The Fruit of My Lipstick (3 page)

Which kind of makes her a target for people like Brett, who has the gall to ask her to fetch and carry for him, but doesn’t have the guts to give her more than a smile in return. I guess a smile is enough for some people.

That’s about all she’s going to get, since Vanessa Talbot has a lock on the rest of him.

Contemplating the test printout unhappily, I slowly became aware that someone was standing on the other side of my table.

“Okay if I sit here?” Lucas Hayes asked when I looked up.

My heart jumped so hard it practically bounced off my chin. I straightened and wondered frantically if there was residual foam on my upper lip from the cappuccino I’d knocked back to finish it before I came in. Or if he’d get up and go sit with Vanessa in the unlikely event she darkened the library doorway.

“Sure, help yourself,” I mumbled. He swung his silver-and-black backpack into the chair next to him, and I licked my upper lip as unobtrusively as possible.

“How’d you do?” He indicated my printouts with a lift of his chin.

I spread them like a hand of cards. “Okay. Not so great in History, though.”

He nodded. “Me, too—only in my case it’s English. The first thing the instructor told us was that there’s no right or wrong answer in literary analysis. I’m thinking, what am I doing here, then?”

I laughed. We were having an actual conversation. Maybe he wouldn’t get up and leave. “I know. If anyone can say anything they want, what’s the point? Other than holding together a logical argument, which you could do regardless.”

He shook his head. “If you can just make stuff up and get a grade for it, we all might as well be writing fiction.”

“I’m lucky at least that my roomie is good at English. We have a deal. She helps me with my papers and I help her with Biology.”

“Your roomie’s Surfing Barbie, right?”

I blinked. Was he cracking a joke? “What?”

“You know. Mansfield. I saw her dragging a surfboard up the stairs at the beginning of term. That must be rough.”

Not following
. “Rough?”

“Yeah. No wonder you have to help her with Bio. Vanessa says you should get community service credits for assisting the disabled.”

Whoa
.
A little too much time spent at the window table, buddy boy.

“Lissa’s not like that. She may not be great at Biology, but she’s going for the Hearst Prize in English this year.” The Hearst was a scholarship open to sophomores and juniors in San Francisco, given to the student with the highest scoring essay in the competition. I picked up steam. “Not only that, she’s my friend, and she’s in prayer circle with you. Two good reasons you shouldn’t let Vanessa do your thinking for you.”

He blinked like phosphorus had reacted with air and hit flash point under his nose.

I was on a roll now. “I think you’re a nice guy and all, but if you’re talking about Lissa like that behind her back, you’ve obviously been spending too much time with the wrong people. Not to mention you owe her an apology.”

“I’m not,” he finally got out. “Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t talk to me at all.”

He yanked his backpack off the chair and stalked out, leaving me sitting there churning with a combination of anger and confusion—and a healthy dose of regret.

Maybe Dad was right. At this rate, I’d do better sticking to chemistry.

RStapleton
      Thanks, man. 80%—best ever.

Source10
        No prob. One large to PayPal.

RStapleton
      Already done.

I HAD THREE periods before lunch in which to contemplate the sorry state of my love life.

By the end of first period, I’d cycled through annoyance and had arrived at that glum place where I concluded I was just a dork where guys were concerned. Halfway through Global Studies, I was beginning to wonder if Lucas had really meant it about never talking to him again.

Because I liked talking to him (today notwithstanding). He was interesting and funny, and, most important, he didn’t feel as though he had to compete with me. The guy’s brain is a force of nature all on its own—the people here who were competing for the Physics Olympiad had taken their scores with a gulp and as much grace as they could muster when he walked off with a near-perfect qualifying score.

This place is no slouch in the academics department to start with. The competition for openings is fierce, what with all the Silicon Valley moguls wanting their kids to get a leg up, and the old money here in Pacific Heights reserving their children’s places the moment they’re conceived. It’s part of the reason I’m here—that, and because Spencer is as far as you can get from Manhattan without falling off the continent.

So when I say Lucas can beat the best brains on the left coast, I’m not exaggerating. And even after he aced the entrance exam, he was completely cool about it.

“It’s something to put on my application to Stanford,” he explained the other day, when I stopped in at the physics lab on my way to class. “Placing in all these state competitions isn’t enough. Even making the Olympiad semifinals in March won’t be enough. It would just be me in a field of two hundred. Big deal. But if I make the top five and get a place on the U.S. team, go to Mexico, and win against competitors from all over the world, that’s going to stand out, both in university and when I take on the job market.”

Snort.
Like Stanford or any business after he graduated wouldn’t be lucky to have him, with or without a medal.

And this is the guy I had just alienated by standing up for my friend.

Headdesk.
Gillian, Gillian. You don’t need another chemistry class; you need to go to charm school
.

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty droopy by the time I got my salad and joined Lissa and Carly at our table for lunch. I was all ready to tell my tale of woe when both Carly and I got a good look at Lissa’s face. She looked like she’d gotten a mouthful of lemon juice when she’d been expecting a nice Odwalla pomegranate cooler.

“The weirdest thing just happened,” she said, lowering her voice so we had to lean in to hear. Not that anyone could pick out her words in the noisy dining room. “You know Lucas Hayes? The one who tutored Vanessa?”

I leaned in a little more.

“He stopped me in the hall on my way here.”

“And?” Carly prompted since I’d temporarily lost my power of speech. Yeah, I know. Hard to believe.

“And he apologized to me.”

My mouth fell open. “What for?” Like I didn’t know.

She shook her head and shrugged, picking up her Odwalla. “No idea. He said he’d done something wrong and he wanted to apologize.”

“What’d you say?” Carly wanted to know.

“I said okay. I mean, what do you say to a random thing like that?”

“But what did he do that needed an apology?”

Another shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t have any classes with the guy. I only see him across the room here and at prayer circle—and he doesn’t really talk there.”

“He called you Surfing Barbie,” I said.

Lissa put her drink down, and she and Carly stared at me. Then Lissa started to laugh. “Surfing Barbie? Now I’ve heard everything.”

“I heard it, and I didn’t like it much.” I didn’t know whether to feel sour about losing Lucas’s friendship over something that just made her laugh, or to be amazed he’d taken me at my word.

Even if it was the last word he’d let me say to him.

“What do you mean?” Lissa asked.

“I called him on it. He said a few other things too—” which I was not going to repeat “—and I told him he owed you an apology.”

“He apologized to me because you told him to?” Lissa’s eyes rounded. “Wow. You must’ve been scary.”

“Or he really likes you,” Carly put in. “A guy would never do something like that unless what a girl thought mattered to him.”

“Trust me, it’s not that,” I said. “He basically told me I couldn’t talk to him like that and to never speak to him again.” My shoulders slumped and I bit into my forkful of mixed greens and cranberries without enthusiasm. What I needed here was comfort food, not rabbit food. A whole panful of my grandmother’s
shui jao
with rice vinegar, to start.

“But he did it,” Carly said. “And you’ve got to believe it wasn’t easy for him.”

“Apologizing to Surfing Barbie,” Lissa said, acid tinging the edges of her smile. “That had to be tough.”

“He doesn’t know you at all, even though he prays with us,” I said. “I told him you were going for the Hearst Prize, but I don’t think he believed me. I feel stupid now for . . .” I stopped.

“For what?” Carly’s eyes sparkled. “Liking him?”

“Aha!” Lissa leaned in and pointed her sun-dried tomato panini at me. “I knew something was going on with you two. Why else do I keep seeing you when I walk by the physics lab?”

“There is nothing going on.” There, that sounded convincing. “Especially now.”

But I had to wonder.

Chapter 3

W
HEN YOUR EMOTIONS
are all stirred up, there’s only one thing to do.

I found an empty practice room and stretched my hands into the opening chords of Harris’s “Introduction and Fugato.” It wasn’t very challenging—I’d memorized it when I was twelve—but it was emotional, which made it the perfect frustration piece. I pounded out its chords and runs, warming up and zoning out.

Which is why I freaked out of my skin when I slammed out the finale and someone said my name from the doorway.

“Lucas!” I clapped a hand to my throat. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” He moved a step into the room, which is big enough to let the sound out of the piano, but not big enough to hold more than a couple of people. “I thought you were done.”

“I was. I just didn’t see you.”

He smiled. “I could tell. You were pretty focused.”

Silence fell as I took my foot off the pedal and the final chord died away. Were we talking again? What was he doing here? Should I say something? What?

He cleared his throat and jammed his hands into his pockets. “You were right.”

About what? His badmouthing Lissa? Or something else?

“I shouldn’t have said what I said about your friend. I apologized to her.”

“She told me. She didn’t know what your reason was, though.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Yes. She thought it was funny, you calling her Surfing Barbie.”

His eyebrows rose above the tortoiseshell frames of his glasses. “Funny?”

“Yes, Lucas,” I said. “Someone thought your opinion of them was funny. But I appreciate what you did. It took guts.”

Either there was something really interesting on the carpet, or he couldn’t look me in the eye. “I didn’t want you to be mad at me.”

This was news. “Oh. That must be why you told me never to speak to you again.”

“That was stupid, too. I was sorry as soon as I said it.”

A happy little spiral of warmth started up in my chest. “So we’re cool, then?”

He nodded, and tried on a tentative smile, as if he didn’t do it much. It changed his whole face—softening its angles and making you realize he had a very nice mouth. Not that I make it a habit to notice stuff like that. I respect a guy for his brain, not his looks. But still.

“Are you finished?” he asked. “Do you . . . want to walk down Fillmore and get something to drink?”

I glanced at the clock over the door. “What, now?”

“Sure. If you want.”

“But it’s half an hour to lights out.”

“So?”

“So when our dorm mistress checks, I’ll get a demerit.” For such a smart guy, he really had a problem with the small stuff.

He shrugged. “It’s just a demerit. Something for the staff in the office to count. Meaningless.”

“Maybe to you, but with enough of them, they’ll call my parents. And believe me, that’s grief I don’t need.” I got up and closed the piano lid. “Come on.”

The music rooms, which rang with people practicing from seven in the morning until after dinner, were all silent and dark as we walked down the hall toward the dorm wing. The happy glow in my chest was still there. He’d asked me out! So it was only a coffee or a soda or something, and I couldn’t go, but it was the thought that counted, right? Maybe I wasn’t such a loser after all.

“Is your family pretty hard-nosed about rules?” He held open the double door that led into the main hall with its parquet floors and giant chandelier, and the common rooms for each of the dorms. Wow. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had held a door for me. In New York, a man is more likely to get a stiletto through his foot than a “thank you” for trying it.

“It’s not so much the rules as it is excelling in everything. A demerit means you’re not doing that. And explaining why to my dad is not much fun.”

“I know what you mean,” he said. “When I won the mathematics medal in eighth grade, all my dad could say was, ‘You got a C-plus in gym.’”

“Some people aren’t happy with themselves, and they can’t be happy for other people.” I wasn’t sure if that was my dad’s problem, or if I was just one more Chang with performance issues in a family of type-A personalities.

“Oh, he was happy,” Lucas said. “He just would have been happier if I’d been more—as they say—well rounded.”

“I’m not well rounded, either, then. Phys. Ed. is something to endure. Though I have to say, it’s more interesting out here than on the East Coast. No more stupid field hockey. I took sailing last term and got an A.”

An accomplishment I was pretty proud of, if you want the truth. It’s not everyone who can capsize a sailboat on purpose, get it right way up again, climb into it, and sail it back to the dock. But, working together, Lissa and I got it done.

“Yeah?” Was that admiration in his eyes? I hoped so. “I’m a landlubber, I guess. Give me a track and let me run on it, and I’m good.”

By now we’d reached our common room, which was as far as anyone with a Y chromosome could go in the girls’ dorm wing. I passed it and headed for the stairs.

“See you tomorrow, Lucas.”

He nodded. “Maybe we can still go out sometime. When’s your free period?”

“Tuesdays and Thursdays after breakfast.”