The Secret Identity of Devon Delaney (9 page)

“No, Mom,” I say. “Luke’s not my boyfriend.”

“He’s not,” Katie agrees. She reaches into an open box of macaroni that’s sitting on the table and takes out a piece of ziti. “Her boyfriend’s name is Jared, and I would like to make a macaroni necklace, please.”

“Not right now, Kates,” my mom says. She takes the box of macaroni from Katie and sets it by the stove. “Maybe after dinner.”

“Okay,” Katie says, shrugging, which I find slightly disappointing. I was half-hoping Katie would start pitching a fit, therefore sparing me any more embarrassing questions from my mom about my love life.

“So your boyfriend’s name is Jared,” my mom says, studying me. She wanders over to the stove and pulls a pan down from the cabinet overhead, then heads to the sink and starts filling it with water.

“No,” I say. “Jared is not my boyfriend.” Again, depending on who you ask.

“But he went to the mall with you,” my mom says slowly. She sets the pot on the stove and turns on the burner.

“Yup,” Katie says. “He went to the mall.” Since when did my sister become Page Six? She pulls her gold medal out of the pocket of her shorts and hands it to me. “Devon,” she instructs, “crown me the winner.”

“Yes, he went to the mall with me,” I tell my mom. I slip the piece of cardboard around Katie’s neck. “Katherine Grace Delaney, I now pronounce you winner of the gold medal in soccer for the third year in row. The United States thanks you for being such a good athlete and bestowing this honor upon our nation.” Katie puts her hand over her heart and starts humming the national anthem softly to herself. “Anyway,” I say, turning back to my mom. “Luke is going to come over tomorrow so we can work on our project, okay?”

“I guess it’s okay,” my mom says. She bites her lip. “Devon, if you’re interested in boys, that’s okay. It’s normal at your age.”

“Mom,” I say, “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Okay,” she says, sounding doubtful. I wonder what my mom would think if she knew what was really going on, all the lying and the manipulating. I don’t think she’d be too pleased. I take a deep breath and try to push those thoughts to the back of my mind. It’s going to be fine. In fact, things are going great. I just have to give it a few days, keep Jared away from Lexi, stage a fake breakup, and everything will go back to the way it was. I have everything under control.

The phone rings again, and Katie hops down from the kitchen chair that she’s using as a podium and grabs it. “Delaney household, this is Katie speaking, how may I help you please?” She pauses and then holds the phone out to me. “It’s for you Devon. It’s Melissa. You left her on the other line. Not very nice.” She hands me the phone and hops away happily. Everything under control. Right.

“This afternoon is going to be so fun, Devi!” Lexi squeals the next morning before homeroom. I’m standing in front of my locker, trying to figure out what books I need for the morning. My eyes feel scratchy and tired, like someone rubbed them with sandpaper. I had a hard time sleeping last night. Probably because
of all the stress. Plus I got to bed late. I was up trying to find something to wear to school. I went through all my clothes at least a thousand times, but I couldn’t find anything that seemed cool enough. I couldn’t even find a way to make any of my summer clothes warmer. They should really teach us more about sewing our own clothes in home and careers. Right now all we learn how to do is hem and sew on buttons. Which is useless, because I’m trying to make my clothes warmer, not shorter.

“Yes, Lexi,” I say, my voice purposely low so maybe she’ll get the hint that it’s good to be quiet. Speaking of voices, my Devi voice still comes and goes. Sometimes I remember to use it, sometimes I don’t. I sound like guys do when their voice is changing. Except I’m a girl. So it’s not exactly the best sound. No one’s said anything yet, but I’m just waiting for one of them to bust out with, “DEVON, WHY DO YOU KEEP SWITCHING YOUR VOICE?” It’s like pretending to have an accent or something. “It’s going to be fun.”

“We have to hit Nordstrom,” she says. She grabs my locker door and swings it out, almost hitting me in the face. “Devi, where’s your mirror?” She frowns.

“I don’t have one,” I say.

“You don’t have one? Why not?” She runs her hands through her hair and pulls a small mirror out of her purse. “Never mind, we’ll get you one today.” She runs her tongue over her braces and smiles at her reflection.

“Listen, I have to be home by six,” I tell her. I slam my locker door shut. The metal makes a clanging noise that reverberates through the hall.

“That doesn’t give us much time,” she says, frowning. “Why do you have to be home so early?” She leans in close to me and lowers her voice. “Is everything okay with your parents?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Everything’s totally fine.” In fact, last night my parents stayed up until after midnight, watching DVDs and giggling in the family room. I know this because I was still awake and I could hear them all the way upstairs. It was nice of Lexi to ask, though, and I realize how cool it will be to spend time alone, just the two of us, without having to worry about anyone else being around, saying things that could cause problems. Not only is this whole lie causing problems in my friendship with Mel, but with Lexi also. I swallow around the lump in my throat.

“Cool,” Lexi says. “So why do you have to be home?”

“Because Luke is coming over to work on our project,” I tell her. I don’t tell her my mom is sketched out because she thinks Luke might be my boyfriend.

“Fun,” Lexi says, rolling her eyes. “I gotta get to homeroom.” She flounces off down the hall, her hair bouncing behind her and her skirt flouncing. Lexi is very flouncy.

“Where were you this morning?” Mel asks me later in study hall. “I waited for you by my locker.” Crap. I totally forgot that I was supposed to meet Mel this morning. That’s the second time in two days I’ve forgotten about her.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell her. “I got to school late and I was rushing around to make it to homeroom on time.” Which isn’t actually that much of a lie. I did get to school late. My mom had to drive me because I missed my bus. I’m still struggling to keep my eyes open after my late night.

“That’s okay,” Mel says. She pulls open her binder and takes out a sheet of paper. “Did you work on the English assignment?”

“No,” I say. “I didn’t get a chance to start it last night. I was busy planning some of my social studies project.” And looking for clothes to wear until really, really late.

“Oh,” she says, looking a little disappointed.

“But we can work on it now,” I say, pulling out my book. “It probably won’t be that hard.”

“Cool,” she says, pulling out her English anthology. “Did you get a chance to write in the notebook?”

I pull our BFF notebook out of my bag and hand it to her. I finished the note I had started writing to her in study hall last night. It was one of the things I did while staying up super late. I wrote her a really nice note, talking about how much I appreciated everything she’s done for me lately. Of course, I kept a lot of it deliberately vague, since, you know, I wouldn’t want it falling into the wrong hands.

“Thanks,” Mel says. She slips it into her bag just as Brent Madison walks by our table.

“Hey, Melissa,” he says, nodding his head at her as he goes by. He’s with his friends James Johnson and Brad Button, and they nod at us as well. They’re all in their football jerseys, since our school has a game tonight.

“Hey,” Mel squeaks back. A stunned look comes over her face.

“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!” I shriek once Brent is out of earshot. Melissa has had a crush on
Brent since, like, forever. Last year at the sixth-grade dance she spent the whole time obsessing over whether or not she should ask him to dance. She finally decided to go for it, except by then, Brent was gone. We found out later he had to leave early because he was going on a family vacation the next morning. It’s still one of Mel’s biggest regrets.

“That’s the first time he’s ever said hi to me,” Mel says, looking shocked.

“That’s crazy,” I say. “And he gave you the nod, too.”

“The nod?” Mel asks.

“Yeah, the head nod that goes with the hi,” I say. “And it was the good kind of head nod.”

“The good kind?” Mel is starting to look dazed. I hope I’m not overloading her with too much info.

“Yes,” I explain. “See, if a guy gives you a nod when he says hi, it depends on which way he moves his head if it’s good or not. If he moves it up, it means he’s doing it in a flirty way. If he moves it down, it means he’s just doing it to be friendly.”

“And he moved his head up?” Mel asks, twirling a strand of hair around her finger and looking thoughtful.

“Yes,” I say.

“And how do you know that means it’s flirty?”

“I read it in
CosmoGIRL!”
I report. In addition to the romance novels, I read a lot of magazines this summer. Lexi and I would walk to the drugstore near her house and buy every magazine we could get our hands on, along with sodas and bags of chips and Swedish Fish. Then we’d hang out on my grandma’s porch for hours, reading, talking, and eating our snacks.

“But what if—”

“Hey, Devi,” Kim says, sitting down next to me at the long table. Oh. I totally forgot she was in this study hall. Probably because she never speaks to me. “What’s going on?” She’s wearing long white flared pants and a long-sleeved emerald green shirt that says
ROCKSTAR
on it in gold lettering. She also has what appears to be purple glitter on her eyes. My mom won’t even let me wear makeup, much less purple glitter. I wonder what Kim’s mom is like. Probably like Paris Hilton’s mom. Very glam.

“Not much,” I say, finally remembering to use my Devi voice, even though I’m slightly surprised that she’s speaking to me. Not just because she’s Kim, but because she was so frosty to me in the caf the other day. Maybe she has multiple personality disorder.
That could be why all the guys want her. Isn’t that what they say? That guys want someone who keeps them guessing?

“I’m psyched for tonight,” Kim says. She flips her long hair behind her back and blinks at me. Sparkle, sparkle.

“What’s tonight?” I ask.

“We’re going to the mall,” she says. “You, me, and Lexi.” She glances at Melissa, who opens up her English book and pretends to be reading. I can tell she’s just pretending because her eyes are not moving across the page.

“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know you were coming.” What is it with these people and making plans? And how does word travel so quickly? Is there some kind of communication chain? And if so, how do I get plugged into it? I’m disappointed that Kim’s coming. Not only will it be trickier because of the whole Jared lie situation, but I was looking forward to hanging out with Lexi by myself.

“Yup,” she says. “Lexi invited me this morning. I totally need to get my nails done.” She puts her hands out and studies her fingers critically. She’s wearing a perfect coat of purple sparkly nail polish, which matches her purple sparkly eye glitter. I wonder if she
has different colors of glittery polish and shadow to match her different outfits.

“Cool,” I say. “It should be really fun.”

“Yup,” Kim says. “It will be. Just the three of us.”

Mel’s nose twitches, but she keeps her face in the book and her nonmoving eyes on the page.

“Try this one,” Lexi says, handing me a
bright red lip gloss. It’s after school, and I’m in Sephora with her and Kim, trying out different shades of lip gloss. The cool thing about Sephora is that you can try everything in the store, so you never have to worry about stuff looking silly on you.

‘Are you sure?” I take the tube from Lexi and smear the gloss on my lips. I peer into the mirror over the display. I look like a clown.

“Um, that would be a no,” Kim says, handing me a tissue.

“Thanks,” I say, wiping it off and wondering if she
meant that in a mean way. Even so, shopping with Lexi and Kim is FUN. First, we stopped at Bavarian Pretzel and got orange freezies to carry around with us as we shopped. Then we went to Nordstrom, where Lexi bought three pairs of capri pants (which doesn’t make a lot of sense since it’s fall, but they were on sale and she swore she would regret not buying them when the weather got warm) and Kim bought a pair of jeans.

We hit the arcade and DDR’d for a little while, and then went to Old Navy, where I got two pairs of jeans and three shirts that are wicked cute. The best part is that I still have about seventy dollars left over.

“This one’s better for you,” Kim says, handing me a pink sparkly color. I put some on and inspect myself in the mirror. She’s right. Much better.

“I can’t decide between ‘Twinkled Pink’ eye shadow and ‘Ice Storm,’” she says, frowning at the two containers in her hand.

“Better get them both,” I instruct, figuring it’s what Devi would say.

“Good thinking,” Kim says, nodding in agreement. “After all, there’s nothing wrong with splurging if you know you’re going to be hanging out with someone special.”

“Right,” I say, not sure what she means by that. Is she talking about this weekend? Does Kim like Jared? I decide not to worry about it. I have my hands full trying to keep Kim from saying anything that would lead Lexi to believe that we’ve never hung out before. It actually hasn’t been that hard, and there was only one close call, when we were in Old Navy and Kim was all, “What size are you?” while she was helping me look for a certain pair of jeans I wanted and Lexi was like, “Don’t you know?” like she figured Kim and I go shopping together all the time. And then Kim gave this sort of puzzled look, and I quickly said, “I’m not sure what size I wear here. This store always runs big for some reason,” which seemed to satisfy Lexi. I’m glad Kim doesn’t seem too interested in getting to know me, because it would be super weird if she started asking a bunch of questions like, “Where do you live?” or “What’s your screen name?”