Crush Control (6 page)

“And this is Willow,” he continued.

I blinked my eyes. He wasn't holding her hand anymore.
Maybe I imagined it
, I thought desperately.

“Nice to meet you!” Minnie smiled genuinely, flashing a big grin in my direction. “Max talks so much about you.”

It was the same thing Trent had said.
Max talks a lot about me.
That had to mean something, right? “He talks about you a lot, too,” I lied. Why didn't Max tell me he had a girlfriend? And what about the way he looked at me on the porch? That was not the look of a guy who had a girlfriend.

“Wow, your eyes! So . . . interesting!” Minnie said.

Max made a face. “Interesting?” he teased. “More like
crazy
!” He distorted his face into a wacky expression.

I tried not to tense. Max didn't know how much my eyes bothered me. How it was my one unfixable flaw. I smoothed my hand over my hair, taming any stray frizz. He was, after all, teasing me.
Or is it flirting?
Suddenly, everything felt so confusing.

“No,” Minnie said, “seriously, your eyes are fascinating . . . captivating, really.”

It was hard not to like Minnie. I looked at her flowered short skirt, white T-shirt, and makeup-free face. She had an innocence about her that made me think of her running through a grassy meadow barefoot, picking daisies and plucking each petal while chanting,
He loves me, he loves me not.
She seemed nice. Sweet. Like someone I would want to be friends with
. Maybe we
could
be friends,
I thought
, except, oh my God, she's KISSING MY MAX!

What just happened?
Sweet, innocent, daisy-picking Minnie just leaned over, pressed her ample bosom into Max's chest, and sucked face with him RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME! My heart pounded, kickboxed my ribs. My mind raced around like a rat running through a wooden maze.
What just happened? What's going on?

I put my hand on the cold locker door to steady myself. The bell rang. Minnie released her grip on Max and waved casually to me as if she hadn't just shattered my world.

“Have a great first day!” she called. Why did she have to be so friendly? I wanted her to be mean. I wanted her to be a bitch, but she was just waving at me like I was her best friend.

“See you!” Max called to Minnie then returned his gaze toward me. He stared at me, waiting for some reaction, maybe?

I steadied my breathing and prayed he couldn't hear the crazy thumping of my heart. He just kept looking at me. I felt the back of my throat burn.
I thought I was incredible. Smart. Capable. Beautiful.
Quickly, I looked away. Someone slammed a locker next to me, breaking the awkward silence.

“So,” Max said. “Your locker is right down there and”—he glanced at the schedule in my hand, all wrinkled and hot from my tension-filled grip—“your first class is one building over. Just tell the teacher it's your first day. They won't be mad if you're late. But I've got to run.” He looked at me one more time, waiting for me to say something.

But I couldn't. I knew if I opened my mouth I would start to cry. So I nodded and gave a forced smile. “Thanks,” I squeaked out.

He looked at me for another long second then darted off toward his classroom.

And I stood there, watching him go, his words rattling in my distressed mind. As if he thought instructions to class would somehow make everything okay.

I looked down at my class schedule. My first class was calculus
. I can't go to calculus
, I thought frantically
. I can't think about derivatives and quadratic equations while my whole life is falling apart!
But what could I do? It wasn't like I could just skip class—that was something I only reminisced about doing with Max back in the day when I was carefree—before I analyzed and planned each day. Before GPA and college admission were a daily consideration.

The late bell rang, and I stood there in a panic. I couldn't start the first class at my new school all frazzled like this. I had already botched a chance at a great first impression with Quinton at the park. I couldn't risk another catastrophe. I scanned up and down the hallway, feeling completely unglued and without a plan.

Quickly I found the nearest bathroom, crawled into a stall, and had a complete meltdown. The tears plummeted down my face in a full-on deluge. I looked around the cold, blue stall of the girls' bathroom. I was such an idiot! I had thought this move would be a great opportunity. I'd thought it would be fun—finally, an adventure in my boring life. I'd thought Max and I would be together and suddenly I'd transform into the person I wanted to be.
How stupid I was to place all my emotions, all my happiness with one person! A person who chose a girl named after a mouse over ME!!!
I felt a wave of loneliness wash over me—a sudden vacuum of emptiness. I missed Lauren and Becca. I missed our row of three desks in the corner of the library, and I missed our favorite diner, Café Tango. I missed having them around to comfort me.

I would have to find new friends, I thought miserably. I'd have to go through the whole process of breaking the ice, cultivating interests, working my way into a circle of girls who already had private jokes and experiences. Ugh! I felt so unhinged—so out of control. This was not at all how I planned my new life to unfold.

Just as I sighed at the weight of it all, I heard someone knock on the stall door.

“Um, are you, like, okay?” a high-pitched voice called. When I didn't answer, a mop of tight black curls appeared under the door. Their owner turned her head and looked up at me.

“Um, hello?!” I said, just a little snippy at the invasion. Thankfully I wasn't actually
going
to the bathroom.

“Oh, thank God, you're alive!” she said dramatically.

“Of course I'm alive,” I said. “I'm crying, aren't I?”

“Sure, but crying in the bathroom at school—it can't be good.” The curly-haired girl backed out and let me open the door. “Let me guess,” she said. “Depression? Regret? Shame?” I walked out of the tight stall. She took one look at me and pointed her finger. “Heartbreak,” she declared, shaking her head sadly. “It's always heartbreak.”

I nodded silently.

“So what happened, did he cheat?”

I shook my head.

“Tell you he's gay?”

“No.”

“Say he's just not that into you?”

“No.”

“Thinks of you more like a friend?”

“I guess that's it,” I garbled, fighting the urge to cry again.

“Oh,
just friends.
That's a tough one.”

I sniffled, wiping my eyes. “Are you like some relationship expert or something?”

She shrugged. “I watch a lot of TV. A
lot
of it.”

“Oh,” I said, and for some reason, I found myself explaining to the strange, curly-haired girl all about me and Max. “It's not like I think I'm desirable enough that a guy would actually want to date me,” I said. “But for once,” I sniffed, “I was hoping I was.”

“Oh, that's awful,” she said and handed me a tissue.

I wiped the smudgy pools of mascara from my face.

“Who's the guy?” she asked.

I told her it was Max.

“Max Montgomery,” she mused, twining a tight curl around her finger. “Yes, I think I know which one he is. Shaved head. Nice arms. Blue, blue eyes.”

I nodded miserably.

“Yes, Max Montgomery. He orbits in a different stratosphere from all the petty immature high school guys around here. He belongs in the solar system of
men.
Pity to lose that one.”

I burst into a fresh swell of tears.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said and rubbed my back with compassion. “Well, if this isn't just like when Bruno led on Ava for years only to wind up marrying Francesca in season five of
Rhapsody in Rio
—the most heart-wrenching story line of all time, in my opinion.”

I looked at her like she was speaking Arabic and she quickly explained.

“
Rhapsody in Rio
! It's the number one all-time highest rated Spanish soap opera! They dub it into English and play it every night at 9 p.m. on SOAPnet.”

“Oh,” I said. “You weren't kidding about TV, huh?”

She laughed. “Someday I'm going to act on a soap opera.” She beamed. “Or at least be a writer for a TV show,” she said, breaking her confident stride slightly. “My name is Georgia. I just moved here this summer from Philadelphia.”

“Your name is Georgia and you moved to Georgia?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Don't get me started.” We walked over to the mirrors and I dabbed at my puffy eyes with a cold, damp paper towel. Georgia told me she'd started at this school two weeks ago, when the school year officially began.

“Yeah,” I said. “We intended to get here a few weeks ago. I told Mom about the first day of school and I even got the bank to move up the closing on the new house, but . . .” I sighed and ran my hand under the cold water. I used my wet fingers to smooth my flyaway strands back into the ponytail. “Well, Mom's not one to stick to a schedule.”

Georgia shook her head in sympathy. “Parents.” She looked at my schedule and told me that we had third period English together. Then, in a move that erased just a fraction of my pain and gave me a sliver of hope, Georgia offered to skip her next class, hang with me in the bathroom, and tutor me on everything she had observed in her first two weeks at our new high school. I hesitated for a moment. After all, skipping one class because of an emotional disaster was one thing, but skipping a second? But, I reasoned, I wasn't skipping without a plan. Georgia was offering valuable assistance to aid my transition. So I nodded in agreement.

She tossed the wooden hall pass into the garbage bin with a casual shrug and proclaimed, “I'll tell them I got lost.” She pulled a trifolded paper towel from the dispenser and smoothed it out. She grabbed a pen from my messenger bag, sat on the floor, and drew a huge triangle onto the white cloth, the black gel ink bleeding into little stray lines.

“So, from what I can make of it, the complex hierarchy of social order here is just like at any other high school.” She took the pen and scribbled some names at the apex of the pyramid. “In ancient Egypt, the gods sat atop the pyramid and here, the gods of Worthington High are Mia Palmer and Jake Gordon. The power couple—king and queen—yada yada yada. You get the drift. Jake is your average football-player jock meathead and Mia is of course the top cheerleader on the squad.”

I sat down on the hard concrete floor of the bathroom and looked on with interest.

Georgia started adding lines and words to the pyramid. “Football players and basketball players outrank soccer players and wrestlers. Student government fits in here.” She drew an arrow. “Band, here . . .” Another arrow. “Mathletes, foreign language clubs, speech team, and the like go here. Theater—here—which just makes no sense. I mean, we all worship actors and actresses, right?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“But most actors and actresses were in drama club in high school. So why is drama not more toward the top of the pyramid?” She sounded a bit defensive.

“Are you in drama?” It seemed like a logical assumption.

She nodded. “Well, I was, in Pennsylvania. I'm trying out for the spring play, that's for sure. I've heard that Abigail Vorhees gets the lead every year, but I intend to break her reign. Seventeen years of dedication to television and romance novels is bound to pay off. What about you?” she asked, scrutinizing me. “What do you do?” She looked over at my bag. “I don't see any instruments. There's no paint or charcoal or any signs of creative art on your hands.” She looked at my color-coordinated notebook sticking out of my bag. “You look organized—you could be in student government—but you also look somewhat athletic. You're not bulky enough for softball, not glam enough for cheerleading. Tennis? I'm thinking you're a student government officer who plays tennis.”

I sat there thinking that I had never had someone ask me that point-blank,
What do you do?
I was always just “the daughter of the Hip Hypnotist
.
” I thought back to when we first moved to Vegas, when I joined the Girl Scouts. I loved the perfectly starched uniforms and the idea of earning each little badge and lining them up in a row on a sash. We met on Thursday nights at 6 p.m. Mom would drop me off, and I would go home with Lauren until Mom could pick me up after her show was over. Lauren's mom was more than accommodating but I felt like such a burden—hanging out on the couch with Mr. and Mrs. Clemmons long after Lauren and her sister had gone upstairs to bed. So eventually I said I'd rather go hang out at the hypnosis show and I let myself become a fixture in my mother's life. And as I got older, I carved out a purpose there—running the audio onstage and managing our finances at home. But now, if you strip those things away—no more show and Mom's newfound desire to be the responsible one—who was I, really? A girl who hung out with her friends at the library and movies? It sounded pathetic. All the more reason for reinvention.