Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty Page 11

  A sick feeling swirled with slow-motion oiliness in the pit of my stomach.

  The next image made my mouth go dry. It was of Hero. He’d probably gotten it from her MySpace account; she was in a pretty white sundress, laughing, her nose splayed with freckles. She looked about thirteen. The bold-faced type beneath her read: “The cock tease must be tamed.”

  "’Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ ”"

  I must have jumped halfway to the ceiling when I heard those words. I turned to see John filling the doorway, his pale blue eyes fixed on my face.

  I gaped at him idiotically. “Sorry, I just—” What? How could I explain what I was doing there? “Just—had to pee.”

  “This isn’t the bathroom. Don’t know if you noticed.” He peered through the shadows at me. His voice seemed to teeter between teasing and deadly serious.

  “Yeah, I—took a wrong turn, I guess.” A nervous giggle escaped my lips. Inside, I was a messy jumble of embarrassment and anger. What the hell was he doing, writing that misogynist crap about my best girls? I thought he was supposed to be smart.

  He was still blocking the only way out. I longed to just push past him, out to the pool and the sunshine and Coronas and laughter, but I didn’t dare.

  “Anyway, you know who that is?” he asked.

  “Who who is?”

  "’Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ ”

  For a second I couldn’t think straight. Finally I said, “Dante?”

  “Bingo. Wow, you really are a brainiac.”

  “Just a lucky guess.”

  “I doubt that.” Something about the way he was studying me gave me the creeps. “I’m glad you girls came over. I’ve been wanting to get to know you and Hero. Your cousin is such . . .”—he searched the ceiling for the right word—“an enigma.”

  Don’t you mean a cock tease?

  “Yeah, she sure is.” I clapped my hands together, hoping to signal the end of our conversation. “Okay, well, I’m going to run to the bathroom now.”

  His blue eyes flashed in the gloom. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “Of course I do! I just have to pee, is all.”

  “Hero doesn’t like me either. Wonder if I’m losing my touch.” He smiled in a way that had nothing to do with happiness. He still didn’t move.

  “I’m sure you’re not. Excuse me.” I managed to squeeze past him. He smelled of cologne and mints. I walked quickly down the hall to the bathroom, not daring to look back, and locked the bathroom door, as if he might actually try to follow.

  While I was peeing, I kept seeing the sketches of all those faces on John’s wall. There was something that tied them together, though they had different hair, different expressions. Then it hit me: They all looked like John.

  Whoa. That was weird.

  I thought about the girls with shiny hair in the dance pictures. If the rumors were even remotely true, they’d all had sex with him—Amber too. I tried to imagine kissing him, but now the eerie, wolflike blue of his eyes was more creepy than sexy. I was sitting there on the pot, considering all of this, when I noticed that through the small, screened window above the toilet I could hear what was being said out by the pool.

  “So what’s up, man? Are you going to make a move?” PJ was asking.

  I heard Ben say, “I don’t know. I’m still having a hard time believing you guys.”

  Amber said, “We’re her best friends, okay? We should know. She’s totally into you. I’m scared to think what she might do if you don’t like her.”

  “What do you mean?” Ben sounded concerned.

  “She’d die,” Hero piped in. “Really. She’d kill herself.”

  “To be honest, before you guys told me all this, I thought she hated me.”

  Amber laughed. “She acts tough, but deep down she’s just a girly girl in love.”

  Wait a minute, why are they saying I like him? I thought he was supposed to have a crush on me.

  Slowly at first, then more rapidly, the wheels started turning in my brain: the strange phone call I overheard at Hero’s house; the loud, oddly theatrical conversation at TSB. Amber needed an introduction to Alistair Drake. Hero needed a chaperone. PJ wanted to get Claudio and Hero hooked up so he could have some peace. All they had to do for everyone to get what they wanted was hook me up with Ben. Suddenly, the unexpected truce between the virgin and the whore made sense.

  That e-mail. Oh, God. Me and my stupid vocabulary.

  I jumped up from the toilet, forgetting to flush. I could feel all the blood in my body rushing to my face. I looked in the mirror and was horrified by what I saw: a beet red girl with two long, stringy, wet braids. How could I have been so stupid? Ben never liked me—it was all a practical joke. I’d been too idiotic to recognize that the good old virgin-whore crew had set me up.

  I washed my hands in a hurry and considered my next move. I couldn’t cower in there forever, but I couldn’t face them either. It was at least two miles to my house, and even if I could sneak my board from Amber’s car without anyone noticing, I’d feel pretty weird skating all that way wearing nothing but a Free Willy towel over damp underwear. I’d have to just go out there, put my clothes on, and leave. If they thought it was weird, so be it. I wasn’t going to speak to any of them for as long as I lived anyway, so if it was awkward now, that was just too bad.

  I marched outside, looking straight ahead. I think they must have sensed something was wrong immediately, because their laughter and chatter died away as soon as they saw me. I made my way mechanically to the pile of clothes we’d left in the far corner of the yard, yanked on my shorts, and pulled my tank top over my head. I could still feel my face burning, but I didn’t care. There was no point in keeping up appearances, since I’d already been completely and utterly humiliated.

  “Hey,” Amber said quietly as she sauntered up to me. “What’s up?”

  “I’m going.” I bent down to tie my shoes. “See you.”

  “Hold on—why?”

  “Not my scene.” I finished tying my shoes and stood up straight. “Later.” I started for the back gate, but she grabbed my arm.

  “Whoa, Geena, slow down. What’s wrong?”

  I looked her in the eye. “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Set me up.” We were speaking in low voices now, but the others were so quiet over by the pool, they might have been able to hear. I glanced at them over Amber’s shoulder and saw that PJ, Claudio, and Ben were all trying to be cool, like they weren’t listening, but Hero was trotting toward us in her Coca-Cola towel, her face scrunched into a scowl of concern.

  “What are you talking about?” Amber asked. “Nobody set you—”

  “I heard you, okay? He never even liked me. It’s all just a joke.”

  Hero reached us just then, pink and upset. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head. “You guys just stay here, have fun, talk about me all you want. I’ve been knifed in the back before. I can handle it.”

  Amber made an impatient sound, but Hero’s eyes immediately brimmed with tears. “Geebs, we did it out of love. Really.”

  Amber glared at her.

  I laughed, but it was a hard, unfriendly sound. “If this is what it means to be loved, I can do without, thanks.”

  With that I turned on my heel and made for the gate.

  I think I’d been skating for about five minutes when I heard someone running up behind me. The sun was scorching, and I knew I was getting so sunburned I’d peel like an egg later. I was hot and humiliated and in no mood for company. I figured it was probably Hero—Amber wouldn’t run if there was a pack of rabid dogs on her heels. I spun around, ready to tell my traitorous cuz that I was a big girl and didn’t need an escort, thanks, when I found myself face-to-face with Ben Bettaglia.

  He was glazed in sweat, breathing hard. The sight of him brought back the sting of my embarrassment, and I planted my fists on my hips. “What are you doing?” My tone was ice cold
.

  “Can we talk?” He bent over slightly, hands on his knees, still panting, and looked up at me with those big brown eyes.

  “I don’t know. Are you capable? You seem to be having trouble breathing.”

  He chuckled, still a little breathless. “I cycle seven days a week, but running kills me. I should do it more often.” When he recovered, I kicked my board into my hands and he fell into step beside me. We walked in silence for a long moment, the sun in our eyes. Finally, he said, “Looks like our friends played a little joke on us.”

  “More like my friends played a joke on me,” I said pointedly.

  “Not exactly. After you left, I got them to fess up. They were all in on it together. Claudio and PJ agreed to tell me you were—you know, into me—while Amber and Hero worked on you.” He spread his palms out. “We were both had, I guess.”

  I snorted. “Some friends.”

  “Yeah, I know. They suck.”

  We plodded along for another minute. A cyclist whizzed past, and Ben followed him with his eyes. “Nice toe clips,” he mumbled.

  “Sorry?”

  “Oh, nothing, I just . . .” He trailed off. When he spoke again, his words came out all in a rush; it reminded me of that time in English when we had to recite sonnets, and Ben raced through his so quickly it sounded like one extremely long word. “What-are-you-doing-next-Saturday?”

  “Saturday? It’s Hero’s party.” I started chewing on the tip of my braid. It’s a disgusting habit, I know, but when I get nervous, it calms me down.

  “Oh, yeah, I got an invitation. It sounds . . . fancy.”

  I nodded. “She’s going a little crazy with it.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while. “Are-you-going-with-anyone?” he blurted at last.

  “No.”

  “You want to go?”

  I tried to get a good look at his eyes, to see what he was up to, but he was staring fixedly at the sidewalk. I stopped walking. “Is this another trick? ’Cause you know, fool me once—”

  He spun around to face me and his expression was so surprised, so sincere, it stopped me mid-sentence. His hair was sticking up all funny from the pool and his bony knees were poking out of his wrinkled, baggy shorts, and suddenly I knew he wasn’t playing me. He wanted me to go with him to Hero’s party, and even if everything up until then had been a complete joke, nothing could change the look on his face right now.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go with you. Or, you know, meet you there, anyway. If you pick me up, Mom’ll whip out the baby pictures.”

  He looked relieved. “Sure. That’s cool. We can meet there.”

  I fiddled with my board, picking at the SANTA CRUZ sticker. “Did you, um . . .get my e-mail?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled with just his eyes. “Bettaglified. Interesting. I wonder if I’m Sloanified.”

  Before I could think too hard about that one, a distraction appeared. Monty Styles, a senior who had supposedly gotten not one but three girls pregnant, chose that moment to drive by in his souped-up Honda Civic. The car was packed with barely pubescent girls sporting big hair, and hip-hop was blasting from the windows. They all screamed at us for no apparent reason, their hoots rolling across the perfectly manicured lawns. We both just sort of grinned at them, unsure of what else to do.

  When the bass was no longer rattling inside our ribs, Ben did something bizarre. He grabbed my shoulders, pulled me to him, and kissed me. The bright world of summer disappeared, and I was dragged headfirst into a vortex of lips and (ohmygod!) tongues. It reminded me of this time when I got pummeled by a wave in Santa Cruz; one minute it was just me and the pelicans and the blue sky, the next I was being yanked by the hair this way and that, lost in a world of frenzied bubbles and saltwater swirling in all directions.

  When we finally came up for air, I could hardly believe we were still surrounded by perfect green squares of emerald lawn and bland, expensive houses. I half expected us to find ourselves on another planet.

  Ben was staring at me intently, asking me questions with his eyes I couldn’t quite translate, let alone answer. I shivered a little, even though it was 100 degrees out.

  “Are you cold?” he asked in a whisper, running his hand lightly along my arm.

  I looked down and saw a long trail of goose bumps stretching from my shoulder to my wrist. Worse, my nipples were standing at attention, just like they had in the frozen food aisle. My body is so disloyal. “I guess I am. Probably ’cause my underwear’s all wet.”

  The second it was out of my mouth, I cringed.

  “You know—from the pool,” I amended, but it was too late.

  “Yeah,” he smirked. “Sure, Sloane. From the pool. That’s what they all say.”

  I turned around and started skating away from him.

  “I’ll see you Saturday,” he called after me.

  I just raised my hand in a wave without turning around and veered right. There was a hill there just waiting for me to bomb. My whole body was buzzing; thoughts tumbled crazily around inside my brain. I needed to feel the force of gravity, to tuck into a low crouch and listen to the air whistling past my ears; otherwise, I might just float off into the cloudless sky with pure, buoyant joy.

  Sunday, July 27

  10:20 A.M.

  Hero and Amber called all last night and this morning. My mom keeps asking, “What is it, babe? Why won’t you talk?” I just told her it was personal and sequestered myself in my room.

  I don’t know what to think. My cousin and my best friend totally lied to me.

  Ben Bettaglia, my rival since the fifth grade, kissed me.

  Sometimes, a girl just has to dive under the duvet and regroup.

  8:30 P.M.

  After hiding in my room most of the day, I heard a knock on my door—a delicate tapping sound that somehow penetrated the folds of my bedspread. Fifty bucks said those were Hero’s tiny, French-manicured fingers out there.

  “Yeah?” I called from under the covers.

  Sure enough, Hero said, “Let me in, Geebs.”

  I flung the comforter off of me and bellowed, “Go away, Judas!”

  “Please?”

  “Traitor!”

  There was a pause. It lasted so long I almost wondered if she’d retreated on tiptoe, but then her small, clear voice said, “I’m coming in.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  I yanked the comforter back over my head. There was no lock on my door—my mother, who unfortunately models herself after Mussolini on issues of personal privacy, won’t allow it. I pressed my face flat against the sheets and listened as Hero entered my room. Boy, she had some nerve. I felt her weight (what there was of it) pressing into my side of the bed. I rolled away.

  “Geena, I’m sorry. Really, I am.” She paused, but I didn’t respond. “It was selfish and wrong, but I didn’t think you’d get hurt.”

  I threw the duvet off so suddenly, she shrank away from me, looking terrified. “Oh, really? You didn’t think it would hurt, discovering that my best friend and my cousin tricked me into believing a boy actually likes me?”

  Hero grabbed my hand with a pleading look. “We thought you’d be cute together. All you needed was a little nudge.”

  “A nudge? This is not a nudge. This is tactical warfare.”

  I heard Mom talking to someone in the hallway, their voices low. Then there was another knock at my bedroom door. I clutched my forehead. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me,” Amber said.

  “Come on in,” I called, “we’re just reviewing Operation Disgrace Geena Sloane.”

  Amber closed the door behind her and leaned against it. “Wow,” she said. “You look terrible.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. “You look like the girl who sold me down the river.”

  She crossed the room and flounced onto the bed. “Don’t be so melodramatic,” she said. “There’s no damage done.”

  “Says you.”

  Amber took out her
lip gloss and applied a thick coat. “Geena, you know perfectly well that our plan worked. You like Ben, Ben likes you, we all live happily ever after.”

  “And I suppose you were only thinking of me, huh? Not of Alistair Drake, for example.” I let that statement hang there, watching them squirm.

  “How’d you know about that?” Hero asked.

  Amber shot her a hostile look. “Ever try denying an accusation, Hero?”

  “I have my ways,” I said, hoping to sound mysterious and knowing.

  “The end result,” Amber said, “is the best of all worlds. You get Ben, Hero gets Claudio, and I get an introduction to Alistair. Is that really so awful? It’s win-win-win.”

  I considered this a moment. “How can I ever trust you, though?”

  “Trust is overrated. Trust too much, you’re just naïve. Valuable lesson in the ways of the world.” Seeing I wasn’t completely convinced, she tried another angle. Grabbing Hero’s hand, she added, “Bonus points: Conspiring has made us friends. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Hero looked at her hand in Amber’s like she wasn’t sure how it had gotten there, but then she pasted on an unconvincing After-School-Special look of sisterly affection.

  I shook my head. “You guys are too much, you know that?”

  Amber leaned toward me with a Cheshire cat grin. “You know you love us.”

  Thursday, July 31

  2:05 P.M.

  All morning at TSB, I had to endure Hero obsessing about how to wear her hair on Saturday. She had this magazine filled with nothing but hairstyles, most of which looked painfully absurd. Also, Hero’s hair is so baby fine and straight, there really isn’t much she can do with it. I mean, it’s beautiful, but it doesn’t respond well to an onslaught of products. Unfortunately, this brand of logic has not yet penetrated the thick, pink atmosphere of Planet Hero.

  “Do you like this one?” She pointed at a picture of a girl with masses of springy black ringlets piled high on her head.

  “It’s okay.” How she was going to manage that one was beyond me, but I knew it was pointless to say so.