How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend (14 page)

We walked upstairs to my room. I would have been relieved, except I knew she wanted to talk to me about my date with Nathan, which—let's face it—was not going to be pretty. I mean, if Nathan hadn't told her how it went, then I was going to have to do it. And there is no good way to explain to your friend that the date she arranged for you ended with the guy comparing you to the mentally challenged.

I sat down on one end of my bed, and she sat down on the other. She forced a smile at me. “Well, they say, ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.' ”

“That's right,” I said.

“However, you may have noticed that they never say anything about hiding under a pool table and crawling across the restaurant on your hands and knees.”

“It didn't happen like that—”

She held up both hands to stop me. “It doesn't matter. It's all history now. We just have to move on and find someone who doesn't know Nathan, so they can't compare notes. That might be a little difficult, since from what I understand, rumors of your date are already making the rounds of Swain Academy.”

I put my hand to my forehead. My head suddenly hurt. “He told people about our date?”

“Giovanna, you let the guy know you'd been arrested for stealing dead frogs and then crawled underneath a pool table. You didn't think he'd tell people about it?”

I gulped and felt my face flush. “If he was a gentleman, he wouldn't have told—Jesse wouldn't have.”

“Well, you broke up with Jesse.”

Her statement hit me hard. I'd broken up with Jesse, and yet I suddenly realized that despite everything, I wanted him back. Forget loyalty. Forget this stupid election. I just wanted my boyfriend back.

Daphne reached over and momentarily put her hand over mine to get my attention. “It will all be fine. You just need some prep work for your next date. You know, a game plan of what to say and how to act.” She let out a sigh, but not one of resignation. This was the breath you let out before you tackled something huge. “I've gone about this matchmaker business all wrong. I've tried to set you up with guys I thought would be good for you. But I never found out what you're looking for. So let's start with that. We want to find someone who is absolutely compatible. So you tell me, what do you want in a guy?”

“Jesse,” I said.

“You want a guy like Jesse?”

“No, I want him. I want Jesse back.”

Daphne's lips twitched in frustration. “But I thought you were mad because he'd betrayed Dante's trust.”

“I am. I want him to be sorry when he comes back, but mostly I just want him back.”

“You want your ex-boyfriend . . .” Daphne tapped her fingers across my quilt.

I bit my lip, watching her expression change from frustration to doubt. Almost to herself she murmured, “That won't be easy.”

“But you told me you didn't think he was over me, because he doesn't want me to date other guys. So isn't there a way we could take the ex out of ex-boyfriend?”

“Hmmm.” Daphne stood up and turned around my room. She crossed her arms and looked, unseeing, at my window. I didn't say anything, because I didn't want to disturb her thought process.

Finally she turned back to me. “He'll have to think it's his idea. That's the thing about guys. They love a challenge. If you come crawling back to him, it's like admitting you aren't capable of doing better. He'll think you're a B-list girl. Then the only way to salvage his dignity—so he's not lumped together with all the guys who wouldn't have you—is to dump you right back. I mean, he's already got Bridget itching for an invitation to prom, and most guys think she's A-list.”

Without meaning to, I clutched the side of my quilt. The situation suddenly seemed very bleak. I mean, with probation, and now the pool table incident—exactly how far down in the alphabet had I fallen? I was probably languishing somewhere down by Q.

“Daphne, I'm not A-list material.”

Daphne let out a snort and waved one hand to dismiss my objection. “No one is, Giovanna. It's all perception. The trick is to make other people think you're A-list.”

“How do I do that?”

She sat down on the bed again, looking at me intently to emphasize her point. “Well, first off, you've got to think it yourself.”

“I'm supposed to act snobby?”

“No, not snobby. Snobby people might as well walk around with a sign that says, ‘Look at me—I'm trying to be A-list.' You have to like yourself, that's all. When you like yourself, you have confidence. Confidence is an A-list quality.”

“Confidence.” I sat up straighter to show her I was trying.

“And of course you'll need to go clothes shopping.”

“Shopping? What's wrong with my clothes?”

She tilted her head at me. “Nothing is wrong with them. They just could be more . . . right. We'll talk about your hair later.”

My hand automatically went to my head. “What's wrong with my hair?”

“Later,” she said.

It was suddenly hard to have confidence.

“And of course we'll have to set you up with some guys from Swain.”

Even the word
Swain
made me cringe. “But I just told you I want Jesse back—”

“Exactly,” she said. “And it's a well-known fact that nothing makes a girl more attractive to an ex-boyfriend than to see her with a new guy. It's that whole challenge thing. We'll find out where Jesse is going to be this week and make sure you're there too with a totally A-list guy.”

“Okay,” I said. I had no idea how to find out where Jesse would be, and only knew it wouldn't be at my house since Gabby had banished him, and I was still grounded. Right now Jesse was at Wilson's house, which I couldn't go to, even though my mind had made frequent stops there all evening.

I pictured Jesse sitting in the hot tub with Bridget. Bridget no doubt wore an A-list bikini on her double-D body, while both of them ate caviar on crackers shaped in the words “Vote for Wilson.”

A knock sounded on my door, then Charity's voice filtered in. “Giovanna, are you in there?”

“Yeah, come in. Daphne and I were just talking about . . .” I glanced over at Daphne, reluctant to say more. “Some stuff.”

Charity cracked open the door. “Daphne, Derek is acting bored, and I think he wants to leave. Giovanna, you need to get downstairs, because Rich and his friends are acting like idiots, and Dante isn't doing anything to stop them.”

Okay, great. What was I supposed to do about the three drunk guys my brother invited to the party? It should be his problem, not mine. Still, I trudged out of my room and down the stairs. If Gabby found drunk guys at our party, she'd probably veto any other parties for the duration of our teenage years.

Several more people had come. Mostly they were fringe kids, the ones who didn't fit in with any of the cliques at school. There were also more freshmen and a few foreign exchange students who probably didn't have enough of a grasp of the English language to understand anything either Dante or Wilson said about the election.

Rich, Brett, and Shane stood in the middle of the group re-enacting a scene from
The Matrix.
Or at least they tried. Mostly Rich fell down instead of dodging the imaginary bullets that Brett and Shane shot at him.

The foreign kids kept looking at those three, then talking among themselves. They probably wondered about the American party game that required guests to swoop around and then fall on the floor. They looked a little worried as they spoke to each other, like maybe next we'd ask them to perform in this strange ritual. I bet they all wrote some interesting letters back home this week.

I took hold of Dante's arm. “Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” he said. He didn't get to say much more before I dragged him into the kitchen.

Once there I let my gaze bore into him. “You've got to get rid of Rich, Brett, and Shane before Gabby comes downstairs to check on the party.”

Dante shrugged off my hand. “They're harmless.”

“She'll think they got drunk here. Remember how she gave us that big lecture about how serving alcohol to minors is illegal and how I can't afford to get in trouble with the law again?”

Dante rolled his eyes. Easy for him not to worry. He hadn't already imagined up a life in prison with a tiny cell, a rickety bunk bed, and a two-hundred-pound roommate who thrashed in her sleep.

“I can't just send them home,” he said. “They're wasted. They'll hit every telephone pole from here to the other side of Bickham.”

I waited for him to say more. He didn't. “So what were you planning? Letting them sleep it off on the living room floor? Gabby will love that.”

He held up both hands—the exact same gesture Grandma used before breaking into Italian. “Well, we can't take them home now. We can't leave our own party.”

“We?” I asked. “We?”

“Sure. After the party you can drive them home in their car. I'll follow you on my bike, so when you drop off their car I can take you back home.”

I stared at him. “You want me to get in a car with three drunk guys? Hello, I wouldn't trust those guys when they were sober.”

His tone turned impatient. “Fine. I'll ask Brandon or Stephen to do it.”

Well, that probably meant Dante would notice I'd sent them away. I hesitated, looking at the refreshments instead of my brother. “Oh, um, they already left.”

Dante tilted his head. “They left? Why?”

I couldn't lie about it. I knew he'd ask his friends about it later. “I sort of told them they should talk to Emily and Isabella, and I think they all went to see a movie.”

“They went to a—” He took two steps toward the living room, as though about to go after them, then turned back to me. “Why did you tell them to do that?”

“Because you're the host of the party, and I didn't think you wanted those girls hanging off you like little freshman barnacles.”

Dante's hands went back up in the air. “Why would you think that?”

“I thought you liked someone else.”

“I've never told you that I . . .” He took a step back toward me, and I could almost see him processing through the implications. “What you mean is you want me to like someone else.”

I let out a snort as though the idea was ridiculous, but he nodded and took another step closer to me. His eyes narrowed. “And it must be someone at this party, or you wouldn't have sent those girls packing.”

It figured. Just when I didn't want Dante to know what I was up to, the whole twin-psychic-bond thing kicked in. It was like Dante was peering into my head and seeing everything. I tried to block out Charity's name from my mind. I thought of unicorns and ice cream cones and beach balls.

He nodded, and his expression grew tighter. “It can't be Daphne, because she's here with a guy.”

Starfish, and clam shells, and those seaweedy things that wash up on the beach.

Another thought occurred to me. Maybe Dante had been able to read my mind all along, and he'd just never found anything in it interesting enough to comment on before. That would be so like him.

He took another step toward me and folded his arms. “It can't be Charity, because she doesn't date yet. You're trying to set me up with Raine, aren't you?”

“No,” I said.

He tossed his head back and groaned. “Yes, you are. Have you talked to her about me? Does she like me?”

“No,” I said.

More groaning. “Oh, crap. Now it's going to be all weird being around her. Is she expecting me to ask her to prom?”

“I'm not trying to set you up, Dante. Don't be so full of yourself.”

He put his hand over his forehead and shut his eyes. “How could you do this to me? I'm going to have to avoid her until she finds someone else to like.”

“Well, that shouldn't be too hard for her, Prince Charming.”

Dante turned back around to leave. I took a step to follow him. We both noticed Charity standing in the doorway at the same time. I wasn't sure how much of our conversation she'd heard, but judging from the fact that the color had completely left her face, I figured she'd heard enough.

“I came to tell you that Rich is getting out of control,” she said.

Dante's expression grew even darker. “Oh. Thanks. We'll take care of it.” He strode past her out into the family room. I walked past her too. She gave me a vicious glare as I did, but there wasn't time to explain anything to her.

As we walked into the living room, I noticed several things wrong. The first was that Rich stood on our coffee table waving, and very nearly spilling, a glass full of Coke.

He tossed his head back and belted out a song that had something to do with eating worms from tequila bottles and bathing in Jack Daniel's. Brett and Shane sat on the floor in front of him like judges from
American Idol
and yelled up comments about his performance. Mostly they used the phrase, “You suck, man!”

The second thing wrong, and this was nearly as important, was that Skipper stood not two feet away from them, dancing and laughing at Rich's song. She sang the words to her own song, which went, “Worms, worms, worms, Jack Daniel's.” This was especially bad, even though she had better rhythm and was more in key than Rich.

But worst of all, I heard my parents' bedroom door shut, and then footsteps coming across the upstairs hallway. I wasn't sure what Gabby's reaction to the scene in front of me would be, but I knew it probably would involve a lot of yelling.