Handcuffs (10 page)

That’s the last entry. Kandykat typed it four minutes ago.

I minimize Marion’s poisonous bitchfest and put my head down on my arms. I would love to punch Marion in her smug face, but she and I both know that ice princesses don’t fight using their fists. She and Paige gave me that stupid nickname years ago. She knows I can’t do anything to her, even though I’m so mad and frustrated that tears are building up. My eyes feel grainy and weird. I blink a few times, trying to convince myself that there were no tears to begin with. I begin to type.

Every time I look at her lame blog she’s saying something about me and it makes me feel like throwing up. But throwing up won’t help anything. The one thing I know about Marion is, the best way to get to her is through her brother, those two are tight. And the one thing I know about Kyle is, he has one major weakness, and it’s this gorgeous blonde with no heart. Paige Prescott (Thompson). It will totally freak Marion out if I can prove to the world that Kyle is still obsessed with my sister, and I know he is because he drives past our house several times every day. I’ve seen him.

I navigate the Internet on autopilot until I find a free anonymous e-mail site that is truly anonymous, no AOL screen name to trace it back to. Then I hit the notebook icon. Raye and I played some Internet pranks last year, just messing around with some of Marion Henessy’s blog disciples. Raye finally decided it was immature so we stopped, but the anonymity was kind of a rush. I didn’t want to look immature, but I didn’t really want to stop, either. There’s a link directly on Kyle Henessy’s name, where he commented on the blog. It takes me to a Write Mail page. I title my message
Paigey Waigey
and the text part is pretty simple:

:how much would you pay for pics of Paige in a bikini?
How about naked?:

I don’t put my siggy on it, of course. After I hit Send, I pop open my Pepsi and stick a straw in the can. It’s doing that fizzy bubbling action that only a canned soft drink will do, and it stings the back of my throat as I suck it down. As far as I can tell, I’m providing a public service, keeping a pervert off the streets and glued to his computer screen. I do have swimsuit shots of Paige, right here on this computer.

I take a deep breath. I feel like I could have a heart attack right this second. From throwing up to a heart attack. Marion’s blog is going to find a way to kill me, unless I kill it first.

I check the pictures from Florida. They are in a folder on my desktop. I had to help Mom send them to my grandma after our last vacation to visit her. It would be truly amazing if Kyle got any more jazzed up about those photos than Paige herself. They’re pretty good shots. The angle makes her legs look like a runway model’s, impossibly long and slender. The idea of that pimply nerd-freak getting himself all lathered up over them is kind of amusing, and if Paige knew he was looking at her, she would vomit until she died.

Everyone thinks Paige was so damn scared of Kyle Henessy, but I know the truth. She wasn’t scared, she was disgusted. She was embarrassed that he followed her around everywhere.

I think of all the things Marion has said, rumors that she’s started about me, the way she scrunches up her face when she sees me like something smells bad. I think about Kyle making my family afraid in their own home and about Paige acting like she’s the queen of the world, talking on and on about herself while my mother hangs on every word. It’s enough to fill my eyes with tears, this anger. If I were a volcano, I’d be, I’d just . . . I put my head in my hands and breathe in and out slowly. I’m not used to feeling like this.

Revenge on Kyle, Marion, and, in a roundabout way, my sister at the same time. In exchange for the pics I’ll get him to do something about his sister’s blog. Destroy it. Take it down. Whatever you do to kill a blog. It’s the center of her world, so without that blog, Marion Henessy will be nothing. As I typed the anger drained out of me and now I feel strangely calm.

A few hours later I hear the garage door creaking open and hear my parents talking as they walk in through the kitchen. I hear the TV come on. Don’t they realize Preston has been watching TV almost all day? He turned it on right after he helped me clean up after lunch and has been watching most of the afternoon. I don’t think it’s good for him to watch TV all day, but it’s hard to keep up with him when he isn’t in front of the television. I worry about this, sometimes, when there aren’t a million other things to worry about. I sit on my canopy bed, scrunch up my knees under my chin, and try not to think about anything. Tomorrow is the last day of Christmas vacation.

14

I
wake up freezing, so I know my parents are gone. They have this timer on the heat that turns it down whenever we’re not home. Only it isn’t programmed to know I’m still on Christmas break. At least I know I’m alone in the house. Preston has ADHD camp today, which isn’t a camp at all, just a program held at his school for part of the day where ultrahyper kids run around wearing helmets. It’s nice to get a break from making grilled cheese sandwiches, but kind of lonely too. My family is kind of ignoring me this week. They don’t want to think about me, don’t want to see me, and I think it’s best to lie low. We’ll be back to family dinners and having intrusive conversations once school’s back in session and we get our schedules ironed out. Once the thing that they witnessed fades from their minds and they’re able to see me as just me again, without the handcuffs.

I put on a sweatshirt over my pajamas. Tie my robe on over the bulk of the sweatshirt and head down to adjust the thermostat. Seems like a good idea to grab a yogurt smoothie while I’m downstairs, and as long as I’m in the kitchen I kind of slide a certain drawer out. No luck, my cell is gone, probably in Mom’s purse. Three days ago I snuck downstairs and put it back in the junk drawer, unwilling to test my luck any further. Stealing it had been useless because I didn’t have the nerve to call him, no matter how bad I wanted to. I was like some old-fashioned girl, the kind my parents wanted when Paige was in fifth grade and they kept telling her not to call boys, that she should wait for them to call her. By the time she hit puberty Mom and Dad had given up on that notion. But somehow, even though I went to where his number was stored, I couldn’t make myself push the button. So the possession of the phone was not worth the risk of having stolen it. My parents are still mad and hurt and disappointed, but who knows when they might relent and let me out of the house for good behavior? I am hopeful but not overly optimistic.

I grab the regular phone, which is resting neatly in its cradle, where the phone has remained, when not in use, since Paige moved out. When she lived here, you would have to hit the Find Handset key every time you wanted to order a pizza or something, and half the time the battery would be dead.

I turn it on and get a dial tone, but when I start to dial nothing happens. Finally, I hit Mom’s work on the speed dial and it goes to a recorded message. “This number has been set to receive calls only; no outgoing calls can be made from this number.” I didn’t even know this phone could do that! It’s my rotten luck to have a dad who reads every single page of every instruction manual. He can even call from his cell and enter a code to get all of his messages. Too bad all that instruction reading didn’t help him keep his upper-management job. He was in charge of telling people where to take semi trucks or something. All I know is he was always calculating supply orders and gas mileage on big spreadsheets, then writing reports that he e-mailed to someone named Harold.

What happens if I have an emergency and need to call 911? What happens if I desperately need to get in touch with Raye? What happens if I need a Hawaiian pizza? I feel all deflated, like the balloon that Preston brought home from the infamous birthday party. It’s a green balloon that’s been losing helium all week; now it just droops in the corner of his room, saggy and pathetic. I am so expendable that my parents don’t even care if I die. I sigh, knowing I’m being silly. But it is obvious that they don’t care if I get hungry for pizza and can’t get it. I mean, I know we can’t afford pizza, but if I were
starving . . .
I guess the computer is now my only connection with the outside world. I feel like a prisoner. I head upstairs to take a look.

My in-box contains a long message from Raye detailing all of her problems with Josh and why she isn’t sure if she wants a long-term relationship with someone who doesn’t go to school with us. It’s hard to rub your ex’s nose in your newfound happiness if he doesn’t even know you have a fabulous new boyfriend. As a single grounded person I can’t offer much in the way of advice. And then there’s the message I’ve been waiting for. Not just one, but three of them, all neatly in a row. For a minute I’m scared to open them.

Message one

Subject:
parker, please

Message: I

Message two

Subject:
Parker, Please

Message: Need

Message three

Subject:
PARKER, PLEASE

Message: You

I Need You.
Yeah, my heart soars when I read this, but it’s too bad that suddenly I can’t get Kandace Freemont out of my head.
It was amazing,
huh? I can imagine. I don’t want to, but I can’t help it. Kandace Freemont has a body any girl would envy, and the evidence shows that guys aren’t too reluctant to pant over her, to use her, to . . .

Trying to shut off the imagination. The anger stays for several minutes, because it’s always there, but then the longing for him comes back even stronger, and I put the anger away, push it deep down and ignore it.

Still ignoring the fact that I have feelings (I do this sometimes, try to shut them off), I minimize his e-mail and check the dummy account I set up last night and find this message from Uberdork Kyle.

Who is this?

I type in
your worst enemy
and hit Send. Melodramatic, I know, but hey, when you play silly mind games you have to play them stupidly, right? I stare at the screen—
your mail has been sent
—feeling dumb and shaky. Why am I doing this? I didn’t really think he would even respond, and suddenly I want to take the whole thing back.

There is yet another e-mail from Raye in my in-box. She’s all confused because she says she likes this Josh guy about half as much as she liked Ian. I know how she feels. I doubt I’ll find anyone I like a fraction of the amount I like my ex, and yet he’s an ex. What’s wrong with me?

The phone rings and I jump. Incoming calls seem to be working, which can only be good, right? Caller ID says
Unknown,
but I’m pretty desperate for someone to talk to, so I hit Talk and say, “Hello?”

“Mrs. Prescott? This is Albert at the electric company.”

“Um,” I say, confused. Why would the electric company be calling us?

“If you remember, Mrs. Prescott, you told me last week that you would be sending half of your past-due balance. This was on December twenty-second. You said right after Christmas, do you remember this?”

“Um . . .”

“Mrs. Prescott, your account is seriously overdue. If you don’t want us to shut off your utilities you will have to pay part of this bill.”

“My mom isn’t home right now.” I want to get this guy off my phone now, I do not want to talk to him or hear about this at all.

“What?”

“My mom isn’t here.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that to begin with?”

“I tried to tell—”
Click.
I put the phone back on the charger and sit down at the kitchen table; then I get up, run upstairs for a pair of socks and back downstairs to put the thermostat back on freezing. My hand is still on the thermostat when I see the Volkswagen pull up. Four years old and it’s still a gorgeous car. I hope Paigey-poo isn’t going to try to get me to share my feelings again.

The doorbell rings. She’s always forgetting keys and things. I go to the door and find West there, not Paige. I feel relief that I’m not going to be interrogated, followed by irritation. What does he want?

“Hi, West.”

“Hey, Parker.” He pushes past me and goes straight for the kitchen. I follow him, curling up my toes as we go over the cold, cold tiles in the hall.

“Something wrong with your heater?”

“No, it’s on a timer. It goes off when nobody’s home.”

“Oh. Where’s the ketchup?”

“What?” He came here for ketchup?

“I’m making hamburgers for lunch and I need ketchup and cheese slices.”

“Cheeseburgers, you mean.” He gives me a kind of mad look. “I mean, if you put cheese on them, they’ll be cheeseburgers, technically, not hamburgers.” This clarification does not make him any friendlier. In fact, he looks downright pissed. I lean into the fridge and pull a big plastic Heinz bottle from behind a gallon of milk. “Here’s the ketchup. Are you gonna just take it?”

“No. I’m going to pour some in my hand and rush home to put it on my
ham
burger.” Somebody should tell him that to be sarcastic you have to say something that makes sense. Duh. He’s so irritating and I’m not in a good mood. That phone call has me feeling more worried than usual about our money situation, and now dumb inconsiderate West is stealing all our food.