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Jess
For a girl who doesn’t like to share her private life, I tell T everything. What will I do if he stops listening? Allie doesn’t even know I think Dad’s having an affair. That Mom pops sleeping pills like Pez. That I cry myself to sleep every night. I spend as much time as I can at T’s. His parents talk to him, eat dinner with him, go to his games. At this point, I could leave for school in bikini and nothing else and mine wouldn’t even notice.
~ from the diary of Elizabeth Sara Thorne (age16)
There’s a girl on Gabe’s bed.
The same girl who sent him the happy bday text. The girl he labeled Short Blonde One. And she’s even prettier life-size than as a postage-stamp icon.
My lungs deflate. I stumble into my room, shoving the door closed before I clear it. The bottom corner clips my pinky toe, pitching my instant squeal somewhere past glass-shattering range.
“Mother of Pearl.” Vi drops the lacy plum bra and panties she’s holding. The phone pressed to her ear slips to the floor. “You scared the silicone out of me.” She slaps her hands over her chest, like she can corral her heartbeats. Or her implants.
I let go of my damp hoodie to brace against the wall, kick off my flip-flops, and grab my foot to inspect my toe. Blood wells in the corner under a flapping piece of skin. “Ow. Ow. Ow.”
“Sit.” Vi tightens the sash on her robe and grabs a wet washcloth from the bathroom.
I slump onto my bed and wrap the towel around my bleeding toe until the sharp sting deadens to a dull throb that matches the one in my chest.
How could I let myself feel something for Gabe when I know better than to get attached to anyone? No one in my life stays. My friends dropped off. Dad disappeared. And then he pushed Mom away. It’s hard to have a relationship with someone who’s not allowed to come within a hundred feet. Not that she’s tried. But if he forgave her, that would change. He needs to get over what happened. It wasn’t him she hurt that day, it was me.
“You wrecked your pedicure.” Vi shakes her head like I’ve committed a mortal crime against my foot. “And that’s not your shirt.”
A garbled yell comes from the phone on the floor. The voice is deep, male, and slightly crazed. Gross. Her flavor-of-the-night.
She scoops up the cell. “Sorry, dropped the phone.” Listening, she nods like the mystery guy can see. The smile that slants over her mouth matches her lingerie. “Sure.” She tucks the bra and panty set in the pocket of her robe with a honeyed laugh that summons my gag reflex. “I’ll wear it,” she lowers her voice, then ends the call.
Vi. My personal PSA for abstinence. “Can you get me a Band-Aid?” The gravel in my tone nixes my, “Please.”
She pulls a small black bag from the top of her suitcase and fishes out a bandage, tossing it on my lap on her way to the closet.
I’m careful as I unwrap the towel from my toe. The bleeding’s stopped, and the Band-Aid covers the ick factor.
Vi takes a pair of cream pants and a blouse that’s almost a normal shade of lime off their hangers. “Do I want to know what happened to you? Or who you were with?”
I don’t answer. But my gaze accidently strays toward Gabe’s door.
“Little. House. On. The. Prairie.” Her mouth tips into an I-know-what-you-did grin. “You were with Gabriel Wade last night. Spill.” Her eyes sparkle like her frosted eyeshadow.
Why does Vi insist on being the bestie I never wanted? “I wasn’t with Gabriel last night.” I leave out where I spent my morning. “Don’t you have to get dressed for the luncheon?”
She disappears into the bathroom, then peeks out the door. “A girl should be allowed to savor her secrets.”
“There are no secrets. Nothing happened.” And nothing’s going to happen. Not now.
Vi’s face falls like I excluded her from the “it” slumber party, and she shuts the door.
I flop across the bed, put an arm over my face, and get a whiff of Gabe’s T-shirt—a dash of laundry detergent, a little hotel shampoo, a lot of too-good-to-be-true TV star.
Vi’s phone goes off on her bed. The ringing stops and starts three more times.
“Alright already.” I stretch across the small space between our beds to grab her phone. While I’m limping to the bathroom, my gaze catches on a text that pops up.
I’m picturing you in the purple lingerie ?
Everything inside me compresses into a compact space.
The three missed calls and the text came from the same number. The same number time-stamped a few minutes ago when I interrupted her hookup call. A number with no contact details.
