The Fruit of My Lipstick (6 page)

Uh . . . possibly not the best thing to say, as I realized moments too late. I’d helped her pick an outfit for a special date with Callum McCloud last term, and look how
that
had turned out.

But Lissa wasn’t made of sponge cake. “You did,” she said gamely. “Exhibition. Right. That means a lot of walking. This is the opening, right?”

“Yup.”

“So jeans and sneaks are out.” She opened my wardrobe door. “But you still want to do fancy science stuff?”

“Virtual reality, gaming, that kind of thing.” I’d have fun watching Lucas have a good time. Maybe then he wouldn’t notice I didn’t have a goofy helmet on my head. I’d leave the droid soldiers and killer monsters to him. Not to mention the swordplay and the inevitable death throes. Blech.

“Okay.” Lissa pulled a couple of things off their hangers. “You want to be dressy but still be able to experiment and move. So, flats.”

She tossed the D&G slouchy boots over in front of the mirror, so I kissed the thought of my Report buckled booties with their four-inch heels good-bye. Then she handed me a black Miu Miu jersey mini. “With tights.” She reached into the closet again. “And this.”

“Ooh, I like it,” Shani said. “Where’d you get that?”

“Trunk show in Manhattan.” I pulled a black tank over my head and dropped the crimson angora tunic on top of it. It felt like a cloud landing, soft and easy. “An Italian designer, but I forget his name.”

“I like how the angles woven into it look almost 3-D,” Shani said. “Can I borrow it sometime? I’d be really careful.”

“Sure.” I pulled on some tights and stepped into the boots. “But you’re, like, a foot taller than me.”

“Try six inches. I might be able to carry it off.”

I did my makeup carefully, trying out a new shade of lipstick that wouldn’t clash with the sweater. Makeup isn’t a priority for me on school days or at home, but for special occasions like this, it’s a must. I have a pretty reliable complexion, but all the same, it’s kind of sallow, and a little help goes a long way.

“You look great,” Shani said when I came out of the bathroom.

“He won’t be able to take his eyes off you,” Lissa agreed.

“Which kind of negates the whole exhibition experience,” I said with a grin. “But thanks.”

I tossed a few necessities into my dressy little Prada leather backpack, and hesitated. “Coat? Or no?”

“It’s not that bad outside,” Shani reported, swinging the window open. “The rain stopped. And you’ll be inside most of the time.”

True. You don’t wear a red this rich just to hide it, do you?

With a final check in the mirror on the inside of my wardrobe door, I was good to go.

Even though I was five minutes early, Lucas still beat me. He pushed himself off the passenger door of a blue Mini Cooper with a white stripe as I came down the front steps.

“Hey.” His eyes held warmth and approval, and I felt an answering warmth deep inside. Usually he looked at me as though I were a fellow scientist. I like to be admired for my mind, don’t get me wrong. Lissa has this
Top Five Clues That He’s the One
list pinned to her bulletin board—and I’m the first to agree that looks don’t need to be number one.

But being looked at like a girl instead of a scientist can be really nice. Especially since I’m not the most experienced person on the block when it comes to being on the receiving end, you know?

“Nice car,” I said. “Is it yours?”

He nodded. “Gets great gas mileage and has lots of leg room.”

“And it’s cute.”

He looked from me to the car. “If you say so.”

It was so clear he’d never thought about its looks that I had to laugh as I got in. “Most guys go for macho or sporty. Like they have something to prove.”

We rolled past the photographer hanging around at the gate, but since neither of us is a celebrity or the progeny of one, he slumped back over to his ratty car again and leaned on it, watching the building.

Lucas didn’t have anything to prove in the driving department. There’s something to be said for leaving the theatrics to the stuntmen and simply getting a girl to where she’s going in one piece. Yeah, call me boring, but don’t forget I grew up on the mean streets of Manhattan, where venturing into the crosswalk can mean your life.

“People with something to prove are a bore,” he said as we dove down a scary hill. “If you’ve got it, you don’t have to prove it. And if you don’t have it, don’t bother with the pose.”

He sneezed.

“Bless you,” I said. “I think so, too. People worry too much about what other people think they should be. Especially at this school. Look at Vanessa Talbot. She’s always saying how much she hates photographers, but I bet if you’d been taking her out, she would have made sure that guy got her best side on the way past.”

With a snort, Lucas glanced at me and back to the street. “The likelihood of me taking Vanessa Talbot out is approximately one billion to one.”

“Approximately?” I teased.

“Give or take a few million, depending on whether I had—” he hesitated “—something she wanted besides solutions to equations. Also a very remote possibility.”

Which was probably true for 99.9% of the school’s guys.

The exhibition itself is a blur now. I remember some things—the mess of traffic because of the New Year’s parade I was missing. A silver tunic on a Japanese girl that I’d swear came from Prada’s winter collection. How the VR visor made Lucas look like a star pilot straight out of one of Lissa’s
Firefly
DVDs (much to his delight). The welcome by James Cameron, whose new SF movie was set to open the next night.

But mostly what I remember is the way Lucas took my hand almost without thinking as we wove through the crowd. How he saved me a seat and craned his neck to look for me when we got separated in the crush before Cameron’s talk. And how he sneezed.

Sneezed?
I can hear you thinking.
What?

After about the fifteenth time, I stopped saying “bless you” and took a good look at his face. It was flushed, and his eyes watered and had kind of a gummy look, and he was squinting. He looked miserable.

“Lucas, are you okay?”

“I don’t doh.” Even his voice had changed. He sounded like that time someone stuffed cotton gym socks in Curtis Paretski’s tuba in seventh-grade orchestra.

“Are you getting a cold?” Couldn’t be. It had come on too fast. “Or maybe you’re allergic to perfume. That woman beside you at the Cameron thing must have showered in Opium.”

One of the more unfortunate by-products of the eighties, if you want my opinion.

“I’b dod allergic do perfube.”

Oh, boy. This was getting bad. “Come on. Let’s go. Once you’re outside, it’ll probably clear up—who knows what’s circulating in the ventilation?”

We abandoned the buffet and headed for the main doors—but not before I snagged a cupcake for each of us from Citizen Cupcake. I get
Daily Candy SF
every day in my e-mail inbox, and the reviewer raved so much that the name stuck in my head, like tons of other useful and not-so-useful trivia.

I wish I’d retained what to do in the case of a major allergic reaction. Fresh air? The hospital? An EpiPen?

We emerged onto the wide sidewalk and Lucas stood a few steps away from me, breathing deeply. “This helps,” he said. “Buch better.”

“If you say so.” I stepped closer, looking into his face. “Your eyes are still really swo—”

He sneezed violently, and a tear ran down his cheek. “Ged away!” he choked. “Id’s you!”

What?
I skittered away about six feet. “Lucas, I’m not wearing perfume.”

“Id’s dot perfume. Id’s your swedder. Whad’s it bade of?”

I hugged myself, as if protecting it. “Angora. It cost a fortune.”

He lifted his hands. “Clearly I’b allergic to angora. Take id off.”

I pulled the tunic off over my head, rolled it up, and stuffed it into my leather backpack. It didn’t take up as much room as you’d think, the yarn was so fine and soft. But it left me standing on the street with nothing between me and the damp, fifty-degree air but my black cotton tank top. Thank goodness I’d thought to throw it on, or the consequences could have been embarrassing.

Lucas stalked back and forth, throwing his head back and breathing long, cleansing breaths. “Wow,” he said at last. “I’m allergic to penicillin and mold. Didn’t know about angora.”

“Sorry.” I sounded so lame, but there wasn’t much I could add.
Way to ruin your first date, Gillian
.

He tried to smile, and wiped the heel of his hand against his eyes. “I’ll get over it.”

The damp air lay on my skin, cold and clammy, and I began to shiver.

“Can we go get the car?”

“Is that thing in captivity?” He peered around me at my backpack to make sure I’d closed the zipper all the way.

“I promise. There’ll be no escape this time.”

The
Star Wars
line went right over his head. “Okay. I’m done here.”

I had no problem keeping up with his long stride now—in fact, I was happy to head back to the parking structure at the next thing to a run. By the time we reached it and I fell into the passenger seat, I was sure I had early-onset hypothermia. I cranked up the heat as we zoomed out of there, but it couldn’t get warm enough for me.

“Whew,” Lucas said. “Sure you need it up that high?”

“I can’t get warm.”

“Here, take the wheel.”

I hung on for dear life, steering up the side of what seemed like a sheer cliff, while he shrugged out of his herringbone tweed blazer and pushed it over to me. I huddled inside it, smelling the faint echo of his cologne and appreciating the way it had retained his body heat like I’d never appreciated anything before.

“I could go for a coffee,” he said as we turned left and headed along the crest of the hill on which Spencer sat. “What about you?”

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” I said fervently. “I think my core is five degrees below ‘still living.’”

So much for glamour and high tech. Lucas and I wound up our first real date much like we’d wound up our practice one—facing each other across a tiny table, with hands wrapped around our drinks.

Which, when you think about it, wasn’t a bad thing. Lissa can do glamour with one hand tied behind her back. Me, I’m pretty down to earth. And an extra-hot latte and Lucas Hayes were about as good as it could get.

I’ve been wrong about a lot of stuff. But I turned out to be right about that.

To: GChang©spenceracad.edu

From: MarionChang©hotmail.com

Date: January 25, 2009

Re: Call asap

Gillian,

What is wrong with your phone? I’ve left three messages for you to call me.

How could you be so disrespectful to your aunt and uncle? Isabel called me this morning and told me you couldn’t go to the New Year’s celebration because you had to do something on a school project. But, Gillian, this is your family. Your father’s sister. School is very important, but they went out of their way to include you in something special and you treated them like it didn’t matter. Your father and I are so embarrassed. You need to call your aunt and apologize. And then call me to tell me you did so.

Mom

Chapter 6

A
FTER WHAT
COSMO
would call a “dating disaster” with no known cure, and then having my mother yell at me on top of it, my expectations sank to a new low. Lissa couldn’t help me with my family, but she tried to help with the Lucas situation.

“The fact that he’s allergic to something is not your fault,” she told me for the eleventh time two weeks later. Contrary to what adults think, it is possible to study and do relationship therapy at the same time. “How were you supposed to know?”

“I could have asked.”

With a snort, she said, “Right. That would be number five on the questionnaire you handed him at the beginning of the evening.”

Carly snickered and kept her eyes on her Chem notes. I was prepping both of them for our second set of thirdterms, which were at the end of February. Yep. Exams every three weeks or so during a ten-week term. It wouldn’t surprise me if we were the smartest student body on the planet, statistically.

“Lots of people are allergic to angora and fur and stuff,” I went on. “I should have thought of that and gone with natural fibers.”

“Fur is a natural fiber,” Carly observed, not looking up.

“You know what I mean.”

“The point is, you guys just need to communicate,” Lissa said.

“How can we do that when he isn’t talking to me?” Honestly, sometimes Lissa really is blond. “He hardly said a thing to me at prayer circle this week.”

“Have you gone up to him and tried to talk? Thanked him for the evening?” she asked. “Or have you been hiding out in here with us, making us do more homework than we need to?”

“Do you want to pass Bio or not?”

“Not at the expense of your love life.”

“You have a better chance of getting an A on that exam than I do of getting another date with Lucas.” Once you nearly send a guy into anaphylactic shock, you may as well cut your losses and move on.

“You could always buy an A,” Carly said.

Both of us stared at her.

“I can buy a pair of shoes. I can’t buy a grade,” Lissa said. “Or did I not hear you properly?”

“You heard it right. At least, that’s the word around the halls.”

“Back up,” I said. “What’s this?”

“Rumor has it that someone’s selling exam answers,” Carly said. “For a thousand bucks, you can get a whole Chemistry exam with the answers all marked.”

A thousand. The neurons in my brain lined up and fired. “The week before last, I heard Rory Stapleton telling Brett that he got eighty percent on his Trig test.”

“And if you believe he got that without help, I have a bridge to sell you.” Lissa made a wry mouth.

“But why would you buy an answer sheet that gave you wrong answers?” I wanted to know. “How stupid.”

“What would be stupid is any teacher believing Rory could get a perfect score,” Carly said. “That would tip them off right away. With eighty percent, he could say he’s been working with a tutor.”

“That’s some tutor,” Lissa put in. “He probably doubled his grade.”