Speed Dating (3 page)

Lina glanced at Mads and Holly, who pretended to be fascinated by something on the wall across the room. Lina and Ramona were
friendly, in an itchy, combative way. But Ramona wasn’t part of their circle of three. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t be coy,” Ramona said. “It’s obvious that Tess and Peter are you and Walker. Walker’s mother is a widow, right? So she
probably dates. And he has two younger brothers. And going to the county fair is just the kind of cornball activity you’d
think is cute. But here’s the clincher: You’ve got a big pink stuffed elephant in your locker. How stupid do you think people
are? If they don’t know it now, it won’t be long.”

Lina didn’t think anyone had seen the elephant. She waved this away. “I am not the kind of person who thinks going to the
county fair is cute. Generally. I made an exception in this case. But anyway, nobody knows that about me. You don’t even know
it about me. You’re just guessing.”

“I still say you’ll be unmasked before you know it,” Ramona said. “And what will Walker think of that? He comes off so whipped
in your column. It could be pretty embarrassing for him.”

Lina remembered what Walker had said earlier. The last thing she wanted to do was embarrass him, or herself.
But she still felt confident that their identities were safe.

“You’re just trying to upset me,” Lina said to Ramona. “You’re not applying for the
Crier’s
summer internship program, by any chance, are you?” Maybe Ramona was trying to psych her out.

Ramona grinned. “Of course, I am. After all, I’m the editor of the school literary magazine—and I’m only a sophomore. Erica
Howard already told me she found that impressive.”

“Who’s Erica Howard?” Mads asked.

“The Metro editor at the
Crier,”
Lina said. “She’s in charge of the interns. They take a few college students and one ‘unusually precocious high school student.“’

“That wording is key,” Ramona said.
“’Unusually
precocious.’ Not just ordinary, everyday smart. Like most people. When it comes to unusual, I’ve got you and Autumn beat
by a mile.”

“She said ‘unusual,’ not ‘freakish,’” Lina said.

“There’s no point in arguing about it,” Ramona said. “The final results will vindicate me. I’m submitting some of my latest
poems. If Erica Howard has any brains, she’ll recognize genius when she sees it.”

“I’m sure she’ll love your latest sonnet, ‘A Worm’s Thoughts at Mealtime,”’ Lina said. “In case you didn’t read the latest
issue of
Inchworm,”
she explained to Holly and
Mads, “it tells what a worm is thinking while it gnaws on Ramona’s grandmother’s corpse.”

“Ew,” Mads and Holly said together.

“The journal is called
Inchworm,
and nobody ever writes about worms,” Ramona said. “The worm takes everyone after they die. No one is exempt. Except people
who get cremated. I think. Do worms eat ashes?”

“You think I know?” Holly said.

“You have to admit it’s unusually precocious,” Ramona said.

“Or just creepy,” Lina said.

“It’s better than a sappy story about the county fair,” Ramona said.

“At least that’s of local interest,” Lina said.

“You are going to get busted for that story,” Ramona said. “Everyone will figure out who Pete and Tess are, eventually. And
then you’ll know what it feels like to weather a storm of ridicule.”

“Like you do every day?” Lina said.

“Precisely.”

Ramona had a knack for finding Lina’s sensitive spots—and a tendency to be negative.
It’s nothing to worry about,
Lina told herself.
Just Ramona being Ramona. That is, a pain.

To:     mad4u

From: your daily horoscope

HERE IS TODAY’S HOROSCOPE: VIRGO: You will encounter a sticky romantic problem, and you won’t be able to un-stick
it until you get that glue off your fingers.

Y
ou look so cute on roller skates,” Stephen said. Mads snuggled against him in the compact backseat of his red Mini-Cooper.
She wore jeans and a red cowgirl shirt that had actually come from a kids’ store. She was petite, still small enough to wear
children’s sizes, though she preferred not to, unless it was something kitschy-cool, like the cowgirl shirt. She wore a red
bandanna in her dark hair and looked up
at Stephen with her small, sleepy eyes.

“Who doesn’t look good on skates?” Mads said. “Especially under a disco ball, with Jed Cheatham on the Mighty Wurlitzer. It’s
the equivalent of a camera lens smeared with Vaseline—makes everybody look great.”

They’d gone to an old roller rink Stephen had found way out of town, where instead of dance music an old man played a Wurlitzer
organ while couples waltzed on roller skates. The men wore 1950s Elvis clothes, and the women wore full skirts that swirled
around their legs. Mads and Stephen felt awkward in their jeans and lack of waltzing ability, but still, it was fun. The old
four-wheeled roller skates they rented were clunky compared with the Rollerblades they were used to. Stephen, tall and skinny
and serious-faced, grinned goofily when he tried to waltz.

“I love the way you’re always slightly off-balance,” Stephen said. “Just when I think you’re about to fall down, you wave
your arms or grab the rail and save yourself. It’s the suspense. Like a horror movie. Will she fall? Oh, no!… she’s okay…
no, wait… there she goes!… caught herself again—”

“Yeah? Well, there’s no suspense watching you,” Mads said. “You fall on your butt every five minutes. I could set my watch
to it. And yet, no matter how many times I see it, it’s still funny.”

“Funny-strange or funny-ha-ha?” Stephen asked.

“Funny-sexy,” Mads said.

“Funny-sexy?” Stephen repeated. “What does that mean? It doesn’t really make sense—”

“Quiet, you.” She stared at him in the dark for a second. The streetlight made his eyes glow. “I don’t have to make sense.
I’m Madison, Queen of the Wild Frontier.” She closed her eyes, and he kissed her.

They hadn’t been going out for very long, and Stephen had been away in Europe with his mother for several weeks, so they were
still shy and tentative with each other. Stephen pressed his lips against hers, and her head tilted back awkwardly. She didn’t
try to move or say anything. She didn’t want to spoil the moment.

But she felt stiff, and her mind wandered. She remembered something she’d read in
Cosmo
that month, an article about kissing tips. Something about a counterclockwise tongue-swirl that could drive a boy wild. She
decided to try it. Maybe that would warm things up between them. She wanted to show Stephen he didn’t have to be shy with
her. That she could be as wild as any cowgirl.

She gathered up her courage and went for it. She opened her lips and pushed her tongue out, pressing against Stephen’s teeth.
For a second, he relaxed. His mouth opened, and he let her tongue roam around in
there. Then he suddenly snapped his mouth shut, nearly biting her tongue off, and jolted up as if he’d been electrocuted.

“What’s the matter?” Mads asked.

“What? Oh, nothing,” Stephen said.

Nothing? It sure didn’t seem like nothing to her.

“Something just poked me in the butt,” Stephen said. “I think there’s a loose spring in the car seat or something.”

“Oh.” Mads wanted to buy it, she really did. But come on. A loose spring? In a year-old car?

“What did it feel like?” Mads asked. “Did it feel like this?” She playfully pinched his butt. He twitched and laughed.

“No, it was more like
this.”
He tried to pinch her, but she dodged him. They played around like this in the back-seat, pinching each other and slapping
each other’s hands away and laughing. But the sexy mood was gone, and they never got around to serious kissing again that
night. The porch light on Mads’ house started blinking, her mother’s sign that she knew Mads was home and it was time to come
in or face the consequences, which involved her mother coming out there herself and knocking on the car window. Obviously,
Mads would eat live spiders to avoid that.

“There’s the signal,” Mads said, pushing the front seat up and opening the car door.

Stephen clambered out after her and kissed her quickly before she trotted up the stone steps to her house. “Happy trails.”

When the new girl, Quintana Rhea, walked into school on Monday morning, Mads felt it right away. Something different. Electricity.

Quintana had long, glossy, straight brown hair that moved like water across her shoulders. She was small-chested, with a cute
little bubble butt. Her lips were very red, and her teeth very white. Her hazel eyes were large and fringed with thick, black
lashes. And she was wearing a chic pink-and-silver-sequined-covered peasant blouse that Mads had seen in
Teen Vogue
only a week before. Quintana was very pretty and very chic. But that wasn’t it.

Mads wasn’t the only one who noticed her. Heads turned as she passed through the halls. Boys, with a helpless look in their
eyes, watched her walk until she turned the corner. Girls, too, with a different sort of helplessness. She had something that
couldn’t be bought. But, what? Mads turned the question over in her mind. What, exactly, was it?

By lunch on day one, Quintana trailed a stream of boys in her wake wherever she went. All kinds of boys: lowly freshmen, hottie
seniors, regular in-between guys.
They didn’t seem to care that they were part of an endless stream. They just wanted to be near her. They wafted after her
like perfume.

What’s her secret?
Mads wondered as she watched Quintana scan the lunchroom for a place to sit. Because Mads knew she had one. It leaked out
of her pores, whatever it was. Quintana seemed to know something. Something juicy.

“Is that the new girl?” Holly asked.

“Yeah,” Mads said. “She was in my English class. Her name’s Quintana. She moved here from L.A.”

“I feel sorry for her, starting so late in the school year,” Lina said.

Quintana spotted Autumn, Rebecca, and Ingrid at their table and headed toward them.

“This should be interesting,” Holly said.

Quintana stood in front of Rebecca and her friends. She nodded at an empty seat, and Mads could tell she was asking if it
was taken. Rebecca looked at the other girls. Then she did that thing where she showed her teeth as if she were smiling, but
somehow it didn’t come off as friendly. She said something to Quintana, who didn’t seem to react. She just shrugged and walked
away, as if saying, “Your loss.”

“Those bitches,” Holly said.

“She doesn’t look too upset about it, though,” Lina said.

“I’ll go get her,” Mads said. She imagined Quintana scurrying for the door, ready to dump her uneaten lunch in the trash and
spend the rest of the period in the bathroom, crying. At least that’s what Mads would have done. But Quintana just looked
around for another table with another empty spot. Mads walked up to her.

“Hey.” Mads tapped her on the shoulder. “We’ve got room at our table. Want to sit with us?”

Quintana smiled, as if she’d been expecting this all along. “Thanks,” she said. She followed Mads back to the table. Mads
introduced Lina and Holly.

“Rebecca can be cold,” Holly said. “But she’s not as scary as she tries to make herself look.”

“Yeah, she’s like a blowfish,” Lina said. “She puffs herself up to intimidate you, but she’s as insecure as anybody else.
If not more. She just doesn’t want you to know it.”

“That blowfish technique works pretty well,” Quintana said. “But I’m used to it. I’ve moved so many times, I’m an expert at
being the new girl. This is my third school this year.”

“Wow,” Lina said. “That’s rough.”

“It’s not so bad,” Quintana said. “I like living in different places. Before L.A. we lived in Honolulu, and before
that, Dallas. My dad’s a business consultant. He works for a new company every six months or so.”

“I still think it would be hard to change schools all the time,” Mads said.

“You learn to be tough,” Quintana said. “Every school has its little quirks you have to adjust to. I’ve adopted so many quirks,
I’m getting to be kind of quirky myself.” She laughed, low and throaty. An oddly adult laugh for a tenth grader.

“People are pretty friendly here, once you get to know them,” Mads said.

“We’re a little lacking in cute boyage, that’s our biggest problem,” Holly said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Quintana said. “I met some pretty cute guys this morning. Let’s see, there was Mo, and Alex, and David,
and this extreme hottie who offered to share his muffin with me… Sean? I think it was Sean.”

“You met all those guys in your first three hours?” Lina asked.

“You met Sean?” Mads was impressed—and a little jealous. Sean Benedetto was a senior and the school’s major hottie. As a ninth
grader, Mads had taken one look at him and vowed that someday he would be hers. Now, a year and a half later, she still had
a long way to go. But the goal was always there in the back of her mind. Sean. He
was her ideal guy. It took her a year and a half to get him to notice she was alive. And he was offering Quintana a muffin
on her first day? Why was life so unfair?

“Why, is he a big deal?” Quintana took the top off her hamburger bun, smothered the meat patty in ketchup, then cut into it
with her knife and fork.

“Kind of,” Mads said.

“To Mads, he is,” Lina said.

“Not just to me,” Mads said. “He’s the sex god of Rosewood.”

“Granted,” Holly said. “But that’s only because there’s so little competition.”

Quintana laughed that low laugh again. “Madison, you can’t let boys intimidate you. If you give them too much power, they
get so out of hand.”

She finished three-quarters of her hamburger, wiped her mouth with her napkin, and took a tube of lip gloss from her bag.
She swiped it across her lips. It was a bright magenta color with gold sparkles in it.

“I love your lip gloss,” Mads said. “What kind is it?”

“Munchies,” Quintana said. “Try some.” She handed the tube to Mads. “I don’t wear it for the color so much as the flavors.”