My Life Undecided (26 page)

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The phone rings at seven
. The cal er ID comes up “Unknown,” but as soon as I hear the voice on the other end, I know exactly who it is.

“Hey, biatch.”

“Shayne,” I say numbly, feeling a strange mix of disappointment and relief. Disappointment because I kind of hoped it would be someone

else. And relief because I’m not sure I could have dealt with anyone else right now.

“What are you doing?”

I glance around my room. I haven’t left it since my mom brought me home from the nursing home. “Nothing much.”

“Wel , put on something cute ’cause we’re going out.”

I think about a lot of things in that moment. Some that matter and some that don’t. Some that seem to make a difference in my life and some

that seem pointless. I think about the party. The fire. The courthouse. I think about Shayne’s heartfelt apology speech in the car this morning.

I think about Brian.

I think about Hunter.

I think about choices.

And then I hear myself saying, “Sounds good. Pick me up in fifteen.”

Shayne arrives in her il egal indulgence mobile and we head over to Bil y Jenkins’s house because his parents are out of town and they left the

liquor cabinet unlocked. The regular crew is there and it feels good to be back among them. Speaking their language, laughing at their jokes,

valuing their values. It al comes so easily to me, it’s almost as though I never even left. I guess some things are just in your blood. Some things you

never forget.

And when Shayne and I walk through the front doors of the school together the next morning and begin our familiar catwalk down the main

hal way, people notice. Heads turn. Lips murmur. Eyes stare. With Shayne’s hand hooked into the crook of my elbow, bringing me up to speed on

al the gossip that I’ve missed over the past few weeks, tel ing me how much she loves my accessories and whatever creative thing I’ve done with

my eye shadow that morning, I feel safe. I feel content.

I feel like I’ve come home.

At first the deletion of my blog seems to upset people. Everyone has a theory about why it suddenly vanished. Some even go so far as to speculate

that BB4Life has been assassinated, but after a few days people seem to forget al about it. Or at least they stop lamenting its disappearance.

Plus, DishnDiss.com posted some site where you can play matchmaker to a bunch of cartoon characters and after that I’m pretty much old news.

Not that I mind in the slightest.

Hunter asks me to the winter formal again and this time I don’t hesitate. I just say yes while Shayne claps ecstatical y next to me and gushes

about how perfect it wil be for the four of us to go together: Hunter and me and Shayne and Jesse.

She assures me that I’ve made the right choice. That Hunter is a guaranteed stock booster. Beautiful and popular and highly sought after by

every girl in the school. And according to Shayne, “What else could you ask for in a guy?”

I tel her I can’t real y think of anything.

But the truth is I don’t real y try. With Shayne, it’s always a rhetorical question. It’s never meant to be answered.

After that, Hunter starts to sit with us at lunch every day. And every time he leans over and whispers flirtatious things in my ear or plants

delicious kisses on my cheek, I notice Shayne nodding in approval out of the corner of my eye. And there’s always this comforting sense of

satisfaction and relief that accompanies Hunter’s displays of affection. Like a weight has been lifted. Like after so many detours, my life is final y

back on track.

The struggle is over.

By the time school lets out for Thanksgiving break, I’ve managed to assimilate seamlessly back into my old life. I’m reinstated as Shayne’s second

in command. I’ve reclaimed my coveted seat next to her at the center table. Recovered my high-ranking status at our school.

And you know what? I’ve never been happier.

Life is more glamorous at the top. People respect you. They move out of the way when you walk by. They talk about what you’re wearing and

what you were seen doing the night before.

Things are much simpler here, too. There are fewer choices to be made. Shayne and I go to the mal and she picks out my next favorite pair

of jeans. We go to the food court and she tel s me what I can eat and stil manage to fit into those jeans. We cruise the makeup counters and she

tel s me which colors bring out my eyes and which ones make me look dead. We see a table ful of hot guys and she decides whether or not they’re

worth talking to.

There’s less to think about. And I like it like that.

Maybe I was never meant to be a leader. Maybe I was never meant to tackle huge decisions al on my own. Maybe I’m just a natural-born

sidekick.

And if I try hard enough, I can almost make myself believe that the past six weeks never even happened.

The Toast of Harvard

Brian is the exception.

Thoughts of him are like ghosts from my former life—my temporary life, as I’ve come to cal it—returning from the dead to haunt me. To

remind me of what I left behind. In ruins.

No matter how hard I try, I stil can’t seem to ful y erase his presence. His voice lingers in my ears. His face appears around every corner.

The pain in his eyes is stil fresh in my mind.

“I think we both know that kiss was more than just a dare.”

That sentence fol ows me wherever I go. Taunting me. Provoking me. Chal enging me to refute it. Chal enging me to debate the other side of

the resolution. And as much as I want to, I can’t do it. I can’t find one convincing argument to support a contrasting point of view.

It’s Truth or Dare al over again. Except this time, I don’t want to play the game. I don’t want to choose either one. The truth is too destructive.

But the dare is too exposing.

And now al I’m left with is an answered question.

My sister’s flight arrives at eleven a.m. on Wednesday morning and my mom insists the whole family be there to greet her when she steps off the

plane.

Izzie looks so different, I barely even recognize her. She used to have this kind of bland, dishwater-colored, stick-straight hair that did

nothing except lie there like a dead appendage. She wore barely any makeup and her clothes were always straight out of a JC Penney catalog. It

never bothered me before because at least I never had to worry about her raiding my closet.

Now her hair is dyed honey blond and cut in cute layers. Her eyes are dramatized, her lips are lined, and her clothes are actual y somewhat

fashionable. She has this kind of hip, East Coast preppy look. And as soon as I see her walk out of the security doors, the only thing I can think is

Great. Now she’s smart and stylish. What’s left for me?

“Did you join a sorority?” I ask as she wraps her arms around me and pul s me into a hug.

She laughs and ruffles my hair like I’m five years old. “Don’t be preposterous, Brooks. When you go to Harvard, you don’t have time for

sororities.” The way she pronounces the word makes me cringe. Like she just stepped in dog poo.

I want to say something to the effect that I would never go to col ege and not join the Greek system since Shayne and I have been planning to

pledge the same sorority since we were twelve, but I’m not given the opportunity. Izzie starts blabbing the minute she steps off the plane and doesn’t

stop the entire ride home. Seriously, the girl can’t shut up. She’s like one of those creepy talking dol s…on steroids. She uses words you’d only see

in the verbal section of the SATs, and she switches subjects so rapidly I almost want to pop open the back of her head and check if she’s running

on batteries.

She yaps about how her art history class has given her such an in-depth appreciation of some French painter I’ve never heard of. She

gripes about the socioeconomic climate of our country and how we’re al to blame for global warming. And then she claims that her Judaic studies

class has inspired her to take a tour around Eastern Europe to visit the concentration camps.

“But we’re not even Jewish,” I point out.

She turns toward me with this pitying look on her face and says, “Nie wieder, Brooklyn. Those who cannot remember the past are

condemned to repeat it.”

Did she just speak to me in German?

But before I can ful y digest her last sentence, she’s already chattering about something else entirely.

Her energy level doesn’t falter for an instant. Even after we’ve arrived home. For a day and a half I don’t think I see my sister sit down once.

She’s like a bee buzzing around from room to room. One minute she’s helping my mom in the kitchen with food preparation, the next she’s carrying

firewood into the house with my dad, and then she’s wandering around my bedroom, fidgeting with stuff and asking me questions about boys and

life as if we’re best friends.

If there’s one thing my sister and I have never been, it’s friends. Never mind best friends. I see al those movies where two sisters are

inseparable and share everything, including their hearts and souls. Wel , that’s about as inaccurate a description of Izzie and me as you can get.

We’ve been fighting for as long as I can remember. Now that we’re older, we’ve matured a bit. Meaning that we no longer rol around on the ground

and try to pul each other’s hair out. Our fighting consists of shal ow jabs and manipulative head games.

That’s why I find it incredibly suspicious when she comes into my room on Thursday morning and bounces onto my bed while I’m trying to get

through the first act of Twelfth Night.

“Hey, sissy. I’m bored. Let’s go somewhere.”

I give her a strange look. The lighting in my bedroom is making her pupils look huge. And kind of scary. This is definitely feeling like a trap.

“That’s okay,” I say, shaking my head. “I think I’l just hang out here. I need to finish this.”

“Oh, Brooks,” she says, ruffling my hair again. I real y hope this doesn’t become a habit. “You’re so obdurate sometimes.”

“Whatever,” I mumble, refocusing on my book.

She tilts her head to get a better look at the cover. “Are you reading that for school?”

I rol my eyes. “No, I’m reading it for fun. Of course it’s for school.”

She jumps off my bed, grabs my iPod from my desk, and starts scanning through my playlists. “That’s so funny because that BB4Life girl

was reading it, too.”

Suddenly, Twelfth Night is no longer of any interest to me. It fal s from my hands and plops onto the bed. “Who?”

“Don’t tel me you haven’t heard of that blog! MyLifeUndecided.com.”

“Oh,” I say, chuckling weakly. “Right. That.”

“Everyone on campus was so into it.”

“At Harvard?” I ask in disbelief.

“Yeah. When it got shut down, people went crazy. They were so pissed. Everyone on my floor was taking bets about who she was going to

end up with.”

“What do you mean?” My voice comes out almost in a whisper.

I watch as my sister discovers an underwater basketbal game on my desk and becomes obsessed with trying to flip the submerged bal

through the hoop.

“Rhett Butler or Heimlich,” she says, as though it’s obvious.

“Heimlich?” I choke out. “Why would she end up with Heimlich? She wasn’t even dating him. I mean, she didn’t even real y like him. Not in

that way, anyway.”

Frustrated, she shakes the game and makes another attempt to steer the orange bal into the basket. “Yeah, but you know how girls can be.

The guy you’re real y supposed to be with can be standing right in front of you and you don’t even notice because you’re too distracted by the one

you think you’re supposed to be with. It happens al the time. Sometimes the most obvious choices are the hardest to see.”