Sometimes it’s better to be clueless.
I pulled a blanket up to my chin, hiding my naked body from the scrutiny of the mirror. Wesley was living proof that beauty was only skin-deep, so why did his words bother me? I was intelligent. I was a good person. So who cared if I was the Duff? If I were attractive, I’d have to deal with guys like Wesley hitting on me. Ugh! So being the Duff had its benefits, right? Being unattractive didn’t have to suck.
Damn Wesley Rush! I couldn’t believe he was making me worry about such stupid, pointless, shallow bullshit.
I closed my eyes. I wouldn’t think about it in the morning. I wouldn’t think about Duffs ever again.
Sunday was fantastic—nice, quiet, uninterrupted euphoria. Of course, things were usually pretty quiet when Mom was away. When she was home, the house always seemed loud. There was always music or laughter or something lively and chaotic. But she never seemed to be home for more than a couple of months, and in the time that she was gone, everything grew still. Like me, Dad wasn’t much for socializing. He was usually buried in his work or watching television. Which meant the Piper house was pretty much silent.
And, on a morning after I’d been forced to withstand all the racket of clubs and parties, a quiet house was the equivalent of perfection.
But Monday sucked.
All Mondays suck, of course, but this Monday really fucked up everything. It all started first block when Jessica slumped into Spanish with tear-stained cheeks and running mascara.
“Jessica, what’s wrong?” I asked. “Did something happen? Is everything okay?”
I’ll admit it; I always got really freaked out on the rare occasions when Jessica came to class looking anything less than perky. I mean, she was constantly bouncing and giggling. So when she came in looking so depressed, it scared the shit out of me.
Jessica shook her head miserably and collapsed into her seat. “Everything’s fine, but… I can’t go to Homecoming!” Fresh tears spewed from her wide chocolate eyes. “Mom won’t let me go!”
That was it? She’d gotten me all freaked out over Homecoming?
“Why not?” I asked, still trying to be sympathetic.
“I’m grounded,” Jessica sniffed. “She saw my report card in my room this morning, and she found out I’m failing chemistry, and she flipped out! It’s not effing fair! Basketball Homecoming is, like, my favorite dance of the year… after prom and Sadie Hawkins and Football Homecoming.”
I tilted my chin down and looked at her teasingly. “Wow, how many favorites do you have?”
She didn’t answer. Or laugh.
“I’m sorry, Jessica. I know it must suck… but I’m not going either.” I didn’t mention that I considered the whole practice of school dances degrading or that they were just giant wastes of time and money. Jessica already knew my opinions on the matter, and I didn’t think reminding her would help the situation. But I was pretty happy I wouldn’t be the only girl skipping. “How about this: I’ll come over, and we’ll watch movies all night. Will your mom be cool with that?”
Jessica nodded and wiped her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. “Yeah,” she said. “Mom likes you. She thinks you’re a good influence on me. So that’ll be okay. Thanks, Bianca. Can we watch Atonement again? Are you sick of it yet?”
Yes, I was getting very sick of the mushy romances Jessica swooned over, but I could get over it. I grinned at her. “I never get tired of James McAvoy. We can even watch Becoming Jane if you want. It’ll be a double feature.”
She laughed—finally—just as the teacher made her way to the front of the room and began obsessively straightening the pencils on her desk before calling roll. Jessica tossed a glance at the scrawny instructor. When she looked back at me, her dark brown eyes sparkled with a few fresh tears. “You know what the worst part is, Bianca?” she whispered. “I was gonna ask Harrison to go with me. Now I’ll have to wait until prom to ask him to a dance.”
Because of her sensitive state, I decided not to remind her that Harrison wouldn’t be interested because she had boobs—big ones. Instead I just said, “I know. I’m sorry, Jessica.”
Once that little crisis was behind us, Spanish went by smoothly. Jessica’s tears cleared up, and by the time the bell rang, she was laughing giddily while Angela, a friend of ours, told us about her new boyfriend. I found out that I’d made an A on my last prueba de vocabulario. Plus, I totally understood how to conjugate regular present subjunctive verbs. So I was in a pretty damn good mood when Jessica, Angela, and I walked out of the classroom.
“And he has a job on campus,” Angela rambled as we pushed our way into the crowded hall.
“Where does he go to school?” I asked.
“Oak Hill Community College.” She sounded a little embarrassed, and she quickly added, “But he’s just getting his associate’s degree there before he goes to a university. And OHCC isn’t a bad school or anything.”
“That’s where I’m going,” Jessica said. “I don’t want to go too far from home.”
Jessica and I were such polar opposites, it was sort of funny sometimes. You could always predict what one of us was going to want to do just by picking the reverse of the other. Personally, I wanted to get the hell out of Hamilton as soon as possible. Graduation couldn’t arrive soon enough, and then I’d be off to New York for college.
But the idea of being so far away from Jessica—not seeing her bounce by me every day or hearing her jabber about dances and gay boys—suddenly scared me. I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d handle it. She and Casey kind of balanced me out. I wasn’t sure anyone else would be willing to put up with my cynicism once I left town.
“We should get to chemistry, Jess,” Angela said as she shook her long black bangs from her eyes. “You know how Mr. Rollins gets when we show up late.”
They scampered off to the science department, and I started down the hallway heading toward AP government. My mind drifted to other places, to a future without my best friends to keep me sane. I’d never considered that before, and now that I was thinking about it, it made me really nervous. I knew they’d tease me for it, but I would have to find a way to keep in constant touch.
I guess my eyes lost contact with my brain, because the next thing I knew, I ran smack into Wesley Rush.
That was the end of my good mood.
I stumbled backward, and all of my textbooks slipped from my arms and crashed to the floor. Wesley grabbed me by both shoulders, his large hands catching me before I had the chance to trip over my own feet and slam into the tile.
“Whoa,” he said, steadying me.
We were standing way too close to each other. I felt like I had bugs crawling under my skin, spreading from the places where his hands touched me. I shivered with disgust, but he misread it.
“Wow, Duffy,” he said, looking down at me with a cocky grin. He was really tall—I’d forgotten that, sitting next to him at the Nest the other night. He was one of the only boys in our school who was taller than Casey—at least six two. An entire foot taller than me. “Do I make you weak in the knees?”
“As if.” I twisted out of his grasp, fully aware that I sounded like Alicia Silverstone in Clueless but just not caring. I knelt down and began to gather my books, and to my intense displeasure, Wesley joined me. He was playing the Good Samaritan role, of course. I bet he was hoping some hot cheerleader, like Casey, would walk by and think he was being a gentleman. What a pig. Always looking to score.
“Spanish, huh?” he said, glancing down at the scattered papers as he grabbed them. “Can you say anything interesting?”
“El tono de tu voz hace que quiera estrangularme.” I stood up and waited for him to hand over my papers.
“That sounds sexy,” he said, getting to his feet and handing me the stack of Spanish work he’d swept together. “What’s it mean?”
“The sound of your voice makes me want to strangle myself.”
“Kinky.”
Without another word, I jerked the pape
rs from his hands, tucked them inside one of my books, and stomped off to class. I needed to put as much distance between myself and the womanizing bastard as possible. Duffy? Seriously? He knew my name! The egotistical jackass just couldn’t let me be. Not to mention my skin was still itching where he’d touched me.
Mr. Chaucer’s AP government class consisted of only nine students, and seven of them were already in the room by the time I walked through the door. Mr. Chaucer gave me a dirty look through his squinting eyes, impressing upon me that the bell would ring any second. To be late was a felony in Mr. Chaucer’s opinion, and to be almost late constituted a misdemeanor. I wasn’t the last one to show up, though. That helped a little.
I took my seat in the very back of the room and started to open my notebook, hoping to God that Mr. Chaucer wouldn’t call me out on my near tardiness. With my current mood, there was no guarantee I wouldn’t start cussing at him. He didn’t, and we were both saved the drama.
The last student entered just as the bell rang. “Sorry, Mr. Chaucer. I was putting up signs promoting next week’s inauguration ceremony. You didn’t start already, did you?”
My heart skipped a beat when I looked up at the boy who’d just come in.
Okay, so I’m not quiet about the fact that I hate teenagers who date in high school and constantly rant and rave about how much they “love” their boyfriend or girlfriend. I freely admit that I hate girls who say they love someone before they’ve dated them. I don’t hide the fact that, in my opinion, love takes years—five or ten at least—to develop, and high school relationships seem incredibly pointless to me. Everyone knew this about me… but nobody knew that I was almost a hypocrite.
Well, okay, Casey and Jessica knew, but that didn’t count.
Toby Tucker. Aside from the tragic alliteration, he was perfect in every single way. He wasn’t a testosterone-loaded football player. He wasn’t an overly sensitive guitar-playing hippie. He didn’t write poetry or wear eyeliner. So he probably wouldn’t have been classified as the typical hottie, but that worked in my favor, right? Jocks, guys in bands, and Emo boys didn’t look twice at—as Wesley would have so delicately worded it—the Duff. I probably had a better chance with intelligent, politically active, somewhat socially awkward guys like Toby. Right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Toby Tucker was my perfect match. Unfortunately, he wasn’t aware of this fact. That was mostly because I lost my ability to form coherent sentences every time he got close to me. He probably thought I was mute or something. He never looked at me or spoke to me or even seemed to notice me in the back of the room. For a girl with such a fat ass, I felt pretty invisible.
I noticed Toby, though. I noticed his outdated yet adorable blond bowl cut and his pasty ivory skin. I noticed his green eyes beneath the lenses of his oval glasses. I noticed that he wore a blazer with everything, and I noticed the adorable way he bit his lower lip when he was thinking really hard about something. I was in… okay, not love, but definitely like. I was deeply in like with Toby Tucker.
“Fine,” Mr. Chaucer muttered. “Just keep an eye on your watch tomorrow, Mr. Tucker.”
“Sure thing, sir.”
Toby took a seat in the front row next to Jeanine McPhee. Like a stalker, I listened in on their conversation while Mr. Chaucer started writing the lecture notes on the whiteboard. I’m not normally such a creep, but lo—like makes people do crazy things. At least that’s the popular excuse.
“How was your weekend, Toby?” Jeanine asked through her constantly stuffy nose. “Did you do anything exciting?”
“It was pretty good,” Toby said. “Dad took Nina and me out of state. We toured the University of Southern Illinois together. That was fun.”
“Is Nina your sister?” Jeanine asked.
“No. Nina’s my girlfriend. She goes to Oak Hill High School. Didn’t I tell you about her? Anyway, we both got accepted there, so we wanted to check it out. I’m looking at a few other schools, but we’ve been together for a year and a half, and we kind of want to attend the same school to avoid the long-distance issue.”
“That’s sweet!” Jeanine cried. “I’m actually considering just doing some classes at OHCC before I decide what university I’ll go to.”
My skin had stopped crawling, but now my stomach was doing sickening somersaults. I thought I was going to vomit, and I had to fight the urge to run from the room with a hand cupped over my mouth. Eventually, I won the battle to keep my breakfast where it belonged, but I still felt pretty shitty.
Toby had a girlfriend? For a year and a half? Oh my God! How had I missed that? And they were going to college together? Did that mean he was one of those stupid, mushy romantics I mocked on a daily basis? I’d expected so much more from Toby Tucker. I’d expected him to be just as skeptical about the nature of teenage love as I was. I’d expected him to see college as a huge decision, not one that should be swayed by where your boyfriend/girlfriend got accepted. I’d expected him to be… well, smart!
He wouldn’t date you, anyway, a voice in my head hissed at me. It sounded uncannily like Wesley Rush’s unnerving whisper. You’re the Duff, remember? His girlfriend is probably thinner with bigger boobs.
It wasn’t even lunch yet, and I already wanted to jump off a cliff. Well, okay, that was overdramatic. I definitely wanted to go home and go to bed, though. I wanted to forget Toby had a serious girlfriend. I wanted to wash the feeling of Wesley’s hands off me. Mostly, though, I wanted to erase the word Duff from my memory.
Oh, yeah, and things got worse that day, too.
Around six o’clock that night, the guy on the news started talking about some big snowstorm that would show up in the “early morning hours.” I guess the school board took pity on us since we hadn’t had a single snow day so far, because they went ahead and canceled classes before the storm even hit. So Casey called at seven-thirty and insisted that we go to the Nest, since we didn’t have to get up early the next morning.
“I don’t know, Casey,” I said. “What if the roads are bad?” I’ll admit it. I was looking for any reason not to go. My day had been crappy enough on its own. I didn’t know if I could endure the torture of that hellhole, too.
“B, the storm isn’t supposed to even start until, like, three a.m. or something. As long as we’re home by then it’ll be cool.”
“I have a lot of homework.”
“It’s not due until Wednesday. You can work on it all day tomorrow if you want.”
I sighed. “Can you and Jessica find another ride and go without me? I just don’t feel up to it. It’s been a bad day, Casey.”
I could always rely on Casey to act at the slightest sign of trouble. “What happened?” she asked. “Are you okay? You didn’t look happy at lunch. Is it about your mom?”
“Casey.”
“Tell me what’s up.”
“Nothing,” I assured her. “Today just sucked, okay? Nothing major or anything. I’m just not in the mood to go partying with you guys tonight.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Finally, Casey said, “Bianca, you know you can tell me anything, right? You know you can talk to me if you need to. Don’t keep things bottled up. It’s not good for you.”
“Casey, I’m fi—”
“You’re fine,” she interrupted. “Yeah, I know. I’m just saying that if you have a problem, I’m here for you.”
“I know,” I murmured. I felt guilty for getting her nervous like that over something so stupid. I had a bad habit of holding in all my emotions, and Casey knew that all too well. She was always trying to look out for me. Always coaxing me into sharing so that I didn’t wind up exploding later. It could get annoying, but knowing that someone cared… well, that felt nice. So I couldn’t really get mad about it. “I know, Casey. I’m fine, though. It’s just… I found out Toby has a girlfriend today, and I’m a little bummed. That’s all.”
“Oh, B,” she sighed. “That sucks. I’m sorry. Maybe if you come out tonight, J
ess and I can cheer you up. Two scoops of ice cream and everything.”
I let out a little laugh. “Thanks, but no thanks. I think I’ll just stay home tonight.”
I hung up the phone and went downstairs, where I found Dad using the cordless in the kitchen. I heard him before I saw him. He was yelling into the receiver. I stood in the doorway, assuming he’d notice me and immediately lower his voice. I figured some telemarketer was getting an earful of Mike Piper, but then my name came up.
“Think of what you’re doing to Bianca!” Dad’s loud voice, which I’d taken for anger, sounded more like pleading. “This isn’t good for a seventeen-year-old girl and her mother. She needs you here at home, Gina. We need you here.”
I slipped back into the living room, surprised to realize he was talking to my mother. Truthfully, I didn’t really know how to feel about it. About the things he was saying. I mean, yeah, I missed my mom. Having her home would have been nice, but it wasn’t as if we weren’t used to getting along without her.
My mother was a motivational speaker. When I was a kid, she’d written some sort of uplifting, inspirational book about improving self-esteem. It hadn’t sold well, but she still got offers to speak at colleges, support groups, and graduations all over the country. Since the book had flopped, she came pretty cheap.
For a while, she’d taken only local jobs. Ones she could drive home from after she finished telling people how to love themselves. But after my grandmother passed away, when I was twelve, Mom got a little depressed. Dad suggested she take a vacation. Just get away for a few weeks.
When she came back, she gushed about all the places she’d seen and the people she’d met. I guess maybe that’s what sparked her addiction to traveling. Because after that first vacation, Mom started booking events all over the place. In Colorado and New Hampshire. She’d set up entire tours.
Only this tour, the one she was on now, had been the longest. She hadn’t been home in almost two months, and this time I wasn’t even sure where she was speaking.