Going Vintage (19 page)

Look, I’m not asking for genius. But I could sure use some perspective, and I don’t get why Grandma is being so stingy with the shares. I thought she would whisper all her list pointers, the secret to a happy and clean adolescence, some tidbit that would take away all the pain. Isn’t that why we have grandparents, anyway? So they can get all misty-eyed about the days of yore? Grandma Vivian, I need to know about yore.

“So. Peach chiffon.” Her reading glasses are perched on her nose, a notebook out, all business. “It’ll look pretty with the red in your hair, but what do you think Jeremy will think about it?”

I rub my hand along the fabric. So she’s not giving up the Secret of Life, but she is offering up her time and talents. And in return, I’m giving her a very limited slice of the truth. She thinks I’m just doing this because I need a dress. She has no idea about The List or the event that inspired its significance. And if I only tell her what happened and not the particulars (ahem, BubbleYum), then maybe she won’t think I’m completely moronic. “Jeremy and I broke up, Grandma.”

She reaches for another fabric, this one a bedazzled pale
blue. “A week before the dance? I would have stretched it out a bit. At least get another date out of him.”

“I think he wants to get back together, but … I can’t. It isn’t worth it.”

“Did he do something wrong?” she asks, her voice much more tender. It’s similar to my mother’s questions, but Grandma’s inquiry feels more heartfelt. She doesn’t ask questions unless she wants to know the answer.

“He did. Nothing horrendous, but … I don’t trust him anymore.”

“Betrayal.” She clucks her tongue. “Been there. Not easy to come back from that.”

The store bell jingles again, followed by girls laughing. I step back against the wall, in case it’s someone I know. If anyone sees what kind of fabric I’m buying, they might assume it’s for a formal and then they’ll want to know who I’m going with and …

Yvonne squeals when she sees me. “Mallory! Did you disappear off the face of the earth? I haven’t seen you in a week! Why weren’t you at the party last night? Paige, look! It’s Mallory!”

Paige rolls her eyes and smiles. “Hey. Are you buying fabric for your Industrial Revolution project too? Yvonne and I are getting muslin to make a true-to-era dress. Big sleeves, high neck. Extra credit.”

“No. I’m just here with my grandma. She’s making a quilt.” I squeeze Grandma’s arm, a silent prompt not to mention homecoming.

Grandma smiles. “You know grandmas. Always quilting, baking cookies, threading bobbins …”

I squeeze her harder. Gambling and sassiness. Seems I don’t know Grandma at all.

Yvonne’s eyes widen, like she suddenly remembered something. “Did you get my text? Paige, did you text her?”

“She’s doing a social experiment, Yvonne. No cell phones. It’s very cutting-edge.”

“Why did you text me?” I ask Yvonne.

She bites at her thumbnail. “Um, you should read the text. I like texting bad news instead of saying it to the person’s face. It makes it less awkward.”

“Saying things are awkward is what makes them awkward.” Paige shakes her head and takes a step closer to me. “Um, Lincoln Gleason had a beach bonfire for his birthday last night. Totally unplanned, I just saw an e-vite on Friend-space. I stopped by your house to see if you wanted to come, but no one was there, and I couldn’t call—”

“What happened?” It’s crazy how unplugging has made me so invisible.

Paige glances at Grandma, who takes her cue and starts to rummage through her purse. “Oh, I think I left my measuring tape in the car. I always prefer using my own. Be back in a minute, girls.”

Paige waits for the store bell to ring until she speaks. “Jeremy was there. And, apparently …”

“He asked some other girl to homecoming!” Yvonne jumps in. “She doesn’t even go to our school! He met her at camp or something. She’s from Indiana.”

“Illinois,” I say faintly. BubbleYum. I can’t believe him.

Paige slips her arm around my shoulder. “Well, the good
news is that everyone thinks he’s a jerk for not having a mourning period. I don’t know if he had this girl on the side or what.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I pull back from Paige, not giving away any information. “I don’t care.”

“Is this why you guys broke up, then?” Yvonne asks. “Because that would totally make sense. I knew all those Internet rumors weren’t true. You don’t really have a chat-room college boyfriend, do you?”

I expect to feel that cutting, sharp pain, that out-of-body surrealism that’s been like an old sweatshirt since my discovery. But my body isn’t reacting at all. No butterflies, no shaking, no sweats. I don’t feel one pinprick of tears. It’s almost like I’ve been expecting this, almost like knowing there is a flesh-and-blood girl traveling here makes it easier. And it helps me make up my mind about something.

Grandma clangs back into the store and pretends to search through a rack of leather jackets. When I make eye contact, she mouths, “Are you all right?”

I stick the bolt of peach chiffon under my arm. “Well, good seeing you girls. We have to go. I’m sewing my own dress for homecoming.”

“I’m going to write an editorial on you. Strength in the face of adversity.” Paige nods with pride. The fact that she likes me for traits that I’m just now discovering, and liking about myself, makes me think we should hang out more often. Actually, I should have more friends in general. Like, in-person, spend-time-together friends.

“Wait, so you’re going?” Yvonne asks. “With who? Everyone already has a date. It’s only leftovers now.”

Yvonne, however, is not high on my get-to-know list.

The goal was to sew a dress for homecoming. And I’ll do that, at least with Grandma as a very involved party. So I could get by without attending the dance, maybe give the dress to Ginnie. But the strong move would be to go, to see Jeremy and BubbleYum, to prove something even The List can’t. That I am going to be okay. Eventually.

“I don’t know who I’m going
with
,” I say. “But you can text everyone you know this. Mallory Bradshaw is going to homecoming.”

Chapter 14

Things I have sewn in my life:

1. A button
.

2. A tie quilt for a fourth-grade project. I quit midway and my mom finished it for me
.

3. That piece of half-finished fabric in sewing class
.

4. Um, wow. That’s it
.

I wake up Sunday morning to a weird burring sound. It takes a few minutes before I realize it’s my new/old rotary phone. I glance at my new (old) alarm clock. It’s 9:12. “Hello?”

“May I please speak to Mallory?”

“Oliver?” I sit up in bed. “What’s with the formal greeting?”

“You don’t have a cell—I didn’t know who would answer. I had to use proper phone etiquette.”

I cradle the phone on my shoulder. “Oh. I didn’t know there was proper phone etiquette.”

“Of course. We learned it in Scouts.”

“Scouts? Like Boy Scouts?” I giggle. Genuine giggle.

“Don’t laugh. I just earned my Eagle Scout. That also looks good on college résumés.”

“Sorry, but practicing phone calls doesn’t sound like scouting. Aren’t you supposed to make a bear trap out of a lunchbox?”

“Ah, yes. The bear-in-the-lunch-box merit badge. Took me weeks to get that. No, we had to take an etiquette class. I also know all my dinner forks, so you know who to call in case of an emergency.”

“I’ll remember that.” I rub the yarn that’s still on my finger.

“Sorry, so proper phone etiquette is introduction, small talk, and now I’m going to move on to my point.”

Honestly. I can’t even hear irony in his voice. I think the boy is so wry that he probably doesn’t recognize his own sarcasm. “Another merit badge? Make me a booby trap with dental floss and a quarter. Go.”

“So I was thinking.” No laughs at that one. I’ll have to try the joke on Ginnie later. Just the expression “booby trap” should have earned me something. “About the float. Since we’re not going to be able to go full throttle, we can make up for lack of size with good costumes. Now, the theme this year
is ToonTown. Blake’s idiot idea, but whatever. SpongeBob is out, the sophomores are doing some Disney homage, so we need to think of a cartoon no one has used.”

“Oh my gosh, you’re a closet spirit freak!” I laugh.

“What?” Oliver sounds wounded. “No, I’m not.”

“This college application thing is all a cover-up, huh?”

“I just think if we’re going to do something, we should do it right.”

I slide out of bed and start walking toward the bathroom, but forget the phone has a cord and get yanked back. My neck snaps and I cry out.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” I sit down on the bed and massage my neck. What happened? I gave up my cell phone, had my sister confiscate my cordless phone, and am now injuring myself with a rotary dial. As you do. “So you obviously have a plan for this float. What’s my part?”

“Are you and Ginnie doing anything today? I was hoping the VP and secretary could come with me to buy supplies.”

I feel an unexplained flicker of annoyance that he asks about Ginnie, even if I did initially have him on her steady list. “Ginnie has soccer and I have to work on a paper.”

“One hour. Two, tops. If we get everything together today, we’ll be able to start the float right away.”

I rub the sleep out of my eyes. I wouldn’t mind hanging out with Oliver again—maybe this time I could even manage to not break into tears—but I seriously have to get going on that history paper, and Ginnie wanted to do a big Sunday
dinner to help prepare for our soiree. “Look, I really want to do a float, but I’m not sure today is good for me.”

“We only have until Friday.” Oliver coughs. “I can’t believe I’m the one begging to do this.”

“I can’t, either.”

“Your school needs you, Mallory.”

I smile. Ginnie’s the only one who ever jokes like this with me. Maybe I’m not losing my touch. Maybe I just need to be around the right people. “Fine. I will make a sacrifice for spirit.”

“And I promise I won’t ambush you with my cousin this time.”

My smile fades. Oliver is always going to have that asterisk by his name when I think about him—Jeremy’s cousin. Being around him isn’t going to make the grieving process happen any faster, but completing The List will. If I want to call myself a real pep club secretary, I have to go secretarial on that float.

Oliver offers to drive, but I go legit and ride my bike instead. Because in the sixties, a lot of teens still didn’t have cars, so they had to ride bikes, see? Also, in the sixties, Orange was half the size it is now, so they didn’t have to ride so
far
. The cracked banana seat of the old beach cruiser I found in the garage keeps pinching the thin material of my vintage 501 Levi’s.

In Southern California, it’s easier to
feel
fall than see it. There isn’t an autumn blitz of golden colors and the weather
only dips a few degrees. But there’s still something in the gray sky that whispers change. I button my jacket against the chill. A cardigan or pea coat would have been more authentic, but I didn’t think to get winter clothes for my project. I just need my clothes to last until I finish The List.

I pretend I’m biking because of the cooler weather, pretend like I wasn’t nervous to have my parents accidentally meet Oliver and ask who he is and find out he’s related to Jeremy. I don’t want Ginnie to point out that Oliver and I are going alone and he could have asked Cardin or Paige or even freshman Vance to come too. I want this little shopping excursion to be simple and mine—not something to be dissected by anyone else, especially since there isn’t anything to dissect.

Oliver’s Nissan chugs up to the craft store and I watch him from behind the glass. His door is jammed shut, so he slides out the driver’s window like a dancer in some hipster ballet. He zips up his hoodie with one quick flick, his fingers long and strong, just like Jeremy’s.