Three
LIV’S DADS INVITE us for Sunday dinner. It’s a two-part celebration: me, Liv, and Wyatt going back to school and Dodd’s promotion at work. Now instead of being Trillium Salon and Day Spa’s assistant stylist, he’s the expert colorist. This may not sound like a big deal, but Pops couldn’t be prouder. There’s shrimp on the grill, champagne, and a huge cake in the shape of a woman’s head, with yellow Twizzlers for hair.
Liv made up business cards on her computer: Todd Longo, Colorist to the Stars. Todd is his real name. When Liv was little she couldn’t pronounce her T’s, and “Dodd” just stuck.
Now, about fifteen minutes into dinner, Pops starts telling the story of how he and Dodd met.
“So he took one look at me and said, ‘Sweet Christ, what are we going to do with all that hair?’ ”
Even though she’s heard the story a million times, my mom throws back her head and laughs. I do too. Because the thing is, Pops does have crazy hair—thick and dark and curly. When it grows out, it becomes a Jackson Five fro, which is pretty funny when you think about where he works: Sterling, Weiss & Lowe, this ultraconservative law firm in Worcester. Pops is Gregory James Weiss—the “Weiss” in Sterling, Weiss & Lowe. He wears custom-made suits to work every day.
Dodd wears jeans.
Pops is also a sports fanatic, whereas Dodd couldn’t hit a baseball if his life depended on it. Pops drinks scotch; Dodd drinks Fresca. Basically, if you didn’t know how perfect they were together, you’d take one look at them and think, Huh? But Pops and Dodd are, bar none, the happiest couple I know.
Which makes it all the more cringe-worthy when halfway through the meal Pops turns to my mom and says, “So, Kate. I heard you had quite the shopping trip the other night.”
Come on. Does Liv really need to tell her dads everything? Is nothing sacred?
My mom gives me a look. I kick Liv under the table.
“Ow!”
Liv’s twelve-year-old brother, Wyatt, raises his eyebrows at me. “Kidney stone?”
“What?”
“You seem to be in pain. When Pops had one, he said it hurt like—”
“Oh, honey,” Dodd says, reaching out to caress my mom’s hand. “How are you?” His green eyes are wide with tragedy, as if instead of seeing Paul Tucci’s parents buying shampoo, my mom had witnessed a murder.
“I’m fine,” she says, waving a shrimp through the air. “Absolutely fine. . . . I haven’t even thought about it.”
Bald-faced lie. I saw the yearbook on her bed last night, and I know she was looking at Paul Tucci’s picture. Maybe the close-up—his senior portrait. Or the full-body shot of him at the foul line, shooting a free throw. If that’s not “thinking about it,” what is?
“Thought about what?” Wyatt says. His long strawberry-blond bangs flop gracefully over one eye—the latest of Dodd’s creations.
“Kate ran into some old friends at the grocery store,” Pops explains. “Some friends she hadn’t expected to see again.”
And the Euphemism of the Year Award goes to . . .
“Josie’s dad’s parents,” Liv says, which compels me to kick her under the table once more. And once more she says, “Ow!” Then, “What?” Liv looks from me to my mom and back to me. “We all know the story. What’s the big secret? We’re family!”
My mom nods and jams the fork in her mouth. She chews for a second, then blurts out something that sounds like “Family comes in many forms,” sending little bits of shrimp sailing through the air like confetti.
Wyatt cocks an eyebrow at her. “Say it, don’t spray it.” And my mom laughs. If anyone is a good sport, it’s Kate Gardner. If anyone is going to smile and say, “Now, how ’bout that hair cake?” it’s my mom.
Still, I know she’s hurting. Those Tuccis are stuck in her brain like shards of glass. But she’s not going to let on, believe me.
I watch as my mom raises her glass to Dodd. “To the best expert colorist this side of the Mississippi.”
“Hear, hear!” Pops says.
“Hair, hair!” my mom says, and everyone laughs.
I love this about her, the way she makes other people feel like a million bucks. Instead of throwing a pity party for herself, she’s always the first to say “Good for you” to someone else. It’s a wonderful trait. Also kind of twisted. I mean, why should Kate Gardner, this amazingly caring and giving person, not have what Pops and Dodd have? Someone who loves her back? Even someone who is completely tone-deaf like Pops, who right now is holding up the hair cake and singing, “Isn’t she loooovely”at the top of his lungs while Dodd gazes up at him with big, starry eyes. It’s the sweetest thing ever. Sweeter than hair cake.
It’s 7:40 a.m. and I am back on Liv’s porch, ringing the doorbell. Since Liv is a May birthday and I’m June, all we have is our learner’s permits. We can’t drive to school yet, so we figured we’d ride the bus like we have every day since first grade (Liv: window seat, me: aisle), but for some reason my mom insisted on chauffeuring. Now she is sneaking little glances at us in the rearview mirror and saying things like, “Junior year. I can’t believe it. This is huge.”
She’s fresh from the shower, fully caffeinated, and smiling, but I can just see the thought bubble rising over her head: Junior year. The year my life went to hell in a handbasket. My mom only got to be a junior for three months. Three months before she peed on a stick and saw that little pink plus sign.
“One more year and you’ll be seniors,” she says. “Two more and you’ll be in college.”
College, the one place my mother never got to go. Instead she got her GED. And a big, fat belly.
One time I asked her why she didn’t go back to high school after I was born, to finish her senior year, and she said, “It wasn’t my choice, Josie.” It was Grandma Gardner who wanted her to work, who pushed her to take the job at the bookstore.
“College,” my mom says again, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it.”
“I know, right?” Liv says, shaking her head right along with my mom. “Six more years and we won’t even be in school.”
You would think that Liv, being an expert in the art of sarcasm delivery, is mocking my mother, but she’s not. Liv loves school. There is no one, and I mean no onewho embraces the first day like Olivia Weiss-Longo. For as long as I can remember, she has been the kid with the fifty-pack of perfectly sharpened #2 pencils in her book bag and an apple for the teacher.
She’s also the one in the crazy outfit. In middle school, if all the girls were wearing jeans on the first day, Liv would show up in a peasant dress. If miniskirts were the rage, she’d wear camouflage. Liv is so anti-cool, she actually raises coolness to new heights. So I had to laugh when I saw her this morning, in kneesocks and a plaid kilt fastened with one of those giant safety pins. I guarantee tomorrow half the freshman girls will be wearing the same thing.
At a stoplight, Liv scrambles into the front seat next to my mom. “O licensed driver over the age of twenty-one, can I drive?”
“No, you may not.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I let you drive, then I would not have the pleasure of chauffeuring you on the first day of your junior year.”
“Pleeeeeease, Kate?”
“Noooooooo, Liv.”
Liv pretends to pout, but she doesn’t mean it. She loves my mom. My mom is the mom Liv never got to have. Her and Wyatt’s biological mother is an egg donor/surrogate from Minnesota, a Princeton grad with a genius IQ. Pops and Dodd joke about this, saying next year Liv can apply to Princeton as a legacy, but we all know she’s so smart she would get in anyway.
“Who do you have for English?” I ask from the backseat.
Liv looks at her schedule. “Uh . . . Montrose. Fifth period.”
“AP?”
“Yup.”
Advanced Placement English. I rest my case. I’m about to ask about math when Liv changes the subject. “Look, Jose,” she says, pointing out the window. “Wendy Geruntino is wearing a thong!”
Sucker that I am, I look.
Wendy Geruntino, walking along the sidewalk with the same wheely pink backpack she’s had since seventh grade, is wearing baggy jeans and a sweater down to her knees.
“Ha-ha,” I say.
Liv crosses her eyes and grins.
Wendy Geruntino would never in her life wear a thong. Wendy Geruntino is secretary of the student council and co-chair of the Christian Students Fellowship. She is also the founder and president of Elmherst High School’s Chastity Club, which is essentially a society for virgins. Last year in assembly she tried to get the entire student body to sign a purity pledge, inspiring a bunch of senior guys to yell, “Eat me!” from the back of the auditorium.
It’s mind-boggling how Wendy keeps up the cause, trying to convince everyone to “stay pure” until marriage, when ninety percent of the school rags on her.
“I don’t know why anyone would wear a thong,” my mom says. “They seem so uncomfortable.”
“Don’t knock it till you try it, Kate,” Liv says.
“Please,” I say. “Don’t encourage her.”
The last thing I need is my mom showing up to one of my soccer games in dental-floss underwear. It’s bad enough that she’s barely aged since high school—that her butt looks as good in low-rise jeans as my friends’ do, and that guys my own age check her out. She’s my mother.
We pull up to the curb in front of school.
“Junior year,” my mom says again, gripping the steering wheel. “I still can’t believe it.” She leans over to kiss Liv’s cheek, then turns back to me.
“J-Bear.”
There’s no stopping her from using that nickname or from flinging her arms around my neck, burying her nose in my ear, and whispering how proud she is of me.
Minutes pass, and she’s not letting go.
“Mom,” I say.
Liv has hopped out of the car and our friends are beginning to gather on the sidewalk, whispering, laughing.
“Mom. Everyone’s waiting.”
Finally—and I can tell how hard this is for her to do—she tears herself away.
A lot of my friends would be rolling their eyes by now, saying, God, Mother. There’s a reason teenagers don’t let their parents drive them to school.
But I don’t say that. Instead I say, “It’s just another school year.”
My mom nods, smiles a little. “I know.” She eyes the shirt I’m wearing, gauzy and white, with the lace camisole underneath—tight, but not too tight. “Are you sure you don’t want a sweater? I have a sweater in the—”
“Mom,” I say.
“OK, OK.” She holds up her hands.
“Just . . . I’ll be fine.”
“I know.”
“OK?”
She nods.
“I’ll stop by the store tonight.”
“Sounds good.”
“Good,” I say, and hop out of the car to join my friends.
My mother beeps, waves, drives away.
And what do I feel? Relief. OK, and a tiny sprinkling of guilt on top. But that is not going to stop me, let me tell you. This is my junior year! My junior year, and I have no intention of screwing it up.
I sit in the back row of Mr. Catenzaro’s homeroom, between Kimmy Gustofson and Lorelei Hill, who screamed when they saw me and launched right in, telling me every detail of their summers. They were both lifeguards at Lake Wyola (big shocker there; Kimmy and Lorelei have been attached at the hip since kindergarten). They both dated fellow lifeguards (uh-uh). Total hotties (of course). Who just so happened to be twin brothers: Andy and Randy (ach).
Fluorescent lights crackle overhead. The air is a potpourri of chalk dust, armpits, and those wood shavings the janitor throws on the floor when someone pukes.
I notice that Mr. Catenzaro, who is the only teacher I know who wears jeans to school, seems to have gone one denim shade darker and two sizes tighter since last year. Liv thinks Mr. C is hot. She says he looks just like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever—the same olive skin; dark, feathered hair; chin dimple. She imagines him tossing off his blazer after school, unbuttoning his shirt, and doing the hustle on his desk. I’m not sure how she comes up with these things, but she does.
It’s not just Mr. C, either. Liv thinks a lot of the male teachers are hot. Even Mr. Arble, the assistant principal, with his cheesy goatee, makes it onto her crush list. Forget high-school boys, Liv is always telling me. Too immature. The last guy she dated, Avi, a counselor at her drama camp, was twenty-one: a real man.
The truth is, twenty-one sounds old to me—skeevy. I like boys. I like that Matt Rigby was a bit unsure of himself that night on my porch, fumbling with the hook on my bra, embarrassed when our noses bumped. If he was twenty-one instead of seventeen, he might not have been so—
“Josephine? . . . Josephine Gardner?”
Mr. Catenzaro must have been calling my name for a while, because now everyone is looking at me. I can feel my cheeks heat up.
“Here,” I say.
Mr. C grins. “Are you sure about that?” His teeth are big and square and white. “Sure you’re not still on the beach somewhere?”
Porch swing, actually.
I bob my head like an idiot, telling myself: No—the whole class did not just watch a slow-motion reenactment of Matt Rigby de-bra-ing you on New Year’s Eve.
Mr. C finishes attendance and moves on to announcements. My cheeks return to room temperature. After a million years, the bell rings.
By some scheduling fluke, the entire Makeup Mafia ends up in fourth-period gym with me and Liv.
“So their coach talked to Coach, and I think it’s happening tomorrow.” Jamie Mann is all smiles and hair flips.
I sit on the bleachers, lacing up my sneakers and listening to Jamie, Kara, Lindsey, and Schuyler chattering away.
“It is such an awesome idea,” Kara says.
“I know, right?” Lindsey says.
“Isn’t it an awesome idea?”
“Don’t you guys think?”
Apparently, they’re asking me and Liv.
“About what?” Liv says.
“Coed scrimmage. With the boys’ team.” Jamie’s face is all aglow with excitement.
“Whose idea was it?” I ask.
“Theirs,” Schuyler says. “Can you believe it?”
No, actually. I can’t.
“Their strength is aggression at the net,” Jamie explains. “And we’re better at the passing game, so it, like, makes sense to learn from each other.”
“Plus if we’re trying to impress each other, we’ll probably play better. I know I will,” Schuyler says. Schuyler is not exactly the queen of motivation during practice. She’s probably most excited about scrimmaging the guys so she can show off her butt in Spandex.
Liv shrugs. “Sounds good to me.” Meanwhile, her elbow is digging into my ribs. “Hester?”
I shoot Liv the fish-eye.
She smiles innocently.
The girls are confused. “Who’s Hester?”
“No one,” I say. “Scrimmage sounds fun.”
Seventh period, on my way to English, I’m walking through the senior corridor (not because I’m hoping to run into anyone, but because it’s the shortest route to Room 310), and I see him. Matt Rigby, alone at his locker, fiddling with the padlock. His polo shirt is bright green, new-looking. Blond hair curls over his collar. Jeans. Black Converse low tops. I can feel my breath quicken, the plunge of my stomach into my knees. He couldn’t look better if he tried.
What if I walked up to him right now? What if I walked right up and tapped him on the shoulder—smiled and tossed my hair around like Jamie Mann. Hey, Riggsy. What’s up?
But I would never do that.
It’s stupid to pretend that I don’t see him, but that’s what I do. I hold my books to my chest and steer my gaze to the end of the hall: the trophy case under the Elmherst Hurricanes banner.
Out of the corner of my eye I see a redhead in a tube top—Tessa something, a senior—sidle up next to him. “Heyyy, Riggsy!” she says in that perky cheerleader way, draping one arm around his waist like she’s done it a million times before.
She wants to know if he’s going to study hall. He is? Great! They can go together!
Great.
“Are you going to the game Friday night?” I hear her ask.
And he says, “I don’t know. I have to check with my secretary.” Now she giggles.
I walk as fast as a person can walk without looking like a moron.
Sometimes the feeling is like a wrecking ball to your gut. Not that I have any right to be jealous. I mean, just because Matt Rigby disrobed me on a porch swing once, it’s not like I own the guy. He’s probably been disrobing girls all summer long, ever since he and Missy broke up. And who cares if he has? Matt Rigby can do whatever he wants, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a free country.
“Awww,” my mom says. “Best daughter in the world.” She peels back the lid of the milk shake I’ve brought her and tastes it. “Hmm. White chocolate peanut butter?” She likes to be surprised, so Bob always changes it for her. “No, wait”—she frowns into the cup—“what is that? Almond? Cashew?”
“Macadamia nut,” I say. “White chocolate macadamia nut.”
“Aha!”
“Bob says hi, by the way.”
“Well, tell him hi back.”
“If I do that, he’ll think you like him.”
She smiles. “Bob’s sweet.”
“Please.” I roll my eyes. “I have ten minutes before I have to go back and bleach something.”
“And I have no customers. Let’s sit.” She steps down from the ladder she’s been using to shelve books. We’re in the travel section. I used to love the travel section. When I was little I would pull down the National Geographic coffee-table books with the photos of Africa, and I’d pretend I was going on safari. Now I’m more into self-help. That section is hilarious. Whatever problem you’re having, there’s a book with the solution. Fear of snakes? Check out the Phobia and Anxiety Workbook. Trouble with your hoo-hoo? You too can Overcome Painful Vaginal Symptoms and Enjoy an Active Lifestyle. Then there’s my personal favorite—the first place everyone should turn when they’re feeling sorry for themselves: Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life.
We plop onto the blue velvet couch by the window. Everything in Twilight Books comes in shades of blue. Blue curtains, blue chairs, blue shag rugs. This color scheme can be either extremely soothing or extremely depressing, depending on your mood.
“So,” my mom says, “how was the first day?”
I shrug. “OK.”
“OK?” Both eyebrows shoot up.
Here is the thing: You can’t just say “OK” to my mother. You can’t just say “fine.” You have to get specific. There is no such thing as the fuzzy middle.
“Teacher stuff, girl stuff, or boy stuff ?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“It’s one of the three.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“How?”
She laughs. “Believe it or not, I used to be a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“Gee, really?” I say, adding a little squirt of sarcasm. “I had no idea.”
She takes a sip of milk shake. Stirs it with her finger. Licks the finger. Takes another sip. Waits.
“If you must know,” I say, “it’s boy stuff.”
“The boy?”
I nod. My mom knows about New Year’s Eve—the PG version anyway.
She leans in.
I sigh, reach for the milk shake, take a swallow. “This is disgusting.”
“You’re changing the subject,” she says.
“No, I’m not.”
“So . . . did you talk yet?”
“I told you, we don’t talk. We stare. And we say nothing. That’s what we do.”
My mom raises her eyebrows again.
“Just . . . never mind. It’s not a big deal.”
Silence for a moment. Then she pats my arm. “Well, you’ll talk to him when you’re ready.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“When you’re ready to put yourself out there, to take the risk, you’ll do it.”
“Oh, OK, Pot.”
“What?”
“Calling the kettle black much? When was the last time you put yourself out there?”
“We weren’t talking about me,” she says.
I smile. “We are now.”
She gives me a look that’s halfway between annoyed and amused. Anused? Ammoyed?
“When was the last time you went on a date? Huh? 1994?”
I am referencing the Paul Tucci era without actually saying the name. I can’t. My mother hasn’t uttered the word “Tucci” since the Shop-Co debacle, which means she is not exactly—
“Help!” I squeal, because she is pinching my thigh. “Child abuse!”
That’s when the bells above the front door tinkle and a man walks in. Not too old, not too young. Blue eyes, wavy sand-colored hair. Suede jacket, khakis. Funky green sneakers. He spots us on the couch. “Wait—you are open, right?”
“Absolutely,” I say, and stand up.
“Great,” the guy says. Nice baritone voice. “Because I’m looking for a book.”
“Break’s over,” I say to my mom, and boy do I hightail it out of there. Because sometimes, just when you need to end a conversation, a beautiful moment arrives.