The Predicteds (8 page)

“Me too,” Dizzy chimes in. “I can't believe it!”

“It's unbelievable,” Lightning Rod agrees.

At this point, I'm contemplating a wig. I mean, it looks fine to me, but if this is the kind of reaction I'm going to get, I might as well forget about showing it to anyone else. “That bad?” I ask, thinking that my taste must be seriously off. The longer I look at it. the more I think it's kind of cute.

“Bad?” Dizzy yells. “It's awesome!”

“You look like Louise Brooks,” Lightning Rod says.

“Who?” I ask, wondering if I even want to know.

“She was a silent movie star, a pinup girl. She was…something else.” Lightning Rod blows a kiss into the distance. “Hot. Sexy. Out of this world. That kind of girl.”

Dizzy pulls out her BlackBerry and quickly finds an image. I stare at the black and white photo of Louise's sleek, shiny crown of hair. I do kind of her look like her, I guess. My hair is longer than hers, falling just below my chin, but I can see that we have the same dark eyes, pale skin, and bow-shaped lips.

I smile at the mirror and then at Lightning Rod. “You think I can pull this off?”

“Honey, if you were ten years older, or I were ten years younger, you would be my dream girl. I love it!”

Dizzy squeals and hugs me for about the hundredth time today.

The only word I can think to describe it is
cool
. That's how I feel. I don't even feel bad about the hunks of my long hair lying dead on the tiled floor.

“This is exactly what you needed,” Dizzy tells me. “Now you are finally you!”

After the haircut, we buy two pairs of jeans, some makeup, and a pair of dangerously high heels with silver studs for me. I blow through Melissa's money quickly, and I have to reach into my purse for the few dollars I've saved from Christmas and birthday money that my grandmother sends to me. Lightning Rod doesn't come cheap. And buying stuff at the mall, I realize, is seductive and addictive. I'm enjoying the idea of being a different version of me, someone who has clothes from the mall, rather than just the hippie-esque things that Melissa gives to me—undoubtedly, someone's thrift store castoffs.

We end the shopping marathon by picking out Dizzy's swimsuit, a daring two-piece in chocolate brown with gold rings on both the top and bottom. She looks incredible in it. Dizzy is one of those people whose good looks sneak up on you. One minute, she looks like a little girl playing dress-up—someone who packed on her mother's makeup—but if you look at her for a few minutes, you realize she's actually sort of amazing, with curves in all the right places. Even with those pigtails, she can pull off a bikini in a way that I could only imagine. I try not to act too surprised when Dizzy twirls around.

“When does pool season begin?” I ask.

“Oh, not until May, probably. Josh is having a pool party for his birthday then, and if you don't get a suit early, all the good ones are gone. Come on,” Dizzy says after she pays for the little brown swimsuit with a credit card. “Let's get food.”

We get pizza slices—glossy-looking pieces that have obviously been under a heat lamp for hours—and look for a place to sit in the tiny and crowded mall food court, a depressing circle of chairs and tables beside a foul-smelling waterfall. It's almost three o'clock, but there's no sign of the lunch rush dying down. The few chairs are loaded with Quiet High people, and many of them rush over to Dizzy to greet her or chat with her, so it takes us a long time to finally sit down at a table in the corner, right beside the window that overlooks the vast parking lot of The Mall.
Is the lot ever full?
I wonder.
Where would that many people come from?

Dizzy talks a lot—and it's all frustratingly fast and incredibly loud. I have to be quick if I want to jump in and get something out before Dizzy interrupts. She's not trying to dominate the conversation or anything—she's just the type of person who has so much to say that she can't manage to keep her mouth shut for very long. After much chatting about pool parties, she switches topics with no warning. “So do you have a boyfriend at your old school? Are you a virgin?” she asks, without the slightest hesitation. My jaw drops.

“No, no boyfriend,” I say, ignoring the virgin question. “I went out with a few guys here and there. Nothing special. Just dinners, a couple of movies, that kind of thing.”

Dizzy laughs until she chokes on her rubber pepperoni. “That's so old school! Dinner dates!” She turns to the people sitting next to us—two women with small children. “A dinner date!” she tells them. “Can you believe it?” They move their children closer to their table.

What I don't tell Dizzy is this: I've never met a guy that I could see myself being with for more than a few hours. Nobody has ever caught my attention in that way.

“I'm a make-out slut,” Dizzy tells me in a softer voice. “I have a running tally.” She pulls a notebook out of her giant pink purse and slaps it on the table. Names neatly written in different colors of ink litter the page.

“Wow!” I say loudly. One of the little kids starts to cry.

Dizzy slams her hand down on our table, sending plastic silverware bouncing off our plates. “Thirty-three just this year!” she yells with glee, and the kid cries harder. The mother shoots us an irritated look.

“What about Josh? You were with him at the diner.”

“Eh,” she says. “We're on-again, off-again. We're not like some of the couples at Quiet High. Old married people.” She makes barfing noises. “What do you think of Sam?” she asks suddenly.

I shrug. “I don't know. Seems okay, I guess.”

“Almost every girl at QH has a thing for Sam Cameron, but he's pretty particular about who he hooks up with. Brooklyn is pretty lucky,” she says. “I know girls who would kill to be in her pointy pageant shoes.”

I refrain from saying that Sam can't be too picky if he's with Brooklyn. “You act like Sam is a celebrity.”

“He sort of is. He's Sam Cameron. Every school has a guy like him. He's our very own Brad Pitt.”

“Sam's not really my type,” I say, surprising myself. I am not really aware that I have a type until the words come out of my mouth.

“What?” Dizzy says, holding her ear, pretending that she's heard me wrong. “Did you just say that Sam Cameron is not your type? What, for goodness sake, then, is your type?”

I'm thinking of an answer when I see January's pink-streaked hair in the distance. She's carrying a handful of shopping bags, and she's talking animatedly to the person walking with her. I squint into the distance. It's Jesse. He's looking through the glass of the pizza case. January keeps talking, putting the shopping bags on her wrist and using her hands to punctuate. Jesse suddenly moves his head slightly in our direction. I feel silly saying that The Mall suddenly gets quiet, but I swear that it does. His eyes lock on mine—he smiles, a genuine smile that covers his whole face. I force myself not to look behind me. I give him a half-smile back, just in case there's a crowd of people behind me who are waving at him. Jesse touches his own hair and then points to me. He gives me a casual nod. I give him slight head turn, a modest
Who me?

Dizzy, oblivious to the fact that I've been ignoring her, is hard at work sawing at her pizza, running her plastic fork against the tough skin of cheese. “Wow,” she says. “That settles it. You're crazy.” Then she proceeds to explain the history of every relationship of every person at QH, pausing only to make sure I'm following the complicated soap opera plot. Apparently, everyone dates everyone else. “Within reason,” Dizzy says. “One of us is not going to date someone like him.” She points her fork at a table behind me, where a cowboy-hatted, Wrangler-wearing boy eats, holding a fork like a shovel. He smiles at Dizzy, unaware that she is holding him up as Exhibit A: Cowboy Eats Chick-fil-A Coleslaw.

“I see,” I say, turning back around to face her.

“Hey, Dizzy.” January and Jesse appear at our table.

“Oh, hi, January,” Dizzy says in a fake sweet voice. “Jesse,” she says, nodding at him, giving him a million-dollar smile. She turns back to me and raises her eyebrows. Obviously, she's trying to speak to me in some kind of secret code, but I have no idea what she's saying. I just nod.

“I hardly recognized you, you look so good,” January says to me.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Awesome, isn't it?” Dizzy says proudly, as if she did it herself. “The bald spot is practically invisible.” My hand goes immediately to my scalp, and then I wince when I touch the stitches.

“You look incredible,” Jesse says boldly. We all turn to look at him. We exchange smiles that seem laced with undertones.
You didn't call me last night
, he says with his eyes.

I didn't know I was supposed to
, I say back with mine. My cheeks feel warmer. I reach my hand out and touch my new, smooth hair—it feels like the satin edge of a blanket. It's weird not having it draped down my back, feeling hot and sticky.

“It's different,” I say.

“It suits you,” Jesse says.

“What's going on? What are you two up to today?” January asks.

“Bathing suits,” Dizzy says, reaching for her bags. “Check this out.” She extracts the brown top and waves it in front of her face. “Cool, isn't it?” she says to January in a pleasant tone laced with pity. She's being nice to January because she feels sorry for her.

“God, I'm fat,” January says, looking down at her scrawny legs, her skinny arms dangling at her side.

“You are not,” Dizzy says. Then she sighs heavily and pushes her plate away from her. “I shouldn't be eating this. I'm going to look like a cow in that suit.” She glumly tosses the top back in the bag. Dizzy is hardly fat. Nevertheless, she and January continue to go back and forth about who is fatter, each claiming to be a bigger blimp than the other.

I heard these kinds of conversations before at Academy. I understand that it's a ritual, something that is supposed to make girls feel better, but it never does, because the conversation always repeats, stuck in a loop forever. I feel lucky that I have never been part of this. I've just never felt bad about my body. I've never felt too fat or particularly skinny. Melissa did something—at some point in my life—that made me feel okay about who I am. Too bad she couldn't bottle that and sell it. We'd be rich.

Jesse looks at me while Dizzy and January make pig snorting noises at each other. “So what are you two doing today?” I ask.

“Shopping,” he says, pointing at a J.Crew bag he has in his hand. “One of my least favorite things to do.” I immediately like that about him. I can't stand guys who like to shop. I put them in the same category with guys who use flatirons on their hair and who press their jeans.

Dizzy now has her bags open and is showing January all of her purchases. She's even showing mine.

“What'd you get?” I ask Jesse, pointing at his bag.

“Something really exciting.” He pulls out a tie. “It's for work.”

“Oh, yeah? What do you do?”

“Mostly show up and prove to my dad that I'm
reliable
and
trustworthy
, and that I'm
developing a sound work ethic
.”

“Oh,” I say. “So you're pulling yourself up by your bootstraps?”

“Something like that.” He smiles.

“What does your dad's company do?”

“You heard of FauxFuel?”

Heard of it? It's practically all anyone talks about here. Melissa told me that FauxFuel is some substance made out of banana peels, dead flowers, human waste, and a bunch of other gross stuff ground up and mixed with regular unleaded fuel. It increases your gas mileage by three times while decreasing the amount of real fuel that you use. Melissa thinks it's the greatest thing ever, although she's still against driving in principle. (“All that carbon-based pollution? No way, Daph. Your feet are the most earth-friendly mode of transportation you'll ever get.”)

But a lot of people in Quiet hate FauxFuel. In a town built on oil money, you don't exactly get a parade if you find a way to decrease oil use.

“Wow,” I say. I think back to what one of the girls said at the lake, something about Josh's mom being so rich because she married Jesse's dad.

“What about you?” he asks.

“Just advising Dizzy. And letting her transform me into a whole new person.”

He motions toward the mall corridor leading to the stores. “Bet this is a far cry from what you are used to back home. You're from Minnesota, right?”

“Saint Paul.”

“That's cool. I'd love to go there sometime. I heard it's beautiful.”

“It really is. I miss it,” I say, but I don't feel the familiar twinge that I usually feel when I think about home.

“You look incredible,” he says again. “Really, really good. Not that you didn't look good before.” He stumbles over himself. “You just look…I don't know, you just look—wow.”

“Thanks,” I say, feeling slightly self-conscious. And kind of elated. I chastise myself silently. I don't want to be one of those girls—a girl like Brooklyn. “Whatever,” I say for no reason other than to make me sound breezy in an offhanded way.

“So,” Jesse says, tapping his foot against my chair. “You up for hanging out tomorrow night? That is, assuming your head is okay.” He touches his own head and then smiles, his eyes wrinkling at the corners.

“Maybe,” I say coyly. Without realizing it, I've lowered my volume to match his. We are practically whispering now.

“I'll call you,” he says, half-mouthing the words.

That's when I realize that January and Dizzy have stopped talking and are looking at Jesse and me. I've actually sort of forgotten they are here. Suddenly, I feel nauseous, like I'm going to hurl half-digested pizza everywhere. I must be glowing from the inside out.