Dessert First (5 page)

Sara:
geez evan they were kidding.

Lauren:
Partly
.

Right,
I posted.
You can say anything as long as you say ‘kidding' afterward. Even if you can't capitalize or punctuate and don't have a personality.

Jenna:
See,
Kat dishes 2.
Crap. I'd posted that message as Kat, not Cipher.

Lauren:
Totally
,
but not funny.

Sara:
Yah don't take the pity friend thing 2 far evan.

Evan:
I'm unfriending Sara and Jenna and Lauren along with Tracie and Ashley. Forever.

Wow. Had he actually done it? There were no more comments from any of the five Tracies. I went to Evan's timeline, and scrolled through his immense list of Facebook friends. It no longer included any of the Tracies—no Tracie, Ashley, Sara, Lauren, or Jenna. Their snark had been fairly mild, to earn a lifetime unfriending. Maybe Evan wanted me to know he was on my side, no matter what. I sat there in a long pause of happy-hopeful stunned. I picked up the iPad, because this might get mushy. As Cipher, I commented.
You are also my hero. Thanks for standing up to those girls for Kat. (*Cipher tucks away her poisonous barbs and wishes she could give Evan a close tentacle hug. He is great.*)

Evan sent back a private Facebook message to Cipher,
Or maybe someday I could work my way up to at least holding your hand?

I frowned at the computer screen. Holding hands with Cipher, not the real me, Kat.
With my tentacles
,
I messaged back as Cipher,
you'd get covered with sucker marks. Sucker.
Even my flirts, as Cipher, had a drive-by bite to them.

If you also had poisonous fangs
, he sent back, y
ou'd fit right in with some of the girls at my school.

I hoped he was talking about Tracie and her followers, not me.
Darn. You're already marked with girl wounds? Aren't there any nice girls at your school?

Thoroughly wounded. There is one great girl, though, who I'm probably crazy about.

For about ten seconds, I went to fantasy dream-park land, and imagined Evan meant me, Kat. But it was a scary topic, while I was flirting with him as Cipher—especially given how into Tracie he'd been last year. I almost certainly did not want to hear him gush about some other random girl at school he liked.
Humph. Skinnyboy, free advice: Never tell a girl you're flirting with that you're crazy about another girl. Tacky.

Maybe I'm not crazy about another girl. Maybe I'm crazy about you.

Now I got annoyed. It was always so heart-bending when I flirted with Evan as Cipher. What I really wanted was for him to like me as Kat, not go into full-court flirt with Cipher, an imaginary girl he'd never met.
Yeah, right. Me with the poisonous tentacles. Then you're crazy, period. And I don't date the deranged. TTFN, Cipher.
(Ta-ta for now. And, technically, that was (1) game, (2) set, and (3) match, as a drive-by flirt.)

There was a ding of an incoming email. I had Cipher's email open in a different window on the monitor. I clicked over. The new message was from Drowningirl.

Can't take it anymore. On top of everything, BFH is being a total bitch
.

BFH is Drowningirl's sister, Brat From Hell. Since my sister Rachel also mostly behaves like a bitch from hell, Drowningirl and I have a lot in common.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change
, Drowningirl went on.
And the self-control not to kill BFH or myself.

As Cipher, I emailed back and forth with her for twenty minutes, trying to type-talk her down from the ceiling, or maybe even the ledge. She sent a poem.

Drowningirl finally signed off with
be well
, promising to email again later in the week. I signed off too, as Cipher with
1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433)
. Then, back in my real world identity of Kat, I typed Evan a private message:
Thanks for standing up to the Tracies for me
, less flirty than what I'd sent as Cipher.

I sat, giving the computer monitor a kind of dreamy gaze. I was worried about Drowningirl, but had the warm tingly feeling that Evan—even if just out of pity—had my back. That tingly feeling faded as I thought about the Tracies. They'd been unfriended, by hot, popular awesome musician Evan, for lowly me. Somehow, they'd make me pay.

• • •

I hadn't managed to get any actual homework done, so the next morning I peeled off the label from my Yoplait container at breakfast, blotted off the pink strawberry yogurt spillover glop, and stapled that label to a sheet of binder paper. I wrote my name at the top, with the heading
Culture Française
.

In afternoon French class, I set it on Mme Yves' desk. “
Voilà!
”

Mme Yves even looks French—dark-haired and skinny, wearing a belted black dress that made her look like she was headed to a cocktail party instead of serving her latest nine-month sentence with bored high school students. “
Quelle
?
” She knitted her brows.

How do you say stroke of genius in French? “
Un coup de brillance
!
” I announced. “
Un bon idée, n'est pas
?
”

“
C'est quoi?
”

I gave up on French entirely for the rest. I needed to sell this. “Yogurt is cultured milk. And Yoplait is a French name. And the wrapper is thin, a symbol of shallow American consumer culture.” I gave her what I hoped was a winning smile. “By comparison.”

She crossed her arms and frowned.

“See,” I babbled on. “You're essentially French, Mme Y.” Although, technically, she was born in Montreal. “And you're looking down on the wrapper right now—that's exactly how the French view American culture and our limited understanding of theirs.”

“
Je suis Canadienne
.” She shook her head at my little offering. “
Une grande difference
.”

She lifted the paper, holding it disdainfully with two fingers as if it were still dripping pink yogurt blobs, and dropped it in the trash. “
Zero.
” She pronounced the no credit—or, I guess
pas de credite
—the French way, all gargled in the back of the throat with derision.

Well,
merde.

Tracie was scowling at me from her seat, like I was trying to deliberately wreck my grade, instead of desperately trying to save it. “
Imbécile,
I'll get you for this,” she whispered as I passed.

I stopped and leaned down like I had a secret to tell her. “
Merci, cochon égoïste avec le ballon
.” (Thanks, ball hog.)

She just smiled back, like she had already figured out some payback.

Great.

• • •

By that night, Beep looked like a zombie from one of his videogames. His lips were the ash-gray color of dust from a vacuum cleaner bag.

He'd spiked a fever of a hundred and three Fahrenheit. Even scarier: Beep, of all people, was too listless to play videogames.

They started an antibiotic drip and made the call to transfer Beep to the PICU. All the ICU beds were full, though, so they scurried around over there, figuring out what kid could be stabilized enough to move out to the step-down unit or the floor to make room.

Probably, when they put the Broviac line in Beep and flushed it with saline, they blew some germs into his chest vein, where there wasn't much immune system waiting, thanks to the blood-cancer. So now he had sepsis—a blood-system-wide bacterial infection. Before the hospital even got serious about poisoning Beep with chemo again, those little germs were spreading, trying to send him home early, in a bag.

It was 7
P.M.
, and I was visiting, in semi-useless hover mode, trying to keep Mom from destroying medical equipment as she bounced off walls. She called Dad, who—of course—was only now on his way from work.

“Hank!” She barked it with an urgency that made his name an accusation. “Should I threaten to sue, if they don't move Beep this minute?”

Right. This minute. They didn't have a bed to move him into.

I could hear Dad yelling at her, through the phone, even across the room. “
Never
threaten to sue. They're
already
paranoid because I'm a lawyer.”

Mom held the phone away from her ear and winced, he yelled so loud. Except when it involves things that cut into his work time, Dad usually lets Mom have her way, because otherwise she'd drive everyone crazy rethinking decisions. For once, though, Dad stood up to her. “Don't even use the word ‘sue' at a hospital, except as someone's name.”

“Mom,” I said, after Dad hung up on her. “Sit down, be quiet, and let the nurses do their job. Or I'm calling hospital security on you, before someone else does.” Even Beep looked over at that.

It's possible I was exaggerating, but I doubt it.

I was mostly out of it the day after they moved Beep to the PICU, from stress, worry, and lack of sleep. It had been 10
P.M.
when they'd finally gotten a bed for him, and even later when we got him settled. Then I'd had to take Muni and BART and then bicycle home, where I'd had trouble falling asleep.

I share second-period Algebra 2 with all five of the Tracies and three of the Tracie-Wannabes. While I yawned—even more than usual—there was whispering and giggling and glancing over when Ms. Clarke turned her back. Why? Giggling wouldn't be the news about my brother's returned cancer making the rounds. Tracie looked over at me with a satisfied smirk. Was she just trying to make me feel worried?

• • •

After fourth-period English, Evan met me at my locker. “You, uh, still want to eat lunch together?” He had his scrunched brown paper sack in hand, but for some reason was making eye contact with the locker below mine instead of with me.

“Of course.” After carpool that morning, Evan had asked if we could have lunch together. I'd jumped at that, a chance to go back to how things used to be, and a lot less lonely than the end of last year. But now Evan's shoulders were slumped, and he looked unhappy about it. I retrieved my sandwich and fruit from behind my books, with a sinking feeling. I followed him out toward our old spot by the tennis courts. Why did Evan look like he was shuffling to a funeral? “Why? You get a better offer?” It would be just like Tracie to invite him, trying to sink her hooks into him again.

“No. I thought you might not want to, now that you have a boyfriend.”

“What?” I stopped. We'd just gone out the back door into the concrete by the steps. Was this some joke? “Who?”

Evan turned around. “I heard you got back together with Curtis Warren—”

“Back? I've never
been
together with Curtis.” My mood exploded in a ball of anger. “Wait. You
believed
the slut-shaming fiction Curtis wrote about me?” That wonderfully detailed little note had circulated last year, just before Evan got together with Tracie and abandoned me the first time. Evan opened his mouth to say something, but I kept going. “He even made up half the
spellings.
”

“No!” Evan said. “'Course I didn't. But I heard you kissed him . . .”

I put my hands on my hips, one of them holding my now-squished lunch. “I did not—and will not ever—kiss Curtis Warren.” I was glaring at Evan so hard, it was amazing that his straight, perfect teeth didn't catch fire. “Who told you that?”

“Ashley said you got back togeth—”

“Ashley. Tracie's friend. Who hates me. Who is mad that you unfriended her and Tracie on Facebook. Who always does what Tracie tells her to do. Hello? She lies.”

“Oh,” Evan said, like this was the first time he'd thought of that. Guys. So dense. I don't know why we let them run anything when they grow up, let alone whole companies.

Great. This is just what I need. More talk about me and Curtis. “I hope you didn't pass on that wonderful rumor.”

“I'd never do that.”

“Excuse me?” I was breathing hard, and somehow my eyes were wet at the fresh memory of a sharp hurt. “You did. Last year.”

“What?” He gave me a blank stare.

“When you became your own wreck-my-life-media? When—better than telephone and television—the best way to get my snarky comments to everyone was tell-an-Evan?”

“Oh. Right.” His shoulders sank. “I don't know why Tracie passed those on—”

“That's what she does, Evan. Getting people excluded is the Tracies' team sport.”

“I'm sorry.” He looked miserable. “I didn't mean to mess up your life. I know you're mad at me.”

It wasn't just that. “I thought I could count on you.”

To be my friend. To be my BFF. Or maybe actual boyfriend. Or all of those. I'd thought I was important to Evan. More important, anyway, than holding hands or swapping spit with Tracie. Or even his constant flirts with online Cipher, who he didn't even know.

“You can.” Now he was making those big eyes at me. “Count on me.”

Humph. I shook my head, thinking about the stupid lies about me and Curtis Warren. “I'm probably the only slut-shamed girl in America who's never even been really kissed full on the lips.”

“You've never been kissed?”

“No, Evan,” I said tiredly. “Or anything. At least if you don't count a game of spin the bottle in sixth grade, which I don't, because it wasn't exactly romance. Once Curtis lunged at me with his tongue out. But if that counts as a human kiss, I'm dating outside my species.”