Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [12]
I grabbed it off the rickety folding table.
“I must have this!”
Barry was resplendent in an electric blue, bedazzled jumpsuit, unbuttoned to midchest. His head was thrown back, legs spread wide, arms outstretched, making a perfectly symmetrical X. A triumphant celebration of song by the man who writes them.
“I must have this,” I repeated, trying to get Marcus's attention, which had wandered somewhere behind my shoulder.
“It's not for sale,” wheezed an emphysemal voice from the back of the tent. It came from a lumpy-faced woman with cheap platinum extensions that looked more like pull cords on a windbreaker than genuine human hair. She was dressed in red stretch pants and a BARRY FANILOW T-shirt.
“Excuse me,” I said, in my sweetest voice. “What's your name?”
“Lorna.”
“Surely, Lorna, you can part with this one.”
“Nope.”
I groaned. “Then why do you have it on display?”
“To share my love for the Showman of Our Time,” she said, taking a cancerous drag on her cigarette.
“Hey, Jessica,” Marcus said, sidling up to me. “Why don't we get going?” There was a hint of urgency to his voice, one I'm unaccustomed to hearing. I thought I was embarrassing him.
“I'm not leaving without this toilet-seat cover!” I shouted, clutching the most kick-ass, most absurd thing ever. “Name your price!”
“It's not for sale,” Lorna and Marcus replied simultaneously.
And that's when it finally happened, the realization of my darkest fears about being Marcus's girlfriend. An inevitability that has been stalled for so long that I had fooled myself into thinking it would never come to pass.
“Holy fuck! It is you,” exclaimed a scratchy female voice approaching the tent from behind me.
“Hey, Sierra,” Marcus said, his dark eyes casting me an apologetic glance.
And with that look, one I'd never seen before, I knew: Sierra was one of the forty-something girls Marcus had sexed before me.
If I had opened my mouth, it would have elicited a leonine roar, so completely overcome was I by primal, territorial jealousy. And it's not like she made a compelling nemesis. Sierra was shorter than I was, and scrawnier, with thinning hair that she pulled into a malnourished braid running down her back. The small, sporadic patches of skin not covered in freckles were as white as milk. She would probably object to this comparison, as she was clearly of the vegan variety in her cruelty-free plastic shoes, hemp shorts, and I THINK THEREFORE I'M RAW T-shirt.
“How the fuck are you?” Sierra asked.
“Oh, you know . . . ,” Marcus said vaguely.
Sierra burped. Loudly. And didn't excuse herself. Ack.
A top-heavy nymphomaniac with limited intellectual capabilities? Okay. That I could understand. But a vulgar raw-food freak? What had he seen in her?
Sierra launched into an expletive-riddled monologue about how much she loves Reed College and how she took his advice and has been putting her poetry to music and how she's been clean for three years now. Meanwhile, my insides threw furniture off balconies and crashed cars into trees and set buildings on fire.
“This is my girlfriend, Jessica,” he said, pulling me closer and closer until I was actually in front of him, acting as a human shield.
“Well, fucking A,” she said. “You're the girl Marcus is with now.” She emphasized the word now. My anger burned hotter than the asphalt beneath my feet. But I felt oddly cold, like when you've got a 104-degree fever but can't stop shivering. I almost couldn't blame her for being blatantly unimpressed. After all, why should she think that he'd be more serious with me than with her? Than with any of them?
“We've been together for a year,” Marcus said.
“Well, fuck me,” she said, jumping up to playfully ruffle his hair.
And there was an excruciating fraction of a second in which I could feel Marcus physically shrink at her words, knowing that I would respond in the obvious way. I lunged at the opportunity, like a cornered animal.
“He already did,” I spat before shaking off his arm and darting for the Caddie.