Chapter 3

“I can’t believe this!” Linda shouted, snapping the thin blue door of her locker shut. The weak metal protested with a sharp, dry echo. “All this time assuming he was keeping his almighty promise, and I was here, waiting like some stupid puppy. I should’ve known better than that.” She let out a soft snort. “Now I belong to the lame circle of the cheated. I bet people can see it flashing across my forehead.”

I leaned my shoulder against the wall and settled my eyes over her disheartened profile. “First of all, they would need a powerful X-ray vision to see it, better than the one that guy in blue tights—Superman—has. And why do you care about the others? If they obviously don’t give a damn, why would you?”

“I don’t.” She turned and faced me. Her nose was tipped with a soft red and gleamed like a premature cherry. I knew that if I touched the skin over the straight bone, it would’ve been warm, like mine was when sadness threatened to break away from my eyes—something I never allowed in public. Tears only came out in solitude. They were inexorable allies in the privacy of my bed. Outside, those tears merged into my skin, leaving a hard mask to the eyes of others.

And ignorance was what I craved.

“Okay, tell me what happened.” I told her as softly as I could.

She looked down and sighed. “I called to his dorm last night and…a girl answered. Her voice was all giddy and she kept repeating ‘stop it baby, stop,’ so I thought it was a wrong number and was about to hang up when…Brad’s voice came in and I…froze.”

I grinded my teeth together. Men. Why couldn’t they just keep their hands in one cookie jar?

“Please tell me you said something to him.” I pinned her with a sharp stare.

“It’s over. I…I broke up with him,” she wavered and lowered her head.

Poor Linda. She was such a nice girl, always trusting people when she wasn’t supposed to, claiming everyone deserved a chance. She believed in goodness and everything bright and shiny. That’s why people took advantage of her. And that’s why guys like Brad thought they could play with her like some dumb puppet. “Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you, Linda. College is the Holy Grail of sex for guys, with all the parties and the girls throwing at…”

“Okay, okay, I get it, no more dating college guys unless you’re in college.” She looked at me with sadness in her dark eyes and took in a deep reassuring breath. She frowned, as if remembering something, and brushed behind her ear the longest side of her asymmetrical bob. “Isn’t Buffy’s boyfriend in college, too?”

I swallowed back a hiss. “Don’t you dare mention that guy’s name to me.”

She snapped her fingers. “Oh, yeah, I remember…Ian, right?”

I rolled my eyes, a swirl of anger twisting my stomach. “Thank you so much for the nice reminder,” I said and pushed my feet down the hallway. “It’s not the same thing, and you know it.”

“Yeah,” she said, following my quick stride. “But it doesn’t mean he’s not going to cheat on her just because he’s fifteen minutes away.”

I stopped and turned to look at her, surprised. “Are you telling me not to trust Ian, Ms. everybody-deserves-a-chance?”

That caught her off guard. “I, um, no. No. I’ve just seen him twice, so I can’t really…hey! Why are you turning this on me? You’re the one who doesn’t trust him.” She pointed at my chest, which was covered with a black “The Cure” logo and a picture of the band. It was one of my favorite T-shirts, white and tight, stopping an inch below my belly button to show a bit of flat skin.

To Buffy’s eyes, black heeled boots were a fashion essential. To my eyes, not having vintage styled shirts was a fashion suicide.

“Exactly, I don’t,” I said wiping my hands over my blazer, as if cleaning the thought of him from them. “But I have seen him more than twice, which, believe me, is enough to have a well-rounded opinion of him.”

“I don’t get it,” she said with a soft shake of her head. “He seems pretty in love with Buffy. The times we bumped into him at your house and saw him, his eyes were, like, shinning all the time. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“I can’t follow you, Linda. Are you with or against the guy? I already told you the kind of person he is.”

“Was.”

“Is…was…whatever. Nobody changes just like that.” And especially guys like Ian who thought the entire female population was at their feet. Linda hadn’t been able to witness all the lovely “encounters” out in the parking lot with him plastered on several girls’ faces, or even right here in the hallway. Since she’d barely checked into school this year—her parents had transferred from the University of Iowa to the creative writing department at Berryford’s preppy university—she’d only seen Ian’s best behavior now that he was with my sister and out of high school.

Yes, he’d changed a lot from the time he’d started hunting Buffy—which must’ve been his fastest hunt ever. She’d fallen prey to his charms faster than a pissed off monkey running to reach his stolen banana. But I didn’t believe in this sudden change. I hadn’t forgotten all those hot and heavy scenes with him practically eating those girls’ faces last year. He was a player to the core. He never took seriously any girl. And, no, he hadn’t been exactly popular. He was just one of those guys who kept to themselves, hanging in one corner with a few friends, looking all mysterious and pensive, as if he would just pull out his guitar and start playing some tunes. That brooding, artsy vibe, I think, was what made him so irresistible to girls—besides his chiseled good looks, of course. He had the looks of James Dean and the spirit of Van Gogh—a dreamy combination of which he took full advantage.

“Wow, I love Buffy’s blazer,” Linda suddenly said. “Where did she get it?”

I turned around and chased her line of stare. “At Ralph Lauren, I think. What a preppy thing to buy.” I snorted, looking at Buffy crossing the bottom of the hallway with the double J’s. Their true names were Jessica and Jennifer, but since they sounded too run of the mill, I’d decided to give them a worthy moniker—one for the price of two. A great deal, really.

As if sensing my thoughts, Jennifer glanced at me, and when she realized who I was, the casual look in her eyes filled with fierce disapproval. Her eyes narrowed and she turned around, tagging along with Buffy and Jessica, her rounded chin pointing forward.

Had I said how much the double J’s disliked me? And how much I disliked them? It was a world of pure love down here.