Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [8]
I will never quite understand what Scotty ever saw in me.
“Oh! And did I mention that Mrs. Milhokovich said Bridget will be back in a few days?”
I'm actually looking forward to seeing Bridget for the first time since winter break. But I'm worried, too. She said she couldn't visit me at school during spring break because she was still recovering from the removal of what she calls “ugly marks,” aka benign moles. She had been talking a lot about how cosmetic surgery is a fact of life in LA, and no more out of the ordinary than, say, brushing one's teeth. So I'm troubled by the possibility that the moles were just a front, and she now has the artificially pneumatic look favored by starving starlets and the horny casting directors who bang them.
“Oh! Grant said that Wally and his daughter are supposed to stop by later. Sara graduated with you, right, honey?”
Of course my mother knows that Sara graduated with me. It's just one of the asinine questions she asks as a means to launch into the meaningless conversations she holds so dear. But my mother may not know that Sara was caught trying to cheat on her Introduction to Fundamentals of Conceptual Finite Mathematics (aka Numbers for Dummies) by copying the formulas she had written on the inside label of her water bottle. She should have failed the class and been put on academic probation, but Sara's dad—the legendary Wally D'Abruzzi himself—promised to open a drive-through combo Papa D's Donuts/Wally D's Sweet Treat Shoppe on the Harrington campus and all was forgiven. I find it hilarious that Harrington prioritizes fast-food funding over an endowment for like, oh, I don't know, a library or something. And knowing Sara's love/hate relationship with hydrogenated fats, it's even funnier. Because G-Money and Sara's dad have made it their joint mission in life to take Papa D's Donuts and Wally D's Sweet Treat Shoppe national, I will bear unwilling witness to Sara's foibles for a very, very long time.
Thankfully, Sara was the last of my mother's name-dropping material. When she trotted out of earshot, Bethany leaned in conspiratorially.
“If you and Marcus are still together, why isn't he here?”
And that's when I decided I needed a break from the festivities and went to hide in my room.
Marcus is still in California, away from me for two more weeks so he can attend an elective “Learning Cluster” on The Creative Coexistence of Nature and Humanity.
You know what would be really creative? The coexistence of Marcus and his girlfriend. Me.
It's not entirely his fault. I'm the one who's leaving in July, not him. It's the promise of my internship at True, of doing something cool with one-third of my summer, that has made this very uncool Marcus-free part of my summer bearable at all. Of course, the irony is that the internship itself will actually extend the Marcus-free part of my summer. Get it? It's an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a clusterfuck.
I can hear footsteps. It's probably my mom on her way upstairs to demand that I stick my hands back in my paws, put on my poodle head, and get out there to perform another tap—
MARCUS!
MARCUS IS HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the eighth
I have imagined my reunion with Marcus in many ways.
In the PG-13 version, I'm wearing something casually sexy, like the ME, YES, ME T-shirt Marcus gave me for graduation and a pair of shorts. In this daydream, I do not have a mental-patient haircut; it's still long enough for a swingy ponytail. I'm lounging on my bed, writing in my journal about how much I miss him, when he sneaks up behind me. He grabs my journal and chucks it across the room. We kiss.
In the R-rated version, the setup is the same, except I'm wearing a tank top and a pair of bikini-cut skivvies. He says something like, “I need you right now,” which doesn't sound all that sexy, but it's