Chapter 9

“What say you, Mary? for you are a young lady of deep reflection, I know, and read great books, and make extracts.”

— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Volume I, Chapter Two

As of Monday night, I had two sisters firmly following The Book—not including Lydia, who seemed to have a talent even for messing up Jane Austen’s plans. When Dad quizzed Liz about Alex Darcy, she finally admitted she was dating him.

Alex Darcy. And Jane was dating Charlie Bingham. Sure, it’s Bingham, not Bingley, but that comes within spitting distance of Jane Austen’s prophecy. At this point, you’d think Jane and Liz would be registering for china, but from the rumblings around the house last night, it sounded like they were just going to look for an apartment. For the two of them, not the four of them.

It wasn’t as bad as picturing Lydia living with Justin and pole dancing in a strip bar, but the thought of Jane and Liz doing the wild thing with those guys left me unsettled.

It also made me think even more about The Book. Jane Austen hadn’t said that Mary Bennet ended up a spinster who died of old age or, for that matter, was eaten alive by a pack of wild dogs. As Liz put it, even if we were following The Book, Jane Austen had given me a blank slate for my life. Jane was with Charlie, and Liz with Alex, but I was a free agent.

Luckily, Mom paid no attention to free agents. At least, not this morning. She was still haranguing Liz about Alex and Jane about Charlie when I slipped out of the house for school.

In my overalls.

So sue me. I just couldn’t handle the thought of wearing another new outfit today. Eventually the other kids would get tired of cutting on me, right? But not this quickly. I finally appreciated the benefits of being ignored. No one ever talked to me before, but they left me alone. Lately, they talked about me, and sometimes to my face, but never as friends. More like bloodthirsty jerks.

Then there was Josh, who slouched next to my locker before first-period English class. I tried to ignore him as I spun the combination on my locker.

“Mary?” He slapped the side of his head. “I mean MB. Sorry. For some reason I just can’t get used to it.”

Welcome to the club.

I kept spinning the dial and finally wrenched my locker open. “Hey. Time for English class, right?”

Josh didn’t say anything, so I finally glanced at him. He was staring at my overalls. I had my hair in a ponytail and my feet in hiking boots, but that almost seemed redundant.

I rolled my eyes. “Was there something you wanted? Did you have a question or something?”

“Uh . . .”

“I mean, a question other than what happened to the clothes I was wearing yesterday?”

“They’re dirty?” He grinned as I sputtered. “To be honest, I was trying to decide which I liked better: the overalls or the new clothes.”

“Right.”

“No, really.” He waved at a cute girl who walked by, who definitely wasn’t wearing overalls. “You must like overalls. You act more comfortable in them.”

I tossed my backpack and half my books into my locker, held onto the rest, and slammed the locker. I took off down the hall, even though the warning bell hadn’t rung yet. Unfortunately, Josh stayed beside me.

Glancing at him, I noticed his baggy black jeans and green plaid shirt. Typical skater look. He’s cute, I admit, but no one cares what he wears, do they? “People are used to me in overalls. They don’t ever say anything.”

“And . . . that’s good?”

I screeched to a halt. “Of course it’s good.”

The warning bell rang, and we both started walking again as a crush of kids shoved past us. Josh glanced at me sideways, as if I was an exhibit in a museum. “I would think you’d be pretty sick of it.”

“I was. Totally sick of it. That’s why I’m wearing overalls again today.”

Geez. I thought Josh was smarter than this, but he didn’t seem to grasp the most basic concept. Probably because he liked talking to people like Kyle and Chrissie and the other morons who populated our school.

“That’s not what I meant.”

I frowned at him. “What don’t you get? When I do anything different—anything at all—everyone makes fun of me. They’ve been making fun of me all year so far, and it’s been the longest month of my life.”

“Because you’re doing things differently?”

“Because you’re talking to me, for starters. Because my sister is in reform school. Because I don’t have a partner for Physics. Because yesterday I wore something different. Just once.”

“You can’t help the part about your sister being in reform school.”

We walked into our classroom, and I dropped my voice. “I can’t help the rest of it, either.”

“You wore some new clothes. That was your decision.”

I reached my desk as Mr. Skamser followed the last kid inside the room and shut the door. “Actually, that was more my sister Jane’s fault. She’s trying to do me a so-called favor. As if.”

“And I asked you to be my Physics partner.”

I swiveled halfway around in my seat and gaped at him. “Aren’t you forgetting? You dumped me as your Physics partner.”

“Not exactly.”

He actually said that with a straight face.

“What part of ‘Kyle is my partner’ am I not getting?”

“Mary? Josh? Is this something you want to share with the class?” Mr. Skamser sat on the front edge of his desk, twisted up in his usual pretzel imitation, but today his beady eyes were skewering Josh and me.

A few kids laughed, and the guy next to Josh nudged him and winked. I just raised my eyebrows at Josh. He proved my point, didn’t he? Now that he talked to me, I kept getting nailed in class. The whole thing was out of my control.

I turned and made a show of opening my English book to the right page—I hoped—and grabbing a notebook and pen.

A note, folded into a triangle like one of those tiny “footballs” the guys used to punt across the cafeteria tables in grade school, flew over my shoulder and skittered onto my notebook. Startled, I slapped a hand over it, drawing another look from Mr. Skamser.

I gave him the most benign smile I could.

Unfortunately, I don’t do “benign” too well, and he headed toward my desk just as my clammy hand tried to slide the note across my notebook. I made it to the spiral binding just as Mr. Skamser stopped in front of my desk.

“Is there a problem, Mary?”

“Uh, no. I thought it was a mosquito, so I was trying to hit it.” With my free hand, I slapped the side of my neck. And winced.

Mr. Skamser stared at my other hand. The one that looked guilty, clammy, and clumsy. I bit my lip when Mr. Skamser reached for my hand. Just then, I heard a loud slam behind me as Josh’s textbook dropped on the floor. Mr. Skamser’s head jerked up at the noise, but he started to turn back to me just as someone else’s textbook hit the floor on the far side of the room. The girl who’d been hanging with Josh by my locker, and in class, a couple weeks ago. Who was now wearing overalls.

I swear Mr. Skamser’s back cracked from all the twisting and turning he was doing, which proved that his pretzel position wasn’t exactly good for him. My dad—or Deepak Chopra—could’ve told him that.

As I was thinking this, though, I whipped the football/note under my desk and crammed it in the side pocket of my overalls, then returned both my guilty hands to the top of my desk a moment before Mr. Skamser whirled one more time. On me.

“What do you have in your hand, Mary?”

I shrugged as I turned my open palms toward the ceiling. “A pen? If that’s okay?”

The whole class laughed—but this time with me. Not at me. For the first time in my entire life!

Mr. Skamser glanced again at Josh, then slowly ran his gaze around the room, sighing as he walked back to his desk.

I’d escaped capture and likely torture, not to mention humiliation, since Mr. Skamser would’ve undoubtedly read the note from Josh out loud. I’d made a tiny joke at Mr. Skamser, and the class had laughed with me. And I had a note from Josh burning a hole in my pocket.

I should wear overalls more often!

Still buzzing at lunchtime—despite the usual disasters that befell me in second-period Gym class, where we played soccer and Ms. Gonzalez made me the goalie and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty—I practically skipped into the cafeteria.

Okay, I didn’t skip. Hiking boots pretty much prevent a girl from skipping, even if she were still in the habit of skipping by the point she reaches her senior year of high school, and I wasn’t. But I felt good. I had the note in my pocket, and I couldn’t wait to read it. Lucky thing no one ever sat with me at lunch.

I blinked when the girl from English class, who was wearing overalls probably for the first time since age three, plopped down across from me. When Josh took the chair next to her, I frowned. Cozy. Even though they helped me avoid Mr. Skamser’s wrath today, I wanted to gag.

The girl smiled at me. “Hi. I’m Penelope.”

“I’m Mary.” Glancing at Josh, I flushed. “I mean, MB.”

Josh looked back and forth between the two of us, comparing us. Ew. Unless he’d just never seen two girls in overalls within a hundred yards of each other.

I studied Penelope, too. She wore glasses almost identical to mine, although hers looked so clear I wondered if she needed them. She didn’t have her hair in a ponytail, but it was too short and curly to be subdued by a mere rubber band. Her hair wasn’t the only thing that needed subduing. I couldn’t believe someone as short and voluptuous as Penelope would want to wear overalls. Her boobs practically burst out the sides. Or was that her goal?

I almost looked under the table to see if she was wearing hiking boots, but I held myself back. Besides, she wasn’t my clone. She was the wildly curvy version of me, wearing the same clothes but giving a totally different impression. Independent, maybe, but smoldering.

The only thing smoldering on me was Josh’s note. I reached my hand into my pocket, just to make sure it was still there, especially when Josh kept looking more at Penelope and less at me. When they started talking to each other and shutting me out, I gobbled my lunch and slurped down my soda and made my excuses and beat it out of there.

The note had lost most of its hotness by the time I made it to the media center, pulled it out of my pocket, and unfolded it. But I was still more excited than I wanted to admit—I mean, this was my very first note ever—so I quickly scanned it.

And frowned.

MB, do you have time after school for Kyle and me to ask you questions about the roller coaster we’re designing?

Josh

Oh. My. God. I was such an idiot.

Thank God I had Josh to remind me of it. Every day. I pictured him sitting in the cafeteria, playing kissy face or slobbering all over Penelope right now. Penelope, my doppelgänger, but with curves and wild curly hair and a gallon of makeup and, from what I could see, eyes for Josh.

Thank God I didn’t want Josh.

He wanted me only for my brains. Specifically, my brains for Physics. My knees suddenly felt rubbery, and I plunked down in the nearest chair as the librarian shushed me, apparently for plunking too loudly.

Had Penelope copied my look—such as it was—to get Josh? But which look of mine had Josh preferred? The one I wore yesterday when he couldn’t take his eyes off my boobs, or the overalls I’d worn today, when he tried to talk me into helping him get a better grade in Physics?

Why should I care? I hated Josh!

As I slouched in the hard wooden chair, feeling sorry for myself and pissed at Josh, the librarian walked up to me. Ms. Kieran had cast-iron eyes, jeweled fuchsia reading glasses on a chain around her neck, and—especially for a librarian—the loudest voice I’d ever heard. I steeled myself, figuring she’d give me grief for groaning in the media center. As if everyone didn’t do that, at least during finals.

“Mary? Mary Bennet, right?”

I nodded, not bothering to mention the “MB” thing to her. She’d probably only shush me.

“Are you here to look at college applications online? Or to look at college brochures?” She nodded at me, as if she couldn’t possibly think of another reason why I’d come into the media center during school. Like, say, for a book. “I heard you did quite well on your ACTs. I hope you’re considering some good schools. Just like your sister Jane.”

Right. Jane, who’d had to transfer from Carleton College to the U of M after her first year when Dad’s mid-life crisis and a sucker investment sent our family’s finances—along with all of our hopes for good colleges—up in smoke.

I shrugged. “I’ll probably just go to the U of M. That’s the only—”

She pointed a ring-covered finger at me. “I heard about your ACT scores, and I know your grades are quite high. Really, Mary. You must apply to some good schools.”

“Like I said. The U of M.”

“I see great things for you.”

I blinked. I hadn’t ever met a single person who saw great things for me, but somehow I’d been holding out hope that it’d be someone other than Ms. Kieran. Like maybe other kids, or at least my parents or sisters. Sure, Jane and Liz said nice things the other day, but I figured they were just giddy from having dates that night.

Ms. Kieran gave me a smug smile, told me to wait, then came back with half a dozen college brochures. Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, the University of Chicago. She might as well hand me brochures for a rocket to the moon.

I gave them right back to her. “Really. I pretty much have to go to the U of M.”

“Because you want to stay close to home?” She made a tsking sound, a lot like my mom always did, and held her reading glasses up to her nose as she peered at one of the brochures. “I hope your parents aren’t pressuring you to stay home. I find it extremely annoying when—”

“They’re not.”

“Well, the University of Chicago really isn’t so far away. There’s also Carleton College, which is very close and a gem. Doesn’t your sister Jane go there?”

She smiled wistfully, as if she wished she were having this conversation with Jane. Not with me, especially since I seemed to be thwarting her grand plans to live vicariously by sending me to the college of Ms. Kieran’s dreams.

I shrugged. “Jane went there her first year, but then she transferred to the U of M.”

Ms. Kieran frowned. “Really? Carleton’s English program seemed like just the thing for Jane.”

And it was, and Jane had loved it, and I think having to come back to the U of M had utterly crushed Jane. Just like Charlie crushed her. Come to think of it, for a girl Jane Austen called perfect, my own Jane had been smacked upside the head a few times in her life.

I’d just never thought of it that way.

As I thought about Jane, Ms. Kieran kept trying to shove the brochures back into my hand.

“Really, Ms. Kieran, I can’t.” I wasn’t about to explain my family’s finances to anyone, let alone the biggest gossip at Woodbury High, but I also didn’t feel like pretending I was going to bother dreaming of a school I couldn’t afford to visit, let alone handle tuition or housing. Even a scholarship—as if I could get one—would never come close to covering it all. “But thanks, uh, for thinking of me.”

As I backed away from her on my way out of the media center, my only sanctuary from Josh and Penelope and every other kid here at Woodbury High, she waved the brochures in the air. “I’m not giving up on this, Mary. I’ll speak to your teachers and perhaps even Mr. Paymar.”

I shuddered as I reached the door to the media center. Great. The last thing I needed was yet another trip to the principal’s office, even if it wasn’t technically for punishment. Visiting Mr. Paymar for any reason was torture.

I opened the door and waved feebly at Ms. Kieran. Nothing I said was going to stop her. I might as well ignore her.

“You have star potential, Mary. You deserve this!”

I shook my head as I joined the swarm of kids in the hallway. Ms. Kieran definitely had me confused with someone who, unlike me, had star potential. Or someone who had a future.

Weird. Despite being a librarian, Ms. Kieran obviously hadn’t read The Book.

Josh sat next to me in Physics again, but I finally knew why he’d decided to quit avoiding me in class: he wanted my help getting a good grade.

I’d figured out by now that Josh could get a decent grade in pretty much any subject, even with Kyle for a partner. But Josh wanted a good grade. Even if you didn’t absolutely need a partner to get a good grade, having someone smart to bounce ideas around with made it a lot easier. Which was why I’d basically stalled out on designing my own roller coaster.

It wasn’t that working on the roller coaster made me think of Josh, or of barfing all over him, or of how he stopped speaking to me and dumped me as his partner and then hooked up with a weird chick who was suddenly dressing like me. I told myself I was too busy acquiring a new wardrobe to work on a roller coaster. Even though the wardrobe had lasted exactly one day.

When I first saw Josh slide into the desk next to me in Physics class, I stuck my hand in the pocket of my overalls, right where Josh’s so-called note had been, to remind myself exactly how stupid I could be around a guy if he pretended to like me, even just for a few minutes.

Josh had pretended it, twice now, to get a better grade in Physics. And, twice now, I’d fallen for it.

At least this time I’d fallen for it only long enough to read his note. I was improving.

As Mr. Gilbertson started droning on about another physics principle that would never have great meaning in my life—since I wasn’t going to MIT or the University of Chicago or any other college for brainiacs, and therefore wouldn’t become a world-famous lab researcher, if there was such a thing—I glanced out the window. Unfortunately, Josh sat between the window and me, so an idiot might think I was glancing at Josh. Which I totally wasn’t.

He grinned at me.

I gave him a tight smile and looked back at my Physics notebook, which was open to a page on which I really ought to be taking notes instead of doodling, especially since I wasn’t much of an artist. I was a math and science geek who wasn’t going to MIT. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. How weird that one of Ms. Kieran’s brochures was for the college I’d dreamed of since seventh-grade science class. The day Jane moved back home after freshman year of college, I’d shoved it out of my mind forever. Painfully.

The droning continued, the half-assed doodling continued, and I could swear Josh’s grinning continued. Irritated, I sneaked a peek at him. He wasn’t grinning at me. He wasn’t even looking at me. From what I could tell, he was staring at some girl on the other side of the room.

I didn’t want to think about how many girls I’d seen Josh hanging with in the last couple of weeks, or even the last few hours. I mean, he probably hung with guys, too—like Kyle—but somehow I never noticed that. Why did I care? I didn’t like Josh. I mean, not like that.

But I’d kinda liked him as a friend. The strange, inexplicable guy who’d actually talked to me, passed me notes, hung out by my locker, and invaded my otherwise empty lunch table. As it turned out, he’d done it just to get a better grade. Couldn’t he hire a tutor?

Come to think of it, when he paid for my soda and rides at the Mall of America that day, had he actually thought of it as paying for a tutor?

Biting my lip until it ached, I stacked my books ten minutes before the final bell rang and leaped to my feet the moment it did. I scooted around half a dozen kids as I headed to the door, intent on escape. I almost stopped at my locker, then whapped myself upside the head. Duh! Josh would look for me there. I shot past it, then turned a corner and cruised down another hall as fast as the throngs of kids let me. Another corner. And into the media center. My old safe haven.

I’d forgotten about Ms. Kieran.

“Mary! Have you come back for the brochures?” She held up a hand when I started to protest, then waved it frantically when she noticed me backing out of the media center. “No, no, wait right here. I set them aside for you. I’ll get them.”

Josh was probably in the hall right now looking for me. Unlike me, he wasn’t a complete idiot, so he probably hadn’t waited more than five seconds at my locker after I left class before him. Would he look around school for me? Or would he and Kyle go somewhere and start working on their roller coaster project?

I sucked in a breath as I realized one of the most likely spots where he and Kyle might get together. Right here. In the media center. Where I was waiting for Ms. Kieran to give me a bunch of brochures that I’d toss in the trash the instant I left.

After a quick glance around to make sure I wasn’t within Ms. Kieran’s range of vision, I turned and ran. Out of the media center, down the hall, outside to the parking lot.

Even though my backpack and half my books, including a couple of hours’ worth of homework, were still in my locker. Even though I’d probably pissed off Ms. Kieran, who’d tell all the teachers or report me to Mr. Paymar or both. Even though it totally annoyed me that I was afraid of Josh and a football player who wasn’t even smart enough to spell his own name, let alone mine.

I was wheezing by the time I made it to the Jeep—or, actually, to where I’d parked the Jeep this morning. Had Cat grabbed it at lunchtime and skipped out for fast food? I glanced up and down the rows of cars. It should be easy enough to find; after one of Lydia’s infamous Jeep incidents last spring, before she even had a license, Dad painted the Jeep hot pink, claiming he wanted to be able to recognize it easily if the police ever called again like that.

No hot-pink Jeep appeared in my line of vision. There were two parking lots, one on each side of school, but we always parked in this lot so we knew where to find the Jeep. I walked up and down every row. Definitely no Jeep.

Cat, that rat bastard.

Sure, I’d done the very same thing to her a couple of times recently, but I’d been provoked. By Josh, who was now walking down the row I was in, coming straight at me.

The only good thing, if there was one, was that he wasn’t with Kyle. Or Penelope. Or any other girl.

But he looked pissed.

“No one in this school actually calls you MB, do they?”

I blinked. Those weren’t exactly the words I’d expected to come out of his mouth.

“Uh . . .” I felt like an idiot. I wanted everyone to call me MB, or thought I did, but no one did. Why? For starters, no one but Josh ever spoke to me. Why would they give a rip about what to call me? “It’s just that—”

“And I wrote you a note. You got it, right? Did you read it and then blow me off after school?”

Oh, right. The love note. The one that made me blow him off after school, yes, but I wouldn’t exactly use those words. Like, not in a million years.

Which was how soon I felt like talking to Josh.

“What do you want, Josh?” Angry, I tried glancing at him, but I wasn’t just angry. Even if he was a jerk and a user, Josh still made me . . . nervous. He was a guy, and guys had never talked to me. I stammered and, with my luck, probably had something green stuck between my teeth. “You want me for a Physics partner, and then you don’t, and then you do—but in some bizarre trio with Kyle, of all people.” I couldn’t help it; I snorted. “And then you decide you want me to help you and Kyle get a good grade. Is that pretty much it?”

I crossed my arms halfway through my speech, and I left them like that now. For one thing, I figured my hands would shake if I actually let them loose.

Josh just stared at me, then took a step toward me. I froze in place when I wanted to take a step or five backward.

A horn honked.

“Yo, Josh! You coming?” Kyle leaned out the driver’s window of a red convertible—figured—as he zoomed up to the two of us, stopping right behind Josh, who was still in the middle of the row.

Josh glanced over his shoulder at Kyle, then back at me. Shaking his head, he turned and climbed into Kyle’s car. Because Kyle was his partner. Kyle, who didn’t barf all over him on roller coasters. Kyle, his pal. I heard them both laugh as Kyle pealed out of the parking lot.

Mary or MB? No matter what anyone called me, I was a loser.

Was that Jane Austen’s fault? Or mine?