“Kyle, this is Jane,” Bitsy said. “Be nice.”
“Oh, poo. I’m always nice.” He looped his arm through mine and led me toward the kitchen. “Jane.
By ten, I was ready to throw myself over a cliff. Here I was supposed to be strutting my stuff, and my stuff was utterly pathetic. Hell, had the Bitches wanted to show how unfit I was for the whole popularity game, they couldn’t have picked a better way.
I even made a fool of myself in front of Nate Solomon, a senior I’d had a secret crush on since before the school year started. Nate lived next door to Phil, and all summer long I’d gotten to admire him from Phil’s backyard. Polishing the hood of his pickup. Buffing the fenders with his T-shirt, which he’d have conveniently taken off. His arms were such boy arms, strong and muscular. Sometimes I got so mesmerized that I lost track of Phil altogether.
“Janie,” Phil would say. “
This is your chance
“Um, hi,” I said.
His eyes flicked over me. He grunted.
“So … picking out some music?” I blushed the second I said it, because duh, what else did I think he was doing? Strumming a banjo? But it didn’t matter, because his attention had already slid elsewhere.
“Ryan!” he called, holding one CD aloft. “Ice bonus, man!”
He brushed past me on the way to the CD player and didn’t notice as he knocked my shoulder, because I was absolutely invisible.
Humiliated, I slunk to the kitchen. The tile counters and the top of the island were cluttered with plastic cups and half-full wineglasses, but there were no actual people in the room. It was a party-free zone, at least for the moment. I bit my lip, then crossed to the far side of the island. I slid down behind it, bringing my knees to my chest as my butt reached the floor. I was eye level with the cabinets under the sink. A lone blue M&M rested on the floor by a piece of fluff.
I exhaled. All that was left of my mojito were small ovals of ice, and I sucked a piece into my mouth. I let it drift about my tongue, then leaned slightly forward and let it slip out. I swirled my glass until I couldn’t distinguish it from the others.
In the living room, someone shrieked and said, “Turn that thing off! I look terrible!”
“Ah, shut up. You know you love it,” a guy said. Stuart Hill, who was apparently making the rounds with his video camera again. I’d seen him with it earlier in the night.
The tension in my chest started to loosen—the party people were
“—in common at all,” a girl was saying. “I’m just so tired of it.”
I swallowed the ice and drew my knees up as far as I could.
There was the hiss of an opened pop top. A second girl said, “Tell me about it. All I think about is what a good girlfriend I would be, if only I got the chance.”
I breathed as quietly as I could. The first girl was Sukie Karing, I was pretty sure. And the second girl was Pammy Varlotta, another junior. I could tell by the way she pronounced her Ts, as if her tongue was too big for her mouth.
“I mean, seriously,” Pammy went on. “How sad is that?”
A third girl laughed. Even before she spoke, I knew who it was.
“Dead sad,” Bitsy said. “If you want a boy, Pammy, you’ve got to go out and get yourself one. None of this lurking about feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Easy for you to say,” Sukie said. “You’ve got boys drooling over you every time you turn around.”
“Well …” Bitsy said.
“But she’s with Brad now,” Pammy interjected. “Right, Bitsy? And I’m
The next morning, I called Phil and told him to meet me at Memorial Park. He showed up with a ratty blanket, two king-sized Cokes, and a milk-carton box of Whoppers, my favorite candy. Obviously I’d sounded more depressed than I’d intended.
“Hey,” he said, putting down the food and spreading out the blanket. As usual, the air smelled foul, because sewage run-off had contaminated the bordering creek. But the park itself was lush and green and nearly always deserted.
Phil patted the spot beside him. “Take a load off.”
I sat down and accepted one of the Cokes. The rattle told me he’d gotten extra ice, just the way I liked it. “What’s better than roses on a piano?” I asked.
“Exsqueeze me?” Phil said.
“Tulips on my organ,” I said. “Hysterical, huh?”
Phil wasn’t there yet.
“Tulips on my organ,” I said again. “Two lips on my—”
He winked and pointed his finger at me. “Clever girl. You make that up yourself?”
“Parker Rylant told it at the party last night, one of many blow-job jokes. You should have been there.”
“Wasn’t invited,” Phil said.
“L’Kardos got steamed, because he said he didn’t want Keisha to hear that kind of crap. He said it was sexist and offensive.”
“And right he was,” Phil said.
“Absolutely,” I said. I sucked on my straw, remembering Keisha’s expression when I’d laughed, before I realized the joke was in bad taste.
Phil stretched out and propped his head on one elbow. “Tell me more.”
“They were like princesses,” I said. “Fairies. And everywhere they went, they sprinkled their magic fairy dust and made everyone adore them.”
“And ‘they’ would be … ?”
“Who do you think? Keisha and Bitsy and Mary Bryan.” I reached for the Whoppers. “Bitsy told Ryan Overturf she’d have to slap his ass if he didn’t give her a foot rub, and Brad, Bitsy’s boyfriend, just laughed like
“That’s so lame,” Phil said.
“I know.”
“Don’t they know that friends shouldn’t let friends drink bad beer?”
I shoved him. “Anyway, they were total goddesses, and I was a floundering blob of patheticness.”
“You’re not a floundering blob of patheticness.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You only are when you say you are, so stop saying it.”
“Whatever.” I paused, remembering Nate Solomon’s complete obliviousness to my very existence. Except my crush on Nate was one thing I would never bring up in front of Phil. So I told him about my inglorious retreat instead.