedged between the floorboards on the stage below.

So I didn’t move Lincoln’s arm. And an hour later, we’d finished the entire bag of caramels. Together.

When I turned onto Vista View Lane on Monday afternoon, I was singing as loud as I could. It was warm for October and I had the top down on the Jeep, but I wasn’t in the best mood. Ally and I had made up on Sunday after the Saturday night date from hell, but I’d felt weird around her today. It was like I
was so afraid to do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing that we’d barely talked. Then I’d had a pop quiz in Spanish, practice had sucked, and tonight Chloe and I were finally getting our parents together to tell them. So I wasn’t singing out of joy or anything. I was singing out of terror.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone sitting on the curb and I slammed on the brakes. It was Chloe. She was doubled over with her head between her knees and it looked like she was heaving. I put the Jeep in park in the middle of the road—our houses were the only two on the street anyway, so who gave a shit—and ran over to her.

“Chloe! Are you okay?” I crouched down next to her.

She shook her head, keeping it down, the tip of her ponytail dragging through a pile of broken acorns near the curb.

“What happened? Is it the baby?” I asked. I went to put my hand on her back, but wasn’t sure I should touch her.

“Do you … have any … water?” she said between gasps.

“Um, yeah! Hang on!” I ran back to the Jeep and grabbed the half-empty Vitamin Water I’d opened after practice. “Here,” I said, sliding it between her legs under her hair.

She picked it up shakily and lifted her head very slowly. With her eyes closed she took a small sip. Then she took some more. She leaned into my side and soon she started to breathe normally again.

“What happened?” I repeated.

“I don’t know,” she replied. She breathed in and out slowly, like she was testing it out for the first time. “I went for a jog and I was totally fine, but then when I started up the hill I got dizzy.”

“You went for a jog? Are you supposed to do that with the, I mean in your—”

Chloe let out a small laugh. “Charlotte did it in
Sex and the City
. Her doctor told her it was totally fine because she’d always been a runner, so I figured …”

Sex and the City
? Seriously? That was where she was getting her medical advice?

“Did you ask
your
doctor?” I asked her, kneading my fingers together between my knees.

Chloe sat up straight. Her eyes flashed angrily. “I’m not gonna call her just because I want to go for a run. I felt fine. What’s the big deal?”

“Okay, okay!” I said, raising my hands. “I was just asking.” I licked my lips and looked down at her belly, which was starting to push out a little bit. “Maybe you’re just nervous about tonight or something and it stressed you out.”

“Maybe,” she said, slumping. “I mean, I’m definitely scared out of my mind, so it’s possible.”

She drained the rest of the Vitamin Water and handed me back the empty bottle. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“So you and your parents are coming over at eight, right?” she asked hopefully.

I nodded, my heart pounding all over again. “We’ll be there.”

Chloe blew out a sigh. “I can’t believe we’re finally going to do this.”

“Me neither,” I said.

I turned my head to look into her eyes and she looked right back at me, completely determined. I hoped I looked the same way, but I had a feeling I looked how I felt.

Like I would do anything to be anywhere but here.

“What do you think? Will people be comfortable buying coffee from a face like this?”

My dad turned to look at me. Faith had painted his face with all shades of gray, radiating black veins out from around his eyes and coloring his lips black as well. He was the perfect zombie.

“What? Is something different?” I joked.

He got up from his stool and made like he was going to give me a big smooch, and I shrieked and ducked away. A few of the Harvest Festival patrons saw us and laughed, probably thinking we were a carefree father and daughter, just having a good time at the school’s annual autumn fund-raiser. Little did they know I was basically dying inside. Heck, my dad didn’t even know that.

But tonight was the night. Chloe and Jake were finally going to tell their parents. Tomorrow, I could be planning my boyfriend’s funeral. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it, no matter how many pumpkins I painted onto little kids’ cheeks, no matter how beautiful and sunny a fall day it was.

“Thanks, Faith,” my father said, finally giving up on painting me with his face. He handed her a five-dollar bill and told her to keep the change. “I’ll see you for dinner tonight, Ally?”

“I’ll be there,” I replied, retaking my seat at the face-painting booth.

My dad waved and disappeared into the crowd.

“Your dad is
so
sweet,” Faith said, watching him go. She was standing next to my chair, wearing skinny jeans and a white
turtleneck. As soon as we’d opened for business, she had painted a bunny face on herself, complete with a pink nose and whiskers. “I feel bad that I hated him for so long.”

“Yeah. Thanks for that,” I said, fiddling with the set of wax crayons in front of me.

It was nice that my dad had shown up to support the Drama Club’s Harvest Fest booth, something my mother, who worked at the school that was two hundred yards away, hadn’t bothered to do. She was, of course, out with Gray somewhere doing wedding stuff. Sometimes I felt as if Jake had replaced me with Chloe and my mom had replaced me with Gray. It was a good thing my dad didn’t have a girlfriend or I might have started to feel like a seventh wheel.

“Does he know? About Jake and Chloe?” Faith asked.

My heart squeezed tightly in my chest. I felt like I’d been lying to both my parents for weeks. But was it really lying if you just weren’t telling them something?

“Nope.” I sighed.

“Okay,
what
is your deal?” Faith demanded, slamming the lockbox closed. “You just sighed three times in a row.”

“Just wondering how, exactly, Mr. Appleby is going to execute my boyfriend,” I said lightly, resting my chin on my hand. I had a ghost painted on one cheek, and made sure to keep my fingertips away from it so it wouldn’t smudge. “Is he more of a gun person or a knife person?”

Faith clucked her tongue and reached back to check her braided bun, adjusting a bobby pin near the base. “And they call me a drama queen.”

“Aren’t you even a teeny bit worried?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over some girl who was shrieking about
her win at the dart booth. “I mean, that man is scary.”

“Okay, yes.” Faith sat down next to me and straightened our tools on the table. “I can’t even imagine how they’re dealing. But no one’s actually going to strangle Jake, right? I mean, Mr. Appleby isn’t certifiable. Just … intimidating. And besides, he forgave your father, right?”

Somehow her logic was not improving my mood. Part of the reason Mr. Appleby had been the first Crestie to forgive my dad for losing scads of money was because he was the only one smart enough not to invest with my dad, or so I assumed. My guess was Jake wasn’t about to get the same kind of leniency. I was about to sigh again, but I caught myself just in time. Kids from school crowded the football field, gathering around the kettle corn booth and clamoring for the next shot at the strongman test. There were some younger moms there with their kids in strollers, most of whom had already dropped a buck for balloons, so colorful orbs bobbed around everywhere. It was festive in that quaint, autumnal Orchard Hill way.

I stared out at the happy faces surrounding me and couldn’t help feeling the tiniest bit jealous. This was my senior year. My last Harvest Festival. Potentially my last fall in Orchard Hill. Shouldn’t I be having fun instead of obsessing about my boyfriend and the girl he’d gotten preggers?

“This sucks,” I muttered, picking at a piece of lint on my cords.

“Well, we’re not making any money being depressing and pouty,” Faith said. Then she stood up, plastered on a grin, and started shouting. “Face painting! Two dollars! Two dollars to be transformed into a totally original walking piece of art!”

Faith was just roping in a second grader and her mom when
Annie came bounding over to us wearing her black-and-white-striped tights, a black tulle skirt, a black long-sleeved T-shirt, and a witch’s hat.

“Wow, you’re in the spirit,” I said flatly.

Annie’s brow knit. “And you are
so
not. What gives, Little Miss Frown?”

“Tonight’s the big reveal,” Faith said, looking up from the spiderweb she was drawing on her little customer’s face. “Jake and Chloe … you know.”

She rolled her eyes up at the kid’s mom, having enough sense, at least, not to mention what the big reveal was about.

“Ugh. I’m so sick of those two making you look suicidal,” Annie said, earning an appalled look from the mom. She pursed her lips and studied me for a moment. “You know what you need? You need a random hook-up. A revenge hook-up. Square things up between you and Jake.”

The little kid’s mother gasped and tugged him off the chair before Faith could finish her masterpiece. They disappeared into the crowd, the mom shooting dirty looks back over her shoulder. Annie didn’t even seem to notice.

“Great! You just lost us two dollars,” Faith groused, throwing her hands up.

Annie ignored her and started to turn in a slow circle, tapping her index finger against her chin. “Now, let’s see … who would be a good random hook-up for Ally Ryan …?”

“Annie, stop. I don’t want a random hook-up,” I said, glancing nervously at Faith, who had one of the biggest mouths in Northern New Jersey. Neither of them knew I had already, briefly, psychotically considered a random hook-up with Lincoln. And neither of them would
ever
know that.

“Yes, you do. You just don’t know it yet,” Annie said. She tilted her head as a pack of jersey-sporting football players strolled by. “Hmmm … Will Halloran’s kind of hot.”

I gave Will the once-over and mentally agreed. Will had one of those compact, muscular, running-back bodies that made girls swoon whenever he happened to take his shirt off. Couple that with the warm brown eyes, the killer smile, and the genuine nice-guy attitude, and he’d be a good hook-up for anyone. Just not me.

“Not my type,” I said, hoping she would drop it.

As the football team headed toward the popcorn booth, Lincoln himself sidled up behind Annie. He had an eye patch over one eye and a red bandana tied around his head. Wisps of his red hair stuck out over his eyes and around his ears.

“S’up?” he said, holding out his ever-present wax-paper bag. “Nonpareil?”

Annie turned and slowly ran her eyes over him. I blushed. Hard. Suddenly I recalled the feeling of his arm around me, his thumb hooked into my waistband, and I could hardly look him in the eye.

“How much sugar would you say you consume in one day?” I asked him, trying to be normal and pretend like I didn’t know my BFF was sizing him up for potential sexual relations.

“It’s less if you take one.” He smirked and shook the bag in front of me. I rolled my eyes as I plucked a chocolate. Annie stepped behind him, checked out his butt, and gave me a thumbs-up over his shoulder.

“Stop it!” I said through clenched teeth.

“Stop what?” Lincoln looked confused.

“Nothing. Forget it.”

I grabbed a handful of candy and stuffed it in my mouth. Annie stepped out from behind Lincoln.

“I’m gonna go check on the ice-cream stand,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Huge mistake assigning it to the jazz band. They’re eating the profits and then some.”

As she walked off, taking slow, sideways steps, she lifted a hand next to her cheek to block her lips from his sight, and mouthed to me, “He’s cute! Do
him
!”

I almost choked. Luckily, Annie had had enough with the torture. She whirled away, tulle spinning, disappearing quickly into the crowd.

“So. Mrs. Thompson tells me I’m supposed to paint faces. Which is good because I rock at art,” Lincoln said, using his tongue to dislodge some chocolate wedged between his teeth and his cheek.

“Really?” Faith said.

“No.” He looked me up and down. “You don’t look busy. Wanna give me a goatee and a scar? Make me look authentic?”

I swallowed the massive mound of melting chocolate and licked my lips. I felt hot from head to toe, and was glad to have something to distract me from thoughts of Lincoln’s butt. Was Annie right about its thumbs-up-worthiness?

“Sure,” I replied, gesturing to the chair at the end of the table. “Have a seat.”

Lincoln complied, dropping the wax-paper bag on the table and dusting some white sprinkles from his fingers. I picked up a black crayon and hesitated, looking him in the eye.

Okay. No more butt-thoughts, but now I was looking right into his eyes. His intensely green, smiling eyes. And suddenly I realized there was no way to do this without touching his
face. I’d been doing it all day. Holding the person’s chin, tilting the cheek, tilting it back again. Was I going to touch Lincoln Carter’s face right now? My pulse began to thrum in my ears. I could feel that I was blushing and I felt the sudden need to track down Annie and kick her in the shin.

“Just be gentle,” he said seriously.

I laughed nervously and rolled my eyes. “I promise.”

As I leaned in to start his goatee, Faith eyed me curiously. I hoped she wasn’t putting two and two together—that she wasn’t thinking I was considering Annie’s suggestion. Because I wasn’t. Not anymore. Lincoln just had a flirtatious personality. That was it.

Besides. I hadn’t thought about Jake and Chloe in two whole minutes. That had to be some kind of record.

I was sitting at the huge table in the Applebys’ dining room, staring at this champagne pear salad thing that Mrs. Appleby could not shut up about, when Chloe’s fork suddenly clattered against her china plate.