Sloppy Firsts_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [83]
"You don’t need to go to a homecoming dance to know it’s an evening devoted to worshipping the Upper Crust and U.C. wannabes!"
"I, unlike you, like to form educated opinions."
I was getting madder by the millisecond.
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
"It means that you’re quick to pass judgment on things you know nothing about."
I hung up on him.
Thirty seconds later, I called him back.
"I’m sorry I hung up on you," I said. "That was lame."
"It was a genuine reaction," he said. "I pissed you off."
"I’m still pissed off."
"Good."
"Good."
Pause.
"Talk to you tomorrow?" he asked.
"Yes. Good-bye."
It wasn’t until after I hung up the phone the second time that I saw this as a major breakthrough. I was pissed off by something Marcus said. His words weren’t automatically intoxicating anymore, just because they were his words.
Marcus is demystified.
And I still can’t wait to talk to him tomorrow.
the twentieth
My mom was standing in front of the bathroom mirror in tears when I got home from school today.
"Am I so terrible to be around?" she asked.
"What?"
"There must be a reason why both of my daughters hate me," she said, tearing apart a soggy tissue.
Either my mom was having a menopausal episode, or something very bad had happened.
"Did something happen?"
"Bethie isn’t coming home for Thanksgiving," she whimpered, wiping away tears. "She and Grant are going to a business dinner party thrown by a bunch of dot-com brats instead."
Mom likes throwing around words like "dot-com" and "IPO." It makes her feel très twenty-first century, which is sad considering technocracy is clearly on the decline. Bethany and G-Money are in denial about this.
"I guess making money is more important than family. I bet the whole thing will be catered. Let’s see if they make Bethie’s favorite mashed sweet potatoes."
I really couldn’t believe that even Bethany could be such an überbitch. I hadn’t been looking forward to seeing her, but this was the third time she’d bailed on my mom since she moved out to California.
"As though turning forty-seven weren’t bad enough," she said, pulling back the skin around her eyes. "I’m old and my daughters hate me."
For Christ’s sake. My mom’s birthday is the twenty-fourth. The Friday after Thanksgiving. I totally forgot.
"Mom, we, I don’t hate you," I said.
"You never talk to me," she said. "So I feel like you do, so it’s the same th—" She stopped mid-sentence, turned on the faucet, and splashed water on her face.
I looked at my mom, water dripping from her nose, mascara running, congealed concealer clumping in peach patches on her cheeks, blond bangs wilting on her forehead. And for the first time ever, I saw my mom not just as my mom, but as a real person. A flesh-and-blood person who was hurt by rejection just like anyone else.
Just like me.
I suddenly felt guilty about every bitchy thing I had ever said or done to her. I wasn’t like Bethany. I was better than that.
"Hey, Mom," I said. "Why don’t we do something together on your birthday?"
She looked puzzled. "Isn’t Friday the night of the homecoming dance?"
Leave it to Mom to have the PHS homecoming marked on her internal Palm Pilot.
"Yeah."
"So you’re really not going to the homecoming dance?"
Why did she have to make it so hard to be nice to her?
"I think we’ve adequately covered that I’m really not going to the homecoming dance." I did a pitch-perfect imitation of my mother using Marcus’s words. A very bizarro hybrid.
"Why not?" she said. "You should go to homecoming instead of hanging out with your old mother."
"Mom! You were just complaining about how I don’t hang out with you enough!"
"But I don’t want to deprive you of special high school memories."
It’s statements like this that make me seriously question whether I came out of her womb.
"Mom! I wasn’t going anyway."
"Why?"
"Well, I don’t have a date, for one," I said.
"You can’t get a date?"
I growled and grabbed a hand towel to chew on.
"Mooooooooooommmmmm," I whined through clenched teeth.
"I just find it hard to believe