This Is So Not Happening (24 page)

“Girls! You must learn how to use the doorbell!” Mrs. Appleby whispered.

She’d been saying this pretty much every time we’d come over here since the age of seven. And as always I thought to myself,
Why don’t you just start locking your door?

“Sorry,” Shannen said offhandedly.

Mrs. Appleby shook her head and stepped aside to let us pass. “She’s in her room.”

We thanked her and crept over to Chloe’s door. She still had the white placard with the painted ballet toe-shoe on it and the words “Chloe’s Room” written in pink script. Shannen quietly turned the knob and we peeked inside. Chloe wasn’t crying. She was sitting in her armchair with a blanket over her belly, reading aloud from
Peter Rabbit
.

For a second, we just froze. I looked at Faith. She looked at Shannen. None of us knew what to do. Chloe was reading to the baby. And suddenly I wanted to burst into tears. I knew we should back away. We should just go. We shouldn’t interrupt such a private moment. But then Chloe started to look up, and I did the only thing I could think to do. I grabbed Shannen and yanked her through the door with me.

“Surprise!”

Chloe dropped the book. “You guys! What are you doing here?”

“We brought snacks!” Faith announced with a big, forced grin. She held up her gift bags and nail kit. “And presents!”

“And movies!” Shannen added brightly, unbuttoning her varsity jacket. “And pedicure stuff!”

Chloe pushed herself up from her chair with both hands, the book forgotten. “I can’t believe this!” she said, eyeing the booty we’d splayed across her bed. When she looked at us, her eyes were shining. “It’s just like old times.”

“That’s kind of the point,” Faith told her, rolling her eyes in an amused way. She walked around to Chloe’s side of the four-poster bed. “Now get up there so I can start your toes. I bet your feet are gnarly.”

“I’m not sure, actually. I haven’t seen them in a while,” Chloe said, struggling her way onto her bed.

Shannen popped a movie into the DVD player. I opened a bag of Baked Lays and busted out the Snapple. The two of us crawled into bed next to Chloe and propped ourselves up against her many, many throw pillows just as the FBI warning glowed blue on the screen.

“Pink or red?” Faith asked, settling herself in at Chloe’s feet and opening her nail kit. Inside, a dozen shades of polish were lined up neatly on tiny shelves, while the bottom well was filled with cotton balls, swabs, tweezers, cuticle pushers, clippers, and files.

“Got anything with glitter?” Chloe asked, craning her neck to see. “This baby’s gonna pop out soon, and when it does I want to be glam.”

“Got it.” Faith lifted a bottle of hot pink polish with glitter. “But first, we work on these heels. Because ew.”

Chloe blushed and I tried to refrain from smacking Faith upside the head.

“Want a present?” Shannen asked.

“What do you think?” Chloe asked, reaching into the chip bag.

Shannen grabbed a small one from the pile and tossed it at Chloe, who deftly caught it. She tore it open and grinned. “Cashmere socks?”

“Perfect after a pedicure,” I said, handing her a lemonade.

“You got
17 Again
?” Chloe asked, her mouth dropping as Zac Efron appeared on the menu screen.

“A classic,” I conceded.

“It’s my favorite,” Chloe said.

Shannen squirmed around, trying to find the perfect comfortable position against the pillows. “Again. Kind of the point. Is she not getting the theme here?” she said to me facetiously, making me laugh.

The movie started up and Chloe looked down at her belly, where she’d laid out her new socks, and at the bottle of lemonade in her hand, while Faith rubbed peppermint lotion on her feet.

“You guys?” Chloe said, her voice cracking.

My heart froze.
Please don’t let her cry.
The whole point of this night was to cheer her up, not to make her cry.

“Yeah?” Shannen said warily, holding her iced-tea bottle an inch from her lips.

“Is it lame that this is the best night I’ve had in months?” Chloe asked.

The rest of us laughed. “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I said. “We could still disappoint you.”

Chloe leaned back into her pillows and let out a contented sigh. “Yeah, I just don’t think that’s possible.”

“I’m so bummed. This is the second year in a row I’m going to be dateless for Valentine’s Day,” Faith lamented, spearing a bright red tomato in the center of her salad, her head held up by her free hand.

“Remember when we used to do Guys Suck Day?” Annie asked, not looking up from her laptop, where she was typing away.

“Omigod, yeah. That was so much fun,” Faith said.

I looked back and forth between the two of them and held my breath. Annie had been psyched to sit at our table with us, the better to spy on the Cresties, but I hadn’t actually expected her to interact with anyone, and now this? Were Annie and Faith actually talking to each other and not sniping? Unprecedented. At least in the last two years.

“What’s Guys Suck Day?” Shannen asked.

Annie’s head suddenly shot up. Then Faith’s did the same. They looked at each other across the cafeteria table like they’d just realized where they were.

“Oh, nothing,” Faith said, grabbing for her soda.

“It was stupid,” Annie added. Both of them were blushing.

“Does it involve hating on guys on Valentine’s Day?” Shannen asked. She glanced toward the far end of the table
where Hammond, the Idiot Twins, Connor, and Josh scarfed their double burgers. “Because I’m in.”

Faith cleared her throat and looked down, rubbing her hands together under the table as she glanced around for a change of topic. Her eyes finally fell on Jake, who sat at the end of the table, catty-corner from her and me, scarfing his own double burger.

“What about you, Jake? What are you guys doing for V-Day this weekend?” she asked.

Jake didn’t answer. He was too busy glaring toward the food line, his latest bite of burger bulging inside his right cheek. I tilted my head and leaned out into the aisle to see what he was looking at and spotted Chloe and Will. My heart sunk. Of course.

“I haven’t even thought about Valentine’s Day,” I said, filling the awkward silence. “I just want to get through the game tonight.”

“Nervous ’cause your new coach is coming?” Shannen said in an overly teasing voice. The Rutgers coach had sent me an e-mail letting me know she was going to be attending the game tonight with a couple of members of the team, kind of a cool way to support the new recruit. Of course the added pressure felt anything but supportive, but if I wanted to play at RU, I was going to have to get used to it. There were some pretty high expectations surrounding that team.

I glanced sideways at Jake. He was still glaring.

“Well, that and it
is
the Valley game,” I replied. “We
must
beat them down.”

“I heard that,” Shannen said, slapping my hand.

“Great. Basketball. Rah, rah, rah,” Faith said facetiously.
“But no one has answered my question.” Everyone looked at Jake. There was no indication that he even knew any of us were there, let alone talking.

“Ja-ake!” Faith sang. She reached out and snapped her thin fingers in front of his face.

“What?” A couple of sesame seeds flew out of his mouth and she grimaced.

“I
said
, what are you guys doing for Valentine’s Day?” Faith asked again.

I held my breath, curious to hear his answer. Chloe and Will started to make their way down the aisle. He held their shared tray with one hand and clutched her fingers with the other.

“Oh, um—”

Just that one second of hesitation made my stomach flip.

“We don’t have a plan,” I interjected, feeling embarrassed.

“No. We do,” he said, putting his burger down on his tray. He dusted his fingers and reached for his soda cup. “We have plans, you just don’t know what they are.”

“Really?” I said, shocked. Jake hadn’t mentioned Valentine’s Day once, and I’d started to think that he was too wrapped up in his anti-Chloe obsession to plan anything. Plus things hadn’t been great between us lately, with his moodiness and my irritation over the way he’d been treating Chloe. I figured maybe he wasn’t interested. “You planned something?”

“Of course I did,” he said, leaning in to give me a kiss. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

A smile twitched its way to my lips, and I reached for his hand. It was the first time since he’d found out about Chloe’s lie that I felt even remotely close to him. But just when my
fingers were about to brush his under the table, Chloe and Will were passing by.

“Nice lunch, Chloe,” he said, his back to her. “I thought you were eating for two, not ten.”

The guys at the far end of the table cackled. Faith and Annie froze. My hand fell back into my lap.

“Jake …,” Shannen said in a disappointed, warning tone.

Will put the tray down on the end of the next table and turned toward Jake. “Do you have a problem, man?”

Jake wiped his fingertips on his napkin and shook his head, avoiding eye contact. “Not anymore, dude. It’s your problem now.”

Chloe shook her head. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

“You don’t have to go,” I said. But it was too late. She was already waddling away. Faith got up to follow her, and Jake shot her this evil look, like he felt betrayed. In that moment his face looked entirely different. Sharper. Uglier, somehow. I barely even recognized him.

I was going to be sick. I really was.

“Why don’t you try saying that to my face?” Will said, taking a step closer to Jake.

Instantly, the guys at the far end of the table stood up, their chairs scraping against the linoleum. Will’s face got blotchy red, but he didn’t look away from Jake. In fact, I couldn’t understand why the heat of his glare wasn’t boring a hole in Jake’s skull.

“Okay.”

Jake got up as well. He was taller than Will, but only by a couple of inches. The two of them stared at each other, and I swear I could taste the flying testosterone.

“You guys, come on,” I said nervously. People were starting
to take notice, getting up from their chairs, straining to see what was about to go down. “You don’t have to fight.”

“Oh, I actually think it’s long overdue,” Will said.

“Don’t talk to her,” Jake spat.

Will laughed under his breath. “Now you’re telling me who I can and can’t talk to? Who the hell do you think you are?”

From the corner of my eye I saw one of the history teachers, Mr. Bucolli, making his way toward us. He was short, neckless, and seriously stocky, and people had been calling him Mr. Troll-ie for years. The door to the teacher’s lounge opened and the vice principal, Dr. Giles, walked out as well. It was like he had a sixth sense for when a student was out for blood.

“I’m the guy who’s about to pummel your ass,” Jake said.

He grabbed the front of Will’s sweater and I yelped. At that moment, Mr. Bucolli’s beefy hands met Jake and Will’s chests and pried them apart. Man was definitely a wrestler in his earlier life.

“No one will be pummeling anyone’s anything,” he growled.

Jake and Will were both panting like bulls about to be released into a fighting ring. If Mr. Bucolli lowered his arms, they would have cracked skulls. Instead, the VP arrived and cleared his throat.

“Mr. Graydon, Mr. Halloran,” he said, tugging on the cuffs of his shirtsleeves beneath his jacket. “My office. Now.”

Neither one of them moved.

“Jake,” I pleaded.

He glanced at me then, but his eyes were blank. Then he reached down, grabbed his backpack, and stormed off, shoving open the cafeteria door with the heel of his hand.

“You too, Mr. Halloran,” Dr. Giles said.

Mr. Bucolli released him, and Will seemed to deflate. “Would you guys make sure Chloe eats something?” he said, glancing over at their forgotten tray.

“We’re on it,” Shannen said.

“Thanks.”

Then he turned around and trudged out with Dr. Giles at his heels. The guys slowly lowered themselves back into their chairs, and gradually the noise level in the cafeteria returned to normal, maybe even louder than normal, as everyone started blabbing about what had just happened. I stared down at my untouched pasta, feeling somehow hot and frigid at the same time.

“You okay?” Annie asked me.

“Sure.” I picked up my water bottle. My hand was shaking. I managed to take a sip, then cleared my throat. “Know how you guys were talking about Guys Suck Day?” I said weakly.

“Yeah,” Shannen and Annie said in unison.

“Well, I think I’m in for that,” I said grimly. “I think I’m most definitely in.”

“It’s not like I don’t know what’s going on around this school,” Dr. Giles said.

The dude was seriously tall with dark skin and graying hair, but not intimidating. When he sat on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms over his thin chest I couldn’t help thinking I could take him. If they needed a disciplinarian around here,
they should’ve given Mr. Troll-ie the job. His hand had felt like a brick against my chest. For a second there I thought he was going to snap me in half. Plus you don’t fuck with a guy who has that much hair growing out of his ears. There’s definitely something wrong there.

“I know what’s going on,” Dr. Giles continued. “The Internet age has been most enlightening.” He tugged a Droid phone out of his pocket and lit up the screen. “Thanks to this I can find out who’s doing what around here at any given moment of any day just by logging on to Twitter.”

I swallowed, but my throat was dry, which made me cough. Dr. Giles was reading our tweets? Okay. Maybe he
was
intimidating. My leg started to bounce up and down. At the far end of the couch, Will was frozen.

“I understand that the two of you are in a trying situation,” he continued, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “And I sympathize. I do.”

He got up and walked around his desk, then leaned both fists into it.

“But let’s get one thing clear right here and now,” he said, looking us each in the eye. “The animosity between you two will
not
manifest itself within these walls. Is that clear?”