Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend (33 page)

been a moment when I’d looked at Josh sleeping on the couch and

seen him as more than a friend? Hadn’t there been a moment be-

tween us when we said good- bye? I concentrated on merging, and

tried not to think about the answers to these questions.

“Well,” Hallie said, looking relieved and a little less serious, “I

was so sorry you both got sick. I guess you can’t trust lobster,

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huh?”

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I hadn’t realized Josh would have gotten that specifi c about

the events of the night, and I felt myself inwardly groan a little.

“So Josh really went into detail, huh?” I asked with a grimace.

Hallie looked thrown for a moment, then nodded. “Right, he

did. I mean, I asked what he’d eaten so, you know, I could never

eat there.”

I smiled. “It’s a good plan. Avoid the Crabby Lobster at all

costs.”

Hallie laughed and reached forward to turn on the radio.

“Noted.”

It turned out that Hallie and I had pretty similar taste in

music, even though she was a little more into hip- hop and I liked

the cheesy summer pop songs more than she did. But Hallie was

good driving company, telling me when I could merge and which

lanes were clear when I needed to get over. And when we stopped

at a gas station— it turned out we needed some after all— she

emerged from the minimart with a bag of chips to share. She

even took the role of the navigator, checking the map on my

phone, since I’d long since given up trying to use the SUV’s navi-

gation system. It was military grade and gave coordinates in lon-

gitude and latitude, and was incredibly unhelpful— and kind of

judgmental— when you made a wrong turn. I knew it was safe to

give her my phone, since I had password- protected anything that

might identify me as me— my pictures, e-mail, everything. I’d

even changed the background to one of the boring generic ones

that had come with the phone.

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“Okay,” Hallie said, looking up from the phone and squinting

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at the road. “I think you should make the next left.”

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“Great,” I said, noticing that we were pulling into the North

Hills Hyatt, which was exactly where we were supposed to be.

I avoided the valet and self- parked, and Hallie followed me

into the hotel, looking increasingly confused. “Okay,” she said, as

she looked around. “So . . . we’re going to a hotel?”

“I think it’s this way,” I said as I looked around for ballroom

2A. Sure enough, we rounded the corner and there was a giant

sign decorated with a spinning red British phone box that read

DROP IN TO SCOTT’S BAR MITZVAH!

Hallie turned to me, eyebrows raised. “Bar mitzvah?” she asked.

I grinned at her. “What,” I asked, deadpan, as I took in Hall-

ie’s baffl ed expression, “not what you were expecting?”

“Hello,” a frazzled- looking woman clutching a clipboard said

as she came hustling up to us. “Are you here for the event?”

“We are,” I said, taking a step closer to her. When Bruce had

put us on this list for this party, I wasn’t sure what names he

gave, and I certainly didn’t want Hallie to see
Gemma Tucker

printed there in huge letters. “Bruce Davidson’s guests?”

“Ah,” the woman said, scanning down her list. She paused,

her pen hovering over the clipboard, and I let out a relieved sigh

when I saw the list read only
B. Davidson 1
and
B. Davidson 2
.

“Got you,” she said. She looked behind Hallie, frowning. “And . . .

will Mr. Davidson be joining you?”

“Nope,” I said, trying to make it sound like this was totally

normal. I started to head into the ballroom, Hallie behind me,

when the woman held out two bright- red canvas bags to us.

“Gift bags,” she said, as we took them. They were surprisingly

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heavy, which seemed to me like a good sign. “Enjoy your eve ning.”

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“Thanks,” I said as I pulled open the ballroom door and Hallie

and I stepped inside.

As I looked around the ballroom, it was clear that the newly

minted man, Scott, was very into the British show
Sergeant

Which
. I only really knew it because of Ford, who loved it, and as a

result, half his obscure geeky T-shirts made reference to it. From

what I could glean, it was about a brilliant ex- military detective

who solved crimes while traveling through space in a magical

phone booth. And yet, Ford refused to watch romantic comedies

with me because they were, in his words, “unrealistic.”

But the show was clearly the theme of this party. There were

blown- up cutouts of the actors, a photo booth made to look like

the red phone booth, and the show’s theme song playing at full

volume.

“Okay,” Hallie said, sounding more confused than ever as she

followed me to the seating chart, which had all the tables named

after the Sergeant’s greatest adventures across space and time.

“So . . . do you know these people?”

“Never met them,” I said as I saw that we were at table nine-

teen, the Battle of Gettysburg. I hoped that wasn’t a bad sign as I

negotiated our way around the side of the ballroom. It seemed

like things were just getting started— no one was eating yet, the

stage was dark, and the dance fl oor was empty. Apparently, the

theme song, with its repeated list of time periods, was not in-

spiring people to get down.

“But . . .” Hallie said, still sounding lost, as we sat down at the

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mostly empty table— clearly reserved for overfl ow and last- minute

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RSVPers. “Um, what are we doing here? I like a gift bag as much

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as the next girl,” she said, peering into it. “But I just think it’s . . .

ooh look, an iPod!” She picked it up, turning it over in her hands.

I noticed that it had a picture of a smiling kid— presumably

Scott— on the back, but I fi gured that was a small price to pay for

getting free electronics.

“Just wait a second,” I said, glancing toward the stage and

seeing a very thin roadie hauling out equipment, then stagger-

ing backstage looking winded. “I think you’ll see why we’re here.”

“But . . .” Hallie said, looking around. “Should we really be

here? If you don’t know anyone? I mean . . .”

The lights in the ballroom dimmed, and a huge group of people,

most of them carry ing giant, unwieldy instruments, crowded

onstage. “Hi,” a guy wearing a T-shirt and carry ing a harpsi-

chord, said into the microphone. “Congratulations to Scott!”

The ballroom burst into applause, and Hallie turned to me.

Her jaw had dropped, and she looked utterly shocked. “This

isn’t . . .” she said faintly. “Sophie, you didn’t . . .”

“We’re Lenin and McCarthy,” the singer continued. “Hope

you enjoy the set!”

Hallie turned to me, shaking her head in what looked like

happy disbelief.

I smiled at her. “Surprise.”

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“That,” Hallie said, “was amazing.”

I nodded and picked up a slice from my pizza box. We were

parked in the driveway, sitting in the giant back area of Bruce’s

SUV. The door was up, and the space was so enormous that there

was more than enough room for both of us and two pizza boxes,

plus a Diet Coke for me, a ginger ale for her, and a stack of nap-

kins. We’d stayed at the bar mitzvah until the band stopped

playing, and when they left the stage, Hallie and I had joined the

crowd of thirteen- year- olds who lined up for autographs and pic-

tures. We’d hung out a little after that and took pictures to-

gether in the photo booth, but when a seemingly endless line of

relatives starting approaching the mic to tell stories about

“Scotty,” we decided it was time to hit the road. Since we’d left

before dinner was served, we stopped by the Upper Crust on the

way back to Bruce’s.

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“It was fun,” I agreed, taking a bite. Even as someone who

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didn’t love their music, I’d enjoyed the show. The only thing that

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I really regretted was that Sophie couldn’t be there. She would

have loved it. I had gotten the lead singer to say “Hi there, So-

phie,” into my phone and I’d recorded it, telling Hallie I wanted it

as a souvenir for myself.

“No,” Hallie said, shaking her head. “I mean, that was
incred-

ible
. Thank you so much, Sophie.”

“It was my plea sure,” I said, meaning it. The cupcakes had

been a bust, and while helping her babysit the twins was one

thing, to night felt like the fi rst time I’d really been able to do

something nice for Hallie. I’d been able to make her happy, and it

felt pretty good. Much better, in fact, than making her misera-

ble had done. “And after all,” I said, raising my eyebrows at her,

“you might have gotten a date out of it.”

“Oh my god,” Hallie said, laughing and covering her eyes. “I

could not believe that kid.” Halfway through the band’s set,

Scott’s cousin Marvin had decided he was in love with Hallie, de-

spite the fact that he couldn’t have been more than twelve. He’d

pestered her until his mom fi nally came and dragged him away,

but when we were leaving, Hallie found that he’d left his num-

ber, e-mail address, and World of Warcraft player name in her

gift bag.

“Maybe you should consider it,” I said, deadpan, as I reached

for another napkin. “It takes a special kind of guy to pull off a

plaid tie.”

Hallie just shook her head. “My boyfriend might have a prob-

lem with that,” she said. “But it’s nice to know that I’m a hit with

the middle school set.” She opened her own pizza box, but there

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were only crusts left.

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“Want some?” I asked, angling my box toward her. I had two

slices left, which I had been planning on sneaking to Bruce as a

thank- you for getting us into his accountant’s son’s bar mitzvah.

“I’m fi nished.”

Hallie looked down into the box and her expression clouded

slightly. “No,” she said. “I’m . . . I’m fi ne.” She closed the lid on

her own box, taking her time getting the tab pushed in just

right. When she turned back to me, her face was drawn. “Actu-

ally . . . I used to know someone who ordered their pizza almost

like that. Someone who was pretty awful to me.”

It felt like my heart totally stopped for a moment. I hadn’t

quite ordered my usual, pineapple- pepperoni- sausage, because

I’d gone to town on the appetizers we’d been served at the party

and wasn’t super hungry. I had ordered my pie with just pineap-

ple and pepperoni. But that was a fairly normal pizza topping,

right? Other people ordered that, didn’t they?

After I stopped panicking that I’d given myself away, what

Hallie had just said sunk in— she was talking about
me
. Eleven-

year- old, pizza- ordering, life- ruining me.

“Oh?” I asked, concentrating on lining up the edges on my

napkins so that they were all even. I didn’t trust myself to look at

Hallie without the truth showing all over my face.

“Yeah,” Hallie said, and I could hear the pain that was in her

voice. “Sophie, have you ever read any Tennessee Williams?”

This question surprised me enough that I felt like I could

look at her and not totally betray myself. “Um, no,” I said. I did

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know who he was, because Bruce’s second wife had gotten him

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to fi nance a fi lm version of
The Night of the Iguana,
starring her

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and set in a postapocalyptic wasteland, with zombies. My dad

had wisely passed on Bruce’s offer to adapt the script. “Not

exactly.”

“Well, we read
Streetcar
freshman year, and this character

talks about how she just can’t stand deliberate cruelty. She can’t

abide it.” I nodded. I had a terrible feeling that I knew where

this was going. “And this person . . . the one who ate pizza like