The Duff: Designated Ugly Fat Friend (25 page)

Why the hell does Wesley want me?

Seriously. The guy had dozens of girls who would kill to be with him. Why me? Wasn’t he the one who had called me the Duff
in the first place? What the fuck?

But when I got home, it just got worse.

On Toby’s suggestion, I’d started reading
Wuthering Heights
in my spare time. Honestly, the main characters pissed me off so much that it was hard to push through the book. I was considering
putting it down for good that day, but a line of dialogue caught my attention.

“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees
—
my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath
—
a source of little visible delight, but necessary.”

As stupid as it sounds, that little excerpt really got in my head, like a song you hate but can’t stop singing. I tried to
read on, but the
words kept bouncing around in my brain. I turned back the page and read the lines again and again. I was trying to figure
out why they bugged me so much when I was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell.

“Thank God,” I muttered, relieved to have a reason to slam the book shut. I jumped off my bed and ran downstairs. “Coming!”
I yelled. “Just a second!”

I pulled open the front door, expecting to find Toby, who’d said he might drop by later. But the man on my front porch was
a chubby redhead in his fifties. Definitely not my boyfriend. He wore a shabby green uniform and a hat that didn’t quite fit.
The name tag on his jacket read
JIMMY
. He was holding a bouquet of flowers in his right hand and a clipboard was wedged under his arm.

“Are you Miss Bianca Piper?” he asked.

“Um… yeah.”

His squinty eyes lighted with a smile. “Sign this, please,” he said, giving me the clipboard and a pen. “Congratulations.”

“Er, thanks,” I said, handing the clipboard back to him.

He passed me the bouquet, which I now saw was full of
real
red roses, and produced a white envelope from his back pocket. “This is for you, too,” he said. “You’re a lucky girl. It’s
not often I get to make a delivery like this to someone your age.” He smiled. “Young love.”

Young love? God, I had to fight the urge to correct him. To give him my long speech about how teenagers don’t fall in love.
But he was still talking.

“Your boyfriend must really be a keeper. Not many boys are so thoughtful at that age.”

I stared down at the roses and said, “You’re probably right.” Was Toby still trying to cheer me up? God, he was so nice. Too
bad I didn’t deserve all of the kindness.

After thanking the delivery guy, I closed the door. I felt guilty for considering my situation a love triangle. It was just
me and Toby, and Wesley danced along the outskirts, far away from us… or that’s how it should have been. That’s how Toby deserved
for it to be.

I put the bouquet on the kitchen table and opened the envelope, expecting to find a sappy but perfectly worded letter from
my flawless boyfriend. It was the kind of thing I’d normally scoff at, but I’d let Toby get away with it. He really did have
a way with words sometimes. That would help when he became a famous politician.

But the handwriting on the letter was the same as the note in my back pocket. This time, however, there was much more to absorb.

Bianca,

Since you keep running away from me at school, and, if I remember correctly, the sound of my voice causes you to have suicidal
thoughts, I decided a letter might be the best way to tell you how I feel. Just hear me out.

I’m not going to deny that you were right. Everything you said the other day was true. But my fear of being alone is
not
the reason I’m pursuing you. I know how cynical you are, and you’re probably going to come up with some snarky reply when
you read this, but the truth is, I’m chasing you because I really think I am falling in love with you.

You are the first girl who has ever seen right through me. You’re the only girl who has ever called me on my bullshit. You
put me in my place, but, at the same time, you understand me better than anyone ever has. You are the only person brave enough
to criticize me. Maybe the only person who looks close enough to find my faults—and, clearly, you’ve found many.

I called my parents. They’re coming home this weekend to talk to Amy and me. I was afraid to do this at first, but you inspired
me. Without you, I never could have done that.

I think about you much more than any self-respecting man would like to admit, and I’m insanely jealous of Tucker—something
I never thought I’d say. Moving on after you is impossible. No other girl can keep me on my toes the way you can. No one else
makes me WANT to embarrass myself by writing sappy letters like this one.

Only you.

But I know that I’m right, too. I know you’re in love with me, even if you are dating Tucker. You can lie to yourself if you
want, but reality is going to catch up with you. I’ll be waiting when it does… whether you like it or not.

Love,

Wesley

p.s.: I know you’re rolling your eyes right now, but I don’t care. Honestly, it’s always been kind of a turn-on.

I stared down at the letter for a long moment, finally understanding what Amy had been thanking me for. Wesley was trying
to
fix things… because of me. Because of what I’d said. I’d actually managed to get through that thick skull of his. That was
absolutely shocking to me.

It took a second for the other surprises to sink in. Words like
love
and
only
leapt off the page at me. It was my first love letter—not that I’d ever wanted one, but still—and it wasn’t even from my
boyfriend. The wrong guy had given it to me. The wrong guy wanted me. Wesley was the wrong guy.

Or was he exactly the right guy?

I was so consumed with my thoughts that I jumped when the phone rang, and I scurried across the linoleum in an effort to answer
it. “Hello?”

“Hi, Bianca,” Toby said.

My heart sped up and pumped shame through my veins. Wesley’s letter, which I still held, burned the fingers of my right hand,
but I managed to sound normal when I said, “Hey, Toby. Are you on your way over?”

“No,” he sighed. “Dad has errands for me to run, so I can’t come by this afternoon. I’m really sorry.”

“That’s okay.” I shouldn’t have felt relieved, but I was. Seeing Toby would have meant hiding the flowers and entering a potential
web of lies, and we all know what a shitty liar I am. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks for being so understanding. But I was really looking forward to spending a little time with you. We just don’t get
much time together at school.” He paused. “Do you have plans tomorrow night?”

“Nope.”

“Then do you want to go on a date? A band is playing at the Nest, and I thought we could go. Of course your friends can come,
too. Would you like that?”

“Sounds great.” See, little lies like that I could pull off. I hated live music, and I despised the Nest, but pretending the
opposite would make Toby happy, and Casey would be thrilled to be invited along. So why not? White lies were easy enough,
but anything bigger and I was screwed.

“Cool,” Toby said. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“Okay. Bye, Toby.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Bianca.”

I hung up the phone, but my feet refused to move. The letter still blazed against my skin, and I found myself staring down
at the tempting words. Why wasn’t this easier? Why did Wesley have to come along and make me question everything? I felt like
I was betraying Toby with every sentence I read. Like I was cheating on him.

But now I knew that every time I kissed Toby, I was hurting Wesley.

“Arrrrrgh!” With a scream that exploded in my chest and clawed its way through my lungs, I wadded the letter into a tight
ball and hurled it across the room as hard as I could. It moved through the air slowly before bouncing delicately off the
floral wallpaper and landing on the floor.

Finally, with my throat aching, I sank to the floor, buried my face in my hands, and—I admit it—cried. I cried out of frustration
and confusion, but mostly for myself, for being caught in such a position, like the selfish little girl I was.

I thought of Cathy Earnshaw, the spoiled, selfish heroine in
Wuthering Heights,
and I remembered the passage I’d been reading before the doorbell rang. But when the words drifted through my brain, they
were slightly different.

“My love for Toby is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees
—
my love for Wesley resembles the eternal rocks beneath
—
a source of little visible delight, but necessary.”

My head shook back and forth feverishly.
Like,
I corrected myself.
My like for Wesley is blah, blah, blah.
I wiped my eyes and got to my feet, trying to calm my ragged breathing. Then I turned and walked back upstairs.

All of a sudden I wanted to know how the book ended.

After staying up all night to read—and folding my clothes at least ten times—I discovered that
Wuthering Heights
doesn’t have a happy ending. Because of stupid, spoiled, selfish Cathy (yeah, I have no room to talk, but still), everyone
winds up miserable. Her choice ruins the lives of the people she cares most about. Because she picked propriety over passion.
Head over heart. Linton over Heathcliff.

Toby over Wesley.

This, I decided as I dragged my tired ass to school the next morning, was
not
a good omen. Normally, I don’t believe in omens or signs or any of that destiny crap, but the similarities between my and
Cathy Earnshaw’s situations were too eerie to ignore. I couldn’t help but wonder if the book was trying to tell me something.

I was dully aware that I was reading way too much into it, but my lack of sleep coupled with the stress of everything else
made my mind go to some interesting places. Interesting, but not productive.

I was pretty much a zombie all day, but during the middle of calculus, something finally woke me up.

“Did you hear about Vikki McPhee?”

“About how she’s totally knocked up? Yep. Heard this morning.”

My head snapped up from the problem I was halfheartedly attempting to solve. Two girls sat side by side in the row ahead of
me. I recognized one of them as a junior cheerleader.

“God, what a slut,” the cheerleader said. “No telling who the father is. She sleeps with everyone.”

I hate to admit it, but my first reaction to this was pure selfish fear. I thought of Wesley. Sure, he’d rejected Vikki in
the hallway a few days ago, but what if something had changed? What if that letter had been a joke? A game to mess with my
head? What if he and Vikki had…

I forced the thought away. Wesley was careful. He always used a condom. Besides, it was like that girl had said—Vikki slept
with everyone. The chances of Wesley being the father were slim. And I didn’t have a right to worry about that, anyway. He
wasn’t my boyfriend. Even if he had pretty much professed his love for me in a letter. I was with Toby, and whatever Wesley
decided to do wasn’t any of my business.

My second thought was of Vikki. Seventeen, on the verge of graduation, and, if the rumors were true, pregnant. What a nightmare.
And everyone knew. I could hear people buzzing about it in the hallway when I left calculus. In a school the size of Hamilton,
it didn’t take long for gossip to spread. Vikki McPhee was the girl on everyone’s mind.

Including mine.

So when I walked out of a bathroom stall a few minutes before English and found Vikki standing at the sink, reapplying
her dark pink lipstick, I had to make an effort to avert my eyes.

But I had to say
something
. I mean, we weren’t close or anything, but we did eat lunch together every day. “Hey,” I mumbled.

“Hey,” she replied, still tracing the lipstick across her lower lip.

I turned on the faucet and stared at my reflection in the mirror, trying hard not to sneak a peek at her. How far
along was she? Had her parents found out yet?

“It’s not true, you know.”

“What?”

Vikki capped her lipstick and dropped it into her purse. She was watching me in the mirror, and I could see now that her eyes
were a little red.

“I’m not pregnant,” she said. “I mean, I thought I was, but the test was negative. I took it two days ago. But I guess someone
overheard me telling Jeanine and Angela and… whatever. But I’m not pregnant.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good.” Yeah, probably not exactly the right thing to say, but I was kind of caught off
guard.

Vikki nodded and tugged at one of her strawberry-blond curls a little. “I was relieved. I don’t know how I would have told
my parents. And the guy never would have made a good father.”

“Who?”

That was such a selfish question.

“Just this guy… Eric.”

Thank God,
I thought. Then, of course, I felt incredibly guilty. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about myself.

“He’s just this stupid frat boy who gets a kick out of fucking high school girls.” She looked down, so I couldn’t see her
eyes in the mirror anymore. “And I didn’t even give a shit. I just let him use me, and I never thought… even when the condom
broke…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Anyway, I’m glad it was negative.”

“Right.”

“It is scary, though,” she said. “I freaked out when I was waiting for the test. I just couldn’t believe I was in that situation,
you know?”

“I’m sure,” I said, but I didn’t find it all that surprising. It was Vikki, after all. Hadn’t she been setting herself up
for that kind of thing for a while? Sleeping with people she didn’t care about. Forgetting about the consequences.

Just like I did…

Okay, so it hadn’t been
people
. Wesley was the only guy. And I did care about him… now, after I’d stopped sleeping with him. But that was just… well, I
didn’t know what you’d call it. Not quite luck. Maybe coincidence? Either way, I was smart enough to know that it didn’t happen
often.