Vibes Page 5

  I sit down across from Jacob Flax, who, amazed by Gusty's presence at our lowly table, launches into an intense friend-making mission. "Hi, Gusty! How's it going?"

  "Okay," Gusty says, still glaring at me. He sits next to me and just stares, waiting for me to speak.

  Jacob, clueless as ever, starts spitting. "I notice your hair is very blond. Say, do you think it's okay for a guy to get highlights? I was thinking about getting highlights myself but I was wondering—maybe it's not very masculine. But perhaps you've gotten highlights. I don't mean to insult you."

  "I spend a lot of time in the sun," Gusty tells him before leaning against me so that I have no way of avoiding him. "Listen, if you don't want to work with me, just say so, okay?"

  I am temporarily rendered mute by the awesome feeling of his hard body pushing against my soft body. I can't even chew my fish, and that's not just because it's disgusting, though disgust is certainly a factor. I swallow hard, take a big gulp of milk to wash the fish down all the way so that my breath won't smell bad, and then whisper, "How about we meet after school?"

  Now I can manage to glance at him. He's looking at me with his head tilted to one side and he's biting his lip. I try to read his thoughts, but it's hard to do with him so close to me that I can smell him—a sharp mix of peppermint and polished leather.

  Gusty has always smelled like that.

  He looks at me distrustfully but nods. "Okay, I'll meet you right here after school."

  "Okay," I croak just as Mallory walks up holding a tray full of weird potato salad.

  "Hey," he says, but his voice sounds deflated. His eyes, which are the only part of his face not covered with acne, look at Gusty with dread.

  Gusty stands and eyes Mallory right back. There's some kind of primate-level contest going on, and it's one that Jacob dearly wishes he was a part of. Finally Gusty sort of tosses his chin back, like a backwards nod at Mallory, and Mallory backwards nods back. Jacob gives a little wince as Gusty finally walks off. "Okay!" Jacob calls after him. "It was good talking to you, Gusty! I think I'll spend more time in the sun and see how that works!"

  Mallory sits down next to me just in time to get sprayed in the face by Jacob saying "works."

  "Dude! You have got to do something about that!" he says, wiping himself off before giving my arm a little squeeze. "Heya," he says to me. "What is the deal with that mean little freshman serving the food? She just suggested I improve my looks by submerging my face in acid."

  "She's a total bitch. I love her," I say, but I can't tear my eyes from Gusty as he walks away.

  "Mark my words," Mallory says. Something in his dark thoughts makes me look at his face. "She will pay."

  I'm glad he's thinking about the spunky freshman and not me, because there's a devious plan turning over in his mind.

  It's not without my heart in my mouth that I go to the Bistro for the third time today. I'm sweating a whole lot, and the only thing that keeps my jaw from trembling is biting my lip a little too hard. When I walk through the door Gusty watches me from under his baseball hat so I can't tell what his expression is. As I sit down across from him, I listen hard for his thoughts, and all I can get is Why is everything so difficult with her?

  When you're psychic and your character education partner is mad at you, the best policy is to get down to business. "What's our assignment?"

  He hands me a piece of paper with a single sentence written at the top: For each partner, working together, please make a list of your ten greatest personal attributes.

  "This school blows," I say.

  "I kind of like it," he says cheerfully. I search his mind, but I don't get any word thoughts. Maybe he's trying not to be mad at me anymore. He takes a pencil from his backpack and makes a line down the center of the paper. "Who first?"

  "You go."

  "Okay." He looks at me, the pencil poised above the paper, and waits, his pale yellow eyebrows raised.

  "What?" I say.

  "What are my ten best personal attributes?"

  "How should I know?"

  "You can't think of one good thing to say about me?" He blinks at me, a little hurt for some reason.

  I can think of about a hundred ways he's the hottest guy I've ever laid eyes on, but I'm pretty sure that's not the assignment. I feel in the back of his mind the word sick forming. Before he can think it all the way I blurt out, "You're enthusiastic."

  "Enthusiastic?" He seems disappointed, but he writes it down. I notice that he spells it with a z, so obviously spelling is not his forte. "What else?"

  "Can't you think of one?"

  He crams the pencil into his mouth and spins it on his tongue. It reminds me of the way he looked when we were kids and we used to play video games together. "I'm really good with my hands," he finally says. "Did you ever see the birdhouse I made for my dad? I carved birds and pinecones on the side. No birds live in it, but my dad says they would crap all over it anyway."

  "Okay, put 'good with hands.'"

  It takes him a long time to write it, which reminds me again of how dumb he always was. But I guess that's not his fault, just like it's not my fault I'm not gorgeous.

  "I have another one I'm good at," he says eagerly. "I'm a total rasta on my board."

  "You're a what on your what?"

  "I rule as a skater. I can ride almost any trick switch, except for the darkslide and the flamingo. I can do a sex change totally diamondz, and I've almost perfected my pop shove-it underflip."

  "What language are you speaking?"

  "Skater." He grins, aware that I've caught him showing off.

  Something about the sheepish way he's looking at me makes me laugh. "This will go faster if you stick to English."

  "Gnarly, Betty," he says quietly.

  We go back and forth, thinking of all his best qualities, until we come up with this list:

  1. Enthuziastic

  2. Good with hands

  3. Skating switch stance, both street and vert styles

  4. Good with dogs

  5. Good listener

  6. Generous

  7. Popular

  8. Tall

  9. Friendly

  10. Observant

  "That's ten. Now you." He pauses, pressing his lips together really hard like he always does when he swallows. It actually makes him look less cute than he really is and gives the impression that he's a little insecure, which I suppose is possible, though I don't know what he has to feel insecure about other than the fact that he's not terribly smart. At least, he's not really book smart, but that doesn't necessarily make him dumb, I guess.

  "What's your greatest attribute?" he asks me, and then I swear to God his eyes slip all over my boobs like a bar of soap.

  I raise one eyebrow at him. He turns totally red, even redder than my raisin red lip-gloss, and I shift in my chair so that my shirt poofs out a little. I say pointedly, "I'm smart."

  "Smart," he says, and writes it down.

  "I'm creative," I say, and suddenly I feel a little weepy for no reason. "I don't like this assignment," I tell him.

  "What else do you like about yourself?" He presses his pencil eraser into his chin and waits. I remember this about him, too. He's quiet, and he watches people a lot. I try to hear what he's thinking, but he doesn't seem to be thinking anything other than Let's get this done.

  I shake my head. I don't want to admit to the cutest guy in school that I don't like very much about myself, but if I don't say anything, he'll know anyway. "I'm good at practical jokes," I say lamely.

  "What kind of practical jokes?" He straightens up in his chair.

  "Stealth ones. I'm a master."

  "Maybe sometime you'll show me one," he says.

  "When you least expect it," I say with an outlaw smile.

  He looks at me, one eye cocked in a kind of grin, and I get all blustery.

  I don't want to be blustery. I don't want to be sitting here with Gusty Peterson making me blustery. I just want to go home and be
with my cat, alone, where I don't have to worry about what anyone is thinking, where I don't have to spend all this energy being nonchalant.

  He writes down "Stealth practical jokes," and says, "What else?"

  I'm quiet again, trying hard to keep my face from showing how stirred up I'm getting.

  He watches me as he taps his pencil eraser against his perfectly chiseled cheekbone. Finally he says, "How about I come up with a few?"

  I shrug.

  He holds the paper so that I can't see it and starts writing.

  Just then Eva Kearns-Tate, a.k.a. Evil Incarnate, walks into the Bistro with Mallory.

  Mallory?

  Yes, Mallory.

  Next to each other, Mallory and Eva look like two praying mantises on the Atkins Diet.

  Eva is obviously anorexic and the whole school knows it. Even from far away I can see the blue veins under her porcelain skin, and her cheekbones jut out so sharply, they look like they're trying to escape from her face. She's gorgeous still, but if she keeps it up she'll start to look really unhealthy.

  When Mallory sees me he gives me a covert little wave and I nod at him, wondering what in hell's name he's doing here with the second most beautiful, evilest girl in school. I notice she's carrying a slip of paper, and I realize that, of course, the all-knowing faculty paired the most physically unappealing guy with the most self-centered girl to ever flip her hair. They stroll over to us casually. Evil smiles at Gusty privately. "Hi," she says to him, completely ignoring me.

  "Hi, Evie," Gusty says, but his eyes are trained on Mallory like two cruise missiles. I hear him thinking, Stay away from her.

  "Hi, Eva!" I say to her, and smile really sarcastically.

  Her dark eyes settle on me in such a way that if I wasn't well insulated with a layer of fat, I'd probably get hypothermia. "Character education should be just the ticket for you, Kristi. Maybe you'll learn some manners."

  "She just said hi," Gusty points out, which amazes me. I never expect to see the ranks of the cool divided.

  The fact that Gusty stood up for me just makes her madder. "Nice outfit, Kristi," she says. "Did you make it yourself?"

  "Yes I did, thanks for asking. And how's your diet going? Are you down to a size negative one yet?"

  She doesn't answer. She doesn't have to. She merely looks at my round, soft belly and smiles.

  "Uh..." Mallory says, and pulls on Eva's sleeve.

  Eva tilts her head to one side and gives Gusty a sexy smile that would make a jet engine stutter. He nods at her, but his eyes are on Mallory, and they're burning with an emotion I've never once seen in Gusty's friendly face. Hatred. He hates Mallory, probably because he thinks he's putting the moves on Evil. Oh, the irony.

  Mallory and Eva walk to a table across the room.

  Gusty looks at me and I smile knowingly. I could help him out by telling him that Mallory, as far as I know, is inexplicably interested in me instead of the she-demon, but why should I help? He thinks I'm sick.

  "One of these days you and Eva need to put away your weapons and call a truce," Gusty says.

  "What for?"

  "What's the point of fighting all the time?" he says simply, then turns back to the paper and starts to write again. All I can hear in his thoughts is The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get out of here.

  It really hurts my feelings that he wants so badly to get away from me, but I try not to show it.

  When Gusty is done writing, he bites his lip. He looks at me nervously as he drops the paper onto the table to show me what he's written.

  1. Smart

  2. Creative

  3. Stealth practical jokes

  4. Funny

  5. Independent

  6. Amazing dresser

  7. Interesting

  8. Good at math

  9. Defiant

  And that's it. There's no number ten.

  My first reaction is to feel flattered. He wrote some pretty nice things about me, and maybe some of them are even true, but then I get a flash of myself through his eyes and I look monstrous. My arms are round and fat, my eyes are freakishly huge, and my boobs are enormous and sloshing around like two sacks of water.

  He wrote those nice things about me to get this over with so that he can skateboard home and probably play video games. So I just look at him, trying not to cry, and I say, "That looks okay. For number ten put 'Impervious to false flattery.'"

  His eyebrows crash together as he studies me. "Well, I had something in mind for number ten, but..."

  "That's okay. Just put 'Impervious to false flattery,'" I say, because at all costs I must protect myself from number ten.

  "I'm not putting that." He watches me angrily for a second, and I can see the color magenta slowly crawling up his neck to take over his face. I totally have his number and he's embarrassed now. He stabs letters onto the paper, then folds it and gets up from the table to leave.

  "What did you write?"

  "Why do you want to know, since you're so impervious to flattery?" He crunches the paper in his fist and presses it against his leg, thinking, Bitch. That's probably what he wrote. He wrote that I'm a bitch.

  "Give me the paper, Gusty!" I yell. From across the room, Eva's mean voice sears my mind: She's such a drama queen.

  Gusty sees Mallory and Eva staring at us, and this makes him even madder. "I didn't write anything!" he says, so I have no choice but to lunge at him and rip the paper out of his hands. I get only half of it, but I get the half with number ten and I unfold it to see that he wrote, "Beautiful."

  He wrote beautiful?

  By the time I catch my breath and look up from this mind-blowing, confusing, earthshattering, and beautiful word, he has walked out the Bistro door and there's no way I could ever summon the courage to catch up with him.

  Anyway, what would I say?

  It's a cruel lie. It must be.

  BIG NEWS FROM AUNT ANN

  I'm just going to put it out of my mind, that's all. I'm not going to think about Gusty Peterson or his mean flattery or the way he stormed out of the Bistro with no explanation. I will not think about the weird way my heart won't stop pounding, and I especially will not think about the piece of torn paper that I folded up and placed in my porcelain box with the painted violets on it that I got from Aunt Ann. The piece of paper is there; it's safe. That's all I need to know about it. So I'm not going to think about it anymore. Because it's a lie.

  It's a cruel lie.

  I grab an all-natural root beer from the fridge and open the door to my bedroom to let Minnie out, and then I sit on our stuffy leather couch with my feet on the coffee table and settle in for some crappy TV. Minnie pads down the hallway, silently cuddles into the crook of the couch, and purrs like a lawn mower. It's hard to really relax because I have to cram an entire evening of fun with Minnie into the two hours between school ending and Mom coming home.

  Her schedule has become annoyingly reliable. I thought with her new job that she would still work late because she's a career-obsessed workaholic, but no sirree. She comes home at 5:30 on the dot and expects us to eat dinner together, which means we park our wide loads on the sofa and watch TV news programs while we eat takeout. I usually feel her thinking, Why can't we talk? And I don't really know why we can't, but we never have been able to. Dad was always the one I talked with, sometimes about stuff I did not want to know about. To give you an idea, here's a smattering of Dad's greatest hits:

  "The passion leaves a marriage surprisingly quickly, Kristi. It can be hard on a man when his wife is more ambitious in her career than he is. It's very emasculating. And God, don't ever humiliate your spouse. She once told our colleagues how long it took me to insert my first vascular shunt when we were interning together. That is a difficult procedure, Kristi, and it has nothing to do with the size of your hands. She was always saying how much better women are at surgery because their hands are smaller, which is just not true. A lot of women have a tremor in their hands—you watch. See if I'
m right."

  I watched. I saw that he was right.

  The worst stuff was what he didn't tell me, but I could catch only little hints of it because it was before I'd fully developed my talent. But I knew. He felt desperate. He felt trapped. Confined. He needed out. My mother had worn him thin.

  And when the last lawsuit happened, that was all it took for him to snap.

  I guess I don't blame Morgan Stewart's family. He was a college track star who held the record for the long jump. So when he came into the emergency room with chest pain, Dad thought he'd suffered a collapsed lung.

  It was all Dad talked about:

  "I mean, sometimes the symptoms don't add up, you know? Even brilliant diagnosticians can be fooled. Maybe I should have called an internist to double-check, but everything, and I mean everything, pointed to a simple collapsed lung, which can happen in tall, thin young men. Surgery is rarely indicated. Radiology was busy, and we had that hit and run to worry about, so I had him lie down in an observation room to wait until we could get an x-ray, just for a couple minutes." He always stopped here, the lines in his forehead deepening. It was like he was trying to remember it in just the right order to bring the kid back alive. But the story always ended the same way. He would shake his head in disbelief and say, "A complication from undiagnosed Marfan syndrome. Thoracic aortic dissection. Boom. And he died."

  He died.

  He told me this story over and over again for weeks. At first it seemed like he was trying to explain it to me so that I would understand and forgive him, but I forgave him so many times that I finally realized he was telling the story so that he could forgive himself. But he never could.

  If that had been the first lawsuit, it would have been okay, but it was Dad's third. His malpractice insurance got so high that he couldn't pay it. The hospital couldn't keep him on staff without insurance, so they forced him to resign. Dad just accepted it. He didn't even fight it because he believed he deserved it.

  I don't know. Maybe he did.

  The doorbell screams at me. I jump, and Minnie digs her claws into my lap. I have to breathe for a second before I am calm enough to turn down the TV and answer the door.