Mia the Magnificent (2 page)

“There were no aliens,” I said, pushing her away. “OK, some of the people I worked with could’ve been mistaken for alternate life forms, but it’s still me in here.”

“So you’re telling me that I spent fifteen years trying to get you to come out of your shell and failed miserably, but after only ten weeks of working at Little Tykes, you became Super Thespian?”

“I’m not Super Thespian; I just discovered that I like being in plays. It’s sort of nice getting to be someone else for a while.” I shrugged. “I shouldn’t have even mentioned it to you. I probably won’t get a part. I mean, I sing so off-key that even my grandma asked me to stop singing her ‘Happy Birthday.’”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Lisa said. “I know for a fact you can sing middle C really well.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, most songs are written with more than one note.”

“OK, so we’ll improvise,” Lisa replied. “I’m the director. I can do whatever I want.”

“You’re the student director,” I said, “and I don’t want any special favors. I want to see if I can get a part on my own.”

Ignoring my request, Lisa threw her hands up in the air in a way that can only be described as “jazz hands,” and exclaimed, “My best friend is going to be a superstar!”

As Lisa launched into full spirit finger mode and a table of senior guys stared at us, I suddenly began wishing that the stories of alternate life forms were true so they could beam me up right now to take me back to their home planet.

“This is going to be so much fun!” Lisa said as, thankfully, she set her hands back on the table. “It’s exactly the sort of thing we both need now that we’re footloose and fancy free.”

“Footloose and fancy free?” I asked with a raise of my eyebrow. “Have you been volunteering at the senior center again?”

“You know what I mean,” Lisa replied. “I broke up with Mike and you broke up with Tim. Being involved in the school play will help us not only fill up our free time, but also meet some new guys.”

“Are you sure you’re ready to meet someone new?” I asked. “After all, you and Mike were pretty serious. It might take a while before
you get over him.”

“Not according to my calculations,” Lisa replied.

I wiped off the ketchup dribbling down my chin. “There’s a formula for that sort of thing?”

“There wasn’t, so I created one,” Lisa stated. “I started with the fact that Mike and I dated for nine months, which is approximately 297 days, or 7,128 hours, or 427,680 minutes. If I allowed myself to be sad for one-tenth of each minute we were together, that would be 42,768 minutes, or 712 hours—or roughly 29 and a half days. Since I found out that Mike dumped me for that
girl
18 days ago, I concluded that within 11 days, I should be completely over him. So far, my time/sadness ratio seems to be accurate. I’m more than halfway through the equation and my bitterness is evaporating accordingly.”

“Good for you,” I said, having lost track of what she was actually saying as soon as she started rattling off her numbers.

“I still can’t believe Mike fell for a... lifeguard.” Lisa spat out the word like it was something vile.

“He was a lifeguard, too,” I replied, feeling the need to defend Mike. After all, I’d been friends with him since forever, too. “And you
did
agree to see other people while you were away at camp.”

“So you’re on his side now?” Lisa snapped.

“Of course not,” I said, thinking Lisa might need to tweak her bitterness equation a little bit. “It’s just that Mike and Mandy spent a lot of time together over the summer and—”

“Mandy.” Lisa made a face as she jabbed a fork into her bowl. “What kind of name is that? Mandy. The mediocrity of it is mind-boggling.”

I bit my lip, figuring now wouldn’t be the best time to mention how I had always kind of liked the name Mandy.

“And speaking of mediocrity, do you even know what her GPA was last year in Texas?” Not waiting for a reply, Lisa exclaimed, “Two-point-nine! She wasn’t even on the honor roll.”

“What did you do,
hack
into our school’s database?” I asked.

“Hack is such a hostile word,” Lisa replied. “I prefer
investigated.
But don’t worry. I logged in under Mrs. Jensen’s account. No one can trace it back to me.”

Deciding I really didn’t want to know how Lisa was able to sign into the school computer using our principal’s name, I said, “Well, personally, I don’t need a mathematical formula to know I’m one hundred percent over Tim Radford.”

“Which might sound a little more convincing if you weren’t currently staring at him,” Lisa remarked.

“I’m not staring at him,” I said, quickly averting my eyes from my former boyfriend’s back. “I’m just trying to figure out what Tim is doing sitting right next to Alyssa Brooks.”

To get a better look, Lisa turned completely around in her seat. “I’ve seen that girl in the hallway a few times. She’s pretty.”

“If you think a spray tan and peroxide are pretty, then I guess she is,” I said with a bit more cattiness than I intended. “Anyway, Alyssa’s in my geometry class with Tim and she’s got this weird habit of giggling all the time. I mean, what’s so funny about geometry?”

“What do you call a man on the beach?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, a bit confused at the turn in conversation.

“A tan-gent!” Lisa replied with a grin. “See, that’s something funny about geometry.”

“I think you’re missing my point.”

“What do you say when you see an empty bird cage?”

I sighed. “Lisa, I’m not really in the mood for this right now.”

“Polygon!”

“OK, I get it,” I said. “Geometry is a laugh a minute. Now, can we move on?”

“What did the acorn say when he grew up?”

“You’re not seriously going to keep this up for the rest of our lunch period, are you?”

I wiped my snickerdoodle cookie crumbs off my uniform skirt and
onto the gray cafeteria floor.

“I swear, you have absolutely no sense of humor,” Lisa replied, obviously disappointed that her stand-up career was coming to such a sudden halt. “So, what were we talking about?”

“We were discussing why Tim is cuddled up next to Alyssa when he’s supposedly dating Cassie Foster,” I said, giving an involuntary shudder as Cassie’s name crossed my lips.

Cassie Foster was every average high school girl’s worst nightmare. She was stunning, vicious, and vengeful—a lethal combination which made every guy want her and every girl fear her.

“Why do you even care who Tim is sitting next to?” Lisa asked as she put the lid back onto her Tupperware bowl. “I thought you were one hundred percent over him.”

“I am over him.” I wadded up my napkin and threw it onto my tray. “I was just making an observation. Excuse me for being curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Lisa said as the ending bell rang.

I glanced over at Tim as Alyssa playfully hit him on the arm. Lisa was right. It was none of my business who Tim was sitting next to during lunch. I was through with Tim and all of his games. It was time for me to move on. After all, a cat may have nine lives, but I had only one. And I wasn’t going to let Tim Radford ruin it for me.

“Hey, Preppy. How’s the convent treating you?”

“It’s not a convent. It’s a Catholic school,” I replied to Zoë, who was sprawled out on my living room couch. “And how did you get in my house?”

“Your brother let us in before he took off to play baseball, badminton, basketball, or some other sport that starts with B. I wasn’t really listening,” Zoë said, plopping her black military boots onto the coffee table. “Those nuns sure do keep you late. Eric and I were out of school, like, an hour ago.”

My focus shifted to Eric, the cute blonde guy sitting in the chair beside Zoë. Even after two months, I still couldn’t get over the fact that Zoë and Eric were cousins. I’d worked with them both over the summer at Little Tykes Theatre, and they were as different from each other as two relatives could possibly be. Eric was tall, blonde, and sweet. Zoë was Goth, pierced, and cynical.

I blushed as Eric’s eyes met mine. “Hi, Eric.”

“Hi, Mia,” Eric replied with a shy smile.

Zoë rolled her eyes. “One date and you two become as mushy as a loaf of Wonder Bread. It’s creeping me out.”

“So, is there a reason you decided to break into my house?” I asked, opting to veer away from the delicate subject of my first and only semi-disastrous date with Eric.

“We didn’t break in—not that I couldn’t have,” Zoë replied, removing from her ear one of the fifteen rings on her face and cleaning it with the front of her black T-shirt. “That lock you have on the front door would have only taken seconds to pick. Your brother let us in because I need to hitch a ride with you to driver’s ed.”

“You’re taking driver’s ed with me?” I asked, not sure if I was more horrified at the thought of Zoë breaking into my house, Zoë driving a car, or Zoë shoving the now “clean” earring back into the cartilage at the top of her ear.

“Yeah, your mom arranged some sort of carpool so all of us can ride together,” Zoë said. “Eric will drop me off on the way to his acting lessons, and then I’ll hitch a ride with you to driver’s ed. It’s win-win. You get the pleasure of my company and Eric gets a little Preppy love.”

“Zoë,” Eric said, his fair skin turning redder than a discount sales tag, “that’s not why—”

“Cool it, cuz,” Zoë replied, switching on the TV. “Just take Princess out back so you two can do whatever it is you do together and I don’t have to watch any of it.”

Helplessly, Eric said, “I swear I didn’t—”

“I really don’t think—” I said at the same time.

“Look, you’ve got about ten minutes before we have to leave, so get out of here,” Zoë said, switching channels. “Tick, tock, tick, tock.”

Not knowing what else to do, Eric and I stood clumsily and went outside to the backyard.

Hoping to break the cement wall of awkwardness Zoë had built, I picked up the basketball lying on our backyard court and said, “Want to play a little one-on-one?”

Eric shrugged as he sat on one of the plastic lawn chairs on the deck. “I don’t really like basketball.”

I looked at him in surprise. “You don’t like basketball? What’s not to like?”

“I don’t know. I probably don’t like it because everyone thinks I’d be good at it since I’m so tall. But actually, I’m really a klutz. That’s why my acting coach signed me up for dancing lessons this year. To get a theater scholarship at a really good college, an actor needs to sing, dance, and act.”

“Oh,” I said, a little disconcerted by the fact that anyone would choose dancing over basketball.

Eric leaned forward in his chair and stared at his hands, which were squeezed together in a vice-like grip. “Mia, we need to talk.”

Talk?
That could only mean one thing. Eric was going to ask me out again. And though I really liked Eric, and he was absolutely gorgeous, not to mention sweet, giving, and one of the nicest guys on the planet, I still couldn’t figure out if I wanted to date him or simply nominate him for sainthood. Besides, I had just declared my independence from Tim. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to jump into another relationship.

As I sat in the plastic lawn chair next to Eric, I frantically tried to figure out what my answer was going to be. It had been a few weeks since our last date, so I’d had plenty of time of think about it. There were only two possible answers: yes or no. Yea or nay. Thumbs up or thumbs down. I do or I don’t. I will or I—

“I
can’t
ask you out again.”

“What?” I asked, realizing I had no answer for that one. “What do you mean you can’t ask me out again?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Eric quickly explained. “It’s just that I don’t have any time to date right now. Between school, acting lessons, singing lessons, dancing lessons, and helping my mom at Little Tyke’s, I’m already swamped, and when play rehearsals start in a few weeks, I don’t even know when I’ll sleep. It wouldn’t be fair to ask you out and then not see you again for three months.”

Relief and regret tumbled around in my head like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle still in a box as Eric’s blue eyes—which were exactly the same shade as how I pictured the Caribbean Sea—met mine. “Are you mad at me?” he asked.

“Eric, you became one of my closest friends over the summer,” I replied. “Why would I be mad? I know how important acting is to you.”

Eric slumped back in his chair. “What a relief! I was so worried
about hurting your feelings because I really do like you.”

I blushed. “You do?”

“Of course,” Eric replied. “Why else would I have volunteered to drive Zoë over here every day? I’m not
that
nice.”

A sudden rush of heat crawled from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

Eric leaned forward in his chair and brushed his hand against my cheek. Gulping at the warmth of his hand, I inadvertently swallowed the stick of gum Lisa had given me on the way home. He moved closer to the edge of his seat and I did the same. Then I closed my eyes and tilted my head toward his. After all, even an independent woman enjoys a little attention now and again, and the last time I kissed Eric was really nice.