Charlotte Cuts It Out (16 page)

“It's against the rules to use wigs because they come pre-styled.” I click my pen open and closed, open and closed. “And she doesn't have enough hair to hold extensions.”

Shea, in an attempt to keep the model, says, “A pixie cut
does
go with our theme.”

I ignore her. I doubt she'd be so accommodating if she had to work with a model who couldn't wear clothes!

Clearly, I'm going to have to replace headband girl.
When I tell her, she says, “Good luck with that so close to
Nutcracker,
” gets up, and leaves.

In a matter of minutes, we're down to two models. I ask Kayla and Kaylee about replacements, but they just shake their heads, purse their lips, and shrug. I look at Lydia, Shea, and Mackenzie, hoping for some assistance, some reassurance, something. After all, they're my co-leaders, aren't they? Shea is in a texting frenzy, no doubt telling off Lindsay for bailing, but promises she'll figure something out. Lydia is having a side convo with Carter Reed, and Mackenzie is braiding a piece of her own hair. How can a team with this many leaders be so lame? This is not how I pictured my winning team. They act like there's nothing at stake.

Suddenly, a disheveled girl in a ponytail and jeans runs in and takes a seat. She introduces herself as Melody from child development. “I'm sorry I'm late. We had a crisis with some biting toddlers.”

“Come on, you guys, we have a lot to do.” I clap my hands to get their attention. “We haven't even met our whole team yet, and we've already lost a member—two, if you count Lindsay. Let's get focused, okay?” I finish the introductions as I hand out the rest of the instructions.

“What's this?” asks Carter. “I know what I need to do.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” He opens his laptop. “In fact, I brought a sample PowerPoint to show you.”

We all huddle around the tiny screen and watch as pictures scroll and pixelate and change in all these funky ways
to an annoying Taylor Swift song. The photos are fine, but his font is inconsistent, and I count at least four spelling and capitalization errors.

“This is your best work?” I say.

He looks as if he doesn't understand the question.

“Here we go,” Lydia mutters. What is that supposed to mean? Is she too into this guy to see that his work is sub-par? Shea snickers.

Again, I choose my words carefully. “It's just that I see a bunch of spelling errors and problems with the fonts.”

Carter gives me a look as if he's thinking,
My work is fine. This girl's just pissed off that I'm into her friend.
“It's a
sample
of my work.”

I tap my pen on the table. “Fair enough. But I'll need to go over the prelim PowerPoint with you, make sure everything's okay.” Now he and Lydia give me a look like I'm just trying for another chance with him.

Seriously? I'm way past that. We're talking about my future here. “Moving on,” I say.

“What do you need us to do?” asks the building trades guy in a grungy Craftsman hat. He's sitting between a guy holding a flute case and a girl splattered in yellow paint. As I explain how I want the set built and decorated, I ask Mackenzie to coordinate the music with the flutist. The form is due today. The rest of my team goes back to their discussions as if my “interruption” never happened.

“It says here that you need a few little girls in sparkly ballet costumes and fairy wings to frolic across the stage.”
Melody points to her instructions. Finally, someone is paying attention! “Where are they getting these costumes?”

“Shea?” I refer the question.

She looks up from her phone and I repeat what Melody said. “I could throw together tutus using elastic headbands and leftover fabric from my petal dress,” Shea says. The words “throw together,” “leftover fabric,” and “petal dress” do not add up to a winning combo.

“Do any of the kids have Halloween or ballet recital costumes they could reuse?” I ask Melody, grasping at straws.

Shea sighs, annoyed, and returns to her phone. Melody makes a note on her instructions. “I'll see what I can do. No promises, though.” Then she says, “So you're doing their hair?” I nod. “When?” I tell her that morning. “Um, you'll need to communicate all of this to their parents. And get permission.”

None of that had occurred to me. I convince Melody to be a liaison with the parents and to make the appointments. She says that will cost more, and I agree to pay—it'll be worth it to make sure everything is right. Then she asks, “Do you just need kids, or do you need some of us to help corral them?”

Corral them? What are they, cows? Yet one more thing I hadn't considered. Kids are always melting down at the store. We'll need professionals to handle that. “Having some of you there to help would be great.”

“Anything else?” she asks. I like this girl.

“Could you bring them to the meeting next week? I'd like to meet them before the showcase.”

“More like criticize them,” Shea says under her breath. But before I can respond, the bell rings and every chair in the room scrapes back as people stand and gather their things.

My team practically runs from the table. I call after them, “Hey, wait! We still need to talk about the snow machine. I have a quote.”

“Do what you want,” Shea says over her shoulder. “You're going to anyway.”

Lydia and Carter crack up.
Ha! Fine! I
will
do what I want, thank you very much.
So much for teamwork.

“Please be prepared for the
next
meeting!” I yell to a closing door.

Other than her “Here we go” comment, Lydia doesn't say a word. She doesn't stay after to explain why she and Carter are so lovey-dovey, or why she ditched me on Saturday. She doesn't stick up for me or help me at all. She just acts like the rest of them and exits in a hurry. With Carter.

I watch as they leave the room, and realize that even in the months before she switched programs—all through summer and early fall—Lydia's been acting like a different person. Like someone who has secrets. And those secrets have affected me. What else is she hiding?

Mondays are pizza days, so the lunch line is really long. Taylor and one of the Emilys are behind me. “Is Lydia seeing that Carter Reed guy?” asks Emily. At first I think she's
talking to Taylor, but she's not. She's talking to me.

“I don't know,” I say. Which sounds weird and defensive, but I really don't know. The last thing Lydia actually said was that they're weren't anything, yet. But her actions, online and at school, have been the complete opposite. Even other people have noticed.

“We're not trying to spread gossip or anything,” says Taylor—which means they are—“but you should know that he's been seeing my friend Brianna from J-High since freshman year. He cheats on her all the time. I don't know why she puts up with it. If Lydia's hanging out with him, she's only going to get hurt. He always goes back to Bri. Always.”

“Maybe this time it's off for real,” I suggest. He does seem interested in Lydia. But until the wellness fair, I thought he was into me. Were there other girls who thought the same thing?

“I almost fell for him myself,” Emily puts in, “until Taylor introduced me to Brianna, and I heard everything straight from her. He's a real jackass.” Whoa! Well, there's my answer.

“Have you guys told this to Lydia?”

“No.” We're getting close to the front of the line. Taylor fishes her wallet out of her backpack. “We figured she'd rather hear it from her best friend. Less embarrassing, you know?”

“Yeah.” But if I did tell her, I don't know if she'd believe me, or if she'd think I just want him for myself. Hell, I don't even know if we're still friends, let alone best friends. What
kind of person drops her best friend for a guy, no matter how cute he is? Maybe she deserves what she gets.

After we get our pizza, they ask if I want to sit with them. Shelby and the other Emily are already at their table. “No,” I tell them. “Shelby hates me.”

Taylor snorts. “No, she doesn't. She thinks
you
hate
her
.”

Why would she think that? I've never done anything to her.

“Come on.” Emily takes my arm.

I stand my ground. “She called me anal.”

“You
were
being anal.” How rude! I was not! I scowl, but Emily doesn't seem affected. She tugs again.

I don't have much choice. I don't know—or care—where Lydia is. She's probably with Carter. So I either need to sit with them or sit alone. Since I'd rather saw off my arm with dull thinning shears than sit alone, I join them. It's awkward. The Emilys ask about everyone's meetings. Just as Taylor starts to answer, Shelby interrupts, throws a few pepperonis on her tray, and gives her a look—a
don't-talk-in-front-of-the-enemy
look. Did she think I wouldn't notice? I chew my pizza and avoid eye contact with her. After I'm done with my lunch, I make excuses and leave as fast as I can, with only a quick smile and wave to Emily and Taylor.

“Icks” class is no time to break it to Lydia that her possible boyfriend is a cheating jackass—and I confess that I'm not even sure I want to—so I don't say anything. Besides, she makes it clear that she doesn't want to talk to me,
because she sits two rows behind where we always sit.

Mr. Comb-over assigns “Expense Projection Reports” based on our presentations. I suggest we call them “budgets,” since that's all they are. He says that's fine. Someone in the back says something, and a bunch of people laugh. One of them is Shelby. This is the girl who thinks I hate her? Fine. I flash her a dirty look.

The first step is to create a balance sheet from our most current ATC bucks statement. When I check the escrow account that Lydia and I share—shared?—there's a major discrepancy. The balance is less than half what it was last week. Mr. Comb-over shows me how to check the transaction history. And there it is: a huge transfer to Carter Reed. Another to someone in building trades, and yet another to multimedia art. Each one is dated the day before the wellness fair.

I whip around to where Lydia is working on her final report.
“You stole my ATC bucks?”
It comes out much louder than I intended.

Joelle says, “Oooh!” and several people around her snicker.

Pink-faced, Lydia pulls over her chair and whispers, “I didn't
steal
them. I needed them for the wellness fair—the expenses were higher than I expected. I'll pay them back to the account before the showcase.”

Everyone is pretending not to listen, but they suck at it. They're hanging on our every word. So I don't even try to keep quiet. “How? Since the fair is over, there won't be any more culinary arts fund-raisers, and you're not in cos anymore, so you can't work in the salon. We're over two hundred dollars
in the hole, and I can't subcontract without it. You could have told me this before the team meeting, you know.”

“I don't have all the details figured out yet,” she admits, “but I won't leave you high and dry. You know that.”

I glare at her. “Do I? Because the way I see it, you've left me high and dry a lot lately.”

Toby says something about being high. Byron laughs, and Shelby tells them to shut up.

Lydia takes a deep breath, and by the look on her face I can tell that whatever she's about to say is going to be nasty. I'm geared up to retaliate with what I heard about Carter, but Mr. Comb-over walks up and tells us to get back to work.

As Lydia takes her chair back to her computer station, I say, “Don't forget to include embezzlement in your final report.”

That prompts a few more whispers and snickers, but I don't care. Lydia shoots me a look, but doesn't say anything. After all, it's true. Her project was fine because she dipped into our shared account, and she didn't tell me because she knew I'd be screwed. She had to know that she couldn't put back her share of the balance. Is she trying to get back at me or something?

Now I have to figure how to write a budget with almost no money. I'm not sure it's even possible. There has to be a way around this, but I'm not sure what it is. I close the program and log out of my account. I'll do the report later.

Then I reach into my notebook, pull out the quote for the snow machine, and rip it in half.

Considering how busy we are this week—even during the times that are usually dead—and how awful school was, I should have just skipped and gone to the store. I head over as soon as the last bell rings.

The store is packed, of course. There's a line at the deli, even with both Katie and Hannah hustling to keep up. After I take my stuff to the break room and clock in, Dad flags me down and asks me to pitch in. He's clearly frazzled, so I don't argue.

I tie on an apron and get right to work. Mrs. Donnelly asks for two pounds of shaved ham, a pound of Swiss, two medium-sized containers of three-bean salad, a container of German potato salad, some tabbouleh, and two dozen onion rolls. “Nolan's home from college, I take it?” I say, laughing as I scoop beans into a plastic tub.

“How can you tell?” She gives me a big smile. “Between him and his brothers, the vultures are picking my kitchen bare.”

Once the salads are done, I box up the rolls and slice the meat and cheese. “Happy Thanksgiving,” I say, handing it all over.

Before I turn to the next customer, I notice what Katie's doing. She gets out the roast beef, slices it, and bags it. Then she scoops a salad. Then she goes back to the cooler to slice cheese. She's completely scattered, running all over the place. Has she always been this spacey?

“Katie?” I say. She stops and looks at me. “Ask for the full order. Then do the meats and cheeses at the same time,
before moving into the salad case. If you consolidate the steps, you'll look less like a turkey running around with your head chopped off.”