Awkward (21 page)

“I’m getting tired of this pity party,” she said with a quick grin to take the sting out of her words. “Mackenzie, you’ve got a lot of stuff going for you. You’ve got looks, a great voice, and a ridiculously big brain, but if you don’t believe that for yourself it doesn’t matter what I think.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Get it?”

“Got it.” And even though my life was still just as messy, our talk had me feeling a bit better.

“Good. Why don’t you shower while I change?” She yawned. “Then I’m raiding your fridge. I’m starving.”

I laughed. “Sure. Feel free to help yourself.”

That’s exactly what she did too. When I came downstairs wearing my baggy garage sale jeans and a boring brown shirt, she was munching on cereal in the kitchen with Dylan. Which I found pretty funny, since it was around eleven o’clock and he must have already eaten long ago. But there he was having another bowl of cereal with her. Someone was crushing—and hard.

“About time you got home,” Dylan said to me. “I’ve been texting and calling you.”

That must have been what woke me up in Logan’s bed, but it had been muffled by my clutch and I’d been too disoriented to recognize it.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize,” I wavered, not certain how to proceed. “So … how was the party after I left?”

“Great,” said Melanie. Dylan just shrugged nonchalantly.

“It was pretty chill. We mainly helped Spencer handle the drunks. He was running understaffed what with Logan babysitting you.”

I tried to remember that, as my little brother, Dylan got a free pass on a few cutting remarks. He’d been great last night when I had needed him, and it probably wasn’t fun for him to watch his big sister get wasted at a party. So I would let the “babysitting” jibe slide.

“It was under control when Corey picked us up. He wants you to call him back right away.”

I nodded and got myself a glass of water. Then I had a flashback to Logan ordering me to drink the Gatorade. I set the cup back down like it had scorched me.

“Sure, I’ll do that in a second. What did, um, Mom have to say about … me?”

Dylan grinned. “You owe me big, Mackenzie, and I mean
big
for covering for you. I told her you had a friend spending the night and were probably just sleeping in. She didn’t check before heading off to work, so as far as she knows you didn’t get hammered and spend the night at Logan’s.” He gave me a shrewd look, the one reserved for when he thinks I’m going to lie and wants to catch me in the act. “Everything go okay over there?”

“Everything was fine.”

I told myself it wasn’t a lie. When I’d been at his house, everything between us had been great. We talked, he held my hair back when I puked, and he’d been so damn nice that I very nearly said we were friends in the car.

I didn’t want to think about how badly I had screwed that up.

“I prayed to the porcelain gods,” I said casually, as if the time I spent with my head in a toilet (and a bush) was just an amusing anecdote. “But I’m fine.”

Dylan studied me a little longer and then turned his attention back to Melanie. I guess it was pretty big proof of his brotherly affection that he could focus on me for that long when Melanie was still in the room.

“You staying around for a while?” he asked as she rose to put her cereal bowl in the dishwasher. The slight tinge in his cheeks showed me that her answer mattered to him. But I don’t think Melanie caught it.

“I should probably go pretty soon.” She smiled at me. “I think Mackenzie could use the house to herself for a bit.”

She was right. She was so right. As much as I liked Melanie, and I was starting to think of her as an extension to the Jane
Corey friendship unit, I needed my space. Maybe my life should have become simpler now that I was out of a job, but instead everything had grown increasingly complex. I needed to sort out my priorities … and check my bank account. I wanted to know how many hours I’d have to spend babysitting before the laptop would be mine.

So I gave her a hug. “I’m really glad you came, Melanie. Sorry I wasn’t a good hostess. Next time I’ll be better. I’ll actually spend the night here too, I promise!”

She laughed. “No worries. Tell Corey I say ‘hi.’ ” Then she scooped up the bag she’d brought with her last night.

“Are your parents picking you up?” Dylan asked.

“Nah.” She said it casually, and I wondered if there was a story there. “I thought I’d walk. It’s a nice day.”

“I’ll go with you.” Dylan said it so matter-of-factly it wasn’t quite an offer … more like a statement. “Mackenzie can have the house to herself that way.”

Melanie looked surprised but recovered quickly.

“Okay,” she agreed. “You can carry this, then.” She thrust her bag at him. “We’ll see you later, Mackenzie.” She slipped her arm through Dylan’s. “Now, tell me about all her most embarrassing moments.”

“Tell her and die!” I called after them. I wasn’t actually afraid he’d spill anything too confidential. Dylan’s much better than I am at keeping his mouth shut.

As the two of them turned the corner, I couldn’t help thinking that I could never have dumped my bag onto someone else. If Logan and I were walking to his house for a study session, I would have carried my backpack—all sixty pounds of textbooks—the entire way. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask for his help because, hello, my body works just fine.

But it hit me as I watched Dylan carry a dinky bag that contained a dress, a pair of heels, and a small bag of toiletries that I didn’t think Melanie was weak. I hadn’t been tempted to roll my eyes. I hadn’t thought,
Wow, there’s another girl playing into the cultural expectation that women are fragile and need male assistance.
It just seemed kind of cute.

That’s when I realized that for someone who prided herself on being open-minded about stuff like gay rights and gender equality, I had a serious case of tunnel vision.

Having a guy carry something or asking for help doesn’t magically turn someone into a fragile damsel in distress. Just like wearing my low-cut red dress didn’t give Patrick the right to call me a gold digger. I hated to admit it, but my mom was right: the terms skank and slut … they suck. A lot. Especially because my level of “sexual promiscuity” is not something that can be extrapolated from one outfit.

I’d been so sure that my quick flash of fame wouldn’t change me, that under the lights and the designer jeans and the lip gloss I’d remain Mackenzie Wellesley. But I was wrong. As soon as I had stepped into that first pair of heels I had changed—and I wasn’t sure it was possible to reverse it. There was no rewind button on my life. I could donate everything to the Red Cross and I still couldn’t be Invisible Mackenzie Wellesley.

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. It was easy to be proud of my low-budget wardrobe and to praise myself for being so unaffected by materialism … but it was such a lie. I enjoyed having new clothes. Receiving all of those packages of beautiful clothes had been overwhelming, sure, but I had loved it. Maybe it was weak of me to depend so much on clothing for bravery, but I had needed some seriously amazing outfits to perform onstage, to turn down Chelsea, and to go to my first high school party. The clothes might not make the girl, but it was much easier to feel good about myself in designer labels. It made me believe that maybe I wasn’t quite as geeky and lame and socially awkward as I kept telling myself.

Logan was right: I did have the power to call the shots. I just hadn’t mustered up the nerve to take a stand.

Disgusted with myself, I marched back into the kitchen, pulled out a yellow legal pad, and began to do something that had always worked for me before: I made a list.

Things Mackenzie Wellesley Needs to Get Over:

1.
Low self-esteem. Seriously, what’s up with this? I’ve got amazing friends who wouldn’t waste their time with a loser. Time to ease up on myself.

2.
The whole Notables
Invisibles hierarchy stuff. Patrick demonstrated last night that not only is this argument untrue and insulting, it also makes you sound like a jerk.

3.
Any residual Dad issues. He left 12 years ago. Get over it already!

4.
My awkwardness (see #1). A little babbling never killed anyone … I think.

5.
Fear of rejection (see #3). Just because Dad walked out on us doesn’t mean every guy is destined to treat me like dirt.

6.
My whole money
college obsession. There will be a school that wants me. There will be a school that gives me enough financial aid. I don’t have to overwork with AP classes and tutoring to prove myself.

7.
Fear of the spotlight. The newspaper can write whatever it wants: my mom will still love me, my brother will still annoy me, and my friends will still laugh at
with me. Which is exactly how I want it.

8.
Caring what other people think (see #7). I need to stop obsessing about what Chelsea
Patrick
Fake and Bake
anyone who reads the garbage in the papers believes about me.

9.
Jumping to conclusions. For all I know, Chelsea and Logan were just sharing one last for-old-times kiss. Doubtful, but possible. And until I know something for sure, I shouldn’t assume the worst.

10.
Logan (?)

I tapped my pen against my lips as I considered the last item on my list. The rest suddenly seemed like child’s play in comparison. It would probably be smart to cross out the question mark and just move on with my life. File him away in the growing folder of Boys Mackenzie Has Had a Crush On. I thought back to his murderous expression when I climbed out of the car that morning—definitely smarter to leave it at that. But as I stared at the name I remembered vaguely how he had (begrudgingly) forfeited his bed for me and had been there when I passed out.

He was the first guy since Corey to meet the real Mackenzie. The girl most people missed because of the babbling and the factoids and the awkwardness. Which meant that if he rejected me, I couldn’t say he was just some stupid jock who wouldn’t know a quality girl if she strolled up and started screaming, “ME!
PICK
ME!” Then again, if there was even the slightest chance he did like me and had only been sucking face with Chelsea because … well, for some reason
other
than that they were getting back together, avoiding him for the rest of the year could be my biggest mistake yet.

Shaking my head, I skipped a few spaces and started another list.

Things Mackenzie Wellesley Needs to Do:

1.
Get control of this crazy YouTube stuff.

2.
Trust my instincts.

3.
Grab the life I want with both hands.

I was about to make #3 sound less cheesy when the phone rang. I was so preoccupied with my lists that I answered the phone on the second ring while I wondered what else deserved an entry on my list for life improvement.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Mackenzie Wellesley?” The businesslike tone threw me off.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Great. This is Mary Connelly. I’m a producer on
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
. We want Ellen to interview you on Monday and then have you perform live with ReadySet. How does that sound?”

She spoke really quickly, like she was about to lose cell phone service any second. I could have sworn I heard someone call out “tall mocha Frappuccino” in the background.

“Wait. You want
me
to perform on the
Ellen
show?”

“That’s why I’m calling.”

I glanced down at my list. Get media control, trust instincts, and grab life. It looked like I was about to put myself to the test.

“I’ll do it.” My whole body went numb with shock, but I kept the phone cradled against my ear. “It’s Ellen, so I’ll do it. Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m actually going to do this.”

“That’s great, hon. Now we pay for airfare and lodging for you and your escort, and you’ll receive some money for food. We need you, ready, at the studio first thing Monday morning.”

“Sorry, my what?”

“You’re under eighteen, right? All minors must travel with someone eighteen or older. And you need parental consent. I can e-mail you those forms right now. What’s your address?”

I gave it to her while all of this information soaked in.

“Can I get your number? I’ll call you back as soon as I confirm everything. I need to check on getting that permission first.”

“You do that, hon. Check and call me right back. We thought we’d schedule Lady Gaga for Tuesday, but if you don’t get back to me soon, she’s taking your spot.”

It was so weird to hear my name and Lady Gaga used in the same sentence.

“Understood.” I jotted down the number she rattled off. “Thanks, Mary. For … wow. For the offer.”

“No problem, hon. You just make sure it happens.”

She disconnected, and I was alone in the house trying to formulate my first plan of attack.

M
aybe it was overly optimistic, but I had my bags packed by the time my mom came home for her lunch. Not that it had been easy for me, as packing was no longer a simple procedure. Instead I had scurried around my bedroom, trying to make snap decisions over which items in my designer closet actually reflected my personality … and which ones needed to find a new home—perhaps on eBay. I purposefully tucked my red dress in a drawer and slammed it shut. I wouldn’t have to decide on it for a few days if everything went according to plan.

“Mackenzie?” my mom hollered up the stairs. “What are you doing home? Shouldn’t you be tutoring right now?”

I set the suitcase aside and hurried down. “I’ve got the day off. Mom, you’ll never guess who just called me! The
producer
of
The Ellen DeGeneres Show !
They want me to fly down to LA and as long as I have parental permission and you go with me, it’s a done deal.”