Chapter 3

“The men shan’t come and part us, I am determined. We want none of them; do we?”

— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Volume III, Chapter Twelve

I trudged home from school Friday afternoon, even letting Cat take the Jeep so I could be alone in my misery and mope. I could handle moping.

Guys? Not so much.

The thing is, I didn’t even want to be able to handle guys. Guys are gross and wear their pants halfway down their butts and think belching is an art form. Guys think they own the world—and for the most part, it seems like they do. A guy can break a girl’s heart.

I wasn’t about to let that happen to me.

Except, well, maybe it already had. Thank you, Josh.

The thing is, I’d been teased and picked on and ignored my entire life. Why would Josh actually pretend for two minutes that he might possibly like me, then treat me like pond scum the very next minute?

He spoke to me for one entire day, Wednesday, the best and worst day of my life. Was it possible that he suddenly turned into a jerk only because I’d been a jerk to him?

I told myself I didn’t care.

Ha.

Ever since Wednesday, when that guy in Physics asked Josh if he had a partner for the roller coaster project, Josh hadn’t spoken to me. Or poked me in the arm or even looked at me. In English, he still sat behind me—thanks to assigned seats—but didn’t say a word. In Calculus, where Ms. Veilleux let us sit wherever we wanted, he didn’t come near me. He was stuck next to me in Physics only because Mr. Gilbertson warned us not to switch our assigned seats on pain of death, but I could never catch his eye, even when I pretended to look out the window.

I’d basically had a friend, or a theoretical friend, for less than twenty-four hours. A new world record.

For me.

Now I didn’t have a friend, and I didn’t have a partner for the roller coaster project, and Mr. Gilbertson refused to let me do the stupid project by myself. He said a few kids still hadn’t found partners and I could “easily” get one by just asking. Right. Like anyone would say yes to me. On any question.

Luckily, the assignment wasn’t due until Halloween. That gave me almost two months to find an imaginary person to call my partner. Maybe someone taking Physics online? Maybe an alien from Mars who’d never heard of me?

The walk home yielded only depressing thoughts, including the belated discovery that I’d spilled chocolate pudding down the front of my yellow shirt at lunch. I temporarily forgot my problems, though, when I reached our front door. Mom, home early from work but still in her suit, was giving orders to the Merry Maids crew, and Jane kept contradicting them behind Mom’s back. I’d barely tossed my backpack in my bedroom when the doorbell rang with a takeout delivery from Kowalski’s.

I asked what was going on, since no one bothered to mention we were having a party or even tried to bribe me to go to a movie or the Mall of America. Mom and Jane both ignored all my questions, but Mom just seemed clueless.

And, unlike Jane, not dressed for a party.

Dad’s yoga mat, which he usually plunked in the middle of the living room, was nowhere in sight. Neither was Dad. Ever since he’d left his lucrative engineering firm to take a mid-life detour to become a yoga master, I was used to seeing him on his mat, chanting and “om”ing and contorting his body in embarrassing positions at all hours.

So, basically, Mom skipped out early on work for reasons even she didn’t seem to understand, she’d booted Dad, and she hadn’t booted me. Totally weird.

When Mom went upstairs to shriek at Cat about getting four tardies on the first four days of school, Jane finally told Liz that she’d invited some friends over. Then Dad showed up, lugging a case of generic beer and two cases of Pepsi. I rolled my eyes. Dad claimed he’d found enlightenment in his yoga practice, but he was still totally clueless when it came to drinks for a party. Pepsi and cheap beer? Any kind of beer when we were all underage? Nothing diet? No water?

When Mom came back downstairs, she frowned at the Pepsi and beer as she bustled and hovered near Jane, who ignored her. For once, though, Mom seemed oblivious to everything she couldn’t fix. She couldn’t fix Dad, or she would’ve a long time ago, but maybe next time she’ll have someone else get the drinks.

Mom glanced at my overalls, and sniffed, but I was another thing she couldn’t fix. Sighing, she finally grabbed Dad and headed out the back door, mentioning some sci-fi movie they planned to catch. Weird on all counts.

Right at seven, the doorbell rang, but it barely registered. Caterers, Cat when she forgot her key, you name it. Everyone in Woodbury appeared to be ringing our door today. I went to answer it, but Jane shot past me, sliding the last five feet.

She opened the door to Charlie and Alex.

So that’s what this was all about. A “party” for the guys who hadn’t called or shown up again, as far as I knew, since Tuesday night. From the shocked look on Liz’s face, she was totally in the dark.

I wondered if Mom was, too. Had Jane bribed her? Jane, who never did anything wrong? I was mortified for Jane, which had to be a first. I mean, no one gets embarrassed for her, because she’s perfect and nice and nothing in her life ever goes wrong. Except when Charlie dumped her. But pretending to have a party just to get Charlie here seemed pathetic.

Pretty soon other friends of Liz and Jane started trickling in, bringing the crowd to twenty or so. Jane hadn’t invited any of Cat’s snotty little girlfriends, thank God, either because they were too young to hang with Charlie and Alex or because they’d all still be buzzing about the Lydia situation, which wouldn’t exactly be cool.

She also hadn’t invited any friends of mine.

Because I didn’t have any friends.

Everyone hung out in the kitchen, noshing on deli food and gulping down beer. Which was totally irresponsible of Dad, since Jane must’ve told him she was having a party and fluttered her eyelashes and asked him to buy some beer. Now Dad would get busted for furnishing liquor to minors, and then where would we all be? With Dad in jail, even Mom’s bipolar meds wouldn’t be enough to give her a sanity check.

Being the only sane person in the house, I went to the fridge, scrounged in the back on the bottom shelf, and finally pulled out the last can of Diet Coke.

Popping the top on it, I scanned the room but didn’t know many people. Cat was flirting with a guy who had his arm around some other girl, and Jane was getting cozy with Charlie, even though he’d dumped her for how long? Almost a year?

Liz stood by herself but kept looking across the kitchen at Alex. At least Liz had some sense—I think—and was frowning at him. Not that he’d notice, since he had a constant stream of girls hanging all over him. When he slowly started heading in Liz’s direction, though, my mission was clear. I had to rescue Liz.

I reached her before Alex did and grabbed her arm. “Don’t worry. After what happened to Lydia, I think we should stick together and keep the wolves at bay.”

Liz frowned at me. “What if I don’t mind the occasional wolf?”

Poor Liz. She’s smart enough to major in biomedical engineering at the U of M, but she’s so naive when it comes to guys. After seeing the Charlie-and-Jane fiasco up close, you’d think she’d know better. “That’s what Lydia thought, and look what happened to her.”

“No one compares Lydia and me. And now that she’s—”

She broke off when Alex grabbed her free arm and dragged her away from me. Possessively. Like he owned her. Like he dwelled in a cave. Alex might be a rich guy, but he’s way too overbearing even for Liz, who can be a little overbearing herself.

I absentmindedly rubbed my arm as I watched Alex pull Liz into the living room and wondered whether I should follow. All of my sisters were going nuts around guys these days, and I felt like the lone soldier guarding the castle against marauders. My sisters, unfortunately, kept giving the marauders the keys to the castle gate.

They might not be grateful, but I was there for them. Ready to foil the enemies’ advances.

Feeling both full of purpose and a little nervous that Liz would whap me upside the head, I followed Liz into the living room. She and Alex weren’t saying anything, but it didn’t look like a romantic moment. It sounded more like the kind of conversations I had with people. Nonexistent.

Alex took one look at me, though, and shot for the front door, calling out to Charlie that they had to leave. Like he couldn’t deal with being in the same space with me for more than two seconds.

Unless he was actually doing a dump-and-run on Liz.

Despite my views on guys in general and Alex in particular, I felt awful for Liz. Sure, she could be a bit prickly about emotional moments with her sisters, except maybe Jane, but I put a soothing hand on her arm anyway. I didn’t even mention that she was lucky Alex didn’t seem interested. “Sorry he got you away from me. I’ll be more vigilant next time.”

“Don’t do me any favors.” Liz groaned, evidently realizing she’d just gotten dumped by a guy she wasn’t even dating, and she didn’t want to admit it. At least not to me. “Please. I can take care of myself.”

All evidence to the contrary.

Liz and Jane holed up in their bedroom all morning Saturday, probably dissecting guys—what else—while Cat spent hours writing an e-mail to Lydia, who was lucky if they let her receive e-mails in prison school. Cat didn’t usually zap more than five-word text messages to her friends, so the idea of constructing entire paragraphs had to be paralyzing her.

Or maybe I’m just being snotty because Cat kept giving me these significant looks. Like she knew something.

I shrugged. Since no one ever spoke to me, pretty much everyone knew more gossip than I did.

By noon, I finished my homework and did a quick-and-dirty Google search on roller coaster designs. Liz has already taken two semesters of college Physics, and I think she has Engineering this semester, but she just mumbles something incomprehensible every time I ask her for help on my roller coaster. She’s not usually rude about helping with a genuine homework problem, but these days she doesn’t even hear the question if it isn’t from Jane or a guy. Sheesh!

After scarfing down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I grabbed the keys to the Jeep and headed outside. My imaginary partner on the roller coaster project would probably appreciate it if I actually looked at a roller coaster. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to ride one, since the last time I’d done that, at age ten, I’d puked all over Dad. Dad hadn’t taken me on a roller coaster ride since, and I hadn’t asked.

Just thinking about roller coasters made my stomach gurgle.

As I turned the key in the ignition, I sorted through my options. Valley Fair is outdoors and huge and has at least a couple of great roller coasters, according to Cat and Lydia. But Valley Fair costs big bucks and is a much longer drive and basically is for people who want to spend an entire day going on rides. I planned to spend exactly zero minutes on rides, so end of story.

The Mall of America has an indoor amusement park. It’s close, it’s free if you don’t do the rides, and I could stop by Ragstock and see if they had any new overalls—or old overalls, as the case may be.

My plan hit a major snag when I decided to check out Ragstock first. Josh Lawton was in there—alone, thank God—looking at clothes.

Maybe he hadn’t seen me yet. I hung a right at peasant blouses and headed for the far wall, where I didn’t see anyone, maybe because it held overalls. Most people stop wearing overalls around age three.

“Mary? I mean, uh, MB?”

Busted.

I stopped next to a rack stuffed with old Army fatigues and slowly turned in Josh’s direction, hoping I didn’t look like I’d seen him and blown him off.

From the frown on his face, he had some doubts.

“Hi, Josh. You shop here, huh?”

Even as he nodded, I couldn’t believe it. I honestly thought no one I knew shopped at Ragstock. My sisters didn’t. Most kids hang out at stores like Abercrombie or American Eagle or Gap or, for skateboarders like Josh, maybe Zumiez.

In other words, I’d always been safe here. Safe from being dissed or ignored or treated like a loser, free to do and wear my own thing even if no one else dressed like me. I’d have to start hanging out at Barnes & Noble. As far as I could tell, the kids at school pretty much avoided books.

Josh took a few steps closer to me, crushing any hope of an immediate dash for the exit. “They have great jeans. So you shop here, too?”

I glanced down at my overalls, then gave Josh a look that basically said duh. But when he flinched, I almost slapped myself. Why did I keep acting like a jerk to Josh? And why did he have to shop at Ragstock?

“You look, uh, kinda cute in overalls.”

Okay, this time I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. I didn’t look cute in anything, and didn’t try to, and everyone knew it. Besides, every time I even considered changing how I looked, I remembered The Book.

According to The Book, as everyone knew, Mary Bennet was ugly. Mary Bennet had No Hope.

“Do you always wear overalls?”

I blinked, realizing Josh was still there and looking at my stupid overalls and talking to me, and I was lost in this weird Jane Austen world. Josh obviously hadn’t read The Book, even though Ms. Mickel assigned it last year in English 11.

But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

“Um, mostly. I mean, like, not in the summer.” At least, not on the absolute hottest days of summer. I felt like an idiot, stumbling over my words, even as I peered at Josh through my geeky glasses, watching for his reaction and wondering if he was just playing me. If so, he was good at it. His eyes, or what I could see of them, looked so sincere.

I bit my lip. Staring into his eyes almost made me wish—almost—I wore contacts. Liz and Jane both got them in middle school, but I’d never considered it. Glasses made me feel protected, somehow, just like my stupid overalls did. In a butt-ugly way, of course.

Josh shrugged. “Yeah, I pretty much wear jeans even in the summer, and I know they’re baggy, but it’s the look. You know?”

“For skateboarders.”

“Yeah. Skaters, and other guys, too.”

Now he was looking at me intently, maybe wondering if I was dissing him for being a skateboarder, or a skater, or whatever I was supposed to call a guy who spends too much of his time on a piece of wood with four tiny wheels. Which maybe I was. Did he always wonder if everyone else was dissing him or playing him or totally laughing at him?

I’d never thought of that.

“I play piano.”

Ugh! That came out of my mouth?

“Yeah?” Josh frowned, like maybe he was trying to make a connection between my overalls and piano, and coming up blank. “That’s what you like?”

“Hate it, actually.”

“But . . .”

What could I say? Admit that, even though I was almost eighteen, my mom made me? Admit I was following in the seldom-followed footsteps of that Mary Bennet? The one from The Book?

I shrugged. “But sometimes life sucks.”

“Yeah.” Josh stared again at my overalls, making me squirm, then glanced out the door. He was probably terrified that someone he knew would see him in here, talking to me, and his skateboarder rep was over.

Guys did not talk to Mary Bennet.

I glanced out the door, too. “I hate to keep you from doing whatever you were doing.”

He frowned. “I was just hanging. And I was gonna check out a roller coaster or two. You know, for Physics?”

Boy, did I know. “Me, too.” Argh! Did I actually say that? Like I wanted to hang with him or, worse, was begging him to hang with me? Like I was pathetic? “I mean, I was going to go look at the roller coasters, maybe do a rough sketch so I can figure out how to do the design.”

Josh laughed. His brown hair was long and shaggy, hanging way down in his eyes, but I got a peek at them: vivid blue. Not at all like my brown eyes, which probably looked as mousy as the rest of me.

“I was actually using the Physics project as an excuse to ride them a few times. Wouldn’t that be more fun?”

“Uh . . .” Not if you puke every time you ride a roller coaster, no.

“Do you wanna?”

“I get kinda . . .”

“Scared?”

“Not exactly. But roller coasters and I don’t get along too well.”

Josh snorted. “Girls always say that.”

I blinked, wondering just how many girls had said that to him. Not that it mattered. I mean, the guy was doing charity work just talking to me. And he was being honest, I thought, so maybe this was how friends talked. Even if the friends in question happened to be a guy and a girl.

Not that we were friends or anything.

I stared down at the shiny tile floor, which seemed safer than looking into Josh’s eyes and trying to figure him out. “I don’t know about other girls, except maybe my sisters.” Liz loved roller coasters, Jane didn’t go near them, and Cat and Lydia only pretended to be scared on them so they could grab a piece of whatever guy they’d dragged along for the ride. “But I’ve never done too well with roller coasters. I haven’t even been on one since I was ten.”

“You were just a kid. Things have changed.”

Not for me, they hadn’t. “Really, Josh, I—”

“Wanna ride with me?”

And pretend to be scared so I can cling to him? No way! Then I thought of Liz, who would never pretend something just to cling to a guy. But she was Liz: the heroic Bennet sister, both in The Book and in real life. She’d even told Mom to stuff the piano lessons.

I looked at Josh, at amazing blue eyes I could barely see though his bangs, and wished I could be like Liz. Well, except for her current obsession with guys. I also wished I wouldn’t puke the moment the roller coaster hit the first turn.

At the thought, my stomach did a little flip.

“It’s really not a good idea.”

“Why? You’d rather ride with someone else?”

I groaned. Nothing I said ever came out right. “I mean, that’s why I was going to sketch the roller coaster. Because I didn’t want to ride on it. With anyone.”

“It’s not that bad. And, hey, you can always sketch it afterward. Like, after you feel how it moves. It’ll help with the Physics project, I swear.”

It probably would, I admit, but I wasn’t really prepared to risk death and public barfing just to ace an assignment. An assignment for which I didn’t even have a partner.

Unlike Josh.

“Why didn’t you bring your Physics partner here to ride the roller coaster with you?”

“Because . . .” Josh looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then intently back at me. “I mean, why didn’t you? Or are you stuck doing all the work?”

Even if I had a partner, I probably would be. But I refused to admit more to Josh than absolutely necessary.

I resorted to lame childhood ploys. “I asked you first.”

“Well, the truth is . . .” Josh didn’t look like he wanted to admit anything, either, and he trailed off when a cute girl walked into Ragstock. Maybe his Physics partner.

“That’s okay. I get it.” I turned and started to head back to the overalls, which were still ugly but reliable, and reliable was good.

Next thing I knew, Josh tapped me on the shoulder. “You just walked away.”

I spun around. “Because your partner . . .” Oh. The cute girl was nowhere in sight. “Sorry. I thought you knew that girl who just came in, and maybe she was your partner, and you were going to meet her here.”

Josh gave me a strange look. “The only girl I saw looked like she was about twelve. With makeup.”

And bigger boobs than mine, for what it’s worth.

“So she’s not your partner.”

“Not for at least five years.” Josh laughed, then looked a little embarrassed. “What I was trying to say was, uh, I don’t actually have a Physics partner.”

I shook my head. “That’s not true. You told that guy in Physics class—”

“Kyle.”

“Kyle.” I flushed, knowing I sounded like a loser for not knowing anyone’s name. Kyle was a football player, from the looks of him, but I didn’t go to football games or pep rallies. “He asked if you had a partner, and you said you’d talk to him after class.”

“I was just putting him off, because I don’t want to flunk the assignment.” Josh shrugged, looking a little sheepish. But was he being honest? I couldn’t tell for sure. “Kyle has football practice right after school, and I hoped he’d forget about it. He always wants a brain to do all the work so he can just focus on getting a full ride at a Big Ten school next fall.”

Josh was a brain? “He plays football?”

Josh grinned. “I didn’t think anyone paid less attention to our football team than I did, but I was wrong. Kyle is being recruited heavily by at least five schools. They have scouts at every game.”

“And you’re friends?”

“Only because he likes to hang out with guys who get good grades. So, you know, he has half a chance at skating through senior year without flunking.”

Josh got good grades? A skateboarder? Come to think of it, he must be doing pretty well just to be taking AP Calculus. I’d always thought . . .

“So do you wanna be my partner? Or do you have one?”

I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to say. “I, um, no.”

“No, you don’t want to be my partner?” Josh glanced down at the floor, probably at the ugly hiking boots I wore with my overalls, even though I’d probably last hiked the same year I’d last ridden a roller coaster.

I am such a freaking idiot. “I mean, no, I don’t have a partner. Yet.”

“But you’re holding out for a better offer?”

There wasn’t one. “No! I just didn’t think you wanted to be my partner.”

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Josh shrugged. “I tried to ask you the other day, but you acted like you weren’t interested. Like maybe you thought I’d suck.”

I blinked. I kept sounding like a total jerk, but I didn’t know how to talk to a guy or, for that matter, anyone else. How would I know? No one ever talks to me. Even Mom and Dad struggle, although Dad is more subtle about it. Mom looks distressed every time she sees me.

Of course, Mom looks distressed a lot.

“I didn’t mean that at all. I was just, like . . .” I didn’t know how to word it without admitting that I didn’t think anyone in the world would ever want to talk to me, let alone be my Physics partner, and I could see the offer to be Josh’s Physics partner swirling right down the toilet.

“That’s okay. I get it.”

He took a step backward, like he planned to bolt. I reached forward and touched him on the arm.

Which felt weird. Really, completely, weird.

“That’s not what I meant. Of course I’d like to be your partner. Your Physics partner. If you still want me.”

He glanced down at my hand, still touching his arm, and I yanked it away.

“Let’s do it. Now, you wanna try out the roller coaster? Just to see how it works?”

“That’s still not a good idea.”

“Let’s try it anyway.” He searched my face, but God knows what he was looking for. Someone cuter? “If you’re game.”

I blew out a breath, bit my lip, and nodded. I finally had a partner, but I was headed to my doom.