Breaking Up Is Hard To Do (Miracle Girls Book 2) Page 4

  “I can’t,” she says lifting herself up on her tiptoes and squinting. “I’m . . . meeting someone.”

  “I’ll come,” Marcus says, but Zoe pretends she doesn’t hear him.

  “What? Who on earth are you meeting?” I nudge Riley playfully, trying to cover the edge in my voice. “Stay and hang with us instead. Who could be more important than us?” I hook my arm around Zoe’s, and we both smile at Riley. I hope my desperation isn’t as obvious as it seems to be.

  “It’s no one.” Riley cranes her neck to see above the heads around us, and finally, her eyes light up. She waves to someone over my shoulder, then smiles at us. “It was great to see you guys.” Before we can even protest, she’s gone, bouncing up the dusty hillside. For a moment I think of chasing her down and asking if I can tag along, but I can’t seem to make myself do anything.

  “Who’s that?” Zoe shrieks. I turn in time to see Riley give that surfer guy Tom a hug, and he smiles down at her.

  Him? I open and close my mouth. What is she doing with him? I watch as he takes her hand and they turn away, her smile wide. I guess on some level I should be happy that she’s happy. I should. But watching her walk away, it’s hard to keep that in mind.

  “Come on, Zoe,” Marcus says, pointing to the line at the front of the haunted house again. He looks so hopeful it’s almost sad. That kid has got it bad for Zoe. “You wanna go?”

  “It’s some surfer guy she knows from San Francisco,” I mumble. “Tom.” I wonder if Riley has told the others about Tom yet.

  “Who?” Zoe bites her lip.

  “Come on. Let’s get in line for the haunted house again, or we could get some pumpkin pie. You want some pumpkin pie?” Marcus tries to put a hand on Zoe’s shoulder, but she deftly dodges it.

  She shakes her head. “Sorry, Marcus. I’ve got to meet Ed by the giant pumpkin soon,” she says, sighing.

  “Oh, come on.” I give her a pleading smile. “You don’t have to go yet.” This is Zoe, my true blue, and even she’s deserting me.

  “Your dad told my parents he’d give me a ride home, so I’ll go with you.” Marcus grabs for her hand, but Zoe moves it away quickly. She glares at him, then turns to me.

  “I’m tired, and everybody else . . .” She trails off, and I catch the look of defeat in her eyes. So much for my big plan for us to spend a little time together. “Do you need a ride?”

  I shrug.

  “Okay.” She watches me for a minute, but I don’t move. “Call me,” she mouths, then begins trudging up the hill. I nod. They walk away, Zoe taking small, labored steps while Marcus skips next to her, yammering away.

  And suddenly I’m utterly and completely alone. A group of junior high girls falls through the exit of the haunted barn. Their high-pitched shrieking is earsplitting, not exciting as it might have been even a half hour ago.

  I wander away in a cloud of confusion. When did all of the Miracle Girls get boyfriends? Okay, Zoe would never call Marcus a boyfriend, but he likes her at least. It’s something.

  I turn around and spot a lonely booth in a shiny beam of moonlight. It’s a milk-can toss. Without knowing why, I walk over to it and saddle up to the counter, though the haggard college student manning it seems in no mood to shill it to me.

  “One play, three dollars. Two plays, five dollars.” He speaks so quietly I can barely hear him.

  I hand him three singles, and he gives me a softball and then moves out of the way. He stares off into the distance, and I find myself wondering if he is all alone in the world too.

  I pull my arm back, harnessing the power of my pent-up teenage angst and launch the ball as hard as I can.

  All six milk cans clatter to the ground with a satisfying crash.

  “What can I get for that?”

  The greasy-haired booth attendant gestures toward the rows of prizes. “You can take any of the prizes on the middle shelf,” he mumbles, waving his hand vaguely in the direction of generic stuffed animals behind him. “Or you can throw another ball and try for the top row.” He halfheartedly moves his arm toward the top shelf, filled with giant pink monkeys and purple gorillas larger than most children. “Or you can get a fish.” He points to the small tank of sickly looking goldfish at his feet and shrugs.

  “Do I get to choose which fish?” I squint at the algae-covered walls of the tank and try to pick out which one will be least likely to die on me. The attendant looks at me, disdain in his eyes, and I sigh. “I’ll take the fish.” He scoops one out with a net, tosses it into a plastic bag, and hands it to me.

  “Thank you for playing.” He’s already turned away before I can utter thanks.

  I hold the bag up to my face and look into his little fishy eyes.

  “What should I call you?” The fish looks at me, and for a moment he seems to understand. Wait, is it a he? How can you tell the sex of a fish? I hold the bag up in the moonlight. Nope. Hmm. . . . He really looks like a guy. He swims to the far side of the bag and ignores me. Okay, he’s definitely a dude.

  I walk around behind the back of the haunted house and pull out my phone, then flip it open, and the soft glow of the screen lights up the night. No new messages. I speed dial my dad, who predictably does not answer, but I leave him a message asking to be picked up. Man, I can’t wait until I get my license. It’s less than a month away now, and I’m getting pretty good behind the wheel; even Dad says so.

  I trudge up to the parking lot, cursing under my breath. Why didn’t I get a ride home with Ana or Zoe? Who knows how long it will be before my dad checks his messages. As I walk through the brightly lit corridor lined with food stands, I try not to think about the real reason I didn’t get a ride.

  Because I didn’t want to go home. Because we were having so much fun I wanted to hold on to the feeling. I wanted them to stay, just the four of us. Even when Ana left, I clung to Riley, and then Zoe. I mentally berate myself as I exit the bright corridor and scuff my feet along the dirt path that leads to the parking area. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I know it’s useless to cling to people because they always move on. Everyone leaves.

  I plop down on a hay bale at the end of the parking lot, holding my fish’s bag carefully. I guess it’s me and him now. Voices sound all around me, people walking to their cars laughing in the cool moist night as I try my dad again. No answer.

  Now that I’m not a part of it, the noises of the festival—the clanging of the milk cans against the cold concrete, the high-pitched screeching from the haunted house, the canned music playing over the sound system—are no longer festive. They only seem sad. Real life is going on around me, but I’m here, struggling to hang on. Behind me, people are eating and making friends and falling in love, and I’m waiting in a dark parking lot with my fish.

  “You all alone, little lady?”

  I gasp, clutching the fish to my body to protect him, then sigh as Ms. Moore plops down beside me.

  She laughs quietly. “You okay?”

  “Oh yeah.” I give her my typical smile and try to sound confident. “Me and Joe here are fine.” I hold up his bag.

  She watches me; then a slow smile breaks across her face. “What kind of name is Joe for a fish?”

  I shrug. A generic one, a forgettable one. It’s the name of a loner, which is fitting if he’s going to join my family. “I thought about Bruce.”

  “Bruce Lee?”

  “Yeah, but fish are no good at kung fu. So I went with Joe instead.”

  “What are you still doing here?” She peers behind my back, turning from side to side as if a Miracle Girl or two might pop out. “Is someone coming to get you?”

  I pretend to be engrossed with Joe, holding his bag up to study his face. He looks a little thin.

  “Did you call your dad?”

  He’s really kind of a silvery color, not actually very gold at all.

  “He didn’t answer.” She says this with an eerie kind of certainty.

  Where do you get fish food? I’ll have to remember to find a pet s
tore around here.

  “Okay.” She pulls me in a little closer. My back stiffens reflexively, but I force myself to relax. “We’ll wait.”

  Behind us, we hear the shrieks and laughter of carnival goers, but on this little bale of hay, all I can hear is my own breath, growing soft and even. Maybe I’m not utterly alone. There is at least one person who cares about me, and that’s a start.

  8

  As I slide into art class, I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m not entirely sure, but I think Ms. Lewis, my gym teacher, might be a witch. She wears a lot of black, she has a funny bump on her crooked nose, she’s bone thin, and sometimes when she looks at me I get the distinct impression she’s about to cackle in delight and throw me into a pot with some eye of newt. Also, I’m getting a C in her class.

  The art teacher, Mr. Dumas, on the other hand, is plump, scatterbrained, and lets us sit anywhere we want at long communal tables. He has messy, whitish hair and wears Buddy Holly glasses and cardigans with holes in them. We don’t have to be on time or even attend his class. Even the freshmen figure out by Christmas that he simply marks everyone present every day no matter what. I choose a seat in the back left-hand corner, pull out my sketchbook, and start thinking about the piece I’ve been working on.

  A couple weeks ago I brought in a very old picture I found in the attic. At the time, I was looking for that stupid wig for my Miss California Pumpkin, which I never really finished, thanks to the pumpkin fight, and I came across an old wooden box from when I was a little girl. Inside were pictures of my mother’s ancestors. I’m not sure who any of them are except for my grandparents, but one of the pictures really grabbed me. It was of a small, weathered woman wearing a nón lá, the traditional Vietnamese hat that looks like an upside-down top, standing in front of a little wooden house smiling like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “That picture is so amazing.” Andrew Cutchins slips into the seat next to me as the bell rings.

  I slide my arm over the picture to cover it, then look at him out of the corner of my eye. Andrew is one of the most popular guys in the entire school, and he’s also probably the best artist in the class. He’s been sitting across the room the whole year, ignoring me, so I’m a bit skeptical about his sudden interest in my project. People like Andrew make me uncomfortable. They’re so ra-ra-ra and I’m so . . . invisible.

  “Um, thanks.” I wait for him to move. Surely he was just sitting next to me for a moment? He tosses his backpack onto the floor and hooks his legs around the bars of the chair, then grins at me.

  “All right, all right. Simmer down, you wild animals.” Mr. Dumas walks lazily to the front of the class. His brand of humor is all about pretending we annoy him to no end, but we know that he lives for this job.

  “Today let’s keep working on our reinterpretations of old photos. I’ll be at my desk if you need to harass me, either for sport or with just cause. Try not to disgrace the muses too much.” He rolls his eyes and trudges back to his antique wooden desk in the corner. Currently Mr. Dumas is working on some sort of acrylic painting.

  “Love that guy,” Andrew says, laughing.

  I stare at him. Is he talking to me? I glance around, but there’s no one behind me. Huh. Is this when normal girls giggle? Would Riley? I decide that she definitely would, but I can’t. On the other hand, I can’t just say nothing either. “Yeah.”

  Right when the word comes out of my mouth, I hate myself. The one and only Andrew Cutchins deigns to speak to me, and all I come out with is yeah? Christine Lee, you are definitely doomed to the lonely life of an artist.

  “By the way, I’ve been wanting to tell you how amazing that painting you did last month was. I thought it showed a lot of Gustav Klimt.”

  My heart slams around in my chest. As Ana has observed out loud on several embarrassing occasions, I’m the most confident girl in the world, except where guys are concerned. Take for instance that disastrous date with Tyler this summer. I don’t think I breathed a word the entire time we walked around the gallery, and galleries are really quiet. The silence was pounding in my ears.

  “Really?” I turn to him. “The trees in the painting are in my friend Zoe’s backyard,” I say quickly. “We were over there one day, and I snapped this incredible picture of the light hitting them just the right way. I’d been itching to paint it.”

  “I wanted to say something earlier, but my painting was so bad.” He runs his hands through his hair. His eyes are such a pale blue that they’re almost gray. He’s got a lanky frame, which no doubt helps him in basketball, and big hands with short, pristine nails.

  “Oh please. Yours was the best in the class.” I startle even myself with this comment. For some reason this guy isn’t so intimidating. Not like Tyler.

  “Hey now. It’s not nice to tease a simple preacher’s son like me.”

  “Give me a break.” I wave off his joke. There is no way a guy like Andrew is a preacher’s son. Preachers’ kids always dress a little funny, quote Monty Python movies, and have weird allergies.

  “Really, I am. I swear!” He puts his big hand across his heart.

  “Whatever.” He seems serious about this, but it’s better not to find out. Just when I start to believe him, he’ll admit he was teasing me and I’ll feel like a loser. I uncover the photo and try to settle and get a little work done.

  “That’s looking really good.”

  I drop my pencil and turn back to him. Okay, seriously. Why pick on the poor lonely freak girl? I’ve got enough troubles as it is. I narrow my eyes at him.

  “So why the sudden interest in my work?”

  “It’s not sudden.” My heartbeat picks up again as Andrew pulls a pencil out of his backpack and flips his sketchbook open. “But you’re hard to talk to. Last year you were molting, so . . .”

  I touch my poor, dye-fried hair. “I was going through my Gwen Stefani phase.”

  “The pink was my favorite.” He hesitates for a moment and then lowers his voice. “But I think I like it black best of all. And the nose ring is really cool too.”

  The compliment hangs in the air, creating a tangible awkwardness. My cheeks burn, and my head is trying to make sense of what is happening. Andrew Cutchins is talking to me, and as far as I can tell, he’s not doing it to tease me. Actually, I think he might be flirting with me. Why oh why aren’t any of the Miracle Girls good at art so I could get a second opinion?!

  Mr. Dumas clears his throat dramatically. “Ms. Lee, Mr. Cutchins. This is art class, not the Love Connection. Please stop flirting before the rest of us lose our appetites altogether.”

  I stare wide-eyed at Mr. Dumas and feel my cheeks flush. He gives me a sarcastic smile, and I glance quickly around the room, expecting people to be pointing and laughing, but instead I see a few girls giving me a look I recognize all too well. It’s what I used to do when I saw people talking to Tyler last year. It’s jealousy.

  I swallow and pick up my pencil, trying to focus on the picture I’m supposed to be reinterpreting, willing myself with all my might not to steal a glance at Andrew. After fifteen minutes, though, I can no longer fight the urge. I glance at him and catch him looking at me out of the corner of his eye. I jolt my eyes back to my paper. Is it true? Was Andrew Cutchins flirting with me?

  Finally, after a long, grueling hour of not looking at Andrew, the bell rings and Andrew throws his sketchbook into his bag, runs his long fingers through his hair, and walks toward the door. He is so cute, devastatingly cute. And he knows art—no, he doesn’t just know art, he can create art. I shake my head at this unreal day.

  Packing my things away, I make my way for the door, hitting my hip on one of the desks on my way out.

  “Be careful out there, Christine.” Mr. Dumas crosses his arms over his chest and smirks as I leave. “It seems you might have come down with something.”

  9

  “Okay, give it a leeeettle gas.” Dad seems totally relaxed.

  This sleepy little town is a great place t
o learn to drive because you can’t possibly hit anything, but no matter how many times I tell myself this, I can’t seem to calm down. They never tell you how difficult driving is. You only get to use one foot. That’s like hopping or something.

  I press my foot gently on the gas, and we begin to back out of the driveway, passing a little too close to the mailbox, which Dad is nice enough not to mention. In fact he only winces a little as it passes so close to my sideview mirror that I could touch it, and then we’re off.

  We’re headed to the ice cream shop, just Dad and “his girls.” That would be me and Emma. I wouldn’t even bother except that I need the hours behind the wheel, and Dad is finding it hard to pencil me in these days. He’s an assemblyman, and his official office is in Sacramento, which is two hours away without traffic. Usually on weeks when the legislature is in session he stays there all week and the Bimbo stays with me and Emma.

  Five minutes into the drive, I relax my death grip on the steering wheel a little. I still keep my hands at 10 and 2, but I lean back a little in my seat. When I’m nervous, I drive like a grandma, leaning way forward, and it’s kind of embarrassing. But nothing has happened so far, and I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable behind the wheel.

  I see an intersection coming up and begin to slow the car. Dad and Emma seem to have an unspoken agreement that it’s probably better for their own safety if they don’t talk, and in the blessed silence, my thoughts drift to Andrew. We’ve been chatting in class all week, and every new detail I discover about him makes me like him a little bit more. He is, in fact, a preacher’s son. Plus he’s a junior, so he can drive already. Sometimes he takes his mother’s station wagon to school, but usually he rides with his friend Ben.

  I bring the car to a slow crawl at a stop sign and look both ways. There’s no one in the intersection, so I push the gas pedal down slightly and continue forward.