Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [21]
After I had run out of apologies and lied about a lingering case of bronchitis that had the annoying habit of sneaking up on me when I least expected it, our conversation resumed its course.
“How am I making a mistake?”
“Well, I’m biased, of course, but you should reconsider your ‘No Urban Setting’ rule. Columbia changed my life.”
“Really?”
“Yes. New York is the best place in the world for an education.”
I was skeptical. This was only the second time I’d even been to the city, which is unbelievable since we live less than two hours away. And the first time barely counts because it was with my grandmother to see The Lion King.
“No offense or anything, but what makes you so sure I’d love living in New York? I mean, I can’t watch thirty seconds of Sex and the City without wanting to puke.”
“Well, because of the editorials you write for The Seagull’s Voice, mostly,” he said. “Like the one you wrote about the uprising in response to the social zoning in the lunchroom . . .”
“ ‘Vegetable Medley Mayhem: A Food Fight Against Cafeteria Tyranny.’ ”
“And the one about the slumming socialite, Hyacinth something . . .”
“ ‘Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace: Just Another Poseur.’ ”
“Yeah! That’s the one!”
You could’ve struck me dead right then and there and it would have been okey-dokey with me.
“But you had already graduated when I wrote those. . . .”
“My sister sent me your columns in The Seagull’s Voice last year,” he said. “She’s a big fan of yours. She loves your editorials.”
“Your sister?” There wasn’t another Parlipiano at school.
“Stepsister,” he corrected himself. “You know her.”
“I do?” How could this be possible?
“Sure you do,” he said. “Taryn Baker.”
Taryn Baker is Paul Parlipiano’s stepsister?!
Holy shit.
Very few people remember Taryn’s brief but big-time impact on Pineville society. Most have already forgotten about how she got suspended from school a year ago for peeing into a yogurt cup to provide He Who Shall Remain Nameless with a clean urine sample for his surprise drug test. I am definitely the only person (besides He Who Shall Remain Nameless, of course) who knows that she was lying about having done that, and only did it in a pathetic attempt to propel herself into popularity. We—He Who Shall Remain Nameless and I—are the only two people on earth who know who really squatted over the yogurt cup. We know who, though I doubt either one of us knows why.
I certainly don’t know why I did it.
Of course, Taryn’s plan backfired miserably. After a few weeks, Pineville had erased the Dannon Incident from its collective unconscious, and Taryn in particular. Thus, she went back to being a fade-into-the-paint wallflower.
But what makes this step-sibling revelation even freakier is that I spent a bizillion hours with Taryn last spring, tutoring her so she wouldn’t flunk tenth grade. I agreed to help her because I felt I needed to pay her back in some way for taking the fall for me. Of course, it helps that her parents paid me ten dollars an hour to ease my guilty conscience.
Taryn is not dumb. Just abysmally unmotivated to do any work in her classes—except English and Band. But getting suspended by the administration, then shunned (as usual) when she came back to school, has left its mark. Taryn is the most reluctant conversationalist I’ve ever met. And this is coming from me, so you know it must be bad. Compared to her, I’m like, well, Sara. Whenever I tried acknowledging Taryn’s presence when we passed each other in the halls, she focused her sad brown eyes elsewhere. She spooks me out a little bit. In fact, she’s got definite Noir Bard tendencies. I still can’t help but wonder how she mustered the courage to confess to a crime she didn’t commit.
Even though it qualifies as bizarro behavior, it wasn’t all that surprising that she never mentioned Paul. She never revealed anything personal about herself. Ever. Anyway, her quasi-relation to Paul Parlipiano explained his otherwise