Blue Eyes
And Other Teenage Hazards
By Janette Rallison
Copyright 2012 Janette Rallison
Other titles by Janette Rallison
Playing The Field
All’s Fair in Love, War, and High School
Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Free Throws
Fame, Glory, and Other Things on my To Do List
It’s a Mall World After All
Revenge of the Cheerleaders
How to Take The Ex Out of Ex-boyfriend
Just One Wish
My Fair Godmother
My Unfair Godmother
My Double Life
Slayers (under pen name CJ Hill)
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Chapter 1
Anjie rolled out of my life on a sharply clear September morning. I lived in Pullman, Washington, where most of the time the sky looked like it was holding a grumpy-cloud convention; but on the day Anjie moved, there was nothing but sun. I hate it when the weather lies like that.
I’d gotten up at six in the morning to see Anjie off. Neither of us was sleepy. We stood by her family’s minivan while her dad loaded suitcases into the back. The moving van would come later in the day to take everything else.
“Call me as soon as you get to Virginia,” I said.
“I will.” Anjie put a pillow and a book into the backseat of the minivan. “And you call me too. Call me tomorrow.”
“Nothing will have happened by tomorrow to talk about.”
“But I still want to hear from you.”
Anjie and I had been inseparable since second grade when she moved onto my street, five houses away. We’d shared everything: bikes, clothes, even a crush on super hot Chad Warren. And now, a week before our sophomore year got underway, she was moving. We were finally no longer on the lowest rung of social life at high school. Life was supposed to be fun now. But with Anjie leaving, I felt like I’d been set adrift. In a sea of uncaring teenagers. Many of whom would happily puncture my boat. And laugh as I sunk into the depths of unpopularity.
Anjie’s mother came outside carrying a box filled with houseplants. She put it into the backseat of their van. “Come on, Anjie,” she said. “It’s time to go.” Then, because she felt sorry for me, she added, “You’ll have to come up and visit us sometime, Cassidy.”
I tried to smile. “Sure.” It would probably never happen. Fairfax, Virginia, was on the other side of the nation.
Anjie put her hand on the door but didn’t open it. “We’ll see each other again. Remember, we’ll be roommates at college. Promise?”
“Promise.”
She gave me a hug and got in the back seat next to her little sister and brother.
I watched until the minivan turned the corner and drove out of sight. With it went our late-night phone conversations, homework sessions where we didn’t do homework, and summers sitting by the public pool unsuccessfully trying to get tans. With it went a thousand other things I couldn’t name but felt anyway. As I walked home, I looked up at the sun hanging there alone and abandoned in the sky and decided the weather hadn’t lied after all.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have other friends. I did. I sat with Faith and Caitlin at lunch. We didn’t actually ever do anything together, but they were nice to me. Okay, maybe they were actually more like acquaintances, but that was only because I’d never needed anyone else before. Anjie was like me: a straight-A student, avid reader, and someone who kept the rules instead of looking for ways to bend them. I could talk to her about my goals or values without her looking at me like the Goody-Two-Shoes Fairy was about to carry me away.
The only other sophomore girl on the street was Samantha Taylor—or Queen Samantha, as Anjie and I had taken to calling her. This was because Samantha was bound to be homecoming queen someday, and she generally treated us like peasants. We had all been best friends in elementary school, but in junior high things had changed. Samantha was blond, beautiful, and had joined the cheerleading squad. Now she mostly ignored me at school, although if we were ever thrown together in class, she rolled her eyes when I answered questions. Sometimes she also shook her head.
School started and I went through the first few days mechanically. I didn’t say much at the lunch table. As I ate, I noticed how everyone talked about things without ever really saying anything important, or even interesting. It was all about who was dating who, or fighting with who, or where people were going, or what programs they’d watched. Not one single idea. Nothing about our school assignments except how hard or stupid they were.
If Anjie had been around, we would have talked about today’s lecture on whether hunter-gather societies were really better for the environment (Um, obviously not; otherwise everybody would be out hunting and gathering instead of farming and ranching.) or whether the entire English department had some sort of crush on Hamlet (Probably, even though all the characters in that play were pathetic).
I couldn’t imagine three more years of going through school every day without having anyone to talk to—well, to really talk to.
Anjie and I called each other nearly every day, and I got to hear about her new school. On her first day at school no one talked to her. No one. She’d been so sick about it, she had skipped lunch and spent that period in the library. Things were getting better for her now though. She’d found lunch friends.
My parents knew I was feeling down about Anjie’s move, and they tried to be sympathetic. Dad told me this was an opportunity to branch out and expand myself. Meet new people. Stretch. Dad’s the optimist of the family.
Mom told me I’d better get used to it because sometimes in life you’re alone and you have to learn to cope. She’s the cynic. I could tell Mom felt sorry for me, though. She took me shopping and bought me designer clothes. The expensive kind. She’d never done that before.
As we got to the cash register, she said, “Lesson number one in solitude. If you have to be lonely, do it in high fashion.”
While she was waiting for the clerk to finish with her credit card, I traced the Anne Cline label on her wallet. “Is that why you have a designer wallet? Your money is lonely?”
“I don’t have enough money to get lonely. The wallet’s for me.”
“You’re lonely?”
“Not as long as I’m with you, my little peach.” Mom had an unending list of cute names she used to embarrass me with. “I’m stocking up in preparation for the time when you go off to college. I can’t believe it’s only three years away. Three short years.” She said this last part as if college was death.
Mom had never wanted me to grow up. When I was little, after each of my birthdays she would look at me solemnly and say, “Absolutely no more aging.” I had sensed, even back then, what I had been too young to remember—the grief she felt over a pregnancy where she’d lost not only the baby, but the chance of ever getting pregnant again. I was an only child, and always would be.
When Mom and I got home from shopping, Dad was on the couch answering emails on his laptop. “Will MasterCard call tomorrow to thank me for our support?”
Mom dropped one of the shopping bags on the couch. “Consider it our way of stimulating the economy.” She turned to me. “Show your father what we bought.”
Dad put on a good show of being impressed. He said, “Ooh,” and “Ahh,” and “Very nice.” But in actuality, he had no fashion sense whatsoever. He would have said the same thing if I had held up things from the clearance rack at Goodwill.
“I’m sure you’ll look great in them,” he said. I was his little peach too.
He winked at my mom. “But as it turns out, you didn’t need to take Cassidy shopping at all.”
Mom sat down on the couch and kicked off her shoes. “Oh?”
“I have such good news for her, she’ll forget all about clothes.”
“You’re doubling my allowance?” I guessed.
“Wrong.”
“You’re buying me a jeep for my birthday?”
“Wrong, wrong. Really wrong.” Before I could guess at anything else that was expensive, he said, “While I was mowing the lawn, the Lopez’s realtor came by and took down the for sale sign in front of their house. It sold.”
That didn’t feel like good news. I had faintly hoped that the house would never sell and Anjie’s family would hate Virginia so much they would decide to move back. I sat down with a thud on the couch and didn’t say anything.
“It sold to the Benson family,” Dad went on. “They’re moving here from California in about a week and they have a daughter your age.”
I frowned at him. Anjie wasn’t a pair of shoes that I could just replace when I needed new ones. What were the chances that the new girl would be someone I liked, someone who liked me? It was just as likely she would become fast friends with Samantha and the two of them would spend the remaining years of high school doing eye-rolling relays at my expense. I didn’t even crack a smile. “I’d rather have a jeep.”
“The family also has a teenage son,” he said. “A senior.”
My mother made a disapproving sound as she gathered up my purchases. “Don’t give Cassidy ideas.”
I didn’t comment about that. I already had ideas. I just had them about Chad Warren.
Mom handed me the shopping bags. “When they move in, you’ll have to go over and introduce yourself to the girl your age. You could volunteer to show her around.”
I told myself that I wouldn’t get excited about her. I wouldn’t expect her to be like Anjie. But once a seed of hope is planted, you don’t need to water it. It grows by itself. By the time I went to bed, I was already wondering what ‘about a week’ meant. Six days? Nine? Maybe five. Hopefully five.
* * *
The only good thing about having Anjie gone was that I didn’t have to worry about her getting jealous if I flirted with Chad—not that I had ever flirted with Chad before. Last year it had seemed too presumptuous. He was one of the most popular guys in the sophomore class, and I’d been a freshman who still looked like I belonged in junior high—five foot four, string-bean thin, no clue what to do with my dirty-blond hair, and a smile decorated by braces.
A year later, I’d grown three inches, filled out, discovered Clairol highlights weren’t that difficult to apply, and finished my monthly excursion to the orthodontist. The next logical step was flirting. So this year, I would attempt it. I called my scheme “Operation Chad.” First goal: get him to notice me.
Chad was gorgeous. He had wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and a smile that could melt ice. But the thing I liked about him was that he looked clean-cut—like someone who would be polite to your grandparents. He got good grades, which meant he was smart, and a smart guy had to want an intelligent girlfriend. I was clearly qualified for the position. We would be able to talk about anything and everything. Life. The cosmos. What to name our first child.
With this in mind, I set “Operation Chad” in motion. This consisted of doodling his initials next to mine in my Spanish notebook, planning to go to all the football games—he played wide receiver—and arranging my schedule so I passed him in the hallway three times a day. It was a slow start, admittedly, but I wasn’t sure he even knew my name. I couldn’t just go up and talk to him. With all the hall time we spent together, I somehow hoped he might notice me, wonder who I was, and say something to me. Okay, it was a really, really slow start.
Upon evaluation of the first week of school, I decided I needed something to help me stand out. Maybe I was too colorless to get noticed amongst all the students milling through the hallways of Pullman High School.
On Monday I wore a form-fitting red skirt and a pair of three-inch red high heels. I’d always preferred sandals to high heels, and it took me half an hour of trundling around my bedroom before I felt like I could walk in them without wobbling.
Armed (or rather, footed) with my fashion-model heels and a skirt that looked perfect on me—even if it was so form fitting that I could only take small steps—I set out to capture Chad’s attention. Sometimes he studied in the library before first period. I strolled in, trying to ooze sophistication.
Luck was with me. Chad sat at a table doing homework with his best friend, Mike. I walked by and purposely dropped my English book on the floor next to Chad’s seat. I had visions of him reaching gallantly for it. Our eyes would meet as he handed it to me. Maybe he’d even smile and say something.
But he just sat there, his head bent over his book. He didn’t even look up from his trig problems. Awkwardly—my skirt wasn’t meant for bending—I reached down and picked up the book myself. It was then I noticed a table full of junior girls close by. They were glaring at me. They knew what I was up to. In fact, they’d probably tried the same thing themselves. No wonder Chad didn’t move. He was probably showered with objects daily.
I had planned on sitting down at a nearby table and studying, but suddenly had second thoughts. I didn’t want to look like I had no friends to hang out with. I scanned the library for a group I could sit with.
The only person I really knew was Samantha. She sat at a table with the rest of the cheerleading squad, talking and smiling. Being anywhere in Chad’s vicinity apparently makes the neurons in my brain misfire because it suddenly seemed like a good idea to go over and tell Samantha that a new girl was moving in on our street. For those few moments, I completely forgot that I’d been put on the peasant list.
When I walked over to her, Samantha put on an expression of perturbed patience.
And then it all came back to me, but it was too late to turn around.
“Hi,” I said.
The other cheerleaders stopped talking and stared at me, waiting to find out why I’d disturbed them.
“Did you hear about the new family that’s moving in on our street? They’ve got a girl our age.” I had been watching the house for signs of the new family, checking it impatiently ever since my dad had told me the news.
“Yeah,” Samantha said without emotion. “My mom told me. Mr. Benson drove up last night and the rest of the family is coming this afternoon. They’ve got, like, six kids. The one our age is named Elise.”
I should have known Samantha’s mother, Mrs. Taylor, would already have twice as much information about the family as my parents did. Mrs. Taylor was what some people would have called “involved in the community” and less-kind people would have called a busybody. In elementary school she had always been room mother; in junior high she’d been on the PTO board; and last year the Taylors not only donated the materials for the freshman homecoming float, but Mrs. Taylor had basically designed the thing and helped build it.
“Elise,” I said the name out loud, trying to conjure up an image of the girl it belonged to. “What else do you know about her?”
Samantha hesitated. Her lips pursed together slightly. Whatever she knew about Elise, she didn’t like. “Nothing really.”
The fact that Samantha wouldn’t tell me probably meant it was something that wouldn’t have bothered most people. Elise didn’t have a fatal disease or a third leg. She just didn’t meet Samantha’s qualifications as a worthwhile person. She wasn’t homecoming court material.
I didn’t think about what I said next; it just came out of my mouth in a moment of spontaneous goodwill. “We should stop by the Benson’s house after school and welcome Elise to the neighborhood. I could make some cookies for her family.”
Samantha shrugged and glanced at her friends. “Sorry. I have cheerleading practice after school.”
“That’s okay. We can wait until cheerleading practice is over. After all, it will take me a while to bake cookies.”
“Ummm,” Samantha said, clearly searching for an excuse to skip out on being friendly.
I pressed her anyway. If both of us went it would look more like a neighborly thing and less like a Cassidy-is-desperate-for-a-new-friend sort of thing. “Come over to my house at four o’clock and we’ll walk over together.”
“Fine,” Samantha said, then didn’t say anything else. None of the cheerleaders did, either. They were waiting for me to leave.
“Okay. See you later.” I spun on my heel. Literally. I had forgotten I was wearing shoes with heels so high they prevented all natural movement, and when I turned, I lost my balance.
The tight skirt didn’t help matters. I took a lunging step to steady myself. Or rather, I tried to steady myself. The skirt didn’t allow for lunges, so I ended up taking a stumbling step that did nothing but quicken my decent to the floor. My books went flying in all directions. I heard a ripping sound that was either my skirt or the tendons in my leg. At that point it was all a blur.
To Samantha’s credit, she helped me up. She was laughing as she said, “Are you all right?” but at least she helped me.
“I’m fine,” I said. And I was. Unless you counted my pride, the slit in my skirt that was now considerably longer than it had been, or the stinging in my palms from where I’d hit the floor.
The other cheerleaders gathered my books for me. My biology book had slid over to Chad and Mike’s table. Chad picked it up and handed it to perky blonde cheerleader named Chelsea.
It was my book though, and Chad had picked it up. I could even say with confidence that he’d noticed me, since he was eyeing me over. Which, if I was being really technical, was Operation Chad’s first success.
Chapter 2
After school I made chocolate chip cookies for the Bensons. I had told Samantha to meet at my house at four o’clock, but at four fifteen she still hadn’t come. Apparently cheerleading practice had run long or Samantha had found some more important thing to do—like anything.
I didn’t want to go over to the Benson’s by myself, but I wanted to meet Elise, and what else was I going to do with two dozen cookies? I waited until four thirty, then headed over.
My father always said that when you make a wish and send it out into the universe, the universe conspires with you to make it happen. I had never believed him. I’d wished for a horse from the time I was three, and so far the universe had done very little in the way of helping out in that regard. But as I walked to Elise’s house, I not only sent a wish out, I struck a bargain.
I wanted Elise to have a good sense of humor. And be smart. And be nice. And not be a drama queen. That wasn’t a big order, was it? But if that was asking too much then I would settle for smart and nice. In return, I would be kind to any and all new students for the rest of my life.
After I rang the bell, a thirteen-ish boy with unruly black hair opened the door. He looked at me unconcerned. “Yeah?”
“Hi,” I said. “I’m one of your neighbors. Is Elise home?”
“Yeah.” He held the door open, and I walked into what used to be Anjie’s living room. It looked all wrong without the Lopez’s black couches and marble coffee table. The tan walls seemed scuffed and forlorn. Stacks of boxes and miscellaneous furniture cluttered the floor.
The boy eyed my plate of cookies. “Hey, are those for me?”
“For your family. You can have one if your mom says—”
At this he grabbed a cookie, tilted back his head and yelled, “Elise! There’s someone here to see you!”
It was so loud she must have heard it, but there was no reply.
The boy then grabbed another cookie off the plate. With his mouth full he told me, “My parents aren’t home right now, but they’d let me have two.” Then he ran upstairs. I stood alone and waited.
A giant German shepherd trotted into the room. He stopped when he saw me.
I’ve always liked dogs. At least little ones. Little dogs are better because if a Yorkshire terrier suddenly thinks he’s a wolf and you’re a deer, or if he mistakes you for a fleeing criminal, or if he just thinks you look tasty, he’s probably not going to do a lot of damage. German shepherds are different. And mutatedly large German shepherds are enough to make anybody’s plate of cookies tremble.
“Hello there, doggy,” I said. “I hope you’re a nice dog.”
He surveyed me intently.
At this point certain questions ran through my mind: Where is everyone in this family? and Why hasn’t Elise shown up?
I took a step toward the door. “Nice doggy. Why don’t you find a cat to chase?”
His eyes never left my face. He didn’t growl, but he didn’t wag his tail, either. He moved toward me, sniffing.
I took another step backward. The dog took several more forward. Then his gaze fixed on the plate and he licked his lips. I held the cookies up over my head. I could tell he was calculating whether he could reach them if he jumped.
“Stay, doggy. Sit, doggy.”
He heaved himself up and put his paws on my shoulders. I had to take a step back to keep from being knocked over. I was nearly pressed up against the wall.
“Down, doggy! Down!”
He didn’t move. Instead he barked at the plate.
I was just about to let him have the plate and flee from the house, when I heard a teenage girl say, “Goliath! Down!”
The dog dropped to all fours and wagged his tail.
“Bad dog! No eating the guests!” She looked at me, nonchalantly. “Sorry about that.”
Elise was tall with long, dark hair and blue eyes. She looked athletic, tan, and pretty—not the sort of person Samantha would avoid. Elise wore shorts, a tank top, and flip-flops even though the weather had turned cool. Apparently she was in autumn denial.
A few of the cookies had nearly slid off the plate. I pushed them back into the center. “That’s all right. He didn’t get any.” I held the plate out to her. “I’m Cassidy Woodruff. I live down the street.”
“Thanks.” She didn’t take the cookies from me. “I’m thrilled to be here.” It was clear she wasn’t.
I shifted my weight, awkwardly. “Pullman is a nice place.”
She looked at me like I had to be joking. “Does Pullman even have a mall?”
“Not really.”
“A Seven- Eleven?”
“No.”
“A Burger King?”
“We have a McDonald’s.”
Elise plopped down on a couch. “Great. At least I won’t be without my Happy Meals.”
I suddenly understood why Samantha hadn’t been eager to meet Elise. Somehow, Samantha had known what Elise was like. Rude. Condescending. Not at all what I had ordered from the universe. I smiled in an attempt to be gracious.
The dog went and lay at Elise’s feet. I still stood there holding the cookies and wondered if I was supposed to sit down.
Elise said, “Where do you guys do your clothes shopping, anyway?”
“Moscow, Idaho, is only eight miles away. Mostly we go there.”
“You go to another state to shop?” Elise tossed her head back against the couch. “For this I had to give up my friends, eighty-degree weather, beaches, mega malls, pool parties, and Hollywood?”
How could I compete with Hollywood? “Well, at least we don’t have any earthquakes.”
Elise ignored this helpful evaluation. “My parents thought the small-town atmosphere would be good for the family.” She picked up a pile of dish towels that lay on the couch and moved them to an end table. “They thought it would be a good place to move their stupid office-supply store. A brilliant financial decision, since offices are obviously so plentiful here.”
Pullman was a university town—home of Washington State University and Schweitzer Labs. The population was almost thirty thousand, but twenty five thousand of those people were students. It wasn’t a big place, but it had always been big enough for me. I looked around the room for someplace German-shepherd proof to set the plate. “Where do you want the cookies?”
“I’ll put them in the kitchen.” Elise finally took the plate. “Sit anywhere. I’ll be back in a minute.”
I took a box off a small love seat and sat down. Goliath got up, trotted over, and stared at me. All the old dog sayings came to mind. Never run from them. Never provoke them. Dogs can smell fear.
“Nice Goliath. I don’t have the cookies anymore. Go see Elise. She’s in the kitchen.”
He sat sniffing, then jumped up on the love seat. For a moment I was nose to muzzle with him; then he lay down on my lap.
“Down, Goliath, down!”
The dog didn’t move. I thought of pushing him off but was afraid he’d consider that provoking.
He rolled over on his back, stretching.
I strained to see the kitchen. “Elise,” I called weakly. “Elise!” No one came.
I patted Goliath a few times on the stomach. “Nice doggy. Get off.”
He didn’t move. I decided to take a chance and I pushed him off. He rolled from my lap onto the floor, shook himself, and then jumped back onto the love seat. He plunked down in my lap again.
Elise returned from the kitchen carrying a couple of glasses and a bottle of Sprite. “Goliath, get down!”
He still didn’t move. Elise put the glasses and soda on top of a stack of boxes that was in front of the couch, then grabbed Goliath by the collar and pulled him off me. “Sorry about that,” she said, but she looked more amused than apologetic.
“It’s all right.”
Goliath put his face on the cushions and looked up at me with forlorn brown eyes.
Elise sat down on the couch across from me. She seemed to have forgotten about the soda and glasses full of ice she’d brought in. “So, what do you do for fun around here?”
“I belong to the chess club and I play tennis.”
She looked completely unimpressed by this so I added, “With all my homework, I don’t have time for much else.”
“Chess and homework,” she said flatly. “What does everybody else do for fun?”
Goliath whined. I patted his head. “The regular stuff. Play sports, go shopping, and see movies.” Goliath flung himself onto my lap once more. With some effort I managed to push him off. He slid onto the floor, a heap of tan and black fur, then barked at me indignantly.
“Why does your dog want to be on my lap?”
“No reason.” Elise smirked, holding back a laugh. “Except that you’re in his chair.”
I got up, with a huff of exasperation. “Your dog has a chair and you let me sit in it?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but by that time she was laughing.
I brushed dog fur off my jeans with quick motions. “Thanks. I came innocently bearing cookies and you let your dog sit on me.”
She tilted her chin down. “You didn’t come innocently. My dad told your mom that I needed to be around good influences and so here you are—the good influence welcome wagon. The I’m-too-busy-doing-my-homework-to-have-fun poster girl.”
Ah. Her dad had talked to Mrs. Taylor, so Elise thought I was Samantha.
“Nobody told me anything about you,” I said pointedly, although suddenly I wished they had. “And my mom has never met your father. I just came by to be friendly.”
Elise studied me for a moment, discerning whether I was telling the truth. “Fine.” She picked up one of the glasses and poured soda into it. “If you’re not trying to reform me, you can stay.”
As if I wanted to stay.
She handed me a drink and gestured toward the recliner. “You can sit there. Goliath doesn’t fit on it.”
I wanted to tell her that I had to be going, but decided to give her another chance. I moved a suitcase, sat down, and took a sip of soda.
Elise rifled through a box sitting at her feet. “When I asked you what you did for fun, what I really meant was where do you party?”
“I don’t drink,” I said. “It’s illegal.”
She pulled out a can of beer that had been buried underneath clothes and wiped off the top. “Yeah, so is speeding, but everybody does that.” She laughed, then stopped when she saw my expression. “What? You don’t speed?”
There wasn’t much of a point to speeding in small towns. It wasn’t worth risking a ticket just to shave two minutes off your time. I shrugged. “It would ruin my insurance rate.”
Elise sighed, opened her can, and poured it over the ice in her cup. She swirled it around and took a drink, then poured the now chilled beer back into the can.
I watched her not knowing what to say. I knew some sophomores drank, but it was four thirty in the afternoon on a Monday. Wasn’t drinking like that a sign of alcoholism?
Off in the distance I heard wailing. The noise got louder and louder until two young girls shrieked into the room. One held a doll up in the air while the other chased her around the boxes.
Elise put her can on the floor, stood up, and grabbed both of them by their collars. “Stop it!”
The girls barely seemed to notice that Elise had a hold of them. The older of the two, who couldn’t have been more than six, kept reaching for the doll. “It’s mine!”
“It isn’t your Skipper,” the other said. “It’s mine!”
Elise took the doll. The girls tried to grab it, but she pushed them away. “Be quiet. Skipper is trying to say something.”
Both girls grew silent, suspicious. Elise held the doll up to her ear. “Skipper says she’s tired of you two pulling her apart and she wants to be my doll.”
“She did not!” they cried together.
“She did too. She also says you’re both ugly little trolls.”
“She did not!”
“She did too. Now go watch TV, and if I hear any more arguing, the TV and I will have a talk too.”
The girls took a few sullen steps away. In unison they turned back and stuck out their tongues. Then they ran out of the room.
Elise tossed the doll onto the floor, sat down, and went back to drinking her beer. She wasn’t casual about it. Each sip was angry, determined, like she was making a point. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“None. I’m an only child.”
“That must be great.”
“Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.”
A car pulled into the driveway. Elise swore and looked for someplace to hide her beer. She reached for the box, but when the car door slammed she ditched the can behind a chair cushion instead. She finished the whole production just before the door opened and her older brother walked in.
He looked a lot like Elise. His black hair was wavy and a few stray curls lay against his forehead, like he’d just walked in from the beach. His blue eyes made a striking contrast to his dark hair, and he had a face that would make the girls at PHS take a second look. And probably a third looks too.
Elise relaxed. “Oh, it’s only you,” she said and took the can out again.
Without noticing either of us, he opened one of the boxes on the floor and sifted through papers in it. “Mom and Dad decided to stay late at the store. I’m just picking up the invoice sheets, then I’m going back.”
“That’s all right,” Elise said drearily. “I don’t have anything to do with my life anymore except babysit.”
As he straightened, he looked over at Elise and saw the can in her hand. His eyes narrowed into icy blue slits. In two strides, he’d reached her and grabbed the beer from her hand. “If you want to get drunk on your own time, that’s one thing. But don’t you ever do it when you’re watching the kids.” His voice got louder. “Do you even know where they are?”
I would have withered up and died if someone talked to me like that. Elise took it in stride.
“Abby is asleep—at least she was until you just yelled. Bailey and Olivia are watching TV. Dan is putting away his junk, and I’m entertaining a guest.”
Elise’s brother glanced at me for the first time. He didn’t seem impressed.
“What, you’ve only been here twenty-four hours, and you’ve already found drinking buddies?”
My mouth fell open. I knew I looked stupid, but I couldn’t help it.
“Cassidy lives down the street. She brought over cookies to welcome us to the neighborhood. Unless you give me my beer back, I’ll give yours to the dog.”
He crumpled the top of the can in a way that made its return unlikely, then stalked out of the room without another glance at either of us.
Elise flipped him off and then leaned back into her chair with her arms folded. “That was my brother Josh.”
“Oh.” And then, because I felt I ought to say something else, I added, “I guess you two don’t get along.”
“Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don’t.”
An awkward silence came between us.
I shifted in my chair. “Well, I’d better go. If you want help finding your classes tomorrow, I can give you a tour in the morning.”
“That’s okay. It’s such a small school. How hard can it be to find things?”
To Elise’s credit, she got up and showed me to the door. She even thanked me for the cookies and told me goodbye. I half expected she wouldn’t.
I walked back down the street shaking my head. I had hoped for someone who was funny, smart, nice, and not a drama queen. Out of those things, I’d gotten, um, nothing.
I went inside my house and sat down at the kitchen table. Mom was on the other side surrounded by charcoal sketches. She was a freelance artist and frequently worked all day on her projects. This meant dinner would be something Dad picked up on the way home from work. I was clearly excused from kitchen duties tonight, but I still sat there, staring off at the cabinets and replaying the scene with Elise in my mind.
“What’s the new girl like?” Mom asked.
“Sort of psychotic.”
Mom glanced up from her paper pad. “Why is that?”
“I think it’s because she comes from a family of psychotics.”
“And what did this psychotic family do?”
“Yelled at each other.”
Mom went back to her pad, making quick, dark strokes on the paper. “If that’s your criterion, then we’re occasionally psychotic too.”
“Yeah, but at least we don’t flip each other off.”
“And we can be mighty proud of that.” Mom laughed, and suddenly it did seem funny—the thought of my parents and I giving each other the finger. Despite what my mom had said, we hardly ever fought, let alone yelled at each other. My life was quiet, predictable, sane. That’s the way I liked it.
So who cared if Elise was rude? Eventually I’d find another best friend. And I still had Faith and Caitlin to eat with and talk to. I probably wouldn’t see much of Elise at all.
Chapter 3
As I stood at the bus stop the next morning, rereading parts of Macbeth for honors English, an ancient white Nissan pulled up. Elise leaned out of the passenger side. “Hey, Cassidy, do you want a ride?”
After yesterday’s reception, I couldn’t believe she offered. I stood there with the book open in my hand and stammered out, “Sure,” because I couldn’t think of an excuse to turn her down. I climbed into the back seat and noticed Josh was driving. He didn’t say anything to me, but Elise turned around so we could see each other. She was smiling like she was happy to see me.
I put on my seatbelt. “It’s nice that your parents let you have the car for school. That’s still a matter of debate at my house.”
“It’s Josh’s car,” she said, “and he never lets anyone forget it. I’m surprised he doesn’t ask for cab fare.”
Without glancing at her, Josh said, “That could be arranged.”
Elise ignored him. “My parents would never let me take one of their cars to school. I don’t know what I’ll do next year when Josh graduates.”
“Ride the bus,” Josh said.
“No way. I’ll have to date someone who owns a car.”
Josh came to a stop sign, looked both ways, and almost stopped all of the way before he went through the intersection. “You could always get a summer job and save up for a car like I did.”
Elise let out a snort. “I doubt there are many high-paying jobs for teenagers in Pullman. So hey, that means you’ll have to get some measly minimum-wage job next summer—just another one of those small-town benefits Mom and Dad were so eager to have us experience. Maybe McDonald’s is hiring. You’d look spiffy in their uniform.”
He shook his head. “We’ll probably be too busy helping Mom and Dad with their store to get jobs.”
“You mean you’ll be busy with the store. I’ll be stuck at home babysitting.” Elise wrinkled her nose. “And with what they’ll pay me, I won’t even be able to afford a bike.” She let out a martyred sigh. “It’s settled. I’ll have to find some hot guy with a car.”
Josh smiled. “I’d better warn all the upperclassmen with wheels.”
“Just remember,” she said, sending him a sharp look. “I know where there’s video of you running around in nothing but Batman tighty underwear. You don’t want to see that make its way around the internet, do you?”
“I was six at the time,” Josh said.
She waved her hand in his direction as if to erase this point. “My camera works. It wouldn’t be hard to capture some of your less-than-flattering behavior. I’d start listing things right now, but I don’t want to gross out Cassidy.”
Josh made a scoffing sound. “Like what—you mean all the times I don’t act like a girl?”
Elise leaned closer to me and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “He lets the dog lick his face. That’s like frenching with a canine.”
Josh shot Elise a look, taking his eyes from the road for the first time. “No, it’s not. Sheesh, Elise, what have you been doing on your dates?”
She smiled at him smugly. “Are you going to warn the upperclassman about that too? I’ll have a boyfriend with wheels in no time.”
“And a few communicable diseases,” he added.
“Cad,” she said and laughed—a sound that was light and airy and told me that this sort of teasing was normal between them. It was as if all the yelling—all the flipping off of yesterday—hadn’t happened. Elise seemed so nice, so normal that I almost expected her to say, “Oh, by the way, I have an evil, psychotic twin sister. You may have met her.”
Another thing hit me about Elise. Although she had nearly called me boring for preferring homework to partying, the girl had a vocabulary: cad, canine, capture some of your less-than-flattering behavior. Elise was smarter than she let on.
“What’s your class schedule?” I asked her.
She pulled out a paper from her backpack and handed it to me. It was so crumpled, I wondered if she’d wadded it up at some point. I could imagine her doing that—crumpling it up and throwing it across the room. Maybe I would have done the same thing if my parents had uprooted me. It made me want to help her, to make all of this easier for her.
“We’ve got lunch and Honors English together,” I said.
She looked down at the Macbeth book in my lap. “Is Honors English doing Shakespeare all year?”
“That and Greek literature. Oh, and we’re also going to read some Chaucer in the original text.”
Elise took the schedule from me, pulled a pen from her backpack, and crossed out Honors English.
“Hey, it’s a fun class,” I said. “We’re going to put on The Tempest in a couple months. Everyone will have a part.”
Elise added more pen marks across Honors English. “Which means the teacher will make us memorize large chunks of sixteenth-century dialogue. Forsooth and forthwith—I just don’t think so.”
Josh said, “The lady doth protest too much.”
More hand fluttering on Elise’s part. “Beware the ides of March—and any teacher who makes you write essays on that phrase.”
“It’s all much ado about nothing,” he said.
The two of them could even banter in Shakespeare quotes. Impressive. I slipped Macbeth into my backpack. “I think you’ll be able to handle Honors English.”
Elise gazed at her marred schedule. “I wonder if they offer dance during that hour. What are the easy classes?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said.
My comment made Josh laugh, although I wasn’t sure why. I hoped I hadn’t come off sounding arrogant.
After Josh parked the car, he walked beside Elise and me to the school. Yesterday I hadn’t noticed how tall he was and how broad his shoulders were. It made me feel suddenly self-conscious. I wasn’t sure if it was rude to walk beside him and only pay attention to Elise or whether it would be presumptuous to start a conversation with him when he’d only given me a ride because his sister had asked him to.
Anjie’s brother had been in seventh grade. I had no idea about the social mores of friends’ hot older brothers. Before we went our separate ways, I inserted an awkward “Thanks for the ride” into the conversation, and he shrugged and said, “No problem.”
I helped Elise find where her locker and classes were. Despite Elise’s prediction that it would be easy to find everything in a small high school, it wouldn’t have been the case. Pullman High had apparently been designed by a frustrated artist looking for a creative medium.
First of all, the school was orange and yellow—two colors I’d grown to hate by the time I was halfway through my freshman year. Second, there was hardly a regular geometric shape anywhere. All the classrooms were sort of trapezoidish. It was as though the builder had dropped walls anywhere he fancied. The hallways were so confusing that the administration had painted giant arrows on the walls to show which direction certain classes were. The cafeteria was an open, sunken room off the main lobby. The library was two stories in the middle of the building. The architect had also dropped two minibuildings a short distance from the main one. I’m not sure what purpose those buildingettes were supposed to serve off by themselves, but we had to trudge outside to get to our math classes—a fact everyone appreciated from October to April, when it was freezing.
After I’d shown Elise around, I took her to the library to see if Faith or Caitlin were there. They weren’t, but Chad and Mike were. After we walked by them, Elise said, “Who is that gorgeous blond guy?”
“Chad Warren. He’s one of the junior jock gods, but he also takes trig and chemistry, so he can’t be all good looks and muscle.”
I could have told her more. I knew Chad was the starting wide receiver for varsity football, was the third leading scorer on the basketball team last year, and also ran the 100-meter dash in track. He was student body rep for his class, had two older brothers, drove a dark-blue Toyota, and took weeklong skiing trips with his family every winter. I also knew his address.
When you come down to it, there’s a fine line between adoration and stalking.
Elise cast another look at Chad over her shoulder. “Moving to Pullman just got a little better.”
“Well, if you ever find a good way to get his attention, let me know. I’ve been trying for years.”
Elise managed to drag her gaze away from Chad and back to me. “What, is he stuck up or something?”
“No, he’s just, you know . . .” I shrugged. “He’s Chad Warren.”
We walked slowly around the library, so we could look at him without being conspicuous. “Have you ever talked to him?” Elise asked.
I kept my gaze straight ahead. “It’s not that easy. He’s an upperclassman.”
“So is my brother. You didn’t think talking to him was hard, did you?”
“Um . . .” Now that I thought about it, I realized that during the car ride to school, Josh and I had both talked to Elise but hadn’t said anything to each other.
“You’re a wimp,” Elise said. “But since you’re my friend, I’ll give you the first shot at Chad. You have until the end of the day to talk to him before he becomes fair game.”
“What?” I blinked at her. “How am I supposed to talk to him today?”
Elise nodded toward his table. “He’s sitting right there. Go up and say something to him.”
I made little incredulous grunts. “You can’t force these things.” We had circled all the way around the library but kept going, just like those Jane Austen characters who took turns around the room. That had never made sense to me until now.
“Come on,” Elise said. “You’ve liked the guy for years but have never spoken to him? What are you waiting for, the angel Gabriel to announce you?”
I looked over at Elise with her flowing black hair and blue eyes, all confidence and tan. She couldn’t understand. The problem with living in the same small town all your life is that people don’t just see you, they see who you used to be. They remember every backward, stupid, humiliating thing you ever did. They remember that you used to be short and scrawny with bad hair and no fashion sense. You can’t erase it. It drifts behind you like a kite tail.
I had to wait for the right casual moment to talk to Chad—the moment where it didn’t look like I was hitting on him. That way if he wasn’t interested, I’d still have a shred of pride left.
Faith and Caitlin walked into the library, saving me from explaining this to Elise. “There are some of my friends. You should meet them.” I steered her in their direction.
After I made introductions, Faith said, “How do you like Pullman so far?”
“Well, you have some cute guys here.”
“True,” Caitlin said, “but we’re always looking for new talent. We hear you have an older brother. What’s he like?”
Elise glanced over at me, and I was suddenly embarrassed that I’d told Faith and Caitlin about the new family moving into Anjie’s house. It made me seem gossipy. I wasn’t. I‘d just been eager for them to move in.
“I’m not a good judge of my own brother,” Elise finally said. “What has Cassidy told you?”
“Just that he’s a senior,” Caitlin said.
Then everyone looked at me. “Josh is pretty cute,” I said. On a scale of one to ten I gave him an eight—nine if you counted the fact that he could quote Shakespeare. Chad was a twelve.
Elise smiled at my appraisal. Caitlin raised her eyebrows suggestively. “We’ll have to meet him sometime.” Caitlin was the type who rotated through crushes as though dating were a relay event.
Elise compared schedules with Faith and Caitlin then and was relieved she had some classes with them. They spent the rest of the time telling her about the teachers she was in for and various homework horror stories. I was just glad the topic of Chad had been pushed from Elise’s mind.
Elise saying I should talk to him today? Crazy talk.
As we split up to go to first period, Elise said, “If you want a ride home, meet me at my locker after school. And remember,” she added, “you have until the end of the day to speak to Chad.”
Chapter 4
I met up with Elise on the stairs at lunch time. “How have your classes been?” I asked.
She trudged down the steps slowly, a lunch bag in her hand. “I’ve got to get out of my honors classes. You have way too many overachievers at this school.”
I shrugged. “Most of our parents are either professors at WSU or engineers at Schweitzer Labs.”
She let out a grunt like this was a bad thing.
I didn’t ask more about her classes because I spotted Samantha walking down the stairs in front of us. “There’s the other girl on our street,” I told Elise. “Let me introduce you.”
We caught up to her so quickly I almost didn’t have time to worry about how Samantha would react to Elise. Perhaps it was selfish, but a part of me worried that Samantha would like Elise too much. After all, why shouldn’t she? Elise was pretty and, right now, charming. The type of person who could blend in with cheerleaders.
“Samantha, hi!” I said. “This is the new girl on our street, Elise.”
Samantha forced an unconvincing smile. “Hi.”
I hadn’t been Samantha’s BFF since elementary school, but I still knew her well enough to interpret that look. She wanted nothing to do with Elise. I didn’t know why but could only assume it had to do with whatever Mrs. Taylor had found out about her.
“Samantha was planning on delivering those cookies with me,” I said, “but she couldn’t because . . .”
“Cheerleading practice ran over,” Samantha said.
“Oh, that’s right. Cheerleading practice. I guess that’s hard to get out of. Anyway, you should get to know each other. Why don’t you come and eat with us today, Samantha?”
Samantha’s smile grew even more forced. “I can’t. I have to sit with my friends. They’re waiting for me.”
“They can live without you for one day.”
“Sorry. I really can’t. See ya.” She practically sprinted the rest of the way to the lunchroom.
Elise watched her go. “Are you the leper or am I?”
“That’s Samantha’s friendly way of making you feel like a valued member of PHS.”
Elise shook her head. “Cheerleaders. Some things are the same no matter where you go.”