Devon Delaney Should Totally Know Better (6 page)

“Well,” he says. “I think I should meet him.”

“My dad?” I ask. “Right now? Um, now’s probably not the best time.” The thing is, I kind of sort of haven’t told my dad that Luke is actually my boyfriend. I mean, my parents know who Luke is and everything, but they don’t know he and I are going out.

“Not your dad,” Luke says, his blue eyes grim. “Greg.”

“Oh,” I say. “Right. Of course.” Not. And then I wave goodbye and rush off to the car before he can realize I’m panicked.

When I get into the car, my dad quickly gets off his phone call. “Okay,” he says briskly, “So we’ll touch base about that on Monday.” And then he gets a very guilty look on his face as he flips his phone shut and takes his Bluetooth out of his ear.

“Hi, honey,” he says. “How was mock trial?”

“It was . . .” I grasp around in my head for something to say that won’t exactly be a lie or sound too negative. “Interesting.”

“You know, when I was in high school, I was in debate club.”

“I know,” I say as I buckle my seat belt. “One time mom showed me all your old debate club trophies.” I hope he’s not going to start telling me stories about debate club. Mock trial was boring enough.

“Well, I
was
the best in the state,” he says, pulling the car onto the highway and looking pleased with himself. “I remember one time—” His cell phone starts ringing from his pocket, playing the tune of a rap song that I programmed on for him. If I can’t have my own cell, then at least I should be able to have fun with someone else’s, right?

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” I ask, singing along with the song. It’s very catchy. The song, I mean. And a very good temporary distraction from the fact
that, you know, I’ve made up another fake boyfriend. Wow. That’s my second fake boyfriend in six months. That has to be some kind of record.

“Uh, no,” my dad says, “Probably nothing important.”

“It could be very important,” I say. “I know that if I had a cell phone, I would never, ever not answer it, since it could be you or mom calling me with some kind of family emergency.” He raises his eyebrows. “And,” I go on, “I could also use it to call you when I have to stay after school or something. Like today, when I had to use Lexi’s phone to call you. I’m probably running up her bill super high. In fact, I should probably give her some money for that call I made today.” This is pretty laughable, since Lexi’s family has tons of money, and my dad knows it. But just because she has the money doesn’t mean that I should take advantage of that, does it?

My dad’s phone starts ringing again, and I reach over and grab it out of his shirt pocket before he can stop me.

“Devon, no!” he says, but I look at the screen before he can stop me.

“Calm down.” I roll my eyes. “It’s just Mom.” I flip open his phone and answer it. “Hello?” I say.

“Hi, Devon,” my mom says. “Listen, can you guys stop at the store on the way home and pick up some milk?”

“Sure,” I say. I can hear pots and pans clanging in the background, and then the phone gets muffled for a second and my mom says, “No, Katie, please don’t pour ketchup into the stew!” And then the line goes dead.

“She wants us to pick up some milk,” I say. I slide the phone shut and hold it out to my dad.

As I’m sliding it over, the phone starts ringing again. But my dad takes it out of my hand before I can see who it is, and shuts it off before putting it back in his pocket. Geez. Way to be the Phone Nazi.

The next morning at school, I head to Mel’s locker first so that I can drop off our BFF notebook. The BFF notebook is something we started a while ago. We take turns writing notes back and forth in it, and then just pass the notebook to each other. It serves two purposes, in that we can pass it without teachers realizing that it’s not school related, and we can keep our notes all in one place, so that we can read them back to each other one day when we’re old and have grandchildren. Our plan is to talk about how much things have
changed and how silly junior high was. Well, at least I’ll hope that’s what we’ll do. It would be pretty upsetting if we read the notes and thought, “Oh, those were the days, when Devon made up fake boyfriends and Bailey Barelli was always around, like a little fly hovering, and oh, isn’t it funny how Bailey married Luke?”

I slide the combination dial of Mel’s locker to the left. Five . . . fifteen, twenty-one. Mel and I have each other’s locker combinations just for situations like this. Wow, Mel really should clean this place once in a while. Her locker is pretty much a mess. Papers all over the place, which is really unlike her. Her bedroom is immaculate, you should see her bookshelves and her closet. Everything all facing the same way, color coded and alphabetized.

I move some papers out of the way so that I can put the notebook in, and as I do, some stuff falls onto the floor. Oopsies. I bend down to pick the papers up, and realize I’ve accidentally left a footprint on one of them. Hope it’s not important. I look at the paper, “Application For . . .” is all I see before someone snaps it out of my hand.

“What are you doing?” Mel asks, slamming her locker door shut in front of me. She does it so fast that I almost lose my hand.

“I was just putting our notebook in your locker. You could have broken my fingers just now, you know?” What is the deal with people being so secretive all of a sudden? First my dad and now Mel.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “It’s just . . .” She shoves the paper she took from me into her bag.

“It’s just what?”

“I dunno, I saw you looking at something, and I figured you might have been messing up something important.” I look at her, and she slides her eyes down to the floor. Something’s definitely going on here.

“Something’s definitely going on here,” I say.

“No, there isn’t,” she says.

“Yes, there is,” I say.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Then show me that paper!” I hold my hand out, waiting for her to hand it over.

“No!” she almost screams. “I mean, I can’t. It’s private.”

“It’s private?” I ask her incredulously. “Since when do we keep secrets?” Mel raises her eyebrows at me. Okay. So maybe I kind of sort of didn’t tell Mel that
my parents were having problems and were thinking about maybe getting divorced. And maybe Mel kind of sort of found out when her mom ran into my grandma at the store. But that was ages ago. Three weeks, at least.

“Okay,” I say. “Point taken. But we’ve turned over a new leaf! I don’t have any secrets from you right now. You know everything that’s going on with me, and I want to know everything that’s going on with you. We’re BFF.” Mel doesn’t look convinced, so I rush on. “For example,” I say. “Last night at mock trial I made up a fake boyfriend, and now Luke wants to meet him.” I give her an encouraging smile. “Now you go.”

“You what?!” Mel shrieks.

“Unh-uh,” I say, wagging my finger at her. “Not until you tell me yours.”

Mel takes a deep breath, “Devon, I—”

At that moment, a boy with blonde hair who’s wearing a blue and white striped polo shirt passes by us in the hall. As he does, he gently tugs on Mel’s hair. Then he turns around and winks at her. Mel blushes as red as a tomato.

“Who,” I say, “was that?”

“Oh, that’s Dylan,” she says. She suddenly becomes
very busy opening up her locker, turning the combination. But she’s all flustered, and her hands slide past the numbers she needs.

“And who,” I say, “is Dylan?” I’ve never heard of this Dylan, much less know why he’d be pulling Mel’s hair. It seems very . . . flirty. Is this Mel’s secret?

“He’s just this guy who’s in radio,” she says. “We ended up talking for a little bit last night about broadcasting and stuff.”

“Ooooh,” I say, leaning against Mel’s locker. “You guys were taaalking.”

“Come on, Devon,” she says, but her voice sounds like she’s trying too hard to seem nonchalant. “He’s an eighth grader.”

“Ooooh,” I say, “An eighth graaader.”

Mel giggles and fake hits my shoulder. “Devon, come on, be serious.”

“I am being serious. I mean, this sounds very serious.” I look at her, and see her still blushing. “I thought you liked Brent Madison?”

Mel gives me a look, one of those “like that was ever going to happen” looks. I nod, but don’t say anything. Besides him asking about her once when I ran into him at the mall, Mel hasn’t had much success with Brent.

“So tell me about this Dylan,” I say. I’m excited.
New crush! Yay!

“Wellll.” Mel finally has her locker open, and is collecting her books for her first class. “I don’t really know that much, except like I said, he’s in eighth grade. And very nice.”

“Girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t mention one.” She looks nervous.

“Hmm. That could mean either he doesn’t have one, or he just didn’t want to mention her, which means he’s a jerk.” Mel’s face falls at little at the thought of Dylan being a jerk. “But,” I hurry on, “he just did some very public flirting with you, and why would he do that if he has a girlfriend?”

“I don’t think he was flirting with me,” Mel says, slamming her locker door shut. We fall into step together, heading down the hall, me toward English and her toward social studies.

“Um, he pulled your hair,” I say. “That’s most definitely flirting.”

“It is?” We’re at the door of my English class now, and we stop to talk for a second until the bell rings.

“Yes,” I say. “It is. Now he’s an eighth grader, so of course that means—”

“Who’s an eighth grader?” Bailey Barelli asks, popping
her head out of the classroom.

Great. Just how I want to start my morning! With Bailey Barelli asking me all sorts of annoying questions.

“No one,” Mel says quickly, shooting me a look that lets me know she doesn’t want anyone else knowing, even though it’s totally unnecessary. Like I would ever tell Bailey Barelli anything about anyone.

“Yeah, no one,” I say. I try to say it sort of short, so that Bailey knows I don’t want to talk to her anymore. She’s wearing this really fab red-and-white-striped top, and she has red clips in her hair holding back a little braid that goes to the side. It meets her curls and then falls all down her back. She looks like maybe she spent an hour getting ready this morning. I look down at my own outfit, a really cute white cotton dress with a pink butterfly on the bottom, over black leggings. Hmm.

“Ohhhh,” Bailey says, in a very knowing tone. She smiles at me and Mel, like we’re all friends. I guess she doesn’t know she’s the bane of my existence.

“What?” Mel asks.

“Yeah, what?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at her suspiciously.

“You must be talking about Greg, the guy you dated this summer. He’s the one who’s in eighth grade, right?”

“Who?” Mel asks. “I didn’t date any guy named
Greg this summer.” I quickly step on her foot. “Ow!” she yells, “What’d you do that for?”

“Uh, sorry,” I say. “Accident.” And I do honestly feel bad. Mel’s wearing ballet flats, and I’m wearing chunky black shoes with a little bit of a heel. I must have really hurt her foot.

“Oh, how cute,” Bailey says, but she doesn’t sound like she thinks it’s cute. “You didn’t even tell Mel about Greg! Is that because he’s an eighth grader?”

“Who’s an eighth grader?” Luke says, coming up to us in the hall. Great.

“Greg is,” Bailey says. She shrugs her shoulders. “Turns out Devi was dating an eighth grader over the summer, which is why no one really knew about it, even Mel. Is it because your parents wouldn’t let you date older guys?”

Um, my parents won’t let me date
any
guys. But I obviously can’t say that. Because, you know, I’m dating Luke. And he’s standing right there. “Um, not exactly,” I say.

“You didn’t tell me he was an eighth grader,” Luke says.

“Well,” Mel says. “It wasn’t exactly that big of a deal, I mean, people date eighth graders all the time.” I throw her a grateful smile, but Luke ignores her.

“An eighth grader!” he says again, sounding a little dazed.

“Luke, chill out,” Bailey says. She reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. “I mean, Devon said that we all could meet him, isn’t that right, Devon?”

“No,” I say, “I never said that.”

Bailey blinks her eyes innocently. “I thought you mentioned something about us all getting together.” “Us all”? Is Bailey Barelli crazy? How is it that she thinks there’s an “us all”? It sounds suspiciously like she thinks there’s going to be some sort of double date, her and Luke, and me and this Greg person.

“Well,” I say slowly. “I’m not sure how that would work exactly, since, you know, he lives so far away.”

Bailey waves her hand like this is nothing. “Not a big deal,” she says. “I once dated a guy who lived in a whole other state. We met at summer camp. Besides, my mom is always around and she loves to drive and pick people up.”

“Well, great,” I say. “Maybe sometime we can all meet up.” A summer camp boyfriend? How many ex-boyfriends has Barelli had? I can hardly keep up with my one. Of course, mine is fake, and hers are probably real. But still.

“Actually, I’m having a party,” Bailey says, smiling
all innocently up from under her long lashes. She definitely has mascara on. “It’s my birthday.”