Page 3 of Better Than the Movies
I adjusted the messenger bag on my shoulder and caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror. “Wait—I forgot lipstick.”
“We don’t have time for lipstick.”
“There’s always time for lipstick.” I unzipped the side pouch and pulled out my new fave, Retrograde Red. On the off chance (so very off chance) my McDreamy was in the building, I wanted good mouth. “You go ahead.”
She left and I rubbed the color over my lips.Much better.I tucked the lipstick back into my bag, replaced my headphones, and exited the restroom, hitting play and letting the rest of theBridget Jonessoundtrack wrap itself around my psyche.
When I got to English Lit, I walked to the back of the room and took a seat at the desk between Joss and Laney Morgan, sliding my headphones down to my neck.
“What did you put for number eight?” Jocelyn was writing fastwhile she talked to me, finishing her homework. “I forgot about the reading, so I have no idea why Gatsby’s shirts made Daisy cry.”
I pulled out my worksheet and let Joss copy my answer, but my eyes shifted over to Laney. If surveyed, everyone on the planet would unanimously agree that the girl was beautiful; it was an indisputable fact. She had one of those noses that was so adorable, its existence had surely created the need for the word “pert.” Her eyes were huge like a Disney princess’s, and her blond hair was always shiny and soft and looked like it belonged in a shampoo commercial. Too bad her soul was the exact opposite of her physical appearance.
I disliked her so very much.
On the first day of kindergarten, she’d yelledEwwwwwhen I’d gotten a bloody nose, pointing at my face until the entire class gawked at me in disgust. In third grade, she’d told Dave Addleman that my notebook was full of love notes about him. (She’d been right, butthat wasn’t the point.) Laney had blabbed to him, and instead of being sweet or charming like the movies had led me to believe he’d be, David had called me a weirdo. And in fifth grade, not long after my mom had died and I’d been forced to sit by Laney in the lunchroom due to assigned seating, every day as I picked at my barely edible hot lunch, she would unzip her pastel pink lunchbox and wow the entire table with the delights her mother had made just for her.
Sandwiches cut into adorable shapes, homemade cookies, brownies with sprinkles; it had been a treasure trove of kiddie culinary masterpieces, each one more lovingly prepared than the last.
But the notes were what had destroyed me.
There wasn’t a single day that her lunch didn’t include a handwritten note from her mom. They were funny little letters that Laney used to read out loud to her friends, with silly drawings in the margins, and if I allowed my snooping eyes to stray to the bottom, where it said “Love, Mom” in curly cursive with doodled hearts around it, I would get so sad that I couldn’t even eat.
To this day, everyone thought Laney was great and pretty and smart, but I knew the truth. She might pretend to be nice, but for as long as I could remember, she’d given me crusty-weird looks. As inevery single timethe girl looked at me, it was like I had something on my face and she couldn’t decide if she was grossed-out or amused. She was rotting under all that beauty, and someday the rest of the world would see what I saw.
“Gum?” Laney held out a pack of Doublemint with her perfectly arched eyebrows raised.
“No, thanks,” I muttered, and turned my attention to the front of the room as Mrs. Adams came in and asked for homework. We passed our papers forward, and she started talking about literary things. Everyone began taking notes on their school-issued laptops, and Colton Sparks gave me a chin nod from his desk in the corner.
I smiled and looked down at my computer. Colton was nice. I’d talked to him for a solid two weeks at the beginning of the year, but that had turned out to bemeh. Which kind of summed up the whole of my collective dating history, actually:meh.
Two weeks—that was the average length of my relationships, if you could even call them that.
Here’s how it usually went: I would see a cute guy, daydream about him for weeks and totally build him up in my mind to be my one-and-only soul mate. The usual high school pre-relationship stuff always began with the greatest of hopes. But by the end of two weeks, before we even got close to official, I almost always got hit withthe Ick. The death sentence to all blossoming relationships.
Definition of the Ick: A dating term that refers to a sudden cringe feeling one gets when they have romantic contact with someone and they become almost immediately put off by them.
Joss said I was always browsing but never buying. And she ended up being right. But my propensity for tiny little two-week relationships really messed with prom potential. I wanted to go with someone who made my breath catch and my heart flutter, but who was even left in the school that I hadn’t already considered?
I mean, technically, I had a prom date; I was going with Joss. It’s just… going to prom with my best friend felt like such a fail. I knew we’d have a good time—we were grabbing dinner beforehand with Kate and Cassidy, the funnest of our little friend group—but prom was supposed to be the pinnacle of high school romance. It was supposed to be poster-board promposals, matching corsages, speechless awe over the way you look in your dress, and sweet kisses under the cheesy disco ball.
Andrew McCarthy and Molly RingwaldPretty in Pinksort of shit.
It wasn’t about friends grabbing dinner at the Cheesecake Factory before heading up to the high school for awkward conversation while the coupled-off couples found their way to the infamous grinding wall.
I knew Jocelyn wouldn’t get it. She thought prom was no big deal, just a high school dance that you dressed up for, and she would find me completely ridiculous if I admitted to being disappointed. She was already peeved by the fact that I kept blowing her off on dress shopping, but I never felt like going.
At all.
My phone buzzed.
Joss: I have BIG tea.
I looked over at her, but she appeared to be listening to Mrs. Adams. I glanced at the teacher before responding: Spill it.
Joss: FYI I got it via text from Kate.
Me: So it might not be true. Got it.
