he’s related to Reed, which means he’s likely insane.”
“And I really thought this bra would do the trick, too.” She ignored me and pushed up her push-up. “My tits look totally awesome—there is no explanation for how he has not dropped to his knees in obsession yet. I mean, look at me, I am, like, an adorable fucking snow bunny.”
She raised her eyebrows at me, and I surveyed her pink cheeks, pitch-black mascara, ribbon-blond hair and absurd fluffy white coat.
Only this girl could pull that off.
I sighed as she looked back at the road.
“Well,” I said, “he is also friends with Aiden. Maybe he’s got some kind of...integrity?”
“Hah! That moron? Come on.” She shook her head, no doubt in the world. “He’s not picking up on it or something.”
I doubted that.
“All right, so he’s not aware that you’re trying to get him to want to bang you—”
“I want him to want to bang me. I would never actually do that with him. Ew.”
“Okay...so you want him to want to bang you. Maybe you shouldn’t be doing that.”
“I mean, I know that? But this isn’t about cheating on Aiden. Or breaking up with him or anything. I need to know Justin wants me, and that he would have me if he could.”
“You know that’s insanely selfish, right?”
“It is not.”
“Oh no, it is.”
“It’s an attention thing! Aiden and I have been together for what, like...a year?”
“More than that, but go on.”
“So, I mean, it has gotten a little...stale. And I don’t know...I totally don’t want to not be with him. But sometimes a girl’s got to get some attention on the side. I mean, come on. This is the last semester of high school that we will ever have. Shouldn’t I be living it up, being young and all that?”
“I still don’t understand why you want to stay with him if you need that.”
“Do you really not?”
“No, I don’t! You’re not even eighteen yet, and you’re in a relationship you clearly don’t want to be in. I’m just saying—”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I am pret-ty stupid.”
“I’m sorry but you wouldn’t!” she said. “You’ve never really even had a boyfriend, Nat!”
“Yeah, that’s because when I know it isn’t right, I don’t stick around because he’s hot or because I wish I had those feelings.”
“Can we not argue about this?”
“We’re not arguing, we’re...discussing.” Things were tense for a split second before we both started laughing. “I’m just saying, I don’t think you should feel trapped into something that’s not right. You know your options are endless, and no one can blame you for wanting to—”
“You’re the one that we should be talking about.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because! You’re a freakin’ hottie with a body and yet you spend all your time at home nowadays.”
“A hottie with a body? What decade are you from? And hey, I’m not at home right now!”
“You know what I mean, Natalie. I don’t get why you do that. I’ll never understand it. You get asked out by guys more often than makes sense for how little you talk to people, and yet you choose to spend time all alone.”
“I choose me, Brooke!” I quoted the public service announcement on unhealthy relationships we had recently been forced to watch. Apparently none of the rest of the video had affected Brooke much.
“As I was saying, if you could not interrupt—everyone’s all about you, and you ignore them and don’t do anything. People still ask where you are at parties. How many events do you get invited to that you don’t deign to go to, or that you instantly decline on Facebook?”
She pulled onto a street a few blocks from “our” Chinese restaurant and parallel parked.
I watched the tires in the side view mirror. “What is your point exactly?”
“My point—oh, shit—” she rolled up on the curb and then fixed it “—is that everyone knows you’re awesome. What girl in her right mind doesn’t bother using her popularity?” She turned off the engine and stared at me.
“I’m not into the partying stuff so much, and that’s all anyone does anymore. I’m sorry! I know you like it, but...hanging around drinking disgusting beer that tastes like sewer water and taking shots of raspberry-flavored nail polish remover while someone’s mom is out of town is not fun to me. Neither is sitting in someone’s basement watching a bunch of guys in knitted hats smoke weed, or getting hit on by scumbags who aren’t even sure what I just said my name was.”
“First off, everyone knows your name. But...you know what, you’re right in a way. I’ll admit it can be like that on occasion. But it can also be really fun. And when it is, it’s worth it. I have some fairly epic stories. And, yes, Nat, you are happy. But you won’t have anything crazy to look back on if you carry on like this. When I’m old and haggard, I’ll have so many ridiculous stories. I’m afraid of your biggest regret being that you didn’t live it up.”
We got out of the car and—no surprise to me—she was distracted from her bad-influence-best-friend monologue by a cute guy playing a guitar under a heater.
“Ooh!”
He looked a couple years older than us and was Urban Outfitted from loose knitted hat to moccasins. His case was open and filled with the pocket change of passersby. Brooke snaked her way to the front of the small crowd shivering around him.
“And you were so cold a minute ago!” I yelled after her. I groaned and then followed her.
The singer’s eyes locked on hers, and he smiled as he sang the next few lines directly to her. She smiled coyly back, looking from his puppy-dog eyes to his khakis and back again. Good ol’ Brooke. She turned and gave me an excited shrug. She pulled a twenty from her purse and tossed it into his battered guitar case before walking demurely back to me. What I would give to have a twenty-dollar bill I didn’t mind tossing to the wind.
“He’s really hot, isn’t he?”
I looked at him. He was cute. But it was cuter that she thought he was superhot. Something about him wasn’t mainstream attractive.
“Come on, Miss Casanova,” I said, looping my arm through hers. Brooke was, as my dad put it, “boy crazy.”
“Thank you, you’re gorgeous!” he shouted after us—well, after Brooke—as we made our way down the street face-first into a gust of chilly, wintry wind.
“Do you think I was meant to meet him? Like fate and all that?”
“Him? My God, Brooke.” I laughed. “No, no, no. Let’s go get our food.”
“Fine. But he was really cute. And so good!”
“Yes, he was practically Paul McCartney.”
She sighed, her attention and gaze already moving on to another subject. “I want to be twenty-one.” She gestured at the people sitting in a nearby bar. “Look at them all—drinking and hanging out, not a care in the world. No school.”
My ADD best friend. She wanted one thing badly, then wanted another even worse two seconds later.
“Uh-huh. Because as everyone knows, drinking is the universal sign for not having any troubles.”