Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [133]
“I’ll try,” she said. “Because someone has to be the next you.”
The idea of anybody wanting to be the next me was, of course, laughable. Especially when I had tried so hard to be the first me all year.
I was ready to hang up when Taryn—apropros of nothing—said, “You and Marcus.”
Me and Marcus. I still wasn’t used to hearing others saying that out loud.
“You’re together now.”
“Yes,” I said distractedly. I mouthed the words silently. Me and Marcus. Marcus and Me.
“That was a long time coming.”
“Yes,” I replied, without really thinking about what I was saying. “Yes, it was.”
There was a thoughtful pause before she said, “I don’t know how I didn’t see it until now.”
As soon as those words came out of her mouth, I knew that she knew the truth. I knew she knew that I had peed in the cup to cover for Marcus. But I also knew, just as confidently, that our secret would never be revealed in Pinevile Low, The Seagull’s Voice, or elsewhere—my reward for being the first person to listen to Taryn Baker, to treat her like a real person, to earn her trust.
“Thanks, Taryn,” I said. “For everything.”
“No, Jess,” she replied with a tiny, tinny laugh, the first I’d ever heard escape her thin, repressed lips. “Thank you .”
the twenty-first
It was strange, meeting Marcus’s parents tonight. They weren’t any weirder than your average parents, it was simply hard to believe that someone like Marcus even had parents. It seemed much more logical for Marcus to have been the result of a lab experiment, to see what really happens when you mix snips, snails, puppy dogs’ tails, and Viagra.
I was nervous, of course, because I still haven’t recovered from the knowledge that Mrs. Levy loooooooves Manda—a certified whore—yet would’ve had me drawn and quartered if the opportunity had presented itself. I was afraid Marcus’s parents would automatically and inexplicably hate me, too. Before my arrival, I tried to find out something, anything, about them that would aid in the conversation. All I knew was that his dad refurbished old cars and his mom worked in a day-care center.
“My dad likes speed,” Marcus said.
“Speed? Like meth?”
“No, like stock cars and motorcycles,” he said. “It’s impossible for him to sit still.”
“Uh, okay.”
“And my mom is into quilting and crafts and stuff like that.”
It was interesting to think about how these traits manifested themselves in their son. The restless way he rattles coins in his pocket, or flicks open his lighter, or taps the table, etc. And how he personalized his T-shirts all year. I pointed this out to Marcus.
“I never really saw the connection before, but you’re right,” he said. “Now let me point out all the ways you are exactly like your parents.”
“That’s one analysis I really don’t need to hear,” I said before quickly hanging up the phone.
Mr. and Mrs. Flutie are indeed real people. They are also abnormally tall. Even Marcus’s mom tops six feet, which kind of shocked me. I was expecting a delicate china doll wielding a Bedazzler or something.
“Finally we get to meet the famous Jessica Darling!” she exclaimed, crushing me with a hug.
Mr. Flutie was zipping around the room, barbecue tongs in hand. “We kept waiting for you to shoot on over here,” he said in a rapid-fire rat-a-tat-tat tone. “I kept on saying to Marcus, ‘When’s this new girlfriend of yours gonna shoot on over here?’ Just the other day we shot past your house and I wanted to pop in for an introduction, but my son here said that wouldn’t be cool, and the last thing I would ever want to do to my son is be uncool, so I said we’d just shoot on over there another time.”
I learned very quickly that Mr. Flutie is always “shooting” to or from one place or another.
Marcus just stood there, massaging a wrinkled brow. I was seeing him in the midst of a brand-new emotion: total parental humiliation. It was very endearing to see that even the cool, calm, and collected Marcus Flutie could lose his shit in his parents’ presence.
During dinner, I discovered where Marcus inherited his schizophrenic conversational style. Over