Crush Control (13 page)

In the hallway, Max waved to me. I was about to go over and talk to him but Quinton walked over to Max and asked him something. Max burst out laughing and I felt all jittery inside. Could they possibly be talking about me? I walked behind them, analyzing the way each walked. Quinton: smooth and relaxed, his chin up, arms swinging, hips sauntering with long strides. Max: quick paced and light, with a spring in his step and his broad shoulders squared.

Mia was walking to my right and Sadie ran over toward her. They were both wearing their cheerleading uniforms for a pep rally later that afternoon.

“So,” Sadie said. “I heard that next week they're taking nominations for Homecoming Court.”

Mia smiled that stage smile I'd seen at Jake's party.

“Why even have a contest, right?” Sadie laughed. “Just give the crowns to you and Jake!”

As if on cue, Jake rounded the corner. Mia turned her stage smile his way. “Hi sweetie!”

“Hey.” He leaned down and pecked her on the lips, and she looked like she would levitate with happiness. It looked like they'd resolved whatever argument they were having.

I walked into the bathroom. A few minutes later, I was just about to exit the stall when I heard someone come in and go over to the sink. Then the person began making a big ruckus, struggling with something. Whoever it was fumbled and grunted and huffed in exasperation. I took my hand off the flusher and for some reason, found myself peeking through the crack between the door and wall. To my surprise, it was Mia. She rummaged through her book bag and pulled out a small plastic case, unzipped it, and pulled something slim and shiny out. Oh my God, what was going on? Was she doing drugs? Did the perfect queen bee have a needle?

I flung open the bathroom door. “Stop!” I commanded. “You'll ruin your life!”

“What?” She turned toward me and I saw her face, all flushed and rosy, tears streaming down her porcelain skin. She looked so different—still beautiful—but in a much softer, vulnerable way. Like a Jane Austen heroine who just lost her lover. She was holding a needle—a sewing needle—and a spool of white thread.

Mia quickly patted the puffy areas under her eyes and stood a little straighter.

“Are you okay?” I asked, walking out of the stall.

For a minute she held her all-business facade like she was about to say,
I'm fine, perfect,
but then suddenly she just . . . cracked.

“No,” she said. “I'm not fine.” She grabbed her skirt. “It caught on my ring and ripped this huge hole.” She spread the pleats of the skirt and showed me a three-inch gap of fabric. “I was going to sew it, but I only have white thread and the skirt is gold, and at first I thought it would hide under the pleat, but when I do a high kick”—she frantically started kicking her leg in the air—“it's like totally noticeable. And we have the pep rally this afternoon.” She burst into tears.

I stood there completely dumbfounded. I was uncertain what to do. But then I remembered when I was the one crying in the bathroom and Georgia stayed with me and how much I appreciated that. But Mia hadn't exactly indicated that she was interested in a friendship with me. I tentatively took a step toward her. “It'll be okay,” I said, but Mia sat on the ground, still crying. “It's just a skirt. And it's fixable.”

She looked up at me with her weepy eyes, and I got the distinct feeling it wasn't just about the skirt.

I sat down next to her. “What's wrong?”

The warning bell rang. Mia inhaled sharply. She quickly started to gather her things.

I opened my purse and pulled out a safety pin. I held it toward her. “Maybe you can pin it from the inside just until you get home and can properly hem it?”

She hesitated for a minute, then took the pin and nodded. “That's a good plan.”

I smiled a small smile.

“Thanks,” she said. She flipped the edge of her skirt, secured the fabric with the safety pin, and turned it back down. “Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked.

“Aren't most people nice to you?”

“I guess . . .” She tensed. “I don't know . . . it's sort of a fake nice.” She was quiet for a minute. “It was genuinely nice what you did for Hayden and Sarah,” she said softly, her Southern accent echoing against the tiled walls. “I don't think they'd be together if not for you. He might have worried what his friends would say, but you took away his fear. . . .” She looked at me and I saw how clear her green eyes were—lucid, like a transparent stalk of celery. She stared up at the ceiling, looking away from me. “Could you do that for me? Erase my fears?” she whispered.

“Um,” I stammered, completely thrown off guard. “I'm not sure what you mean? You have fears? You're the head cheerleader and the most popular girl in school. You're perfect!”

A fresh swell of tears filled her eyes. She scanned around again, looked under the stalls, although clearly no one had entered the bathroom. “That's just it,” she said, her voice catching. “Everyone expects me to be perfect. I do most of the complicated tricks in the tumbling routines and on the squad. But they just keep wanting more and more.”

“Okay,” I said, unsure where she was going.

“Well . . .” She blinked fast, looking increasingly desperate. “The team wants me to do this flip off the top of the pyramid, and I hate heights.”

“You're a cheerleader and you hate heights? Isn't that kind of . . . paradoxical?”

She exhaled. “I know. But I need to do this trick if we're going to win the upcoming competition and I don't want to let the team down, let my parents down.” She looked at the floor and her eyes got glassy again. “I Googled hypnosis yesterday and found that people use hypnosis to lose weight, to stop smoking, and, I don't know, it worked so well with Hayden's inhibitions I just thought maybe hypnosis could be the answer—to not be afraid of this flip.” She was talking very fast. “But I didn't know if I could trust you. I mean, I didn't know anything about you, what your true intentions were, so I decided against it. But now . . .” She fingered the safety pin on her skirt then looked up at me. She spoke very softly. “Could you help me?”

My mind raced. She wanted my help. Me. The most popular girl in school wanted something from me. Something that I could deliver. Couldn't I? I wasn't sure, but if I could, it might change destiny like with Hayden and Sarah. It could change Mia's destiny but also mine. I could be Mia's friend. I could be popular in addition to being memorable. And that felt pretty powerful.

Mia walked over to the mirror and quickly applied some make-up around her eyes. The bell rang. She looked at me expectantly.

There was the tingly feeling of endless possibilities coursing through my veins. So I smiled and said, “Well, I've never done anything like that before. But I'd love to try.”

She smiled and opened the door. We walked out together into the hallway and raced off to our next classes.

Later that day, after Max dropped me off at home, I snuck into my mom's room in the hope of finding some information I could use to help me with Mia's hypnosis. After all, Mom was working at the Headache Clinic, using hypnosis to help control pain. She had to have some information about how she'd made the leap from performance hypnosis to hypnotherapy. As I opened the bedroom door, I felt a pang of guilt knowing how much Georgia hated that her mom invaded her space. And my mother was so mindful of mine. But we'd always been so close; there had never been anything to hide until now. Now that I was doing exactly what she'd asked me not to do. A sour swell of guilt dropped into the pit of my stomach.

The door creaked open and I crept in quietly, even though the house was empty except for Oompa, who was trailing me with a quizzical look in his eyes. Mom's bed was unmade and a pile of dirty clothes was strewn on the floor. I instinctively picked up the clothes, separated out the delicates, and put the rest in the laundry basket.

On the nightstand, next to the old metal lamp we bought at Pottery Barn, was a stack of textbooks. Hmm. I walked over and picked up the top text,
Basics of Hypnotherapy.
As I flopped onto her bed and cracked open the cover, there was a loud thumping sound followed by a tinny rattle. I looked up, half expecting a cop to be standing there, all uniformed with his silver badge shining, arresting me for trespassing. But I was still alone. Except for Oompa, who had flexed his stumpy legs into his best imitation of guard dog position.

Then I realized the room was filled with silence. More silence than I could remember. Panic sprouted inside of me when I concluded that the gentle hum of the air-conditioning had stopped. I got up and knelt down at the vent. I placed my hand over the grate. Nothing. Instantly it seemed like the room got hotter. I looked out at the smoldering sun, the sizzling beams of light shrouding our house with intense August heat.
Okay, don't panic. It's probably just a fuse.
I got up and started to search for the fuse box.

In a matter of minutes, the air inside the house began to feel stale, suffocating. I could feel the nape of my neck dampen. I decided to go look in the garage for the fuse box when, from down the hall, I heard a commotion in my bedroom. I suddenly feared our house was being robbed.
They turned off the air to suffocate us then they'll rob us blind!
I snatched up Oompa and was darting toward the front door when I heard someone shout my name: “Willow!”

“Ahhh!” I screamed, pulling Oompa in front of my face like a shield. But it was just Max, walking out of my bedroom. “What are you doing?” I asked, all out of breath.

“I tried the front door but it was locked. You left this in my car.” He held up my cell phone.

“Oh, oh.” I felt myself breathe again. “The air-conditioning went out and then I heard all this racket and I thought someone was attacking me.”

“By shutting the AC off?”

“Well, it didn't seem so ridiculous in the heat of the moment. I'm trying to find the fuse box.”

“Did you try the garage?”

“I was just heading there.”

We walked to the garage, where we located the switches and, much to my dismay, realized the fuse was not the problem. By the time we walked back into the house, the temperature had risen a few degrees. Oompa was plopped on the cool kitchen tiles, with his paws splayed out in an X, a little puddle of drool under his panting tongue.

I called my mom and left a message. Five minutes later she texted back that the repair man couldn't make it until tomorrow.

“You're not staying here!” Max said. He pulled out his phone, called his mom, and the next thing I knew, I was packing a bag to stay over at Max's house.

“Wait,” I said before we left. I ran back into Mom's room and put the textbook back on top of the stack on her nightstand to disguise my snooping.

“Why are you reading your mom's books?” Max asked.

And so I made him swear to secrecy; then I told him about Mia's request. Saturday night at Jake's house, Max had been all enthusiastic about me doing hypnosis, but there, standing in my mom's room, he wrinkled his forehead up in concern. “I don't know, Willow,” he said. “It's one thing to do fun party tricks, but now you're talking about controlling someone's mind—their thoughts.” His face was serious, in such stark contrast to his usual joking demeanor. And I didn't like it. I didn't want him to put a damper on this newfound opportunity I had. So I tried to turn it into a joke.

“Hey, did you know I just read that you can hypnotize someone in ten seconds with just a sharp handshake?” I playfully reached for his hand. “
Max
,” I said in a low, put-on voice, “
I will hypnotize you. . . .
”

But he didn't think it was funny. He yanked his hand away. “Quit it, Willow, I'm not kidding. Do you want to mess with someone's mind? Years from now Mia could be off somewhere at college having a good time and suddenly she'll hear
your
voice in her head? Do you want that?” He had a weird look in his eyes—not exactly mad, but not exactly happy, either.

I pulled my hand back to my side. “Geez, take it easy. I was just kidding.”

“About Mia?”

“No, not about Mia.”

“I just think you're making a mistake.”

He started for the door and we were silent as we left my house, which was hot and stuffy now. I followed him out to his truck and climbed in. Oompa jostled his way into the backseat with a loud, disapproving grunt as he teetered atop a messy pile of CD cases. Max laughed at the dog, breaking the silence between us, and reached back to scratch Oompa's ears. And the awkwardness was over—it evaporated and it was just us again.

Max's mom was at the stove, apron on, spatula in hand, with the aroma of spice wafting around her. She hugged me fiercely and said Mom and I were welcome to stay as long as we needed.

“Oh, the AC repair man will be by tomorrow,” I said. “But thanks.”

A thin, forced smile formed on her lips and I didn't quite understand why she looked so sad. But when Max disappeared to talk to Minnie on the phone, I called Mom and her voice was just as thin and forced as Max's mom's smile.

“What?” I asked her.

She sighed. “The repair man said it was going to be two hundred dollars just to come look at the system, then most likely five hundred dollars or more to fix it if it's a simple problem.”

“We'll just have to use the emergency fund,” I suggested. She was quiet. I felt a pang of anxiety. I didn't like my new lack of access to the finances. “Did you use the emergency fund?”

“Yes,” she answered, not telling me how she'd squandered the money I had diligently hoarded for years. But it wasn't like I could demand answers. It was, after all, her money. “Sorry,” she answered sounding guilty, like she was proving Grandma right. “I can't go into it now, but you just have to believe me that I'm doing the best I can.” She sounded like she was going to cry.