Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [44]
Len nodded and my mom kept right on going.
“Especially after talking to you about it when getting your yearbook photos taken last week. Aren’t you two the high achievers? Len told me that he’s applying to Cornell. He’s just waiting for his last round of SAT scores. Isn’t that wonderful?”
My mom had taken an instant liking to Len. Not only was she talking our ears off, but she kept patting down her hair, making sure each expensive golden strand was in place. She’s thrilled whenever any male shows the vaguest interest in her younger daughter, as it brings her just the teensiest bit closer to planning her next wedding extravaganza.
“I only wish that you were so organized. I told him that you had narrowed it down to Amherst, Piedmont, Swarthmore, and Williams.” She turned her attention to Len. “I don’t know why she’s waiting until the last minute to apply, Len, dear. Honestly. I’ve told her to apply to them all and make her decision based on who gives her the biggest scholarship.”
While my mom babbled (something she and Len have in common), Len gave a sympathetic shrug. I could tell from his reaction that his mom must do the same exact thing to him.
“It was my first cross-country meet,” he said, cutting someone else off for a change.
“That’s funny,” I replied, “because it’s my last.”
“What?!” asked Len and my mom.
“I’m quitting. I mean, I quit,” I said, switching to a verb tense with more finality. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to spend another second on this field, so let’s go.”
Len and my mom wore strangely identical expressions of gaping-mouth shock.
“Len, thanks for coming to witness my last moments of agony.” I got up and limped toward the car.
“See you in. Um.”
“Mom, let’s go,” I said, my back to both of them.
My dad had opted to ride home with Coach Kiley to discuss in detail all the things that were wrong with me. Unlike my dad, who doesn’t even bother trying to engage me in any non-running related conversation, my mom frequently tries to force touching mother-daughter moments—usually when we’re trapped alone together in an automobile. The fundamental problem with this ritual is that she all too often relies on the stuff of which her Blonde Bond with Bethany is made: boys, dating, shopping, and, uh . . . boys. So any bonding between us is short-term and ill-conceived—like trying to rebuild the World Trade Center with Popsicle sticks and edible elementary-school paste. Thus:
“Len is so cute! And smart! Cornell! Ivy League! You should have invited him over our house!”
“I didn’t want him over our house,” I replied.
“And why not?” she said.
“I just don’t.”
“What is your problem?” she asked, strangling the steering wheel. “Why do you reject every cute catch who comes your way? First Scotty, then that nice boy Marcus who took you out on New Year’s Eve and we never saw again . . .”
I started thinking about that nice boy who took me out last New Year’s Eve. If my mom had any clue that I almost became his fortysomethingth sexual conquest in the backseat of his 1979 fossil-burner, she wouldn’t think he was so nice, now, would she?
“But Len is so cute, Jessie. And smart! Cornell! Ivy League!” she repeated, like a TV pitchwoman. “I bet he makes his mom proud.”
“I bet he does. His mom is so lucky to have such a great kid, isn’t she?”
I was starting to get dizzy.
“That’s not what I meant, Jessie, and you know it,” she said, her face hard and lined like a walnut shell. All of a sudden—FLASH!—her eyes popped and her face brightened with a lightbulb memory. “Wait a minute! Is this the same Len Levy you had a crush on in elementary school?”
I groaned. I really wasn’t feeling well.
“The one you gave a Valentine in third grade, but didn’t give you one in return?”
I was sweaty but cold.
“That’s why you aren’t giving him the time of day! Revenge for being rejected! Well, Jessie. Let me tell you this, revenge won’t get you a date to Homecoming.”
So it went for the rest of the trip. I didn’t hear much, though, because her voice was drowned out by the sound of my blood pulsing