Crazy in Love

Table of Contents

 

Nicole is still blocking my path. “You need to talk to Star, Mary Jane. You know she and Jackson are going together.”

I smile at Nicole. I could nod and be done with this. That’s what I
should
do, what
Plain Jane
in my head would very likely tell me to do if she were talking to me. But taking the easy way out is not
M.J.
’s style. And before I can stop her voice, I’m echoing it: “I know Star and Jackson have been going out, Nicole.
You
know they’ve been going out. Jackson must know it too, right? Star certainly knows this, at least most of the time, when her
interests
don’t lie elsewhere and she’s not going out with someone else.”

Nicole starts to interrupt, but I won’t let her.

“So if it’s true love and all,” I continue with impeccable logic, “what are you girls so worried about?”

I move around her and take two steps before she wheels on me and shouts, “Just don’t forget the way things are around here!” This is tree talk. To Nicole, Star hangs at the top of The Girls’ family tree. She is our leader, our guide, the most powerful Girl. If Star decides to claim one guy as hers, with half a dozen guys on the side, then those of us on the lower branches should just go along with it.

I take a deep breath, then turn back to face her. “And you, Nicole, don’t forget that the way things are doesn’t mean it’s the way things are meant to be.”

Sarra Manning

Lauren Myracle

Amy Goldman Koss

Sarah Dessen

Sarra Manning

Sarah Dessen

Joan Bauer

Joan Bauer

SPEAK
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First published in the United States of America by Dutton Children’s Books,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007
Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008

Copyright © Dandi Daley Mackall, 2007 All rights reserved

eISBN : 978-1-4406-3074-3

CIP Data is available.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume
any responsibility for author or third party Web sites or their content.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1

Okay, so I do
hear voices in my head, but they’re all mine. And before you go dialing Psychiatrists-R-Us, consider the fact that I’m going to need all the help I can get just to have a fingers-crossed, fighting chance of getting through today.

My senior year was not supposed to start out like this. Not after the best summer ever, hanging with my gal pals and dreaming about being totally free next year when we’d all sail away to college but keep in touch with each other and still be us forever and always: The Girls.

I admit that I had my doubts about the greatness of the summer when Alicia, my all-time best friend, left early for college. But Cassie and Jessica and I visited nine college campuses, including fraternity rows and mixed dorms, even though Cassie and I had already settled on Illinois State University. We exhausted every possible joke connected with the fact that our university is located in
Normal,
Illinois, which means we’ll be meeting Normal guys and dabbling in Normal nightlife, and having Normal love affairs.

On other long summer days Cassie and I met up with Jessica and Samantha to sun at Jessica’s pool because, cancer or no cancer, tan fat looks better than white fat. On occasion, Nicole and Star and Company would meet us at the mall. We’d hook up with some of the guys and see a crummy summer movie half a dozen times just to make fun of it or drive up to Six Flags Great America and flirt shamelessly with Bugs and Daffy and try to get them to fight over us.

So how did I get from that all-American summer to this soap-opera-worthy mess?

“Mary Jane!” Mom yells up the stairs like a normal person would yell only in the event of a life-threatening fire. “Your
fah
-ther and I need to talk with you.”

Mom only calls Dad my “
fah-
ther” when she wants to conjure up images of 1950s head-of-the-household, better-be-real-scared-of-me men. Although she also calls my
fah-
ther “Tom,” “Thomas,” “your dad,” and “Daddy,” according the need of the moment, she has only one name for me, her younger daughter.

Mary Jane. Like the shoes, which I wouldn’t wear if they were the last foot-covering on a desert island.

I told you the voices in my head are mine. But I blame my mother for encouraging
Plain Jane
to take up residence in my head. Like the shoes that bear my name,
Plain Jane
is not so much plain as timeless, classic, loved by mothers everywhere, a good investment, a good bet, a good buy . . . and
so
not fun.

I try very hard not to listen to her.

“Now, Mary Jane!” screams my mother.

“Coming, Mom!” I shout, reaching for my red lipstick. But then I hear
Plain Jane
in my head, reminding me that my mother hates red lipstick and says it makes me look like one of those street people, and she’s not talking about mimes.

In spite of myself, I put down the Flame Red tube and apply wholesome lip gloss to my lips. I have nice lips, if I do say so myself. Very kissable, says
M.J
.
(another voice in my crowded head, a voice that can only be described as sexy).
Plain Jane
, on the other hand, hates my lips. She says they do not go with my eyes, which are small and brown and ordinary, the eye color of three-quarters of the earth’s inhabitants.
Plain Jane
never misses an opportunity to point out my plainness, and she adds that I should simply be thankful for the good vision provided by my plain eyes.
M.J
.
counters that these eyes are intense, sexy even.

Before Mom can shout again, I dash from the bathroom back to my bedroom and grab my pack, in case I need to make a fast getaway.

I think about sliding down the banister, but
Plain Jane
’s voice is shouting that normal people do not slide down banisters, and I go with her voice, since this battle is with the rents. They love
Plain Jane
.

They’re in the kitchen, sitting together at the table. If my parents belonged to someone else, I’d probably think they were nice-looking, for middle-aged rents. Dad has all of his hair, which is brown and matches his eyes. And mine. And three-quarters of the known world’s. The fact that he isn’t balding is a point of pride for him, since his younger brother, my Uncle Jim, has just about lost all his hair. Dad’s in pretty good shape for a lawyer. And he doesn’t have the stereotypical lawyer personality. He doesn’t even hate lawyer jokes, although I’m not always sure he
gets
them.

Mom is small, five feet two, to Dad’s six-two, with me taking the middle at five-eight. She’s blonde, blue-eyed, and bubbly, in a sincere way. If they have ugly secret lives, I don’t know about them yet. But I’m only seventeen.

“Have a seat, Mary Jane,” Dad says. Even now, when I know he’s been up all night obsessing about me, his voice is warm, like a radio announcer’s before the game.

I sit. As always, Mom has set the table for breakfast, even though I skip it half the time because I’m running late. I pour Grape-Nuts into my bowl, hoping to ease the tension with the appearance of normality and healthy bits of grain.

Mom obviously can’t take the waiting anymore. “Mary Jane,” she begins, and her disappointment is so thick in only those two words that, in spite of myself, I feel guilty. I know this disappointment. It’s like a second skin to me, a fur coat in the dead of summer.

Throughout my colorful past, the
Plain Jane
in my head has arranged my rents’ disappointment into words of various patterns:
“After all they’ve done for you, how can you do this to them?” “Why can’t you think of someone besides yourself?” “You owe them everything, and all they ask is that you live by their rules. What is wrong with you?”

Mom glances at Dad to get the okay. Gets it. Goes on. “Honey, we heard you come in last night.”

“Sorry,” I say, before thinking enough. “I tried to be quiet. I didn’t mean to wake you.” This is what the
M.J.
in my head was saying, and I knew better than to listen to her.

“You know good and well that’s not the point,” Dad says, his voice firmer now. He and
M.J.
are seldom on the same side. They know how to push each other’s buttons. “Let’s not play games, okay? I thought we’d gotten over this phase.”

"Sorry,” I say, pouring the milk and trying hard to tune out the smart aleck in my head. “I know. It was late.”

“One a.m.,” Mom helpfully supplies.

“School-night curfew is still ten unless you check with us first,” Dad reminds me. “Your mother and I were very worried about you.”

“I called,” I offer. “Did you get the message?”

“We called, too,” Mom says. “Your cell was off.”

M.J
.
is whispering a dozen excuses to me, just like that. She’s so good.
You called my cell? Really? I have to remember to plug in that phone every night.
Or,
Are you sure you called the right number? I didn’t get a message.
Or,
One of the kids I was with needed to call her parents, and they talked forever.