Little Miss Red (7 page)

When I walked back to the dining room, I found that Michael had blown out the candles and moved the sushi to the family room, where he was watching
Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew
on VH1.

“Is this cool?” he asked with his mouth full of yellowtail.

“Sure,” I sighed, plopping down next to him and plucking a piece of freshwater eel off the plate.

We spent the rest of the evening like we usually did—stuffing our faces while Michael channel surfed.

Operation Remotivation was a bust, but the second red velvet cupcake that I let myself have for dessert helped soften the blow a
little
bit.

Friday was the first of April, a.k.a. Horoscope Day. I can’t stand being late, so Thursday night I had to set my alarm for fifteen minutes earlier than usual so that when I woke up I could log on to HoroscopeAddicts.com and still make it out the door at exactly 7:16 a.m. That would get me to school anywhere between seven and nine minutes before the first bell rang. There were a lot of great astrology columns on there—Alistair Allbright’s “Destiny Awaits You” and Natasha Romanoff’s “The View from Venus,” for instance—but my favorite was one called “The Stars Never Lie” by a little old Irish woman named Wanda McManus. From the picture on her site, Wanda looked to be about seventy-five, and the “About Wanda” page said that she was descended from a long line of astrologers and psychics and had a bit of faerie in her from her mother’s side as well.

The reason I liked Wanda so much was because, like
me and Devon, she was a true romantic. Instead of focusing on money and career stuff, her horoscopes talked only about love and soul mates and the best days of the month for falling in love and meeting your soul mate. For $24.95, she also did personalized compatibility charts. Last year I had used some of my birthday money to get mine and Michael’s done. It had said that we were indeed soul mates, but that “fate would first deal us a myriad of twists and turns and trials and tribulations that would need to be conquered before we could live in eternal bliss.” That seemed fair enough. Except that I then used the rest of my birthday money to get my compatibility chart with Dante done. (I’m not
crazy
—I mean, I know he’s not a real person or anything like that—but Lulu had once written that his birthday was December 5th and I wanted to see how we would have matched up had he actually
existed
.) It ended up saying the same exact thing, except that instead of “twists and turns and trials and tribulations” it said “trials and tribulations and twists and turns.”

I had also noticed that the seventh and the seventeenth seemed to always be listed as the “Best Days for Love This Month,” and the month of April was no different. The seventh was the day that Michael and I were flying to Florida, so I’m not sure how romantic that could be, but it also said that the seventh was a new moon solar eclipse, which I knew from my horoscope research was a
very
dramatic thing as it only happened a few times a year.

What Wanda
didn’t
put in April’s monthly column was, “On the fifth, your entire world as you know it will start to come crashing down.”

The day started with Michael’s mom calling to say that the bugbite he complained about before going to sleep the night before had turned into full-blown chicken pox. Obviously, he wasn’t going to Florida.

“So I guess this means I’ll have to cancel the trip, right?” I asked hopefully after Mom hung up with her.

“Of course not,” she said, as she started to wipe the counter, pour some pomegranate juice for Jeremy, and cut up some cantaloupe for me (Mom: Lots of vitamin A to help with poor eyesight. Me: But I have 20/20 vision. Mom:
Exactly
—because you eat your cantaloupe!). “Why would you have to cancel?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Because I can’t carry both candelabras by myself?”

“Well, Daddy will just have to wrap them up and pack them in a box with peanuts, and you’ll check it,” she replied. She put her hands on her hips. “You’re going. You don’t know how much more quality time you have to spend with your grandmother.”

“But you’re always saying she’s in perfect health!” I cried.

“She is, but you never know. Plus, we decided last night to send Jeremy to your cousin’s for the week, which
means it’ll be the first time your father and I will be alone in years—and I am
not
giving that up.”

Little did I know that forty-eight hours later I’d be very grateful to get out of town—even if it was to an old people’s village in Florida.

That night, as I was figuring out what to pack, Michael called.

“We need to talk,” he said. He must have been really sick, because the TV was off.

I put down my bathing suit. Wait a minute. “We need to talk” was
my
line! “About what?” I asked. I could feel the color drain from my face.

“About us,” Michael replied. “But I think we should do this in person. Can you come over?”

In person?! It was getting
worse
.

“But you have chicken pox.”

“Yeah, I know. I was thinking you could stand outside my door or something.”

“Michael, I am
not
driving over to your house and standing outside your door,” I huffed. “If you have something to say to me, say it right now.”

“Forget it then,” he replied.

That was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. How could a person just forget a “we need to talk” situation?

“You want to
what
?!” I yelped twenty minutes later as I sat outside Michael’s bedroom door.

“I want to push the pause button on our relationship,” came his muffled response from the other side.

“You’re breaking up with me?” I cried. How could this be happening when I was the one who had spent the last few weeks tortured with tumult about breaking up with
him
?

“No,” he said. “I told you—I just want to push the pause button.”

“Michael, I’m not a…DVD player!” I cried. “You can’t just turn a person on and off like that!”

“I didn’t say I wanted to turn it off and push eject,” he said calmly. “I just want to push the pause button. Look, Sophie, you’re awesome, but three years with someone at our age is a long time. Percentagewise, it’s—can you do the math on your calculator?”

I took out my iPhone. “Eighteen point seventy-five percent of our lives.” Wow, that
was
a lot. Had I just wasted my life with the wrong person? I’d be seventeen next January—it wasn’t like I was a kid anymore.

“I just want to, I don’t know, see what else is out there. You know, try another station at the buffet. Being so sick has made me think about a lot of things,” he said.

“You have
chicken pox
, Michael,” I replied. “Not cancer.”

“My fever was all the way up to one oh two point seven at one point!” he said defensively.

I stood up. It was depressing enough that I now had to spend an entire week alone with my grandmother, choking
on the fumes of Bengay mixed with stewed prunes. I didn’t need to sit on the floor while my on-pause boyfriend told me he wanted to see if anything better was out there.

“Good-bye, Michael,” I said to the door. “I hope…I hope you spend the week really, really itchy!” I huffed before stomping down the stairs and out to the car.

As I stopped short at a yellow light (I had seen enough videos in Drivers Ed to know you were just setting yourself up for major tragedy by going through one), I realized that maybe Michael semi–breaking up with me was just the “manicured hands of fate,” as Lulu called them, in action. Once they announced the calendar winners the next morning and I became Miss April, my life was going to take off so fast that even if I
had
still been in love with him, our love probably wouldn’t have been able to survive.

It always took Mrs. Anton, our principal, a long time to get through the morning announcements because of her stutter, but the next morning it seemed to take
extra
long.

“And now,” she finally said, “French club president Michelle Goldman has some important news about the first annual French club calendar that will be available for purchase next fall.”

“
Merci beaucoup
, Madame Anton,” Michelle said. “And
merci
to everyone at Castle Heights who took the time to e-mail their suggestions about which Castle Heights students they think best embody each month of the year. And
now, it is
avec plus de plaisir
that I announce the winners. For Miss January, we have Juliet DeStefano!”

What?! Juliet DeStefano wasn’t even
in
the French club!

“For Miss February, Juliet DeStefano.”

My mouth fell open so wide that my gum fell out and landed on my desk.

“March—Juliet again!” she continued.

What was going on?! Had Juliet
bribed
Mrs. Anton or Michelle? For someone with such a shady past, I wouldn’t put it past her. That being said, April had to be mine.

“April—
quelle surprise!
Juliet DeStefano!” Michelle announced. I put my head down on the desk.

Quelle surprise
, it turned out that Juliet was also going to be Miss May through December as well. Instead of being the French Club of Castle Heights High Calendar, it had become the Juliet-DeStefano-in-Twelve-Different-Outfits Calendar. Kids who sit in the middle of the cafeteria aren’t really the type to protest like, say, Wally Twersky, who was always staging sit-ins or stand-ins or lie-ins or stuff like that. And I was never one to rock the boat. But before I knew it, all that passion that had spent the last sixteen years steeping inside me, like the herbal sun tea that my mom made in summer, spilled out. As soon as the bell rang, instead of turning right and going to history, I turned left and marched straight toward the office so I could catch Michelle.

“
Bonjour
, Sophie,
ça va?
” she said as she walked out of Mrs. Anton’s office wearing a beret and her blue and white boatnecked shirt. Mademoiselle Fritsche, our French club advisor who had lived in Paris for four years, said that no one wore those shirts except for dumb American tourists.

“Don’t
ça va
me, Michelle,” I growled. “You do realize that what just happened went completely against school rules?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“This is a calendar to raise money for the French club!” I cried. “Juliet DeStefano isn’t even
in
the French club! She’s not in
any
clubs!” Probably because she didn’t want to risk her past catching up with her if anyone got hold of our yearbook.

“I don’t remember us voting on a motion that said it was limited to French club members only,” she said.

“That’s because that part was
understood
!” I cried. “And who voted for her? Other than Phan, she doesn’t have any friends!”

“Probably the entire male student body,” she replied.

I guess she was right. “Well, I have it on good authority that I happened to get a lot of votes for the month of April,” I said.

“Okay, Sophie. As president of the French club, I certainly wouldn’t want there to be any sort of controversy during my administration, so I’ll talk to Miss Fritsche about this
tout de suite
and get back to you.”

“Thank you,” I said, and turned on my heel.

“Au revoir!”
she cried after me as I stomped down the hall.

I know I had wanted drama, but this was ridiculous. Between Michael and this calendar, I was feeling a little sick to my stomach.

Which, by the end of lunch, had turned into
a lot
sick.

I wished I was a stoner or a goth or a video-game geek and sat on the fringes at lunch, because even though I may have felt invisible, that day I sure wasn’t.

I was eating my smoked turkey and Swiss sandwich when Michelle sauntered over. “
Bonjour
, Sophie.
Ça va?
” she asked.

This was no time for small talk. I put down my sandwich. “Did you talk to Miss Fritsche?” I demanded.

“I did. And she agreed with me that by limiting the calendar just to French club students we’d risk being seen as elite and discriminating.
Quel dommage
,” she said, which meant, “What a pity.”

It figured. “Well, thanks anyway,” I sighed.

As she walked away, Ali shook her head. “I can’t believe you voted for yourself
fifty-four
times with all those fake e-mail addresses and you
still
didn’t get Miss April!” she said.

“Shhh,” I said. Her older brother was partially deaf because he was a metalhead, so Ali tended to talk really loud. Her whispers were more like regular people’s yells.

Unfortunately, luck would have it that Kyra Mattson was sitting right behind us that day. Not only did Kyra have supersonic bionic hearing, but she was also a huge gossip. By the time I got to history later that afternoon, a group of kids were gathered around Matt Rabinov’s iPhone, laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You’re the latest entry in UrbanDictionary.com,” said Hannah Brodsky.

“What are you talking about?” I said, pushing my way through the crowd so I could see.

“Sophie Greene (n.) A
person who tries to rig an election but fails miserably
,” it said on the screen. “
e.g., ‘Dude, whatever you do, don’t try and pull a Sophie Greene unless you want to commit social suicide.’”

Oh. My. God. Why couldn’t this have happened last period when I was in chemistry and could’ve downed some hydrochloric acid right then and there? Needless to say, I kept my head down the rest of the day and tried to ignore the snickers.

Thank god it was the last day before break.

As I walked through the Dell after school toward Nordstrom to buy the SPF 85 sunblock that Mom insisted I wear, I wondered how I was ever going to show my face at school again. I had wanted to be noticed, but not like
this.
Thankfully, I had a whole week before I had to go back, but maybe I’d just stay in Florida forever. I could get a job as a
checkout girl at the Publix supermarket or become a waitress at Red Robin and rake in the tips during the early bird dinner shift. Sure, it wasn’t New York or Paris or London, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about people staring at me, if only because they couldn’t see me since they were old and almost legally blind.