Gettin' Lucky (3 page)

“He thinks you’re cute,” Alana had told me just the week before, during a free period that we’d spent at the mall. We were lucky to have such prime shopping in such close proximity to the high school. “He’s
been asking me all about you.” She slurped on a diet soda for good measure.

“Shut up,” I said, smiling. This was good news. Jesse and I had biology together, and my pulse quickened every time he walked into the classroom.

I figured if Jesse Dain was truly interested in me, I’d know soon enough.

And soon enough, it seemed, had finally come. After weeks of what I couldn’t be sure were stolen glances in class, he was standing in front of me. He was talking to me!

“Mine are green,” he was saying. I’d been so stuck in a wash of reverie that I almost forgot what we were talking about.

Whoops.

“Green is good,” I said. “You know … the color … I like green.”

Jesse laughed. God, he had an adorable laugh. And perfect teeth. His parents must have been big into orthodonture.

“So,” he said, interrupting my little fan club meeting of one, “are you going to the game on Sunday?”

“Not sure,” I admitted. “I told Alana I would, but I have homework to do.”

“You should come,” Jesse insisted.

“A five-hundred-word essay on the
suffragettes will not write itself,” I protested. It was all for show. I knew full well that I’d definitely be at the game. According to my horoscope, it was a good week to take a risk. Blowing off my report to flirt with a hot jock was probably as good a risk as any.

“We’ll get something to eat afterward,” he said, completely brushing past my sudden academic fervor. “And
then
you can work on your report. I’ll get you home early.” He winked. “Everyone’s happy.”

It was a sound enough plan, and, anyway, he didn’t leave me much room to disagree.

Later on, as I thought back to that moment, it occurred to me that Jesse had never actually asked me out. Rather, he made a plan and then assumed (correctly, as it turned out) that I would go along with it. That was the way that the Jesse Dains of the world operated. He was a Leo, of course. Totally wrong for me. But my horoscope had told me to take a risk, and this risk, this Leo … was
sooo
cute. Obviously, when two astrological influences are acting in direct opposition to each other, you’ve gotta go with the one that says “Date the hottie,” right? Even if he is a fire sign.

For a while, I had a pretty nice life in Vegas. Or, you know, one that most teens seem to want, at least according to the last
Ten Things I Hate About Teen Makeovers
movie that I saw. I was the romantic lead of my own movie, sort of a hybrid of Reese Witherspoon and Cameron Diaz. And I don’t think that would have happened if I hadn’t come to Vegas. So, you know, I had lot to thank Alana for. Alana and Jesse both. I owed them.

Well, wait. Okay, scratch that.

I
used
to owe them. Once upon a time.

Now? Not so much.

Something had to give, though. And soon. I mean, karma’s a boomerang.

Right?

Three

You know what’s crappy? Losing your best friend.

You know what else is crappy? Losing your boyfriend.

You know what’s the complete and total
über-
suck?

Losing them both. At the same time. To each other.

In the days following my immediate discovery of brat-face Alana and scuzzball Jesse attempting to suck each other’s face off, I found myself careening crazily from mood to mood. It was like the powers that be had a big fuzzy dartboard, and each ring represented a different state of mind. Whichever point they hit, there went my emotional state.

Fwoom—
furious.

Fwoom—
lonely.

Fwoom—
sad.

Fwoom—
incredulous.

Fwoom—
self-righteous.

And then another five minutes would pass, and I’d go through the whole bipolar merry-go-round all over again.

I did have the occasional “I Will Survive” sort of triumphant outburst, wherein I envisioned myself meeting someone twelve times cuter than Jesse, replacing Alana as head cheerleader, and spontaneously going up at least a cup size, chestwise, but those scenarios were fairly unlikely, and, therefore, the moods were inevitably short-lived.

My father was working a lot that weekend, which, while it didn’t help with my loneliness, was kind of okay by me since I had a hard time talking about what had happened without freaking out and bursting into hysterics. I’d told him that Jesse and I broke up, and somehow, in the telling, I’d gotten the point across that the problems in our relationship weren’t entirely unrelated to Alana. And I’m sure he noticed a drastic increase in my moping. So I think
he managed to connect the dots. He was good—brought home Ben & Jerry’s and didn’t complain when I downloaded excessive movies on demand. Which was exactly the sort of unobtrusive support that I really needed.

And, anyway, Maxine was the only one who really understood me. For real. She could tell what kind of mood I was in, even as my emotional state fluctuated by the minute, and she was happy to accommodate. Ice cream and chick flick meant melancholy, in which case she was perfectly willing to curl up next to me on the couch. And if, after a particularly slothlike couchpotato marathon, I started to itch for a little air or activity, she’d leap up excitedly as I laced up my sneakers, raring to go. We lived a shortish drive from Red Rock Canyon, which, though touristy, was a great place to hike. At least I knew I wouldn’t run into anyone from school there. I could chill out on a ledge for a while, pat Max, and be alone with my thoughts. And there was no one around to chastise me if my thoughts were, shall we say, vaguely slightly cranky.

Of course, I couldn’t escape from Alana and Jesse completely. School was still there,
after all. The Great and Terrible Face Sucking Betrayal, as I had come to fondly call it, had taken place on a Thursday. I’d had the weekend to immediately box up anything that had any and all connotations to either Alana or Jesse. Which meant that I’d spent most of Sunday staring straight ahead at my nearly bare bedroom. But you’ve gotta get rid of that stuff. Bad vibes and all. Empty at least implied the potential for a fresh start.

Alana had called me three times on Thursday, five times on Friday, four times on Saturday, and then two on Sunday. Obviously I didn’t bother to pick up my cell. There was nothing, I reasoned, that she could say that would make it okay for her to be hooking up with my boyfriend. Nothing. I didn’t want to know that it had been a one-time thing—that they’d been willing to completely betray me for a fling—and I
certainly
didn’t want to know that it
wasn’t
a one-time thing. I was screwed either way.

So you can see the difficulty of the position I was in.

Jesse’s pattern was more consistent than Alana”s. He stopped by on Thursday, though
Dad wasn’t home and I didn’t come to the door. He called me on Friday, but I didn’t answer, and I didn’t call back. On Saturday, he texted me a tentative “U THERE?”; on Sunday, he saw me online and IM’d “hey.”

I immediately deleted him from my buddy list.

He was tenacious, but his efforts were dwindling. At this rate, he’d probably be reduced to a smoke signal in a week or so.

That was, if I got lucky.

I woke up Monday morning with a terrible knot in my stomach. At first I couldn’t identify it; I’d been dreaming that I had just beaten Kristin Cavallari out for the affections of the most eligible Prince of Malibu. The worst part about that dream was waking up from it—there was no reason that I could easily identify to explain my growing sense of dread.

And then I remembered: school.

As in, today I had to go.

Today I had to go back to school and face Jesse and Alana. Or ignore them, as it were. Whichever proved easier (duh).

Alana and Jesse were my
real
friends—or, had been, that was. So facing them
would be about as pleasant as tap-dancing on broken glass. But it wasn’t just them. There were the Katys and the Margies and the Mikes and the Brandons—all of the hangers-on, my fellow second-tiers. They would all know what had happened. Or, if they didn’t know already, they’d find out.

I knew what they would think, too—either they wouldn’t care (being one of the luckier girls in the junior class can inspire a certain degree of jealousy), or they’d think I deserved it (for the same reason). Worst-case scenario, they’d … ugh, it was too horrible to even contemplate … they’d
empathize.
And then they’d feel sorry for me. And that was just more than I could bear.

Getting dressed nearly required a therapist’s consult. I wanted to look good, rather than lovelorn, which required some effort. But I couldn’t put in too much effort—too much effort was dangerous, like I was trying too hard
not
to be the pathetic jilted girlfriend. In the end I settled on a denim skirt and cute, fluttery top. No one can ever accuse you of being overdressed in a denim skirt. But it did fit me in just the right places. I’d found it at an outlet, the last one on the rack, smushed all the way to one side
off the hanger, nearly invisible to the naked eye. It was my size, and it was marked down to thirteen dollars. Thirteen dollars! I mean, how lucky can you get?

I figured I could use a little extra luck for today.

I’m sure that
every
single student I passed in the hallway didn’t
actually
stop in his or her tracks, look me up and down, and turn to his or her friend to whisper. I’m sure that
everyone
I saw wasn’t necessarily speculating as to what I had done to inspire such disloyalty from my best friend and my boyfriend respectively. I’m sure
no one
was wondering if I was, like, the
world’s worst kisser,
or hygienically
challenged,
or whatever. I mean, I’m
100 percent positive
that people had other things to think about than yours truly.

Maybe they were just checking out my skirt.

It’s a really cute skirt.

I didn’t have any morning classes with Jesse or Alana, so avoiding them was just a matter of keeping my head trained aggressively to the floor as I made my way down the hallways (and crossing my fingers that I
didn’t bump into anything, which would render me literally and figuratively lamer than ever). I remember at the start of the semester thinking what a bummer it was that I didn’t get to catch up with either of them until lunch. Now the thought of lunch suffused me with terror. I couldn’t eat in the bathroom again, like I had that first day of junior high. That was … lame.
Beyond
lame.

I ended up grabbing a granola bar from the vending machine and smuggling it into the library. Not the heartiest meal, but considering I’d spent the weekend consuming my own body weight in chocolate and ice cream, a light lunch wasn’t going to kill me.

Maybe I’d waste away from heartbreak, like that chick from that reality show who always wears those big sunglasses. She broke off her engagement twice. But I’m pretty sure her fiancé—
ex-
fiancé—never cheated on her.

I had big sunglasses.

I wondered if I could wear my sunglasses in class.

My mood swings had come back to me in a flash during English; we’d been reading sonnets (the Elizabethan era is
so boring
), and
it suddenly occurred to me that one of the things I’d purged yesterday had been a box of cards Jesse had given me for various occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, the time I tripped and sprained my ankle. For one horrifying moment I seriously thought I was going to lose it all over the fourth row. I’d managed to keep it together, but suddenly cultivating a rock-star, sunglasses-indoors sort of persona seemed like it could be a strategic move.

I spent my lunch period hunched over a computer terminal, surreptitiously scarfing down my contraband snack. I checked my horoscope:
A change will befall you and your patience will be tested.

Gee, ya think?

Even though Midvale is a public school, it’s what they call a “magnet” school, which means that the board and a bunch of concerned parents lobbied for some extra funding from the state. Apparently, it wasn’t too hard to convince the state that we were in dire need of their financial support, seeing as how we all live on the brink of Vegas and hedonism and won’t someone please think of the children, blah, blah, blah. All it really
ended up meaning was that we have a some-what developed arts program, and so in addition to your basic reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic, we each have to take one random artsy course a semester. Alana and I had chosen the Modern American Film. I was way into the early works of Gus Van Sant. Alana, I think, just hoped to catch some Matthew McConaughey action for school credit. I won’t go so far as to say that the class was crazy-hard or anything like that, but it turned out to be a little more challenging than just watching movies.

I had film class right after lunch.

Luckily, seats weren’t assigned. I perched myself in the second row, far corner—close enough to the front that it wouldn’t look like I was hiding, but close enough to the front that I wouldn’t have to spend the entire class not-looking at Alana either.