The Pretty One (9 page)

Why even bother? It's hopeless. My wannabe relationship with Drew is over, gone, kaput. No guy possesses the strength to resist my sister's giggly, wiggly, touchy, smiley, blue-eyed, question-asking tractor beam.

I take a seat beside her, my heart broken. I have no choice but to play my last card. It's desperate, potentially foolish, and almost surely disastrous, but I honestly don't know what else I can do. I have to tell her how I feel about Drew. “Lucy, there's something I need to tell you…” I begin.

But before I can spit out the truth, Lucy's phone rings. She raises a finger as if telling me to wait a minute. “Marybeth,” she says, looking at her caller ID. “I'll tell her that I'll call her right back.”

As Lucy answers her phone I sit on the edge of my bed while I silently practice what I'm about to say. Something like,
You know what's funny? Ha ha! Listen to this: I like Drew! Isn't that a riot? That's right, me! Megan Fletcher, your sweet, loving sister who just spent the past year recovering from a horrible accident that probably never would have happened if you and Alicia hadn't been talking about how ugly and grotesque I was but hey, that's all water under the bridge, right? Forgiven and forgotten. And it will especially be forgotten when you forget all about Drew and hook up with good ole Pouffy instead…

Lucy is nudging me with her foot. “George Longwell?” she shrieks excitedly, giving me a big smile. “Oh my God. He is so cute!”

My heart lurches. Am I being saved by George Longwell? I lean forward and hold my breath.

“And such a sweetheart, too!” Lucy exclaims, winking at me and smiling.

Saved!
I breathe a big sigh of relief and give Lucy a big happy smile. I always knew I liked George Longwell but I really think that at this moment I might just love him.

“Megan's right here,” Lucy says. “I can't wait to tell her.”

“George Longwell? He is so, so cute!” I blurt out as she hangs up her phone. “And talk about chins…does he have a great one or what?”

“I know,” Lucy says. “I'm so excited for you.”

“And the way he writes poetry for his girlfriends and…”

Hold on a second.

Did she say she was excited for
me
?

“Marybeth said she ran into him at the market after school and all he wanted to talk about was you,” Lucy says. “She said he went on and on about how cute you are and how sweet and blah, blah, blah. He even asked her if she thought you would go out with him.”

No, no, no. This was not happening.

“She was like,
duh
!” Lucy laughs. “Of course! He's such a great guy.”

“But…,” I begin.

“You wouldn't believe how many girls like him,” Lucy continues. “They're always calling him and asking him out. But he doesn't want them. He wants
you
.”

“He doesn't even know me.”

“Oh Megan,” Lucy says, taking my hand. “Last year I kept trying to be positive by thinking how great everything would be for us both when you got better. And now here you are—here we are. I have Drew, you have George…. This is the first time I've actually been happy in a long, long time.” She sighs deeply and smiles as her eyes well with tears.

Is she crying? Please tell me she is not crying!

How can I tell her the truth when she's blubbering with happiness? And then, for some horrible reason, a visual pops into my head: Lucy on the day I came home from the hospital, looking all loving and sweet as she helped me out of the car.

“It feels so good, doesn't it?” she says. “To finally be happy again.”

Ugh! I'm speechless. Totally, utterly, speechless.

“I guess,” I manage.

Well, almost speechless.

My head is killing me. I need to talk to someone about this, and since Mom won't be home for another couple of hours, I make my excuses to Lucy and do exactly what I would've done a year earlier if I was upset: I head to Simon's.

Simon lives with his mother on the other side of Key Highway, in a giant fancy high-rise apartment building right on the water. I'm in such a rush to get there that I take the closest route, the highway. I'm pondering my situation when I hear someone yell, “Hellllooo beautiful!”

Suddenly it sounds as if I'm in the middle of the jungle. Monkey noises, shrill hoots, hollers, and whistles fill the air. “Beautiful lady in pink, give us a smile!”

Several men wearing orange safety vests are perched around a giant pothole on the other side of the street, waving and blowing kisses in my direction.

Are they talking to me? I look around, convinced there has to be someone else dressed in pink and risking death alongside the highway, but besides the cars zooming past, it's just me.

“Make our day, beautiful lady!” says a man who is standing next to what appears to be a giant vat of tar. “Give us a smile!”

But I don't feel like smiling. I feel like screaming STOP LOOKING AT ME, YOU PERVERTS! But I don't. Instead, I start to run. Even though I'm wearing flip-flops, I run and run and don't stop running until I reach Simon's apartment building.

I walk through the enormous fern-filled lobby and into the elevator, which opens directly into Simon's mother's penthouse. I haven't been here since last spring, but it looks exactly the same. Unlike the hobbit hole my family and I live in, Simon and his mom have a huge, cavernous, bright and airy open space with floor-to-ceiling views of the inner harbor. Everything is white—white furniture, white carpet, and heavy white drapes. With the exception of Simon's crap, the entire apartment has that pristine-model-home-no-one-really-lives-here kind of look.

“Come on in,” Simon calls out. “Just give me a minute to straighten up.” He dashes out of the living room and heads toward the kitchen with an armful of newspapers.

“Simon, I don't care if it's messy.”

Simon appears, grinning ear to ear. The smile fades, however, the minute he sees me. “What's wrong?”

I'm relieved that in spite of my new face my best friend can still tell when something is bothering me. “Oh…,” I say. “Nothing. Some guys were fixing the sidewalk and they started yelling at me like I'm a…stripper or something.” I have actually never seen a stripper or a striptease, but I imagine that's how the average red-blooded construction worker might have responded to one.

“Really? What were they saying?”

And suddenly I realize how ridiculous this is. Am I going to complain that they said I was pretty? After all, they were complimenting me. I should be grateful. Right? They noticed me. And it's better than having them yell
“Hey, fatso.”

“Nothing,” I say, waving it away. “How about some tea?” I ask Simon, purposely changing the conversation.

“English breakfast or green?”

“English breakfast,” I say.

“English breakfast it is.” He grins as he turns toward the kitchen. “So how was your meeting with Pritchie?”

“It was okay,” I say. “But I ran into Drew Reynolds after school. He said he wanted me to try out for his play.”

Simon puts down the tea box. “Wow, that's exciting, right?”

“Yeah, well, I was excited until I got home and Lucy told me that he's going to be the director of the spring musical. You know what that means.”

“He's her new boyfriend?”

I nod.

“Well, maybe it won't work out. Maybe
he
won't like
her
.”

“Oh yeah, right,” I say sarcastically. “You know that part he asked me try out for? Apparently he wrote it for Lucy.”

“That doesn't make any sense. Why would he ask you to try out for the same role he wrote for your sister?”

I sigh and fall backward, up against the wall. “Who knows?”

Simon shrugs. “Sounds strange to me, but then again, I'm not really surprised. I know you have a crush on him and everything, but the guy has always seemed a little off. Not to mention full of himself. He never even bothers to look at anyone when he walks down the hall.”

“Off?” I stand up straight. “He's not
off
at all. And he's certainly not full of himself either. He's just shy.” I know Simon's just trying to comfort me in my time of need, but nobody badmouths Drew. Even if he was going to be my brother-in-law instead of my husband.

Before he can say anything else, I turn and walk out. I open the sliding glass door in the living room and step out onto the balcony, shutting the screen door behind me. I've always loved the view from Simon's balcony, and today is particularly clear. I can see far into the Chesapeake Bay, to the shipping barges anchored offshore. Directly across the water are the Galleria and the Baltimore Aquarium, where the line of people waiting to see a bunch of fish wraps around the building.

“Guess what else?” I call out a couple of minutes later as I turn my back to the view and peer through the screen into the living room.

“What?” Simon says, rounding the corner with the tea. He has taken off his glasses.

“Marybeth called Lucy and said she ran into George Longwell at the market. She said he wants to ask me out.”

Simon walks directly into the door, causing the tray with the tea to spill on the floor.

“Are you okay?” I ask, opening the door.

“I'm fine,” he says. “I just, well, didn't see the screen. It's a fine mesh.”

“Fine mess or fine mesh?”

Simon cracks up.

“Where are your glasses?” I ask, following him back into the kitchen.

“I just don't feel like wearing them,” he says. “They've been bugging me.”

I take a towel from him and use it to dab at the tea stain on his shirt. Simon stops laughing. There's something in his eyes, a look…a spark that makes me wonder once again if my bra strap is exposed. I turn away from him and head back to deal with the carpet.

“I hope this doesn't stain,” I say, soaking up the tea with the towel.

“I don't care about the carpet,” he says quietly, kneeling beside me. “About this George thing. Do you think you might be interested in him?”

It's the tenderness in his voice that makes me realize that my day has just become worse. Is Simon trying to impress me or something? Is that why he keeps taking off his glasses? Because he thinks he looks better without them? I get a pit in my stomach just thinking about it.

“Of course not,” I say, annoyed. I can't deal with this lunacy right now. My day has been awful enough as it is. I go back into the kitchen and rinse my towel out in the sink. “So where's your mom?” I ask. I'm desperate to lighten things up a bit and get back on the we're-just-friends track. What better way than a mention of good old mom?

“Palm Beach,” Simon says. He's followed me back into the kitchen and is leaning up against the doorway, watching me as I rinse the towel out in the sink. “I have the place to myself for a couple weeks. I'm flying down to visit her this weekend, but maybe next weekend we can do something,” he says. “Order in dinner and watch a movie or something.”

“Only if you promise to wear your glasses,” I say.

Simon starts to laugh and I can tell he thinks I'm joking. But I'm not. And just to let him know I'm serious, I pick his glasses up off the counter and put them on his face. He starts to take them off, and I grab them and try to hold them on, and he is saying “No, really,” and I'm yelling “No, really,” and we each have both hands on his glasses, which is not an easy thing to do, and finally I say, “Simon, I'm going to pinch you!” and then he stops fighting because if there's one thing I'm good at, it's pinching.

nine

ad-lib (verb): to improvise.

There are some days when it just seems like the stars are lined up against me. And today is turning into one of those days. First, my mom had to be at work early so she wasn't there to make certain Lucy and I didn't sleep through our alarm. (Which we did.) Then, I put on my brand-new blue shirt from the Gap and discovered that it had a big stain smack on my boob from paint that I had dripped on it during production class last week, and finally, Annie called from the school and said she heard it was official: Drew Reynolds was to be the director of the spring musical. Call me an eternal optimist, but as I arrive at school, I'm still not ready to lock myself in my room and call it a day. As I finish climbing the marble staircase, I see something that makes me question my optimism. George Longwell is standing in front of my locker, waiting for me.

The sight of him makes me choke on my charcoal toast. I do the only thing I can think of. I turn on my heel and head right back down the steps.

But it's too late. He's already seen me. “Megan,” I hear him call. “Wait up.”

I stop at the landing, turn around, and open my eyes wide in mock surprise. “Oh hi,” I practically shout.

“I've been waiting for you,” he says, jumping down the steps, two at a time.

“Oh…Oh you were? Oh, wow. Yeah. How about that? I was going to go to my locker but then…”

But then what? I saw you and I thought how what I really wanted to do was run screaming in the other direction as fast as my feet would take me? “But then I realized I already have my pre-cal book.”

“I'll walk you to class,” he says.

“That's okay,” I say, quickly. He raises his eyebrows and it looks like (at least I think it looks like) he's a little hurt. “I wouldn't want you to be late on my account,” I say.

“It's worth it,” he says. “Besides, I'm a senior. What can they do?”

“Ha-ha! Right!” I reply. And then even though I totally
hate
it when Lucy giggles, I hear myself make the same sound. Giggle. And then again. And again.

“A group of us are going to the Cross Street Market for lunch today and I was wondering if you wanted to come with.”

“Um, I can't. I have…plans with Simon.”

“How about blowing old Simon off?”

“I brought lunch,” I say, motioning toward my backpack. God forbid I waste that great turkey sandwich, especially when Mom told me two days ago I had better finish the turkey up because it was starting to smell.

“Rain check then.” He jumps the last step and stands in front of me, blocking my path. “I'm not leaving until I get one.”

“A rain check?” I ask.

“Alrighty then,” he says with a smile. “It's a date.”

Say what?

         

I'm on my way to English class when I see Drew and Lucy huddled together, deep in discussion. For the second time that day I change directions rather than deal with the consequences. And for the second time that day I'm not quite fast enough.

“Megan,” Lucy says, cheerfully waving me over. “Drew and I were just discussing the spring musical,” she says.

“Oh yeah,” I say, my attention focused only on Lucy. Maybe if I don't look at Drew ever again my heart will stop hurting. Eventually. I hope. “Congratulations,” I say politely as my eyes inadvertently glance toward his.

“Thanks,” he says, giving me a little smile.

My heart skips a beat.

I glance away. Damn! What was I doing looking at him?

“I'm trying to convince Megan here to audition for my one act.”

“You
are
?” Lucy exclaims.

I forget all about my vow not to look at Drew and stare at him, openmouthed.

“Sure, why not?” he asks, opening his folder. He takes out a manuscript and hands it to me.

It's a play.
His
play. “Thanks,” I squeak. I can barely breathe, not to mention speak. I glance at my sister as if to say, “Can you believe this?” But it is obvious from the major frown on her face that she doesn't share my happiness.

“All right Fletcher sisters,” he says, “I have to get to class.”

As soon as Drew is out of earshot, Lucy looks at me like I just sucker-punched her and says, “Why didn't you tell me he asked you to audition?”

I turn away from her, torn between a tiny sliver of guilt at having somehow played a part in upsetting her and a huge wad of excitement over the fact that Drew wanted me to audition. “I don't know,” I say, glancing down at the play as if it is a ten-carat diamond. “I guess I didn't think he was serious.”

“So are you going to?” Lucy asks, as we begin to walk down the hall.

Is that a tremor I hear in her voice? Don't tell me she's got a tremor!

“Going to what?” I ask, stalling for time.

“Audition for his one-act.”

No doubt about it. It's a tremor. The tremor she gets when she's really upset. The one she gets when she's about to cry. This is so unfair. I know she's disappointed, since she thought Drew wrote the part for her and he so obviously did not, but still. “I don't know,” I say.

And then I get it. A bolt from the blue.

“What do
you
think I should do?” I'm going to put my future and potential love life in her hands. I'm willing to bet that my sister's good-naturedness and her natural ability to share will put a stop to the tremor.

She looks stunned. “Well, you wouldn't be able to work on the set with all your friends if you were in the play.”

No tremor. “Yeah,” I say, even though her reasoning is total bs since “friends” really means one person: Simon. And he certainly isn't going to care.

“And besides, Habersham really prefers that the directors cast the senior drama majors.”

I'm beginning to get a little nervous. I honestly thought she would have caved by now. “You were cast when you were a junior,” I say, as I start walking faster.

“True but—”

“But I guess that was different,” I say angrily, forgetting all about my plan to play it cool. I begin to walk really, really fast, so fast, I'm already three steps ahead of her. Ugh. Why had I even given her the power in the first place? So she had a tremor. So what?

“Megan, wait,” she says. “Maybe you should try out anyway, just for the experience. And Drew asked you to, so why not,” she says with a tiny bit of resolve.

I stop in my tracks. “Really?” I say.

“Really.” She nods.

         

It's family dinner night. Before my accident I wasn't too crazy about family dinner night, because it meant Dad was home and his presence always guarantees a certain amount of tension. Even though Mom makes more money than Dad (and of the two of them Dad is the only one who knows how to cook), on family dinner nights, Mom is the one responsible for dinner. She sets the table and serves the food and then asks him a million times how his dinner is and if he likes it, as if she's slaved over the stove cooking it instead of double-parking the car outside a restaurant and running in to pick it up. Tonight she has picked up dinner in Little Italy, which just happens to be one of my favorite places on earth. Lucy and I help set the table and we all sit down.

“So…,” my dad says, helping himself to a gigantic portion of pasta. “Mom says you got asked to try out for a play today,” he says, looking at me.

I steal a glance at Lucy. Even though Lucy has given me her blessing to try out for Drew's play, I can't help but feel a little weird. But to her credit, all her hesitancy about me auditioning seems to have evaporated. She's eating her rigatoni, seemingly unbothered by the topic. “Yeah,” I say.

“Good part?” he asks.

“It's just for the senior playwright independent study. Not a big deal at all,” I say as if I couldn't care less. “Lucy's trying out, too.”

“What did you think of Drew's play?” Lucy asks me. As she knows, I read it the minute I got home from school.

“I think it's…” I stop myself. What I want to say is that I think it should get a Tony and an Oscar and the Nobel Prize. But instead I say, “Okay.”

“Yeah,” Lucy says, reaching for the block of Parmesan cheese and the grater. “There's definitely some problems, but I'm hoping he'll be amenable to making some changes.”

I get it.
She
will make the changes
when
she gets the part. “The other day you said you thought it was amazing,” I point out.

“Did I? I guess it's pretty good, for a rough. But there are some definite problems. Like the fact that the characters don't have names. What's with that? It's so confusing.”

“I wasn't confused.” There are two characters. One is referred to as “Guy.” The other “Girl.” Simple.

“These senior productions typically become a real partnership between the writer and the actor,” she says authoritatively, ignoring me.

“That's interesting,” Mom interjects cheerfully.

“I love the story though, don't you?” Lucy says to me, as she begins grating the Parmesan cheese. “There's kind of an ominous undertone. The heroine is definitely a little unhinged—the way she tries to seduce him into staying with her and stuff.”

“She seduces him?” my mom asks.

“There's sex in this play?” my dad practically exclaims.

“No,” I say to my parents. “It doesn't say that they had sex. It just says that they hooked up or, well, got together. And I don't think she's crazy.”

“Got together?” Lucy says. “You don't think that means they had sex? They totally did.”

Lucy has a point, which makes me think about Drew. I know he's a writer and this is fiction and all, but does the fact that he's writing about people having sex mean that he's actually had sex? Read: Did he sleep with Lindsey?

“For two,” Lucy continues, “if she's not crazy, why is she sitting in the park by herself at night talking about vampires?”

“Vampires?” Mom asks.

“She's upset,” I say to Lucy. “And I think that it's sad, not crazy. She thinks she knows him but she doesn't. She's in love with the, well, idea of him.”

“Idea of him,” Lucy grunts, ramming the cheese over the grater.

“There's vampires?” Dad asks.

“No,” I say to him. “The play takes place at night when there's a full moon. The character of the girl makes a comment about how she's always heard that weird things happen on a full moon. And I think she only says that because she's trying to be wacky just because she thinks that will make her more interesting or something. She really likes this guy.”

“She's nuts,” Lucy says, grating even more ferociously.

“Lucy!” Mom says, motioning toward her plate.

Lucy stops grating as she looks down at the mountain of cheese on her plate.

“I think that's enough,” Mom says. “Since when do you even like Parmesan cheese?”

“I want to hear more about how you're doing in school, Megan,” Dad says.

“Well,” I say, pausing to chew, “my teachers are a little concerned. I think they're afraid Jan wasn't up to snuff.” Jan was my tutor last year. She looked like a smarty, but I think she took one too many whiffs from the glue bottle.

“Are you sure you want to try out for a play?” Mom asks.

“Maybe you should just focus on your studies for a while.”

Uh-oh. This is a potential complication I didn't expect. “I can handle it,” I say quickly.

“Mom's right,” Lucy says. “You don't want to overwork yourself. You want to be able to have some fun this year, too.”

I give Lucy a look that signals her to mind her own business.

“Yeah,” Dad says. “I bet you're going to have quite the social life now that you're—”

“Better,” Mom says, interrupting him.

“So is everyone fawning over you now?” Dad asks. “I bet you and Lucy are the prettiest girls in the school!”

Before my accident, I would've loved my dad to say something like that (even though I would've known it wasn't true). But now it just makes me want to chomp on my nail. It's as if he's all excited and giving me credit for something that has nothing to do with who I really am. And it's a reminder of how he felt about me when I was ugly.

“A lot of guys are interested in her,” Lucy announces.

“Really?” both Mom and Dad say at the same time.

“Guy
s
?” I say to Lucy.

“George Longwell, one of the most popular seniors. He's a music major.”

“Whoopee,” I say sarcastically. “
One
guy: a music major who sings in a barbershop quartet.”

“Barbershop quartet? Those guys who sing a cappella?” Dad asks.

“Bingo,” I say.

“So you think he's weird?” Lucy asks, annoyed. “Is that why you keep avoiding him?”

“I'm not avoiding him.”

“He said he could swear that you run away from him when you see him.”

A piece of pasta lodges in my throat and I choke it down with a gulp of water. “That's ridiculous.”

“He's really cute,” Lucy tells my parents. “All the girls have a crush on him.”

“If he's so great, maybe
you
should go out with him,” I say to Lucy.

She puts her fork down and raises an eyebrow, flashing me the evil eye. “If you don't like him, maybe you should tell him to leave you alone.”

“I don't even know him,” I say, backing down a little.

“Well, all I'm saying is that it's going to be hard to get to know him when you're constantly running away.”

I look at the piece of rigatoni loaded with sauce that I just stabbed and I'm suddenly filled with an overwhelming urge to fling it in my sister's face. “Can I be excused?” I say instead.

“We haven't even had dessert yet,” Mom says. “I picked up some cannolis.”