A Match Made in High School (11 page)

I elbowed her. “All right, I know, I know. I’m sorry. I go on and on about him to you. I’m sure you’re so over the subject. Okay, okay, I won’t mention him again . . . tonight.”

I giggled. Sam giggled with me.

“Let’s try this house,” Marcie said.

By the time we finished trick-or-treating, Sam’s bag was almost too heavy for her. She carried it over her shoulder and told everyone that it had a couple of spare heads in it in case she wanted a snack. Too cute.

We got back to her house, and she dumped the loot into a huge pile on the family room carpet. We decided to watch
Sixteen Candles
again, since we hadn’t gotten through it before. Marcie and I made Mexican-flavored International Corn (taco seasoning and corn oil), and Sam alternated between handfuls of popcorn and fistfuls of candy.

Halfway through the movie, the doorbell rang. Todd. Budget. Damn. I was never going to get to finish watching this movie. Then again, I’d seen it so many times that I knew every line by heart. I hopped up to get the door.

“TRICk-oR-TREAT,” Todd SAId.

“I wish it was a trick, because seeing you is no treat,” I said.

Todd handed me a plastic grocery bag. “Our leftover candy,” he said. “For Sam. Not you.”

“You know, even when you do something nice you manage to be a jackass,” I said. “It’s remarkable, really. If only there were a way to harness this talent.”

He pushed past me into the house. We set up in the dining room. We sat on either side of the table with Todd’s
Trying the Knot
packet spread out between us. “I saw your mother’s article in the
Daily Ledger
,” he said.

“What? When was she in the paper?”

“This morning. Didn’t you see it? Oh, right, sorry. I forgot you’re illiterate.”

“Very funny, Señor Shitslacks. What’d it say?”

“It talked about her campaign against the marriage ed course, and how the school board insists that we keep the course going, even while they’re debating it, yada yada.”

Between going to school, buying Halloween stuff, and being at Sam’s, I hadn’t been home all day. But that didn’t

really make me feel like less of an ass for not knowing about Mom’s article. I’d have to check it out as soon as I got home.

“All right, Princess, let’s get this over with,” Todd said, pulling out the budget sheet. “We earned forty dollars of real cash, so we have six thousand bucks. Plus the twenty we banked from September. Damn, this month we’re rich.”

“You do the math; I’ll fill in the sheet,” I said. “Start with living expenses.”

“We already had the big house last month, so we’re not changing that.”

“Fine with me.” I wrote it down. “Home A. Mortgage two thousand. Utilities five hundred.”

“That leaves $3,520,” Todd said. “Let’s get all the extras this time. Cell phone, Internet,
and
cable. I hated not having cable.”

“Whatev.” I filled in the sheet. I heard Mar and Sam crack up at something in the other room. Probably Long Duk Dong. “How much is left?” I asked.

Todd subtracted in his head. “That’d be 3,365.”

“Really?” I said. “Right on.”

“Cars next. A luxury hybrid for me, and nothing for you.”

“Why don’t I get a car?” I cried.

“You’re a townie. You ride your bike.”

“Screw that,” I said. “We’re rich. I want a luxury hybrid too.” I wrote down two hybrids. “Now how much?”

“Twenty-five sixty-five.”

“We still have that much?”

He double-checked the math. “Apparently.”

124 Kristin Walker

I looked at what was left to budget for. “I don’t think we can possibly spend all of it. Even if we go for top-of-the-line food and entertainment—should we?”

“Of course.”

“Then we still have over sixteen hundred left.”

He spoke into an invisible microphone. “What will our contestants choose? Bank it or blow it?” The dork.

“We should bank it,” I said.

“I think blow it.”

“On what?” I asked.

“Forty-two-inch plasma TV, baby.”

“What do we need that for?”

He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head.

“The sweet cable package we have now. All the sports channels. I’m not watching the games on some nineteen-inch piece of crap.”

“You’re a lunatic. This is
fake
. Okay. You take half and spend it on whatever you want,” I said.

“Hookers?”

“Something we could
both
use.”

“Hookers?”

“For the
house
. Ugh! Why are you making this so difficult?”

“Why not?”

I ignored him and did the division myself. “We’ll put

$807.50 toward a new TV, and the same into savings. Done. Hardly worth the effort.”

Todd gathered together everything but the budget sheet and walked back around the table. “I’m outta here,” he said.

“So you’ll turn in the budget, right?” He patted me on the head. “Thanks, little woman. What a good little wife.”

I smacked his hand away. “Kiss my ass.”

“Wouldn’t you love it.”

“Only if I were a dog, like you.”

“You’re not too far off,” he said, and strolled out. When I got back to the family room, Sam was asleep on the couch with a half-eaten piece of red licorice clutched in her fist. “She crashed,” Mar said. “I think she was literally high on sugar.”

“Seriously,” I said. “I thought she was going to start freebasing Pixy Stix.”

“Todd gone? You guys get done?”

“Yup. He’s such a dickhead. I don’t understand why he makes the extra effort to be a prick. Otherwise, he might be a decent guy.”

“Speaking of decent guys, remember at the dance last month when you, me, and Johnny pulled that prank?”

“Oh yeah, Johnny. I know, he’s actually an okay guy. He’s kind of a riot, too, sometimes. Did you notice that?”

“I know, but Fiona—”

“Guess what he said to me that night? He said that people with class are like people with herpes.”

“Listen Fio—wait, he said what?”

“Hold on—no, that wasn’t it. That couldn’t have been it. What was it he said? It was hysterical.”

“Tell me later. Listen, Fiona, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Oh! I remember what it was! If you have class, then you 126 Kristin Walker

don’t talk about it, just like if you have herpes. That was it. Omigod . . .” I clapped my hands together. “I just got the best idea to prank Todd! Oh, this is priceless. But I need a speaker set for my iPod. You don’t have one, do you? It needs to have some kind of alarm function. And I’ll probably have to download some software.”

Marcie slammed the couch with her fists. “Dammit, Fiona! I’m trying to tell you something, but you just won’t shut up for five seconds so I can say it! I’m so sick of listening to you blab on and on about Todd, and pranking him, and how miserable your life is, and everything. I can’t take it!

Other people have lives and problems too. But you never notice because you’re always too wound up in your own drama. You’re totally self-absorbed and inconsiderate lately. I’m sorry, Fiona, but I can’t handle it. I need a break from you for a while. I gotta get home.”

She grabbed her stuff and was out the door before her words stopped echoing in my brain. Once they did, I felt the full blow of the realization that my best friend—my only friend—had just screamed at me and walked out. Never in my life had I thought Mar could be so mean. She’d never blown up at me like that before. So I had no idea what to do about it. I just stood there dazed, hoping that she’d cool down sometime soon.

Thursday, October 31

I have a few things to say about marriage, as I see it. First of al , what is the point? Is there any reason to put yourself through torture—or to torture those around you—just to say

you’re married? Where’s the payoff? And second, if you get married just to have kids, forget it. They’ll know it and it will screw them up royal y. So again, what’s the point?

Sex can’t be the reason, because if you ask me, you have much better odds of getting laid if you have the entire population of the Earth available to you, rather than just ONE person. And by the way, how unbelievably boring would it be to have sex with the same person for fifty years?

To me, marriage seems to be an archaic institution left over from the age when survival of the species was important, and people didn’t live past thirty-five years old. It’s time for marriage to go the way of the dodo: fondly remembered, but utterly extinct.

GIVING MAR SoME SpACE wASN’T Too hARd, oThER

than having to ride my bike to school the next day. And sit by myself in homeroom. I just hid in the back and read
P&P
. At the end of the day, Principal Miller came over the PA to make the Friday announcements.

“Good afternoon, students,” she said. “First, I want to wish the chess team good luck in their tournament. Here’s hoping you make some king-size moves. Second, I’d like to announce that the senior marriage ed couple who earned the most real-world money for the month of October is Todd Harding and Fiona Sheehan. You two have won five complimentary pounds of sausage from Steuben’s Sausage Shop, located at the corner of Main Street and Dover. ‘Steuben’s Sausage Shop. When only a hot, meaty sausage will satisfy . . . come in for a pound at Steuben’s.’ What? Oh, good Chri—”

The PA squealed as she switched off the mic so we wouldn’t hear her swearing. Not that we could’ve; we were laughing too loud.

After a few seconds and some more PA feedback, she came back on and announced that next week we wouldn’t have counseling sessions. (Yay!) Instead, seniors were to

report to the gym first period Monday morning for marriage ed trust games. (What the
freak
?) Rumor had it the trust games were Maggie Klein’s bright idea. It seemed a lot of couples were failing to bond. So she wanted us to do some lame team-building crap to get couples to like each other. Yeah, good luck with that.

I figured Mar would have cooled off by then for sure, so maybe we could make a big joke about it. Plus, I decided the trust games were a gift from heaven, because all the seniors would be in one spot, giving me the perfect opportunity to pull my latest excellent prank on Señor Shitslacks. But Monday came, and Mar didn’t pick me up for school again. She must’ve still been pissed off. So I rode my bike, which wasn’t easy with a new iPod speaker/alarm set in my backpack. I sat alone again in homeroom. Then first period came, and all the seniors filed into the gym. Mr. Evans was running the dry mop around the perimeter, and grumbled when we walked over where he’d just cleaned. I dropped my stuff next to the plug under the clock and PA speaker. I plugged in my speakers, popped in my iPod, and set the alarm to go off in about forty-five minutes. I covered it with my stretched-out gray hoodie, and looked around for Mar. She was already across the gym. She must’ve walked right by me but never said a word.

Maggie Klein darted and yipped around like a hoppedup Chihuahua. She was giving it her all and then some; I’ll say that much for her.

“All right, we’re going to start with the trust fall,” she yelled once our mumbled complaints dwindled down. 130 Kristin Walker

“Everyone get into a circle with your partner next to you. In this exercise, one partner will fall backward. The other partner will catch. The idea is to trust your partner not to let you fall.”

Now, Maggie Klein was smart enough to realize that many of the guys, like Johnny Mercer for one, were quite a bit larger than their fake wives. So she instructed only the girls to fall, and the guys catch. Which would have been fine. Except for Zoë Kovac, who, in addition to her Eastern European name, had also inherited an Eastern European weightlifter’s build. She’d already been offered full rides to three colleges for playing field hockey. Her partner, Izzy McCully, on the other hand, looked like he hadn’t had a real meal in a decade. This guy was skin on a stick. And about six inches shorter than his fake wife.

“Okay, let’s go around the room, one couple at a time,”

Maggie Klein shouted.

One by one, the girls fell back and their partners caught them under the armpits.

“Very nice! Well done!” she called. She made us clap for each pair.

Right before our turn, I whispered to Todd, “You’d better not try to cop a feel when I fall.”

“Ha,” he said. “Cop a feel of what?”

“Just don’t drop me.”

“I can’t promise anything.”

When he caught me, I looked at Mar to see if she was applauding. Not only was she not clapping, she wasn’t even looking. She was staring at the wall. It had to be deliberate.

Johnny was clapping like a windup monkey, though. What was his problem?

When it got to be Mar and Johnny’s turn, I didn’t watch, either. Or clap. Two could play, as they say. I did peek just a bit to see if she saw me not watching. I don’t know if she did. I think Johnny might have, though, so maybe he’d tell her.

I definitely watched Gabe catching Amanda with his gorgeous guns. And I swear I saw him cup her boobs. From the look on Todd’s face, he saw the same thing. Then it was Zoë Kovac’s turn.

I could tell Maggie Klein realized the problem at the last second, because she made this squeaky inhalation. But it was too late. Zoë fell backward into the trembling arms of Izzy McCully, and continued falling with him beneath her. They thudded to the floor, and all that could be seen of Izzy were his spindly arms and legs flailing from Zoë’s sides, making her look like a Hindu goddess on her back.

Todd’s bonehead buddies just lost it laughing. Zoë rolled off poor Izzy, got up, and kicked him in the side. Mr. Evans rushed over and pulled Izzy to his feet. Izzy couldn’t quite catch his breath, plus his head hurt, so Maggie Klein sent him to the nurse.

“Okay, okay, let’s try something else,” she called over the hysterics. “I have twenty-foot ropes here for each of you. Each couple. Each couple should come get a rope and then line up with the rope stretched between you.”

Todd and I went up to get a rope at the exact same time as Amanda and Gabe. I thought,
perfect
, because Amanda 132 Kristin Walker

would probably talk to Todd, and maybe Gabe would talk to me. So I started inventing blindingly witty things to say to him about the lame-ass trust games. But then Amanda fastened herself to Todd, and Gabe glared at me like it was my fault that Todd was drooling on Gabe’s fake wife. I decided to suck it up and ask, “Something wrong?”

Gabe looked away from me and answered, “I dunno. Something wrong with you?”

I was standing there like a moron, trying to figure out what the hell he’d meant by that remark, when I realized that Todd and Gabe had grabbed either end of the same rope. Now they were locked in this death stare to see who got the damn thing.

“I have this one,” Todd said.

“I don’t think so,” Gabe said.

“Let go of it, Webber,” Todd said.

“I had it first.”

“Like hell you did.”

Meanwhile, Johnny Mercer came up and tried to say hi to me, but I wasn’t paying any attention because I wanted to see if Todd and Gabe were going to throw down. Finally, Amanda stepped in, picked up a whole different rope, and thrust it at Gabe’s chest for him to carry. Gabe tossed his end and walked away with Amanda trailing behind him. Johnny mumbled something I couldn’t understand. Todd gave me the end of the rope Gabe had dropped and dragged me back to the middle of the gym. He positioned himself right next to Amanda. Which meant . . . ? Yup, I was standing next to Gabe. Sophia Sheridan lined up on the other side of him