how Lia was faring with the lemonade.
As if on cue, she appeared on the horizon, searching for us with her hand cupped above her eyes.
Part Two
August 14 th - September 3 rd , 1994
I rehearsed with Lia and Jake after the A.P. Center excursion, but then not again for a week and a half. Spending time with my mom and George, practicing my driving, and folding towels at the Crawford took up most of the last full week and final weekend of my summer vacation. School didn’t start until Wednesday the seventeenth, so my mother asked me to work Monday and Tuesday of the following week, too, to pick up the slack while Alma trained the “new, new” hire.
I called Lia the night before school started and apologized for how busy I’d been. I knew I was far from ready to play either the Housewives show or the benefit, and felt pretty anxious about both. As usual, she told me to relax. Everything was going to be fine. We could practice this coming weekend. She said she was pretty sure Jake and Paige would both be available then.
“How’d the two of them get along?” I asked, knowing the other members of Impressionable Youth had met and rehearsed without me a few times while I’d been tied up.
“Oh, swell. Like gangbusters,” she said. “But then, you know how it is with Paige — dudes love her.”
The one and only time I’d been on a roller coaster, my stomach felt like it’d stayed behind while the passenger car plummeted over each hill. Hearing Lia’s remark made me feel the same way, only slightly more nauseated.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
“Oh, Vee,” Lia breathed, assuming I was thinking of Dustin. “That was the wrong thing to say. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m over it.”
She hurriedly changed the subject, telling me she’d tracked down Katrina Sampson and told her to keep her mouth shut about the Clyde Kameron interview. She’d passed the message along to Dustin and Roy, too. Although she wasn’t worried they’d be the ones to say anything. Katrina was the one known for her big mouth.
After I hung up with Lia, I popped a horror movie I’d rented at Cell Farm – some vampire thing called Subspecies – into the VCR, sat back and tried to watch it. But I paid only partial attention, my mind instead dwelling on Lia’s remark about Paige.
Dudes love her.
I’d said I was “over it,” and it was true I hadn’t given much thought lately to what’d happened with Dustin. As though admitting the pathetic details to Jake had somehow allowed me to lay the subject of him to rest. If I wasn’t mooning over Dustin anymore, or upset at Paige for messing around with him, then why had Lia’s words bugged me so much? I finally had to admit I didn’t like the implication Jake had fallen for Paige. Not that it was any of my business if he had.
But he was my friend, I told myself, and I worried she was wrong for him. That was all.
***
I t seemed Katrina’d kept her promise. So far, no one at school had said anything to either Lia or me about the Clyde Kameron interview The Blank Slate was supposedly running. I’d actually started to relax about the whole thing, thinking maybe we’d be able to pretend Lia’d never made the claim in the first place.
At lunch on Friday, I met Lia at our usual spot. “So, my life’s over,” she said when I sat across from her at the lop-sided table in the back corner of the cafeteria. She had an assortment of snack cakes spread out on a paper towel in front of her and as I watched, she tore open the cellophane on an oatmeal cream pie and shook the cookie out into her hand.
“Now what?” I put down my bottle of vending machine orange juice and dug in my backpack for my lunch.
The first few days of school had been fairly typical and boring for me. Lia, on the other hand, had already become embroiled in both literal and figurative drama. She’d decided to audition for the female lead in the fall theater production (tryouts for the Halloween
As if on cue, she appeared on the horizon, searching for us with her hand cupped above her eyes.
Part Two
August 14 th - September 3 rd , 1994
I rehearsed with Lia and Jake after the A.P. Center excursion, but then not again for a week and a half. Spending time with my mom and George, practicing my driving, and folding towels at the Crawford took up most of the last full week and final weekend of my summer vacation. School didn’t start until Wednesday the seventeenth, so my mother asked me to work Monday and Tuesday of the following week, too, to pick up the slack while Alma trained the “new, new” hire.
I called Lia the night before school started and apologized for how busy I’d been. I knew I was far from ready to play either the Housewives show or the benefit, and felt pretty anxious about both. As usual, she told me to relax. Everything was going to be fine. We could practice this coming weekend. She said she was pretty sure Jake and Paige would both be available then.
“How’d the two of them get along?” I asked, knowing the other members of Impressionable Youth had met and rehearsed without me a few times while I’d been tied up.
“Oh, swell. Like gangbusters,” she said. “But then, you know how it is with Paige — dudes love her.”
The one and only time I’d been on a roller coaster, my stomach felt like it’d stayed behind while the passenger car plummeted over each hill. Hearing Lia’s remark made me feel the same way, only slightly more nauseated.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
“Oh, Vee,” Lia breathed, assuming I was thinking of Dustin. “That was the wrong thing to say. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m over it.”
She hurriedly changed the subject, telling me she’d tracked down Katrina Sampson and told her to keep her mouth shut about the Clyde Kameron interview. She’d passed the message along to Dustin and Roy, too. Although she wasn’t worried they’d be the ones to say anything. Katrina was the one known for her big mouth.
After I hung up with Lia, I popped a horror movie I’d rented at Cell Farm – some vampire thing called Subspecies – into the VCR, sat back and tried to watch it. But I paid only partial attention, my mind instead dwelling on Lia’s remark about Paige.
Dudes love her.
I’d said I was “over it,” and it was true I hadn’t given much thought lately to what’d happened with Dustin. As though admitting the pathetic details to Jake had somehow allowed me to lay the subject of him to rest. If I wasn’t mooning over Dustin anymore, or upset at Paige for messing around with him, then why had Lia’s words bugged me so much? I finally had to admit I didn’t like the implication Jake had fallen for Paige. Not that it was any of my business if he had.
But he was my friend, I told myself, and I worried she was wrong for him. That was all.
***
I t seemed Katrina’d kept her promise. So far, no one at school had said anything to either Lia or me about the Clyde Kameron interview The Blank Slate was supposedly running. I’d actually started to relax about the whole thing, thinking maybe we’d be able to pretend Lia’d never made the claim in the first place.
At lunch on Friday, I met Lia at our usual spot. “So, my life’s over,” she said when I sat across from her at the lop-sided table in the back corner of the cafeteria. She had an assortment of snack cakes spread out on a paper towel in front of her and as I watched, she tore open the cellophane on an oatmeal cream pie and shook the cookie out into her hand.
“Now what?” I put down my bottle of vending machine orange juice and dug in my backpack for my lunch.
The first few days of school had been fairly typical and boring for me. Lia, on the other hand, had already become embroiled in both literal and figurative drama. She’d decided to audition for the female lead in the fall theater production (tryouts for the Halloween
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