Notes from the Blender (5 page)

I splashed some water on my face, flushed the toilet, and left the bathroom. I found Neilly in the kitchen eating ice cream. “Want some Karamel Sutra?” she asked.

I briefly choked on my own spit. “Some what?”

“Karamel Sutra! It’s my favorite flavor.”

“Yeah. Yes, I do.”

“I got you a bowl and a spoon. They’re over there next to the sink.” The sink was not piled up with dishes from breakfast or from last night’s dinner. Another way I knew I wasn’t in my own house.

I scooped myself some ice cream and sat down at the table.

“I wonder,” Neilly said.

Whether dorks are good in the sack? Try me, baby—unpopular guys work harder! “What?”

“Whether it would be possible to, you know, break them up or something.”

“Sounds kinda
Parent Trap
.”

“Yeah, only in reverse.”

“Well, listen, if you can somehow get Lindsay Lohan involved, I’m in. Otherwise, I don’t think it’s such a great idea.”

“Ew, she’s like ten in that movie!”

“Yeah, but she’s not ten now, is she?”

“No, but she’s kind of a skank.”

“Exactly. Anyway, I did think about this. I mean, this may come as a surprise, but I can be a total dick if I want to be. I’m pretty sure I could send your mom screaming for the exits if I put my mind to it.”

She took a minute and looked at me. “You know, no offense, but I think maybe you could.”

“None taken. I pride myself on my ability to offend. But anyway, I don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because—I don’t know how long ago your parents split, but my mom’s been dead for six years. And growing up without one of your parents totally sucks, and I don’t want that for my little brother.”

She smiled. “You mean my little sister.”

“Whatever.” I ate some more ice cream.

“You think we could all fit in your house?”

“Well, I suppose Junior’s gonna need his own room at some point. I mean, I would not really want to share. I’m not hip to the whole two a.m. feeding thing, and, you know, I can’t have my baby brother crampin’ my style when I have a lady over.”

Neilly looked at me skeptically but was nice enough not to interrogate me on exactly which ladies had ever set foot in my room. None, of course, but I wanted to have the option, which I certainly wouldn’t have if Junior was shitting his diapers in a crib in the corner. Though I suppose that might allow me to be able to say,
Hey, baby, wanna come back to my crib?
with a straight face.

“Well, this place is definitely too small for a fam—for five people,” Neilly said. She ate her ice cream in silence for a while, so I did the same. I was glad she’d stopped herself. A family was Mom and Dad and me. Dad and I might live in the same house as Neilly and Carmen, but that wouldn’t make us a family.

The silence started to feel awkward. I didn’t know what to say—can I see your room? Can I have a few minutes alone with your underwear drawer? And then I remembered something from this morning.

“Hey, I have a question.”

“Yeah?”

“Is your dad…is he like a big guy with a mustache? Looks like he does ultimate fighting in the hot sun all day?”

She snickered. “Not hardly. That sounds like my uncle Roger. He’s my dad’s…well, you know, the person he’s committing to, or whatever. Why do you ask?”

“He stood up in church today and said this long thing about how much it meant to him that there was a church that would recognize and celebrate who he really was, stuff like that.” Neilly looked pained. “I’m sorry. Is that like a sensitive subject or something?”

“Only the fact that I got dumped and have to show up alone for their ceremony, like a loser,” she said.

My brain was reeling. Neilly Foster got dumped? It boggled my mind. What must it be like to be the guy who gets so much play he can confidently show one of the hottest girls in school the door? I didn’t know whether I wanted to kill the guy or beg him to teach me his secrets. Maybe both. But not in that order. “Yeah,” I said, “I remember the pain of being dateless. Pretty horrible.”

She raised an eyebrow at me again. “Do you have, like, some harem of metal babes or something?”

No, because it’s pretty tough to find a metal chick who doesn’t drink or get high. “Oh, hell yeah. Tattoos, piercings, the whole thing. You know, you haven’t lived until you’ve felt a pierced—”

“Okay, okay. Enough. Well, lucky you. As for me, I got on the wrong train. I was pretty sure I wasn’t headed to Loserville, but I guess life hands you surprises.”

“Yeah.” Incredible—how could anybody in Neilly Foster’s position be unhappy? I mean, being unhappy about your mom being knocked up by my dad, and having to move, and gaining a weird stepsibling: I get all that stuff. But, I mean, Jesus. She could walk into the hall and whisper, “I need a date,” and probably have a hundred guys lined up within thirty seconds. And she was putting up with a guy making her miserable.

I had a terrible epiphany at that moment. I had thought I didn’t understand girls because I never got near them, but here I was, sitting in Neilly Foster’s kitchen eating ice cream with her, and I had no fucking idea what made her mind work. So it wasn’t proximity that was the problem. It was that they are fundamentally unknowable. Great. I was convinced if I could just figure out how girls thought, I could somehow overcome my lack of athletic ability and my dislike of booze—not to mention my skinny frame and corpselike pallor—and somehow hoodwink a girl into bed with me. But now it was clear that nobody with a penis could ever figure out how girls thought. And I had no Plan B.

“Well, have you asked his friends?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your ex. Jocky McMoron, whoever the hell he was.”

“His name is…Yeah, okay, Jocky McMoron is close enough. You think I should ask his friends out?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Why?”

This gave me a ray of hope—she clearly had no idea how guys’ minds worked, either.

“Well, he dumped you, but that doesn’t mean he wants his friends dating you. He wants you sitting at home all by yourself being miserable, so if he gets bored of whatever ho he’s with now …”

“That would be my
ex–best
friend.”

“Hoey McManstealer?”

She laughed. “The very same.”

“Okay, so he wants you at home crying over him so when he decides he’s bored of Hoey, he can scoop you up again. You’re the backup plan. Every guy always has a backup plan.” True—I even had a backup doomed crush. This brainiac girl named Chantelle. Her glasses said “studious,” but her body said “sinful.”

“And what’s the best way to show him that you’re not at home waiting for him? By scooping up his best bud.”

She thought about it. “That’s truly evil. I kind of like it.”

“Evil is my specialty. But don’t worry. I promise not to be evil at your dad’s ceremony.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, any time there’s a big function at the church, that’s extra work for the sexton.”

“What the hell’s a sexton?”

“It’s me. I clean the church, mow the lawn, stuff like that.”

“Why are you called a sexton?”

Oh, I had been waiting so long for this moment. “’ Cause I’m bringin’ a ton of sex,” I said, grinning.

Neilly cracked up. “That doesn’t even make sense! You could have said ‘ ’cause I get a ton of sex,’ and that would have at least been coherent, even if it is a lie.”

“Hey, I—”

“I know, I know, the piercings. Spare me,” she said.

We both laughed, and just then something horrible happened. Dad and Carmen came in and saw Neilly and me eating ice cream and laughing together, and they both got all misty-eyed, and I really wanted either to vomit or to sulk again, but I couldn’t because I felt better.

“SO, IS IT ALL STARTING TO SINK IN?” MY MOM ASKED
as she plopped herself down on my bed.

I looked up from my chem homework. “Which part?”

She smoothed her loose T-shirt over her growing belly bump. “My being pregnant, for starters.”

I shrugged. “Probably not that, or really any of it, to tell you the truth.”

My mom absentmindedly picked up Wubster and hugged him to her. I had to resist the urge to snatch him back. “Well then, is there anything I can do to make things easier on you?”

“Short of rewinding the past month or so, no.”

My mom deposited Wubster back on my bed, stood up, and stuck her hands on her hips. “I know you’re a teenager and that entitles you to be self-centered, but this is ridiculous. Can’t you think of someone besides yourself for once?”

I stared up at her with my mouth hanging open. “What?”

I mean, I wasn’t only thinking about myself. I was also thinking about Lulu. And Sam. And Dec. And Dec’s dad. And how two people I’d invited into my life suddenly weren’t in it anymore, and how two people I hadn’t invited in suddenly were.

“You heard me, Neilly Foster. It’s taken me a long time to find happiness. I thought I could never trust a man again, but then along came Thomas, and I’m like a schoolgirl. Head over heels in love. I get to start over, Neilly. Do it right this time. Don’t diminish that for me with your sulking.”

Her eyes were boring a hole into mine, I guess looking for me to approve of her completely turning our lives upside down. Or at the very least, to forgive her for suddenly sticking me with an entirely new “family” and deciding we’d all be moving into the freakiest crib in town together as quickly as possible. Yeah, not so fast, bucko.

As if the whole living-with-a-bunch-of-strangers thing wasn’t bad enough, the actual house we’d be living in was straight out of a horror movie—an ancient Victorian creepfest with peeling paint, uneven angles, a weird portico, and even a few turrets thrown in for kicks. Inside, it smelled like a combo platter of mold and old people. I was worried my new little sister—I figured this baby had to be a girl, so I could teach her how not to get burned by her BFF and BF when her back was turned—would be a nervous wreck living there.

Even as a fetus.

In fact, she was probably curled up inside my mom right this very moment, hands at either side of her face, looking like a baby version of that famous Edvard Munch painting,
The Scream
. Either that or the kid from
Home Alone
when he finds out his parents left him behind.

“Mom,” I sighed, “I am happy for you. I’m just unhappy for me, you know what I mean?”

Her eyes welled up, and one salty tear made its way down her cheek. “See? That’s just the kind of thing I don’t need to hear!”

“You asked,” I told her. “And if you didn’t want to know how I felt about it, maybe next time you should consider the fact that I might not answer exactly the way you’d like.”

My mom finally lost it and huffed out of the room. “You are infuriating, Neilly Foster,” she called over her shoulder as she left. “It’s like you’re thirteen all over again. No, wait—it’s like I don’t even know you anymore!”

What my mom didn’t seem to realize was I felt the exact same way about her. Ditto for Sam and Lulu. And out of all of them, Lulu was, in my opinion, the only one even trying to fix things. When I’d flat-out refused to speak to her, she’d tried every electronic avenue possible to apologize for scamming Sam while I was away. And more than once, I’d almost let her slide. But realistically, how could I? If I did, wouldn’t it send the wrong message? Like
Sure, go ahead, girls, make out with my boyfriend when I’m not there. It’s okay, I’m a total doormat! I’ll still be your friend!

Nope, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Forgive Lulu and look like a complete wuss. Don’t forgive her, and be so fucking lonely it physically hurt sometimes. I chose fucking lonely and left it at that.

Really, the only thing that had been worse than losing my best friend was losing her at a time when I so desperately needed her advice. Like, for instance, what in the hell was I supposed to do about being dateless for my dad’s wedding? In my mind, going stag would make it seem like I was ashamed of Roger and him—like I was as bad as Roger’s son Griffin—and I most certainly was not.

So who could I get to take me?

When we were house hunting with our parents—very reluctantly, I might add—Dec had suggested I ask one of Sam’s friends. I think his exact words were:
And what’s the best way to show him that you’re not at home waiting for him? By scooping up his best bud.

The problem here was, I didn’t particularly
like
any of the guys Sam ran with—they were all kind of grunty and caveman-y. Still, I’d tried to put the piece of advice to good use. At a party this past weekend, I’d cornered Tanner McManus while he was filling up at the keg.

“Hey, Tanner.”

“Hey, Neilly,” he said, tipping his cup against the tap so he’d get the maximum amount of beer and minimum amount of foam. “What’s up?”

“This party sucks. Feel like going for a walk?”

He took a big slug of his drink. “Love to,” he said. And then he kind of leered at me with this little foam mustache on his upper lip. He looked like a poster boy for a “got beer?” campaign. There was no way I was going to kiss the big doof now. No way I was going to kiss him
or
ask him to take me to the wedding. No way, no how.

“Cool,” I said. “I’ll meet you out back in a minute. I just have to fill up, too.” I held up my half-full water bottle like I intended to put beer in it. Tanner didn’t seem suspicious at all. Probably because he’s not that smart when he’s sober, but his IQ falls to somewhere around that of a doorstop when he’s drunk.

“I’ll be waiting,” he said, slurring a little bit. Then he lumbered off, foamy lip and all.

I snuck out the front door and never looked back.

On Monday, Tanner told anyone who would listen that I wanted him, adding, “And I would a nailed her, too, but I didn’t want to be uncool to Sam’cause he and Neilly just broke up,” making it seem like
he’d
rejected
me
.

Clearly, it was time for Plan B—the ceremony was only a month away—though I had no idea what that might be. And so I decided to try Aunt Sarah’s youth group. I figured it had to be better than going to a lame-ass party and trying to convince myself to hook up with Tanner McManus, and maybe it’d even give me some new ideas about how to fix my life.

When I went to tell my mom I was going, she was sitting at the kitchen table with a steaming mug in front of her. She was staring into it like she could read the future in her tea leaves or something.

“Life doesn’t always go in the direction you think it should, you know,” she said without even looking up. “The key is to just hang on and enjoy the ride.”

“Right, Mom,” I said, wondering how she expected me to enjoy a ride that took barf-inducing turns every other second. “Okay, well, I’m heading out now for that youth group at Dec’s aunt’s church.”

My mom eyed me suspiciously. “That what?”

It wasn’t exactly something I’d ever expressed an interest in before. “Um, I’m going to the youth group at Declan’s aunt’s church? You know, the same one where Dad and Roger are getting married?”

That’s when mom broke out into this humongous smile. “You’re going with Dec? I am so glad you two are becoming friends!”

Not exactly
, I thought. Under any other circumstances, we’d probably never have met, never have spoken a word to each other. So maybe
friends
was a little too strong of a word—but we were definitely allies by this point. “So I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Of course,” she practically trilled, happy again. Oh, the joys of impending motherhood and the roller coaster of emotions it apparently brought along with it. I made a mental note to wait until I was dead to try that one.

Half an hour later, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the little old church’s basement. I had barely registered anything Aunt Sarah was saying, due to the fact that I was too busy drooling over the mesmerizingly hothothottie leaning against the wall by the door. He looked just like Travis from We the Kings.

“Earth to Neilly,” Dec said, jabbing me in the ribs with his elbow.

I’d been so busy ogling, I hadn’t even noticed he was in the same room as me. “Huh?”

“It’s nice to acknowledge a soon-to-be family member when he’s sitting right next to you.”

“Sorry,” I whispered, trying not to let Aunt Sarah know I was chatting—not to mention ogling—when I should have been thinking pious thoughts and listening. “Are you late because you had to finish up with one of your heavily pierced chicks?”

“Had to finish up my sexton duties,” he whispered back.

“Because you bring a ton of sex, right?”

“A
ton
of sex,” he agreed, and we both tried not to crack up. It didn’t work very well. Aunt Sarah gave us a look, but her mouth was turned up just a bit at the sides and her eyes were warm and crinkly, so I knew she wasn’t really mad.

“Tonight we’re going to have some fun with our senses,” she said, passing around a box of silky black blindfolds. “Turning some off, and turning some on.”

“Kinky,” Dec whispered to me.

“This is going to be way more interesting than I expected,” I whispered back.

“Now everyone stand up and cover your eyes,” Aunt Sarah said. “No peeking. I’m going to pair you guys up, and the first thing I want you to do is find something you have in common. Just one little thing. The only rule here is, no exchanging names or where you go to school. It’s too easy to prejudge someone that way.”

Soon I felt Aunt Sarah’s hand on my back, and I shuffled across the room in pure blackness. “There you go,” she said, placing my hand in one much larger than my own. It fit perfectly, like mine used to fit in Sam’s. At this point, I actually started silently chanting
Please let it be him
in my head. Meaning the Travis look-alike.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey yourself.”

His fingers gripped mine gently, sending little electrical currents shooting across my palms. “So, what do you think? Should we play along or just hang out?” I asked.

“I say we be overachievers and find something big we have in common instead of just something little.”

“Okay,” I said, my brain going in total slow motion. Tumble-weeds practically blew through my gray matter as words continued to elude me.

After a while, the guy helped me out with a little prompt. “Sooooo…how about you tell me something you believe with all your heart?”

I considered making a joke about the tooth fairy or Santa, but rejected them as too obvious. Not to mention sarcastic, and sarcasm is something I tend to rely on too heavily as it is. After a little more thought, it dawned on me that what I really wanted to say was
Love will find a way,
but I was choking on how cheesy and chick-y it would sound.

So in the end, I went with, “I guess I believe everything happens for a reason, though I don’t really know why I’m saying that, because my life kind of sucks right now. And what’s the reason for that?”

I was appalled at myself for spewing the unplanned verbal vomit. But the guy—whoever he was—didn’t seem fazed in the least bit. “I think ‘everything happens for a reason’ is probably something we tell ourselves because we’ll never really know what the reasons are.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. Like, what possible good reason could there be for little kids getting cancer or thousands of people dying after some lunatic crashes a plane into their office building? And where’s the good reason for so many people in third-world countries living in poverty while we sit here on our fat asses wasting water and food and our lives?”

I was impressed by how deeply the guy seemed to feel—and how seriously he seemed to take—everything. “Okay, now that we’ve established what you don’t believe in—that everything happens for a reason. Maybe you could tell me what you
do
believe with all your heart.”

He paused, then said, “I guess that love will find a way.”

“Me, too,” I whispered, my heart beating so loud I was positive he could hear it.

I was pretty interested in finding out what else I had in common with this guy, but then Aunt Sarah announced we should all stop talking. Though there had been quite a bit of buzzing conversation and laughter before, now silence broke in. Eventually, she took me by the hand and led me back to my original place on the carpet.

“You can take off your blindfolds now,” she announced.

A second later, we were all blinking and staring around the room, looking a little disheveled and a lot confused. And the hot guy was nowhere to be found. I was way more disappointed by this fact than I had any right to be.

“So can any of you tell who you’ve been talking to just by looking around this room?” Aunt Sarah asked.

For me, at least, the answer to Aunt Sarah’s question was no. I had no clue who I’d just had such an intimate conversation with—just a supreme hope that it was my disappearing Travis look-alike. Almost everyone shook their heads along with me.