Perfect You Page 5

  And I didn't want to. At least not until the mall door opened and I heard someone say,

  "Oh."

  Then I bolted, grabbing a box and taking off like I was being chased.

  Which I wasn't. Will didn't come after me. Not that I wanted him to, or anything.

  Besides, when I got home, I forgot all about the kiss, at least for a while, because when Dad and I walked in, Grandma was there.

  Chapter eleven

  "Darling," she said as soon as I saw her standing in our front hallway, and swooped in for a hug, moving past Dad like he wasn't there.

  "Hi, Grandma," I said, feeling as small and plain as I always did around her. Grandma was close to six feet tall, and had modeled when she was younger. She had pictures of herself up all over her house to prove it, and even though she was old now, she still had the kind of face that made people stop and stare.

  "I should take you to a proper salon and get your eyebrows shaped," she said. "There must be one around here somewhere. You have my eyebrows, darling, and they must be tamed!"

  "Mother, Kate doesn't need anything done to her eyebrows." Mom gave my arm a soft, reassuring squeeze, letting me untangle myself from Grandma. "Besides, remember what happened when you had yours done right before my sixteenth birthday party?"

  Grandma sighed. "I can't believe you remember that, Sharon."

  "Mother, you wouldn't get out of bed for a week. I had to have Mrs. Glick next door drive me back to school because Daddy was in Switzerland."

  Grandma waved one hand, as if shooing Mom's words away, and Mom frowned before turning to Dad, who'd sidestepped Grandma and taken Mom in his arms.

  "You guys, no one needs to see that," Todd said, clipping me with an elbow as he walked up behind me, his version of a greeting. "Dad, I got up to the last level of our game. Want to see it?"

  Dad did, of course, so we all ended up in the living room, me and Mom and Grandma sitting on the sofa while Dad and Todd sat on the floor blowing up imaginary bad guys.

  "I see Steve still has his little hobby," Grandma said to Mom, and from the huge, fixed--

  and fake--smile on Dad's face, I could tell he was imagining that everyone on screen was Grandma.

  "It helps me relax," he said without turning away from the game. "Sharon, are there any sandwiches?"

  "Roast beef or ham?" Mom said, starting to get up, but Grandma put a hand on her knee.

  "You were just saying how you wanted to sit and rest, darling."

  Mom froze, then said, "Excuse me, Mother," her voice icy, and got up.

  When she'd gone into the kitchen, Grandma looked at me. "You look tired, darling. Did you have a long day?" Long and weird. I thought about Will, and the kiss, and felt a little shiver race through me. "Sort of. But at least I didn't have to go to school."

  "No school? So you spent the day with your friends?" She smiled at me. "What did you buy?"

  Grandma had friends, or at least said she did, and only ever did one thing with them: shop. Every closet in her house was filled with clothes and shoes and purses, all color-coordinated and numbered according to some system she'd set up. Mom once told me her first memory was sitting in a store watching Grandma look at shoes. I don't mind shopping, but Grandma treated it like it was a religion.

  "I worked with Dad," I said. He glanced back at me, a real smile on his face, and I grinned back.

  "Working? But darling, you're only sixteen."

  "She knows how old she is, Mother," Mom called from the kitchen. "Steve's business is a family business. That means everyone pitches in. I told you that earlier."

  "But poor Todd and Kate, working so hard--"

  "It's not so bad, Grandma," Todd said, looking over his shoulder at her and then glancing back at Dad, who was staring at the television screen with his fake smile burned across his face again. "Besides, didn't our grandfather work all the time?"

  "He was a very important man," Grandma said. "And creating medicines isn't the sort of thing one takes a vacation from. But he never would have made me work, and your mother--oh, when she was a girl, she never wanted for anything. He took care of us and certainly wouldn't have quit his job to sell--" "Mother," Mom said, coming back in and handing Dad a sandwich, "he was addicted to the painkillers he developed, and never noticed anything or anyone when he was at home, which wasn't often. Let's not make him into a saint, shall we?"

  Grandma cleared her throat, looking upset. Dad squeezed Mom's hand, smiling a tense and very fake smile. Mom looked mad.

  Todd glanced at them and then shot me a look, saying, "Hey, Grandma, Kate and I didn't give you your birthday presents the last time you were here."

  "Right," I said, realizing what he was doing. Distracting Grandma was a good idea, and luckily, it was easy. "Do you want your gifts now?"

  Grandma grinned, and the tension in the room, so strong a second ago, lessened. Still, I didn't know how were we going to survive living with her, especially when it took her about a minute to rip open all her presents and say, "Well, those were unusual!" before looking at us like she was waiting for more.

  "I just remembered I have to . . . bake a cake for tomorrow," Mom said, disappearing back into the kitchen. "There's a birthday at work."

  Me and Dad and Todd all stared after her, and then Dad said, "Ice!"

  He turned to Grandma. "I know you like lots of ice when you have a drink, and our freezer still only makes cubed ice, not crushed. I'd better go get you some."

  "Ill go with--" I said at the same time Todd said, "I'll grab my keys, Dad, and we can take my car."

  So I ended up sitting in the living room with Grandma, who smiled and then touched one perfectly manicured hand to the umbrella I'd given her.

  "This is a very charming umbrella, darling," she said. "But this gift from your brother--

  what is it, and why does he think I want to read about trees crying?"

  "It's a poem, Grandma." Before he wanted to be an actor, Todd was going to be a poet.

  "Weep, deep, seek--ah, rhyming. I see." She sighed. "I don't suppose you got the picture of the Tiffany bracelet I sent?"

  "We did." Grandma was always sending us ads for things we could get her as gifts.

  Usually they cost more than Todd's braces had, and Mom said we'd be paying for those until Todd had kids and they needed braces.

  "Oh. Well, then, never mind," Grandma said, and looked around our living room, frowning at the stack of video games Dad had piled on the floor by the television. "I don't know how your mother's mind works. What kind of husband just sits around--?"

  "Mother, stop," Mom called from the kitchen. "Why don't you come help me with this cake?"

  "Darling, I'm fine out here. Did you ever get that nice book I sent about decorating on a budget?"

  Mom came out of the kitchen, a cake mix box in one hand. "Yes, mother, but sadly, Steve and I don't have a spare twenty grand lying around to install specially textured walls in the living room. We'd rather send Kate to college."

  "Oh darling, you could never change the walls in here. It would make the rest of the house look like even more of a disaster."

  Mom rolled her eyes at me and went back into the kitchen.

  I wondered how Grandma and my grandfather had produced my mother, who was always so sensible, and got up, telling Grandma I'd get her a drink. She always drank diet soda with a slice of lime and lots of ice. The ice would be wrong now, of course, which she wouldn't like, but at least I'd be able to get away from her for a minute or two.

  Mom hugged me as soon as I came into the kitchen. "Grandma means well. She just doesn't always think before she speaks. Or acts."

  I made a face. "I can tell. And I don't like the stuff she says about Dad. Plus she hated my gift."

  "She didn't hate it. She . . . she believes everyone is just like her, Kate, and thinks only about clothing and jewelry and makeup. Buying useful gifts is not something my mother understands."

  "You'd think she'd understand what an umbrella is for,"
I said, and got the glass Grandma always used out of the cabinet. "And how come she always says mean stuff about Dad?"

  Mom sighed. "She doesn't understand him. My father was a workaholic, and when he was home . . . well, let's just say he wasn't happy. Your father, on the other hand, loves being home. He loves me and you kids. He likes to relax and have fun."

  I opened the fridge and got out a lime, slicing off a piece and sticking it on the rim of the glass just like Grandma liked. "But your dad made lots of money, right?"

  "He did," Mom said. "But it didn't do him or your grandmother or me much good." She handed me a diet soda, not meeting my eyes. Maybe it hadn't done her much good then, but I was pretty sure money was the only reason why Grandma was here now. I didn't say that though, because something in the way Mom wouldn't look at me stopped me.

  I took Grandma her drink and then sat next to her when she patted the sofa. "I want to hear all about you, darling," she said, jiggling her glass and frowning briefly at the ice.

  "How's school? Are there any boys in the picture?"

  Great. I'd found something worse than working with Dad. "Um . . is that outfit new?"

  "It is, darling. I caught a plane to New York last week and spent four days shopping.

  Sometime you and I will have to go together. We'll make a little vacation out of it and--"

  "No shopping vacations with Kate, Mother," Mom said, coming out of the kitchen. "The last thing she needs is to spend day after day trying on clothes and listening to you tell her how pretty she'd be if only she'd do this or that."

  "Sharon, I'd never--"

  "I haven't forgotten how we celebrated my eighteenth birthday, Mother."

  "I haven't either," Grandma said, "A whole day together, and at the end of it you tell me you're going to college in California, never mind that you hadn't ever said a word about wanting to go there before."

  "Yes, well, that's where Berkeley was," Mom said, her voice sharp. "And you managed well enough without me, didn't you?"

  "We all do what we have to," Grandma said, her voice equally sharp, and I said I was tired and escaped to my room. I closed my door, resting one hand against it. I'd had a picture of me and Anna at the Jackson Jamboree taped there once. I used to see it every night before I fell asleep. I kept it in my desk drawer now.

  I turned, looking around my room. On my bed was an empty space where the stuffed monkey she'd given me when I was eight used to be.

  I wished I could call Anna now and tell her about Grandma, about everything, but I couldn't,

  I got the monkey out of the back of my closet and looked at it until my eyes burned.

  When I put it away, I told myself I wasn't crying, and ignored the wet spots that fell from my face onto the monkey's, closing the door before I could see it sitting there all alone.

  Left behind and forgotten, just like me.

  Chapter twelve

  The next morning I was so nervous about seeing

  Will that when I got to school, I didn't even look for Anna.

  I had no idea what was going to happen, other than that I'd hoped things would be okay but was pretty sure they wouldn't be. I mean, in my heart it was all happy endings, but even then I was fuzzy on how to get there. And then there was the fact that I'd kissed Will, who'd been with so many girls--and who so clearly knew what he was doing--that he was basically a professional kisser. Plus I'd run away after the kiss, and I was positive that wasn't something your normal, well-adjusted sixteen-year-old girl would do.

  I saw Will as soon as I walked into first period. That was normal, although the way my heart started pounding as soon as I saw him wasn't. He was looking at the door, like he was waiting for someone, and as I came in he looked right at me and smiled.

  "Hey," he said. That wasn't normal either. Will didn't notice me when I came into class.

  At least not like this.

  I felt shaky, and my palms were wet with sweat. I had to say something to him. Anything.

  Even I knew that much.

  But I couldn't.

  I couldn't because if I did say something, said, "Hey," back, then what? Will would want to date me and Dad would get a real job and Grandma would fly home and never come back and Anna would be my best friend again?

  None of those things were going to happen, not ever, and I didn't want that kiss to become something like that. I didn't want it to be one good memory that led to a lot of bad ones. I wanted it to stay what it was, one amazing moment, something that was strong and sweet enough to stand on its own. Something I could remember without any pain.

  It was a good thing I didn't say anything too, because Will looked away. He didn't say anything else to me. He didn't mention the kiss.

  I hadn't expected him to, but deep down, in a tiny, hopeful place I hated, it stung that he hadn't. But really, why would one kiss mean anything to Will?

  Especially when it clearly didn't. After lunch, as I threw my empty soup cup away, I saw Will come into the cafeteria. He was laughing, and when one of his friends elbowed him he turned, puckering his face into an exaggerated fish-faced kiss. A joke.

  I didn't have to guess what--and who--it was about. I felt stupid for being so nervous before. For spending so much time thinking about that kiss. For thinking it was amazing.

  I was angry, too. I knew he was just a guy and there were plenty more in the world, but I wasn't going to get a chance to do my first kiss over again and it wasn't fair that it had been ruined.

  I faked a headache in my last class and got a pass to the nurse's office. I didn't go there, though. I went to the gym. I knew Will's schedule, and last period he worked in the coaches' office because the internship he was supposed to have ended when the sponsoring company went bankrupt.

  I was walking past the trophy case when the gym office doors flew open and Anna came out, her arms so full of photocopies that all I could see was the top of her head. One of the copies slithered off the top of the pile and hit the floor.

  "Crap," she said, and then kicked off one of her shoes, nudging the copy with her foot. I saw her toes try to grab it, and suddenly thought I might cry.

  She was still Anna. My Anna, who could pick things up with her toes and who once, on a bet, had picked up two quarters in a row. Twice. Todd had to drive us to the movies, pay for our tickets, and buy us popcorn because of that.

  "Here," I said, and picked up the copy, handing it to her.

  She froze for a moment and then said, "Can you put it on top of the stack?"

  I did.

  "Thanks," she said, sliding her shoe back on and gingerly shifting the stack of copies to the side a bit, just enough so I could see her face. She was grinning, actually grinning. "I guess the wonder toes don't work like they used to. I guess my glory days ended with the quarters, huh?"

  I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. She'd talked to me. After months of silence, she'd talked to me.

  "I thought Todd's head was going to explode when we both ordered large popcorns,"

  she continued, and made a face, a mirror of Todd's expression as it had been that night.

  "Oh, I know," I said, laughing as I remembered how mad he'd been, and because I was so happy she was talking to me. Finally, she was talking to me. "The best thing, though, is that I actually caught him trying to do it later and he couldn't."

  Anna grinned again. "Not everyone has my wonder toes. I loved how your dad used to say that. 'Anna and her wonder toes!' My dad hardly ever noticed me and . . . well." She gave me a look, and it was a real Anna look, sad and strong at the same time. "You know how he is."

  I did. "Have you talked to him lately?"

  "He called last week," she said, her voice suddenly wobbly. "He's getting married again.

  Her name is Becky and she's great, she's wonderful, he wouldn't shut up about her. And then he didn't even ask me to come to the wedding."

  "You must be so pissed," I said. "I swear, if you looked in the dictionary, his picture would be right next to the word 'ass.'
"

  She laughed. "It should be, shouldn't it? And I am pissed. Everyone's told me how sorry they are, but no one's seen . . no one else has seen how mad I am. God, I miss you so--"

  She broke off and looked at the floor, then shook her head. "I gotta go," she said, talking so fast the words practically fell over each other, and before I could say anything, before I could even think anything, she walked off.

  I stared after her, stunned. She missed me. She remembered the quarter thing. She remembered being friends with me.

  Anna missed me.

  I looked around, my mind spinning. Maybe I could find her and we could talk, really talk.

  She must have the period free, running errands for cheerleading or something, and if I caught up to her now--

  "So, wonder toes. I guess now I know how to become a successful cheerleader."

  Will. He was leaning against the wall by the gym door, hands in his pockets.

  "Did you just stand there and listen to us talk?"

  "What was I going to do, say, 'Hey Anna, sorry to bother you while you're messing with Kate's mind, but can you not turn the photocopier off when you're done with it because some of us have stacks of health forms to copy'?"

  Now I remembered why I'd come down here. "She wasn't messing with me. She was talking to me. But then I wouldn't expect you to know the difference, you pig dog weasel loser."

  "Wow," he said, sounding surprised and a little angry. "You kiss me, ignore me, and now you're calling me names? That seems a little strange, but then you're--"

  "I kissed you? Is that the story you're telling?"

  "Now I'm telling stories about you?"

  "I saw you at lunch." "Lunch? I didn't say anything about you at lunch."

  "Right. Funny thing, I don't trust liars."

  "Fine," he said, and yanked his shirt collar to the left, baring a mouth-shaped bruise near his collarbone. "Someone saw this earlier, I've been getting shit for it all day, and so at lunch I threatened to give everyone one of their own." He made the face I'd seen him make before.