The Battle of Darcy Lane (14 page)

I pushed aside all Darcy Lane drama and threw myself into our mission.

I found a display with a bedspread set I really liked—just colorful circles upon circles—and when Mom liked it, too, I found the right size on the shelves. We got new sheets and curtains, and Mom got in line to pay for it all.
Right near the register, by one of the fancy living room setups, I saw a framed poster of a single orange flower that I really liked, maybe because it reminded me of that red flower my mother had sat by when she'd told me my life would be full of adventures. So I pointed it out to Mom and she said okay to that, too.

I went and got one out of a small stack leaning against a wall, and brought it over to the checkout. Since there were still three people ahead of us, I ran through the store and found a jewelry box I adored—a plain white wooden cube with a glass top that let you peek inside to its soft lavender compartments. I thought maybe I'd pass the ballerina one on to Isabel the next time I saw her.

“I want you to do something for me,” Mom said as we left the store with our heavy bags. “It's an assignment.”

“Mom!”

“Just hear me out.” She started putting stuff into the trunk, and I had a flash of wondering about who or what was going to be in the trunk of that car on
End of Daze
. It was all I could do not to ask Mom.

She said, “I want you to take a sheet of paper and write down everything you like about Taylor and Alyssa. As friends. One list for each of them.”

I groaned. “I
really
don't feel like doing that.”

“Then don't make a list, but at least
think
about it. Okay?”

“Fine,” I said, and we got into the car.

When we got home the
house smelled funny. Mom said, “I think your dad has a surprise for you.”

I ran upstairs and into my new room, where Dad stood with a paint roller. The walls were the most gorgeous pale lavender I'd ever seen and something about the paint made the carpet—wall-to-wall cream—look even better.

“I love it!” I spun around to take in all four walls.

“Your mom thought you would,” Dad said.

The only bad thing about it was that we had to let the paint dry and air out the room for a few days before I could actually move in. I couldn't stand the wait.

It was already nearly dark
by the time we finished dinner, but I wandered over to Taylor's house anyway to ask her to come over and see the lavender. But Taylor's mom answered the door, looking confused.

“She's at Alyssa's?” she said. “The sleepover?”

“Of course!” I actually smacked myself on the head to really make a show of it. “I forgot.”

I sat on my front porch for a while taking calming breaths. I watched for shadows at Alyssa's window and saw nothing—no lights, no shadows—but I was looking at the
wrong place. They'd be in the back room, with the Ouija board and peep show. I pictured sleeping bags, flashlights.

I wanted to be there almost as badly as I was glad I wasn't.

I was going to beat Alyssa at Russia if it killed me.

18
.

In the car on the way
to camp on Monday, I couldn't exactly ask Peter about his visit to Alyssa's with his mom right there, so I waited until we got out, and said, “I saw you teaching Alyssa how to skateboard.”

“What?” Peter scratched his head. “Oh, right. That.” He snorted.
“Barely.”

I couldn't make eye contact and looked at the ground. The bugs were mostly gone from the air, but their deathly remains were still hanging around, gathering in wispy piles along the curb. “So you like her now?”

“Julia,” he said, all serious, and he shook his head.

So I just walked away and looked for Laney and pulled her into the girls' bathroom and told her about Taylor and Alyssa having a sleepover without me. “And I asked Peter if
he would teach me how to skateboard, and then this weekend he was teaching Alyssa instead.”

“But he likes you; I just know it!” Laney rubbed my back. “And anyway, after you beat her at Russia, he'll never even give her another thought.”

“It's just a game.” I went into a stall to get some toilet paper so I could blow my nose.

“Everything's a game,” Laney said. “And you have to play it. So when you ride home with him today, you have to act like you don't care.”

I knew she had to be right—she sounded so very sure—and still it didn't feel right to play games with Peter.

We were learning a set of pieces called
The Carnival of the Animals
for the big concert, and the music was so lovely and so sad that I had a hard time holding it together. I didn't dare look across the room to where Peter sat with his trumpet. He couldn't like Alyssa. He wouldn't. But I felt crazy about it. Because boys like Peter
had
to like girls like me—and
not
girls like Alyssa—or there was no hope at all.

When Peter tried to talk to me at lunch, I acted like I was really in a rush and had to practice some hard clarinet parts and we'd just talk later. And when we met at the usual spot in the parking lot at the end of the day to wait for our ride, he said, “About Alyssa . . .”

I said, “Oh that.”

My mom was already pulling up.

“Forget I mentioned it,” I said. “You can hang out with anybody you want to, right?”

“Julia,” he moaned.

“What,” I said. “It's true.”

“I thought it would be a few more years before this started.”

“Before what started?” I breathed hard.

He adjusted his backpack straps on the shoulders of his purple tee. “Before you started to get weird.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Everyone says girls get nutty.” He made that crazy gesture by the side of his head. “They get boy-crazy and mean and stuff. I didn't think it would happen to you, but if it did, I thought it would at least be a few years from now.”

None of this was my fault. Didn't he see?

I said, “Yeah, well, me, too, I guess.”

We didn't talk the whole way home.

At home, Mom pulled hamburgers
and hot dogs out of the fridge. “Taylor's coming for dinner,” she said. “In case you forgot.”

I absolutely had forgotten. I wasn't sure I'd even been told. I said, “Does she have to?” and Mom might have smiled.

“Yes, she has to. Her parents have a work party to go to.”

“I'm just really tired.”

“Yeah, well, join the club.”

Then the phone rang and it was Taylor's mom, and she said she'd made other arrangements and not to worry. And that felt worse.

We had burgers and dogs and macaroni salad out at the table on the deck, then moved some of my furniture into the room so we wouldn't have to do it all at once. It still reeked of paint, but after my parents went back downstairs, I sat there, barefoot on the floor, breathing it all in.

19
.

Before I knew it
, it was Thursday—the last full day of camp since Friday was just the concert. And now that camp was over, I wished it had been longer. How would I survive the rest of the summer—the rest of my
life
—without Laney?

“This
really
stinks,” I said, when she was watching me practice elevensies by the parking lot.

“We need cell phones,” Laney said. “So we can at least stay in touch, like, constantly.”

“I'll work on it.” I nodded.

“Me, too,” she said. “And stop looking at your hands. You know how to
clap
without looking!”

I threw another ball, but I wasn't trying very hard. Great as Laney was, I missed having Peter as my coach. We weren't exactly ignoring each other anymore, but he
wasn't going out of his way to be around a nutty girl like me. Right now he was waiting for our ride as far away from me as was possible while still being able to see me.

“Do you think if you win, you'll win Taylor back?” Laney asked. I'd told her it was all on again, for Saturday.

But it wasn't even about that anymore.

Was it ever?

“I don't know.” I thought hard about what I wanted to be different after the showdown. “If I could have anything I wanted, I wish I never had to see either of them ever again. Then I'd like to never meet another girl like Alyssa in my whole life.”

“They're everywhere.” Laney was bouncing a ball. She had no real interest in Russia beyond helping me get better. “You need to learn to spot them and stay away. And, I mean, you have friends in school, right?”

“Not great ones,” I said. “Taylor actually told me the other day that there was no way I would ever win. Why would she even say that?”

Laney shook her head. “You just have to win and you'll have that to hold over them forever.”

I loved this girl.

Loved.

And even though we'd still see each other tomorrow we knew it wouldn't be the same so we hugged hard when my mom pulled into the lot.

In the car, I handed Mom the envelope I'd been given by the camp director after turning in our order form and check that morning: three tickets to the concert.

“You have to call Wendy to remind her,” Mom said as she slipped it into her purse.

I very much didn't want to.

I looked out the window to where Laney was pretending to walk down an imaginary flight of stairs behind a small car. I laughed and waved.

“Who's that?” Mom asked, as Peter jogged over and climbed into the backseat.

“That's Laney,” I said. “Another clarinet.”

“She nice?” Mom asked, after saying hi to Peter.

Now Laney was climbing back up those stairs. “She's entirely awesome.”

“Well, that's exciting!” Mom's voice was full of hope.

“She lives on the complete opposite side of the island,” I said.

“That's too bad.”

“But if I had a cell phone, I'd at least be able to text her and stay in touch!”