“How do you feel?” I rush to her side as the orderly takes off.
Her hair spills around her face in loose curls. It’s long and looks soft. Kelly has her hair sticking a foot in the air in every direction, sprayed solid like a helmet. But Melissa’s hair looks like you can actually run your fingers through it.
“I’m fine.” She tries to sit up a little and lets out a hard groan.
Without asking, I readjust her pillows and gently place one down her back to help her get into an upright position.
“Thanks.” Her eyes scour over my features intensely, eating me up as if she’s never seen another human before, and I’m back to feeling like shit. She clears her throat. “I’m just a little scared.” She pulls up the bed sheet and dabs fresh tears away, so I hand her a box of tissue. “Thank you. I don’t know why you’re being so nice to me. Really, you can go home. I gave the nurse my number. I’m sure my parents will be here soon.”
“I want to be here.” It’s true. There’s no way I’d leave her alone in this room, especially now, knowing she’s scared. “I want to make sure you’re okay. I could have killed you.” My voice cracks, and I clear my throat, trying to play it off. I’m known for a lot of things, and crying isn’t one of them, but ironically a part of me wants to bawl like a pussy.
Her lids flutter with water beading on the tips of her lashes, and her eyes glow an iridescent green set off with a sea of red veins. Her face is blotchy and puffy from crying, but she’s still pretty, not in a Kelly Masterson, heavily manufactured, store-bought kind of way, but naturally pretty, fresh-faced, something I find far more attractive.
“You didn’t kill me.” A smile wobbles on her lips. “I just don’t want you to be mad at me.” Tears spout from her eyes as a man in a greasy jumpsuit runs in.
“What the hell happened?” He leaps over and hugs her tight enough for me to assume this is her dad. He’s covered in dirt from head to toe. His short hair is patchy, leaving his scalp glistening orange underneath.
She murmurs something to him through tears, and I slowly back away. It takes about three minutes before he turns in my direction, his worry shifting to a far more curt expression, and I wonder if this is the part where I get my balls handed to me. Russell is right. He’s going to strangle me.
“It was nice of you to come.” The muscles in his jaw pop. “But you should probably go now. We’ll talk about this later.” His cheeks are cut high just like hers, same glowing green eyes. He looks nice. My own dad looks nice, and a lot of good that did him.
I look to Melissa a moment, her face heated an oven red.
“You mind if I talk to her for a second?”
He glances back to his daughter, and she gives a sharp nod for him to leave.
“You got thirty seconds, kid.” He takes off, and I swoop into the void he left by her side.
“Hey, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Do you have like a favorite food I can run out and get? Do you want me to bring your friends down here?”
She gives a nervous glance to the door and shakes her head frantically. Out of all of those people gathered around us at Glen, not one of them knew her name. Not one of them offered to jump into the ambulance or even try to help out. It broke my heart, and now I feel like an ass for making her feel bad about not having an entire posse clamoring to get into the room.
“Oh, no—actually, I’m good. My dad is here, and I’m sure my mom will run in screaming at any moment.” She glances down, her lashes still rung with liquid. “It was sort of my fault, so I don’t want you to feel too bad. Go ahead and take off. The nurse thinks I busted my leg, that’s all.”
“Shit.” I close my eyes a moment. A cheerleader and a broken leg don’t mix. That’s for sure. “What grade are you in?”
“I’m a junior.”
“First year on the team?” A slight swell of relief fills me. She’ll have next year, too. At least I didn’t completely end her cheer career at Glen—not that it’s any consolation.
Her lips crimp as if she’s staving off a full-blown cry. “It’s like no biggie. I guess like it wasn’t meant to be.”
A tiny smile plays on my lips. Something about the way she infused like into her sentences reminds me of Tracy, my kid sister. She talks like a freaking Valley Girl twenty-four seven, and it makes me insane, but right now, I’d welcome Melissa talking in just about any language. Kelly talks that way, too, but mostly to her annoying friends and with a much more aggressive spirit behind it. Kelly seems to have a much more aggressive spirit in just about every respect these days. Her stratospheric popularity at Glen has changed her. Hell, she’s probably the person she’s always been. I’ve just been too blind to notice.
“It is a big deal,” I say. “Look, I’m not taking off. I’ll be in the waiting room until I hear you’re okay.”
Just as Melissa predicted, a hysterical woman rushes in, hands flailing, her face covered with tears and thick tracks of snot.
Here we go.
I back up slowly, giving a quiet wave as I take off for the waiting area.
This right here is what happens when I get my head so locked up in my misery that I can’t see straight. I’m so pissed I can punch a hole through a door.
Melissa thinks she’s to blame.
If only she knew who was really at fault and why.
* * *
“A broken leg.” Mom gives a solemn nod as we sit around the formal dining room table. The set is heavily lacquered and smells like a paint factory. Mom had it imported from Beijing, and we’re never allowed to enter this room unless one of her extensive dinner parties is taking place or there is a dire family emergency such as this. “I suppose it could have been worse. At least she didn’t have her brains spilled out on the sidewalk.”
“Like seriously?” Tracy bops in her seat, her ponytail swinging counterclockwise like the blade of a helicopter. “That’s like grody to the max.”
“Shut up, Tracy,” I say it gently enough. Tracy and I are pretty close, even if she is just starting out in junior high. I plan on keeping an extra eye on her now that the boys have come sniffing around.
The last time my mother, father, sisters, and I sat around the glossy mahogany was when my sister, Tiffany, tearfully confessed she had gotten knocked up. Tiffany ended up losing the baby a few days later, and we’ve kept it quiet ever since. I’ve never breathed a word of the incident, not even to Kelly, despite her no-secrets policy. There are some things not even she can drag out of me. It taught me a lesson, though. I never leave the house without a rubber in my wallet. I don’t care how many times Kelly gets pissed because she claims she’s on the pill. It’s not that I don’t believe her. It’s just that I’m not taking any chances.
Tiffany is still with Richard, so I try not to get too worked up over it. They’re both at the same state school, but Tiff doesn’t leave until next weekend, so she gets to witness my debacle in the dining room of horrors.
“No internal injuries,” I reassure my parents.
My father is a man of very little emotion. He’s a man’s man with his tall, fit physique, dark hair, and bright blue eyes. I’m his spitting image, so anytime I want to know what I’ll look like thirty years from now, I just need to glance at my pops, and I know. I hope to God all I inherited from him are his looks. My gut churns when I think about the things I’ve recently learned about him. It was the foremost thing fogging up my brain this afternoon when I dropped my truck into reverse and backed out without so much as a glance. My mother is pretty, petite, with blonde hair she retouches at the salon like clockwork every six weeks—model-like features. Tiffany isn’t quite her doppelganger. She’s more of a mix of both of my parents. Tracy, on the other hand, looks just like me. Lucky or unlucky, I can’t figure out which. She’s pretty, though, thus the boys sniffing around in the yard.
“They’ll sue.” Dad nods, stating it calm as a fact. “But that’s what we have insurance for. You pay the umbrella this year?” His tone grows hard as he questions my
mother.
“Always.” She pats his hand. “But there are still ways they can suck us dry.” She looks to me, her eyes alive and wild with panic. “What do you know about this Melissa person? Russell mentioned she was one of the San Ramos kids.” Her chin drops a notch when she says San Ramos as if it were a dirty word. “Do you think she did this on purpose?”
“Do I think she let me back into her with a five thousand pound vehicle as part of some ridiculous get-rich-quick scheme? No.” As much as I’d like to be shocked at my mother’s suggestion, I know it comes from a very real place. Last year, our neighbor, Mr. Roland, had some asshole stop short on his bike in front of Mr. Roland’s Cadillac and sued the ever-living shit out of him. Since then, we’ve heard dozens of these scams cropping up. “She’s just a kid. She’s a cheerleader. The parking lot was busy. Everyone was trying to get out, and my head was pumped full of bullshit.”
“Are you saying this is your fault?” My father’s voice rises, and both my sisters and I exchange glances. “You never fucking admit it, Joel. I knew we never should have pushed that damn football bullshit. You should have stayed the course and dove into your studies like me—not running around in tights like some fucking meathead.” He slams his palms over the table, and the crystal candlesticks dance over a few inches. The room fills with a thick silence. My father doesn’t cuss. He doesn’t slap people, much less furniture. And he’s never put down my desire to participate in organized sports. “Did you see her?”
“No.”
“Then it was an accident.” He gets up and storms out of the room. “I don’t want to hear another damn thing about it.” The front door slams, and a wake of silence trails him as I look to my mother.
“I’ll talk to our attorney first thing in the morning just to be sure we’re covered. In the meantime, young man, you are going to do some serious damage control.” Her eyes bug out, and a part of me wants to let out a nervous laugh.
“As in?” I’m not too sure I want to know.
“As in be nice to her. You’ll be her personal chauffeur if need be. A broken leg requires crutches. You’ll hold her book bag and make sure she gets to and from class in one piece.”
Tracy snickers. “Kelly is like gonna be so freaking pissed!” Tracy isn’t Kelly’s biggest fan. Kelly treats her like a nuisance, and I can’t stand it when she does it. Tracy is just a kid. She looks up to Kelly, or at least she did before she put down her wardrobe choice a few weeks back. Tracy made it clear she was over her bullshit, and that was right around the time I started to come up with the same conclusion.
“Kelly will get over it.” Mom over annunciates the words in her newfound rage. “Hell, this girl will be your next girlfriend if that’s what it takes. All I ask is that you try to defuse the situation as best as you can.” She glances to the door before leaning in. “I may have forgotten to pay the umbrella—the insurance was canceled a few weeks back.” Her eyes shut tight. Her lips clamp together so hard they press as white as the walls behind her.
Both my sisters and I take a heavy breath.
“Shit,” I hiss. “So they can come after you and Dad?”
Mom gives a nauseating smile as she fans her hands over the opulent room. “If they get a good shark on their side—they can take everything.”
Tiff shakes her head. “Holy hell.” She doesn’t bother hiding her disappointment in me. “Way to go, meathead.”
Tracy cringes. The silver tracks in her mouth catch the light. “Like, meathead, seriously? Eww.” She offers a comforting hug before jumping out of her chair.
We disband, and I take off for my room. It takes about a dozen phone calls just to try to get her number.
“You have it?” I pinch my eyes shut while talking to Frankie on the other line. Frankie has been my buddy since we first met in homeroom, first day of freshman year.
“The girl is like a ghost. But, yeah, I got it. This is me you’re talking to. I freaking know everything.”
“Great, you know it all. Let’s have it.” I jot the number down and stare at those seven digits a good long while.
My door bursts open, and Kelly launches at me in hysterics.
“I gotta run, man.” I hang up and frown as she wraps her body around mine, coiled tight like a snake. The thick scent of her sugary perfume chokes the shit out of me.
“I like can’t believe you killed a fucking cheerleader!” She sobs into my neck. Her hot breath pants over my shoulder in quick bursts.
“I didn’t kill her. I broke her leg.” I pluck her heated body off mine. Kelly has a killer body—a face to match, but her personality can be just as lethal, and it’s not a good thing.
“You didn’t kill her?” She blinks away the tears as if they were just as easy to turn on as they are off. I learned long ago that Kelly has mastered the fine art of faucet tears. They come in handy when she needs to get her way in life. “So it’s all good.” She shudders as if shaking off a bad dream. “Like who is she?” Her brows rise in anticipation as she goes from worry to elation in one fell swoop. “Was it Fatima? I’m like so next in line to be captain.” She slides the pendant I gave her last Christmas over her necklace back and forth with glee, and the sizzle enlivens the air.
“It was Melissa Malinowski.”
“Melissa who?” Kelly actually manages to look offended by the poor girl’s last name. I’ve seen Kelly’s reactions to a myriad of things, and very rarely does she impress me. Her sour face regarding someone’s last name is definitely not cool.
“Malinowski. She’s a junior. She was just about to start cheer.”
“Oh, so like now you know everything about this girl.” It doesn’t take much to send Kelly spiraling into a jealous rage. The words you know sound more like you knew. It’s the Val speak again. I get it. The girls think it’s cool, but for some reason, it grates on me when Kelly does it.
“I hit her—I didn’t hit on her. There’s a difference.”
“Like I’m so sure. Don’t get smart with me, you know?” She slips off the bed, pouting like a baby. I used to think it was cute when she did that. I used to think it was adorable as hell when she acted like she was three, and now I see it for what it’s always been, bratty. “It’s totally over anyway.” She shrugs it off as if comforting herself, and for a hopeful second, I think she’s talking about us. “Mouse-akowski lives. The end.”
Crap. I close my eyes a moment too long. The last thing I want is for Kelly and her unreasonable jealousy to make this poor girl’s life miserable. “Look, don’t call her that—okay?”
“Like forget about her already. We have more important things on the brain.” She pulls the collar on my polo up around my ears. I hate that preppy look, but I know she loves it, and in truth, she’s the only reason I wear these alligator stamped shirts. “A bunch of us are going to the movies tomorrow night—last Saturday night of summer. You’re picking me up at seven. We’re going to La Chispa with Michelle and Danny for dinner. I’m wearing baby blue—try not to clash. No reds, and for fuck’s sake, no pink. I hate that color on you. We’ll be discussing the first week of school, pick-up times, dress codes, where and with whom to lunch. Senior year is serious shit, Joel. It’s going to be big.” She pulls me in by the shirt, a veiled threat looming in her eyes. “We’re going to be big. There’s no time for shitting around.”
A moment strokes by as I try to formulate the right words in a language that Kelly might actually understand.
“I’m not going.” There—plain and simple—the King’s English—an old favorite. “I won’t be able to drive you to school either. I have to deal with the fallout of backing into Melissa. Just give me a few weeks to get my bearings. I’ve got—”
“What?” She squawks so loud, so incredulously shocked you would think I sprouted a third eye. Kelly sucks the air right out of the room, the atmosphere itself afraid to stay and witness what’s about to happen next. Then in a display of unexpected emotion, Kelly softens. She sags into me, stroking my thigh. “I get it.
You’ve had a really rough day.” She gives a convincing circular nod. “I think like this girl owes you one serious apology for like trying to ruin our senior year. Does she even know who you are? You’re Joel Fucking Miller.” She growls as she makes her way to the door. “Don’t worry about tomorrow night.” She swallows hard as if the words were hard to push out. “I’ll run damage control and tell everyone you hurt your foot.” She points over at me, a gleam in her eye. “That’s why you couldn’t slam on the damn brakes in time.” She taps the side of her head. “Always thinking. Toodles!”
Kelly takes off, and I glance back down at the phone number in my hand.
Maybe I’ll give it a few days.
2
West End Girls
Melissa
One miserable week drifts by slow as the vomit that trickled out of my mouth in front of the cutest guy on the entire freaking planet. I’ve literally burned with embarrassment for the last seven days. And my feet? That stink? Just crap. The entire incident was beyond anything my wild imagination could have cooked up. I already Mr. Sardonaed that situation into the ground with all the different, might I add disgusting, descriptors I could use to paint a picture of my stench that day. I literally could have died from embarrassment. I wish I had. It was the worst of the worst-case scenarios. I bet Joel Miller’s nightmares now involve my smelly toes. I shudder at the thought. I’ve always wished, dreamed that Joel Effing Miller would notice me, and now I’ve become nothing more than a foot that will haunt him for the rest of his nocturnal wanderings.