Meanicures (16 page)

“I thought it looked different! So he’s Mr. Home Improvement?” I asked.

“Our house is a construction zone. I can’t hear myself think,” Cassidy complained.

“Reminds me of an ex of mine,” Poinsettia chimed in. “So busy fixing things he didn’t notice everything else that was breaking.”

“Deep.” Cassidy looked at me and rolled her eyes.

I smiled, then cracked up laughing with her. But then I thought about it. I hadn’t known things with Cassidy had gotten harder since her mom remarried. I guess I’d thought they’d be easier. Was that why we drifted apart? Because we both didn’t have single moms in common anymore?

But we hadn’t
drifted
. She’d slammed the door in my face. She’d stepped into some new life, and after I dropped out of cheer because I realized I didn’t love it anymore and was only going through the motions, literally, Cassidy had ditched me and hadn’t looked back.

“Hey, all I’m saying is, sometimes people don’t pay attention like they should.” Poinsettia looked closely at Cassidy. “Like you and your nails. Get some sleep. Take more calcium and vitamin B.”

Cassidy turned to me again. “How do you deal with it? I mean, what about that guy your mom’s seeing. You like him?” she asked.

“Sure. David’s okay,” I said. “He’s funny, he’s nice. He’s good to my mom.”

“Are they going to get married?” asked Cassidy.

“What?” I shook my head.
“My
mom? No, Mom will never get married.”

“Why not? Mine did. I never thought she would, remember?”

“Hm. I hadn’t thought about it.” It’s weird when someone’s known you longer than anyone. They’re
kind of like cousins. I’d sort of forgotten about Cassidy’s mom’s wedding, back when we were in fifth grade. Cassidy had worn a dress she positively hated. I pictured myself in an equally hideous dress. “Don’t stress me out!” I said. “They’ve been dating for a couple of years. If they were going to get married, wouldn’t they have done that by now?”

Cassidy laughed. “Not necessarily.”

I felt this worry spot start to grow inside me. Mom … married? To David? The more I thought about it, the bigger the spot grew.

Thankfully, Cassidy seemed to sense I was floundering and changed the subject. “You know what? Maybe you’re not as into cheerleading as you used to be, but you were good, plus you kept me and Alexis from fighting. Don’t you ever think about coming back?”

That was the last thing I expected her to say. “Me? Um, not really.”

“But how could you just quit on us?”

I didn’t know what to say without hurting her feelings. I guess I had already hurt them. Just because I didn’t feel like a cheer person anymore didn’t mean I’d quit on
Cassidy
. Ms. Throgfeld had pulled me aside at the end of sixth grade and told me if my heart wasn’t in it a hundred percent, I shouldn’t bother. And honestly? My heart wasn’t in it even fifty percent. “I just … lost a step, or something. I felt like I was being phony.”

She stared at me as if she had no idea what I could possibly be talking about. We had a lot in common still,
but we had also grown apart. “You should think about coming back,” Cassidy said. “I mean, if you want to add to your coolness factor.”

“Coolness factor?” I said.

“Exactly.”

“Right, I’ll think about it,” I said. “And you know, if your stepdad is ever driving you really crazy, come to our house. It’s usually pretty quiet. We have the quietness factor.”

“Yeah, but your mom will want to color my hair with some experimental stuff,” said Cassidy. “I can’t take that risk.”

“No doubt.” I exchanged a look with Poinsettia. “Thankfully that’s all over for me.”

“Why? Who’s your mom?” asked Poinsettia.

Cassidy gasped. “You don’t
know?”

“Nope.”

“Nik’s Organix. She’s the one who created it,” said Cassidy.

“Oh, yeah?” asked Poinsettia. “That hippie stuff made out of honey and aloe and oregano?”

I laughed. “It’s not oregano.”

“No?”

“No, it’s seaweed,” I said.

Poinsettia arched an eyebrow. “Like that’s better? Okay, all done here, girls. What do you think?”

Cassidy and I admired our new, longer, silver metallic nails. “Beautiful,” said Cassidy. “I can’t wait to show everyone at school!”

We moved to the sofa while Taylor and Kayley started picking nail polish colors with Poinsettia. Kayley decided to get a pedicure after all, and started soaking her feet; Taylor chose to stick with the manicure. I overheard Kayley talking with Taylor about the stress of having so many new siblings in her blended family, and how the only place she could be free was in the gym. Taylor was nodding and agreeing a lot. Poinsettia started applying polish to Taylor’s nails—she and Kayley had both chosen a deep blood-red color.

Beside me, Olivia and Alexis were talking and munching on the Rice Krispies Treats, while they leafed through hairstyle magazines, laughing.
So far, so good
, I thought. Maybe the three of
us
, Olivia, Taylor, and I weren’t on speaking terms, but if everyone else was—

Suddenly Alexis sat forward in her seat. “Why are you asking me so many questions? What are you up to?” she asked in a loud voice.

“N-nothing,” Olivia said.

“You’re going to use this information against me or something. Aren’t you?” Alexis demanded.

“What? No!” Olivia shook her head. “Don’t be so paranoid. I’m just trying to catch up after all this time.”

“All what time? What are you talking about? I see you every day, almost,” said Alexis. “So what’s with the nosy, third-degree stuff?”

“She’s right,” said Cassidy. “You guys are asking way too many questions.” She stared at me, looking genuinely hurt. “Was that why you were being so nice to me? Because this is a setup?”

“No!” I said.

“I don’t believe you. You know, I should have known you guys were up to something. You never just invite us anywhere anymore,” she said.

“Us?
What about you?” I said. “You only talk to us when you want to trick us or insult us!”

“As if.” Cassidy got to her feet, waving her nails in the air to dry them. “Come on, guys. We’re out of here. Let’s get our coats.”

“But—” Kayley looked up, her feet still soaking in the pedicure bath.

“Now,”
said Cassidy, tugging at her sleeve.

Kayley got to her feet, and slipped on the paper flip-flops that she was supposed to wear after her pedicure.

And just like that, they whisked through the dangling, clinking nail polish bottles and were gone.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” said Poinsettia. “Go after them!”

The table
by the sofa was covered with abandoned gift bags and plates of half-eaten treats. The inside of the angel’s food cake was so jagged that it looked like it had been sliced—no, sawed—with a nail file.

“I
told
you this wouldn’t work,” Olivia muttered under her breath, straightening the magazines. “I
told
you it was a dumb plan.”

Taylor turned to Olivia, hands on her hips. “You know what? The plan was working. But I should have known you couldn’t pull this off. I should have known you’d—”

“This isn’t the time to point fingers,” I said. “It’s like Poinsettia said. Let’s go find them already!” I headed right for the door. I knew there were only a couple of places they could have gone without a car, and the quicker we moved, the better. We dashed down the red carpet to the sidewalk.

“Look.” Taylor pointed at the sidewalk. “Kayley left footprints.”

“Man. No socks, and wet feet? She must be freezing,” I said.

“Could those footprints be any smaller?” asked Olivia. “They’re like a child’s feet.”

“So we’re small—sue us.” Taylor hustled alongside me, in a half walk, half jog, following the footprints. She was waving her three freshly painted nails in the air to dry them.

All of a sudden, the footprints ended. Nothing on the sidewalk. No clue.

“Okay …,” Olivia said. “Now what? Did someone start carrying her?”

“I know—we can look for crumbs,” said Olivia. “Alexis was eating a Rice Krispies Treat when she ran out.”

The three of us stared at the ground, desperate for cereal crumbs. We were like three pathetic birds on the lookout for a morsel.

“This Nancy Drew detective thing is lame. Why not just try the coffee shop?” I asked. “I mean, where else are they going to go?”

“I guess,” said Taylor, like she was only agreeing in order to humor me. Seriously, where else would they go? Roadrunner Records? Eastern Cycle Supply? Hal’s Hearing Aids?

We jogged the half block to Bean-a-While, our town’s ancient coffee shop that is usually full of aging hippies, even older and more hippie-ish than my mom, and smells vaguely of patchouli, herbal tea, and espresso.

As I stopped outside the entrance, I heard a crunch under my foot and found a fake silver nail tip stuck to the bottom of my shoe. “See?” I said. “They’re in here.”

“Great!” Taylor reached for the door, but I put my hand on her arm.

“Wait, stop!” I said.

“Why? Do you see them somewhere else?” asked Olivia.

“No. It’s just … we haven’t talked about this yet. What are we even going to
say?”

They both stared at me as if I was ruining the thrill of the chase. But really, we had to decide on something before we just marched in. Cassidy was right; this
was
a setup. We had done it with good intentions, but would they care?

“Oh. Hadn’t thought about that yet,” said Olivia.

“Well, I have,” I said. And I knew that to make this right, we’d have to team up. I wasn’t sure if we knew how to team up anymore. Would everyone just turn on me when things got difficult. I wasn’t up for any more Madison-bashing. “And before we go inside to try to fix things with the Original Mean Girls, I think we need to fix things between us first.” I knew I sounded braver than I felt inside.

“Fix what?” Olivia asked.

Taylor tucked her hands under her armpits. “I’m freezing. Can we talk about this later?”

I shook my head. “No. Listen, if we’re being fake, then there’s no way we’ll convince them to come back with us.” I took a deep breath. “We’re only pretending to be friends right now. We’re not really being friends.”

“We’re not?” asked Olivia.

“Not to me,” I said. My voice came out a lot weaker than I wanted it to. But I was still hurt.

“Madison’s right.” Taylor stepped a little closer to me. “We’ve really been acting like jerks to you lately, Madison. And I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” said Olivia.

“I know I haven’t exactly been nice, either,” I said.

“Maybe not, but we shouldn’t have blamed you for everything,” Taylor said. “We’re all in this together.

Right?”

“Right,” agreed Olivia. “And we’ve all made mistakes.”

“Big ones. So let’s agree that we’re not going to act like that toward each other ever again,” Taylor declared. “Okay? Because when we do, we’re not being friends. We’re being mean girls. And not even original ones. We’re like copy mean girls, which is weak.”

We put our hands together, stacked on top of each other. One of my fake nails clattered onto the sidewalk, and I stomped on it, so now it was stuck to the underside of my other shoe. As I walked, I sounded like a tap dancer. But the pack was back together. That meant I could handle almost anything.

“So when we go in there, we’ll just be honest and tell them everything,” I said. “Right?”

“Um, how about almost everything?” Olivia suggested. “Let’s leave out the part about the fire and exploding pom-poms. We’ll be mostly honest.”

Snow suddenly started to fall, thick, fat flakes swirling around us. We had these furious snow squalls
from time to time in the spring and fall—they didn’t usually last long. They were temporary, kind of like fights between friends.

“So what are we going to say?” asked Taylor. “That we did this because we want to be friends with them again?”

I thought about it for a minute. I didn’t want to be friends with anyone who was mean to me most of the time. “No … I guess we don’t want that, exactly. That’d be phony. Let’s just tell them that we want to
not
be enemies.”

“Great. Let’s go inside!” Taylor threw open the door and we raced in, brushing snowflakes off our shoulders and hair.

Cassidy, Kayley, and Alexis were huddled in a booth by the side window. Between them, they had one can of soda, and three paper cups. They looked miserable. When they looked over and saw us standing next to their table, they didn’t smile.

“It’s snowing,” I said. “Can you believe it?”

“Thrilling,” Alexis commented dryly. Kayley glared at us. Cassidy wouldn’t make eye contact.

“I bet it’ll stop soon,” said Taylor. “One of those snow squall–type things. Um, can you guys slide in and make room?”

“No,”
said Kayley.

“Fine.” I shrugged.

“Not until you explain what’s going on,” said Cassidy, eyes narrowed.

“We’re going to explain everything!” I said. “Just give us a second.”

Us
. I looked to Olivia and Taylor for help, but for some reason they were avoiding eye contact with me, too.
Sure, leave the hard part to me!
I thought. But then I realized:
I’m the one who got us into this … I can get us out
.