Reality Check

Copyright © 2010 by Jen Calonita

 

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

 

Poppy

 

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Poppy is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company.
The Poppy name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

 

First Edition: June 2010

 

Articles appearing in this novel are fictional and are not intended to be taken as literal, and neither E! Online nor
Us Weekly
has endorsed or sponsored or is otherwise associated with this book.

 

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

 

eISBN: 978-0-316-08839-8

 

For my girlfriends, who make life even sweeter:
AnnMarie, Christi, Diana, Elena, Elpida, Erin, Jess,
Joanie, Joyce, Lisa, Mara, and Miana. None of us would
last a week on a reality show!

one

A Date with Destiny

 

It's only 3:47 PM. How can that be? It feels like I've been here for
hours,
not just forty-seven minutes. If I've only been at work for forty-seven minutes, then that means I still have two hours and thirteen agonizing minutes to go before my shift ends.

I stare out the fogged-up window of Milk and Sugar, which is this quaint coffeehouse/eatery I've waitressed at all school year, and silently pray for Mother Nature to give me a break. But nothing happens. Raindrops continue to pelt the windows and the wind rattles the frame, reminding me how drafty this place is. I pull my cable-knit sweater tighter over my cream-colored apron.

“I doubt we'll get anyone in here this afternoon,” Ryan says with a slight frown. His forehead wrinkles as well, which looks pretty funny with his shaved head. Ryan is my forty-something boss and the owner of Milk and Sugar, and aside from the two of us and Grady, the wiry twenty-year-old who helps out in the kitchen, there's only one other person here, a customer named Susan who has been by several times this week. Susan told me she's vacationing here, which makes sense because I've never seen her before, and in our town, everyone knows everyone. But why she'd chosen a beach community like Cliffside for a little R&R in the off-season is beyond me.

“Today is supposed to be just like yesterday—heavy rain all afternoon and night,” I tell Ryan as I aimlessly wipe the counter. I side-eye him hopefully. Maybe he'll close early!

It's not that I don't like working here. I love it—when we have customers. I just hate standing around doing nothing. Being bored is one of my biggest pet peeves, and I usually never feel that way when I'm at work. Milk and Sugar is Cliffside's version of Starbucks (which the town protested so one never opened here) and the place is usually packed. Our ambience has a lot to do with it. Instead of cheesy Formica counters and five-dollar cups of coffee, our shop has blue and burgundy–striped couches, worn-leather recliners and distressed white wood coffee tables. Hanging pendant lights give a soft glow over each eating area and the walls, which are covered with local artists’ prints of the ocean. The one thing we do have in common with Starbucks is a soothing, bluesy soundtrack that drowns out the churn of the espresso machine (our lattes are only $2.50). We have a full coffee service menu plus bagels, paninis, eggs, and salads. The place is so cool that even on my days off I hang out here with myfriends.

“Maybe the forecast is wrong,” Ryan says and my smile droops. “It wouldn't be the first time.” Ryan looks around the place. “In the meantime, why don't you do what you do best?” He smirks.

“Really?” I say excitedly.

Ryan nods. “As long as you promise to dance your way over to the pictures. They could use some dusting.” He grabs my arm before I can take off. “But, Charlie? First see if our new regular needs a refill.” He motions to Susan, who is sitting in the back texting instead of reading the latest Oprah book club pick she has lying on the table. “On the house.”

As I walk over to her table, Susan picks her head up and smiles. She's had some variation of the same outfit on all week. Today it's a brown cashmere-looking sweater, cute jeans, and her BlackBerry glued to her short, polished fingernails.

“Hey, Susan. How's the book?” I ask as I start cleaning her table.

Susan laughs. “I'm taking a short break,” she says, motioning to her BlackBerry. “But it might be Oprah's best pick yet.” Susan pats the cover of the book that is sitting on the table. “I've got forty pages left. I can give it to you when I'm done if you want.”

Since it's been raining practically all week, and Susan's been here every afternoon, we've had a lot of time to talk. I've told her all of my high school drama, which she soaked up like a good piece of biscotti dunked in coffee. And she's dished to me about how she's single—she told me yesterday that she's swearing off men for a few months after a brutal breakup with her last boyfriend—and she's a self-professed workaholic. She still hasn't told me what she does, though. Every time I bring it up, she changes the subject.

“How did your English midterm go?” Susan asks. Chatting
up Susan makes me miss my sister, Isabella, who is away at college. Susan may be older—I think she's in her mid-thirties—but she's got it all together, just like Bella, both inside and out. Susan's super-skinny and has the most amazing blond highlights I've ever seen on a brunette. Her blue eyes, accented with perfectly applied eye makeup, stare up at me.

“I think I nailed the essay,” I say proudly.

“How did Brooke do?” she asks with a sly smile.

Brooke is one of my best friends and I've told Susan all about her too. Brooke and I agonized over our notes all week, quizzing each other about
The Joy Luck Club
and
The Crucible
. Brooke is the perfect study partner. I swear she has a photographic memory. “She thinks she got an A-plus. I'll be happy with a B, though.” I grab Susan's plate, littered with crumbs from her blueberry muffin, and spy her empty coffee cup. “Ready for a refill?” I ask.

Susan grabs her Hermès bag, which I'm pretty sure is the real deal, but I put my hand up to stop her. “It's on the house,” I tell her. “It's the least we can do after torturing you with my singing all week and my blabbing on and on about my crush.”

Susan smiles. “I like hearing your little soap opera. And as for the singing, your Britney impersonation is dead-on.”

“Thanks.” I blush. “I don't normally do that in front of customers.”

“Except this one, because I've been here so much I kind of blend into the walls,” Susan jokes. “You've certainly kept me entertained this week, Charlie. Your Gwen on Monday was impeccable, and the
SNL
spoof you did with Ryan was hysterical. You have a real spark.”

“You're just saying that because I slip you extra sugar cookies every day,” I point out. “But thanks. I don't normally sing at work, but it helps pass the time.”

I've been singing and dancing my way around Milk and Sugar for weeks because business has been so slow. Cliffside has been flirting with spring, but we're still having some cold, wet, rainy days. Until they finally disappear, our sleepy beach town will stay a ghost town. In the meantime, I pretend I'm auditioning for Simon, Ellen, Randy, and Kara, even though singing is not something I see in my future. I just like doing impersonations.

I gather Susan's cup, walk back over to the counter, and make her another no-fat soy milk latte with an extra shot of espresso. I place two sugar cookies on the plate as well and bring it back over. She sees the cookies and groans.

“I'm going to need a diet after this vacation,” she complains, even though she takes a bite of the cookie right away. “So tell me—when do I get to meet these friends of yours who I've heard so much about?”

I glance at the clock. “It's been raining so hard they might not stop by.” I can't help but grin. “Although Brooke is dying to wear her new rain boots so she may drag everyone here.”

“I hope she does,” says Susan, and she blows on her latte. “If she's anything like you, I think I'm going to like her.”

Ryan thinks it's bizarre how into my little high school world Susan has been, but I think she's just bored and probably regrets blowing into town in the first place. Either way, she's out of here tomorrow. “I'll keep you posted,” I tell her. “Now if you'll excuse me, I have a date with Beyoncé that I can't miss.”

“Of course.” Susan winks. “Divas don't like to be kept waiting.”

I cue up Ryan's iPod that is sitting in the Bose dock, grab a mop, and begin to clean along to the beat. It's only a matter of seconds before I break out my song and dance moves. I belt out “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” at the top of my lungs, using the mop as a microphone. I'm so into Sasha Fierce mode that I barely hear the bell on the front door.

Three girls come dashing in out of the rain, holding their jackets over their heads. None of them have umbrellas and their clothes are soaked. But I don't care that they're soggy. I run over and hug them anyway. That's what you do when best friends show up at the perfect moment.

“I'm just about at the chorus,” I tell them. “Want to sing backup?”

“I never do backup,” Brooke Eastman says, looking like a Greek goddess with her long, fiery red hair and a scowl on her face that quickly turns into a smile. As I expected, she's got her Burberry rain boots on. Water drips off her favorite black shirt, a BCBG she got at the Tanger outlets on clearance, not that anyone other than us three is supposed to know that.

“But I
do
do hot chocolate,” Brooke tells me. “Make me a big one, pronto.” Brooke is the most, shall we say, direct in our group. She says whatever is on her mind—whether it stings or not. She's been that way since she started eating lunch with Hallie, Keiran, and me in first grade, the year she moved here from Chicago. Her parents wanted to fulfill their lifelong dream to run a farm, a fact that Brooke hates and pretty much pretends isn't true. But as long as you don't mention cow manure, Brooke is a blast. She always has her friends’ backs too. Last year, when Tom Stamos turned me down for the homecoming dance, Brooke toilet-papered his locker.

“Could you make me one too?” asks Hallie Stevens as she shakes out her long, curly brown hair. She pulls out a mirror and examines her look with a frown. I find her frown amusing considering the fact that Hallie could never look bad, even drenched from head to toe. With gorgeous hair, tan skin, and a smile that makes both local guys and visitors swoon, she is every guy at Cliffside's fantasy, not that she seems to notice (“You're exaggerating!” she always says when some poor dude trips and falls straining to look at her walk by). Hallie gives her lips a swipe of gloss before she plops down on the nearest couch. I watch Ryan wince. The couch is going to be soaked.

“Three, please,” says the third girl, quieter than the rest. Keiran Harper is my oldest friend—she's lived down the road from me since we were both three—and everyone at school thinks she's impossibly shy. But she's not. If Keiran is quiet, it's only because she uses school to get a few hours of peace. When she isn't there, she's babysitting either her three younger siblings or for local families to save money for college. Keiran grabs a few napkins and dries off her shoulder-length blond hair before she sits down next to the others. Even though Hallie is the one guys notice, and Brooke is the one people are equally in awe and fear of, I've always thought Keiran was the prettiest of all of us. She is the only one who never wears makeup. Her freckled face and green eyes are all the enhancing she needs, and her tiny frame looks good no matter what she wears, even if it's covered in baby spit-up and Crayola marker. Me, on the other hand—I'm a different story. I keep praying I'm a late bloomer. My dark brown, almost black, medium-length hair isn't bad, and I like my wide set eyes, but my longish nose drives me nuts. Brooke says it makes me look regal. I think that's just a polite way of saying I need a nose job.

My mom jokes that the four of us could be a new version of
Charlie's Angels.
We fit the movie profile. We're all thin enough to wear tankinis, which is surprising to me considering how many bagels I eat at Milk and Sugar, and we get so dark in the summer that our tans don't fade till November. We're a great team, but that's where the similarities end. Keiran is the quiet blond, Brooke the feisty redhead, Hallie the unknowingly beautiful brunette, and me the raven-haired “ringleader,” as Hallie jokes. I can't help it if I like making plans and keeping us busy on the weekends. I'm a tad Type A, as my mother likes to say.

“Are you going to sing ‘If I Were a Boy’ today?” Hallie asks. “I like when you get all souful.”

“Too depressing for today,” I tell her. “I'm thinking I should switch it up with some ‘Amy’ or go vintage Britney and do ‘I'm a Slave 4 U.’” I pretend to use the map like I'm going to pole dance. Hey, Miley Cyrus has done it. “You interested?”

“Woohoo! Go for it,” Brooke says with a laugh.

I glance at Ryan. “Two more songs,” he says with a sigh. He's trying to look annoyed that I'm performing with customers around, but my friends aren't really customers. He heads into the kitchen shaking his head and I can't help but smirk. Ryan can be such a pushover. That's how I got hired. He never hires any of the kids from Cliffside as waiters, plus I'm only sixteen, which he thought was too young, but I wouldn't take no for an answer. I wore him down after I volunteered to wait tables for a week for free. “Why don't you get the girls something to drink on the house?” Ryan added.

“Thanks, Ryan.” I hurry behind the long coffee counter to make four hot cocoas.

“It wouldn't kill you to throw in a bagel,” Brooke yells, her loud voice sounding even louder in the empty room.

Keiran swats her, giggling. “Nice.”

“Don't pretend you don't want one too,” Brooke points out. “I could barely swallow one bite of Wednesday's meatball hero surprise.”

Hallie groans. “That might have been the worst cafeteria special they ever had. I heard Sylvie Morton got sick in the bathroom and then Karla Platt was walking in behind her and got sick because she saw Sylvie get sick.”

“Eww!” the others screech.

I pour the steaming two-percent milk into four red ceramic mugs and add cocoa and whipped cream. Then I balance the four cups on a round tray and carry them out to the girls, being careful not to let the cocoa slosh over the sides.

“Don't trip again,” Hallie teases as I come dangerously close to losing my balance. I've been waitressing almost a year. I didn't say I was good at it.