MY MOM WAS IN THE KITCHEN when I got home, walking from one end of the room to the other as she talked on the phone. She only paced like that when she was upset, but I could tell she was trying to keep her voice calm and controlled. I listened to her as I searched the fridge for a snack.
“Yes, I have that on the specification sheet you gave me,” she said. “No, it’s not in front of me at the moment. It’s at work. This is my home number.”
Mom sounded totally frustrated. I didn’t know who she was talking to, but I knew that tone of voice, and whoever was on the end of the line had about two minutes to hang up or get yelled at. She was balling her fist so tightly her knuckles were turning white. Not a good sign.
There was nothing decent in the fridge, so I grabbed a box of crackers from the pantry and plopped down on the family room sofa. Mom came in a few minutes later and sat down next to me.
“Who was that on the phone?” I asked, my mouth half-full of cracker.
“A very rude customer,” she replied, resting her head against the back of the sofa. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and turned her head toward me. “You’re home early.”
“Yeah. Bonnie had her neighbor there. She’s helping out and it wasn’t too busy, so they said I could leave early.”
“How did you get home?”
“Hitched a ride with some weirdo.”
She bolted upright. “What?”
“Kidding. Lan picked me up.”
Mom settled back into the sofa and closed her eyes. “She just dropped you off and left?” Usually Lan stayed for dinner or hung out or something.
“She was on her way to see her new boyfriend.”
“That’s nice,” Mom murmured. She was falling asleep, so I took my crackers and went to my room for a while.
After the revelation that Eli’s older brother Ben was the tagger behind half a dozen gorilla murals in several different states, I actually began to calm down. Finally, I had some kind of answer. I remembered that when the school was tagged in January, Ben had been in town. I wasn’t sure how he had managed to create the other murals in Cleary, but it didn’t seem to matter. What mattered was that Eli was in another state with his parents, which meant he was probably nowhere near Reva, one of my main concerns. I didn’t know where Reva was, and I didn’t care—I just didn’t want her curled up next to my future boyfriend, tracing those razor-sharp nails of hers up and down his back.
I tried to block the image from my mind and went to research my history paper. Were we supposed to define art or support our position on the gorillas? Both, I guessed. I perused pages on art quotations and famous artists and European museums, but nothing inspired me. It occurred to me that I was trying to find someone or something else to answer a question that I needed to work out on my own. Mr. Gildea was smart to have given us two weeks to complete the essay. I wished he would have given us two months.
I gave up after an hour. Dad came home and we made dinner, careful not to wake Mom.
“She’s had a lot on her plate lately, so to speak,” Dad explained as he unwrapped a frozen pizza.
“I know the feeling,” I said.
PARTIES SHOULD, BY DEFINITION, bring people together to celebrate. Tiffany’s birthday bash, now less than two weeks away, was having the opposite effect on the students of Cleary High School. In fact, it would not be much of a stretch to say that “the social event of the year” had incited a small war.
The first battle began when Mallory discovered that one of the senior cheerleaders had purchased the exact same red silk dress as her.
“Take it back,” she demanded. It was after lunch on Tuesday, and Mallory’s high-pitched screeching attracted a small crowd in the hallway.
“I already cut the tags off,” the cheerleader protested. She was surrounded by half the squad, all of them standing with their hands on their hips as if frozen in a choreographed dance move.
“I don’t care! Take it back!” Mallory was close to tears. Monica took off in search of Tiffany.
“You take it back!” yelled the cheerleader. I was watching the scene from the back of the crowd. It was amazing to watch two normally composed girls transform into enraged toddlers before my eyes. It was like they were fighting over a doll.
The shouting got louder, the crowd got quieter, and soon two vice principals and a security guard arrived to break things up. Guy fights usually ended with punches thrown, but girl fights always ended with blood on the tile and chunks of hair strewn across the hallway, and the vice principals knew that better than anyone. I didn’t think they had to worry, though—neither girl wanted to endure the trauma of unsightly bruises or challenging hair issues before the big night.
By the end of the day, Tiffany had decided that the cheerleader could still attend the party if she wore a cropped jacket and promised to stay away from Mallory the entire night. It was a compromise—not a good one, but it would work.
The incident reminded me that I had yet to shop for my own dress. Lan had been prodding me to get one, but I was waiting for her to receive an invitation.
“We’ll go dress shopping together,” I told her.
Lan nodded but said nothing.
Mallory’s dress disaster was not the only conflict Tiffany had to contend with. The prom committee, which consisted of several popular seniors, was not happy with the timing of the party (only a month before prom), the theme of the party (too similar to prom, which was going to feature nearly the same shade of blue tablecloths) or the location of the party (they had also reserved the country club—six months in advance).
Ticket sales were way down. Most of the senior class would be at the party and had already announced that they would not be buying a second dress or renting another tux. The general feeling was that a free, exclusive party was much better than an expensive dance that anyone could attend. There was also the television coverage to consider. It looked like Cleary’s prom was going to be canceled.
“It’s not my fault,” Tiffany announced to anyone who would listen. “People want quality, not tacky tradition.”
She definitely had her supporters, but Tiffany was beginning to lose the admiration of half the senior class, most of the cheerleaders and all of the freshmen. Not that she cared, as she pointed out on an hourly basis. They were all just jealous, in her opinion. Still, she wasn’t holding her head as high, and there were a few times in class when I glanced over and saw her staring into space, a blank look on her face. I wondered if she was realizing that her dream party was transforming into a nightmare. I felt a twinge of sympathy for her at those times, but it wouldn’t last. Tiffany would always do something that made me want to strangle her, like pull out car catalogs and wonder out loud which high-priced luxury vehicle her dad was going to surprise her with.
“If it’s not a convertible, I’ll die,” she announced before class one day. “I mean, what’s the point of having a Beemer if you can’t put the top down?”
Sometimes people would nod in fake understanding, but her spoiled-girl soliloquies were beginning to wear thin.
Lan hadn’t mentioned the party in over a week, and I questioned if she still wanted to go. Once, as I helped her sort through tiny pink beads for an orchid pin she was making, I pondered the party’s theme.
“Do you think it will be a kind of ‘diamonds are a girl’s best friend’ motif?” I asked. “Because that’s what I heard. Diamonds and pearls, that kind of thing.”
“Pass me a few clear ones,” Lan said, nodding toward a box of beads.
She hadn’t been speaking up as much in class, but Lan still hadn’t received an invitation. I wanted to approach Tiffany about it, but she was always surrounded by a small flock of fans. I decided to wait a few more days. If Lan decided she didn’t want to go, that would be fine. I wanted her to have an invitation so that she at least had a choice. It wasn’t that long ago, I realized, that her choice would have been clear. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
Lan wasn’t the only person causing me confusion. I was still waiting to hear from Eli. It had been eight days since I’d seen him, but it felt like eight weeks. I searched for him in the crowded hallways at school, my heart quickening any time I caught a glimpse of someone with his same shade of chestnut-brown hair. After school I checked my e-mail, hoping for a message, no matter how brief. And when the phone rang and the caller ID showed Unknown Number I always answered it, only to feel disappointed when it was the inevitable telemarketer.
My concern that Eli was okay had morphed into worry that he was simply avoiding me. Maybe he had reconsidered and decided our first kiss was an only kiss. Maybe Reva had found a way to win him back. Maybe he had spent the past week realizing that he didn’t like me as much as he had. I came up with a new “maybe” every day, but they all boiled down to one depressing thought: maybe Eli and I were over before we ever began.