Vivian lantzs second cha.., p.16
Vivian Lantz's Second Chances, page 16
There’s a new mistake for today: I supremely underestimated Tate Matthews.
Meantime, Amberleigh hasn’t stopped reading.
She clears her throat and announces, “I was getting to the most important point of the plan. It’s crossed out, but . . . yeah, I can just make it out.” She clears her throat and practically shouts, “‘Make Alex Fernandez my boyfriend.’”
It’s so quiet, I can hear the patter of rain on the sunshades.
In this moment, I make a brand-new, desperate wish: to be invisible. To simply disappear, never to materialize again.
But I don’t get my wish. Instead, I get whispers from the girls at the snack table and hoots from the boys in the pool. I get Amberleigh saying, with scathing sweetness, “Wow, Vivian. That’s so cute. You thought you could steal my boyfriend, easy as that?”
I’m speechless. Amberleigh knows that she’s got me cornered. I can practically see the stinger come out as she gets up from the hammock and saunters toward me.
“Good luck with the school paper, at least,” she says. “Maybe that’ll pan out for you. But come on, girl. Trying to make us your friends by pretending it’s your birthday?” She winces, like she’s sorry for me. “That’s pathetic.”
My hands are clammy. My legs won’t move. Amberleigh stands inches from me, arms crossed tight.
“It’s over, Vivian,” she announces. “Quinn Doughty saw you at opening assembly. I know it was you who ruined my shoes. I just hope your dads can afford to pay eight hundred dollars in damages.”
No. This can’t be happening. This isn’t Vivian’s Revenge. It’s my downfall.
I splutter, but no words come out. My feet are stuck to the concrete. Then, I can’t help myself. I look at Gemma. She’s not whispering or laughing. She’s staring straight at me, and she looks mad.
“Is that why you were talking to me today?” she asks hoarsely. “Why you asked to hang out? You wanted to make me your new friend?”
“N-no!” I protest. “It wasn’t like that. I—”
“Did you write that stuff on Amberleigh’s shoes?” she interrupts.
I gape at her, speechless, thinking back on my memories from last night.
“Yeah,” I say, feeling suddenly bold. “I did. Because she deserved it. She’s terrible. She totally betrayed you at camp, and she’s been treating you like crap ever since. You said so yourself, so why are you defending her? She wouldn’t do the same thing for you.” I throw out my hands. “For anyone here. She only thinks about herself!”
Gemma’s face has turned ghostly pale. “Wh-what are you talking about? I never told you anything about camp.” She looks past me, to Amberleigh. “I don’t have a clue what she’s saying.”
It’s true. I know that I’m sharing what Gemma told me in private yesterday, but I have to make her see why I chose to do what I did. Shouldn’t she be glad that I pranked Amberleigh?
“Don’t you get it?” I plead with Gemma. “She’s not your friend.”
Gemma holds up a hand, like she doesn’t want to hear more.
“Know what, Vivian?” she says, getting up from the table. “It seems like the only one around here who doesn’t know how to be a friend is you. Putting me on your to-do list? That is so messed up.”
She turns her back to me and heads into Tate’s house through the patio door. I feel like my heart’s been ripped out and shredded till it’s nothing but bloody, torn muscle.
“Ouch,” says Amberleigh, watching Gemma go. She gives me a pitying smile. “Guess nobody likes a fake friend, huh? I bet that’s why Cami Ruiz moved: to get away from you.”
Amberleigh opens my journal, thumbing the gold-foiled pages. “Let’s see. Is there an entry in here about that?”
My face is on fire. I want to wrench the journal out of Amberleigh’s hands.
But I don’t get the chance.
The next moment, she’s chucking it through the air, and I watch in horror as my hyacinth journal—prized possession and sacred keeper of the Master Plan—lands in the pool with a sickening plunk.
I gape at Amberleigh. “Why would you do that?”
She shrugs. “It was a trashy plan. But then, you’re pretty trashy yourself.”
She steps closer—so close that I feel the heat of her breath on my face. In a whisper, she says, “I don’t know where you heard about summer camp, but the crap you’re saying about me is a lie. And trashy liars? They deserve to be punished. So . . .”
It happens in an instant. Amberleigh lunges, pushing the heels of her hands into my collarbone, and I’m flying backward, losing my balance, falling into the pool.
I gasp as cold water hits my body. It’s pure sensation: freezing water, muffled sound, smeared blue vision. Then I resurface, choking on pool water.
The boys in the pool are laughing. Alex clings to a foam noodle, snickering gleefully. A girl at the snack table asks, “Can she even swim?”
Yeah, I can swim. So I do. I grab my bobbing journal, and I slosh my way to the pool ladder, hauling myself up. Aunt Ximena’s vest is heavy as lead, and water squelches in my sneakers with every step I take. And then—my stomach plummets as I remember: my period. What if there’s blood running down my legs?
Nothing can be worse than this. It’s déjà vu from last night, only this time, I’m the one who got shoved, not Gemma. I can’t think straight. All I know is that I have to leave. I grab my purse from the snack table and make a run for it. But right as I reach the back gate, my right sneaker slips, and I wipe out. Pain slices through me as I skid across the concrete. There’s a new roar of laughter from the patio.
“Oh my god, is she okay?” a girl calls out.
My brain screams at me, Get out. Get away. Leave.
I push myself to my feet, and this time nothing slows me down. I race out the gate and down the driveway, feet flinging me over the sidewalk tiles. I run, and I don’t look back.
I call Dads, sobbing, from Mariposa Lane. They both come to pick me up, but they don’t ask too many questions—not after I practically screech that all I want to do is sleep. Pop sets out astringent and Neosporin on the bathroom counter, and Da sets a hamper outside the door for my wet clothes. Then, they leave me alone, like I asked.
At first, all I can think about is the journal. I open it on the bathroom counter, frantically flipping through the soaked pages. I press a hand towel against my page of goals, trying to sop up the water. That doesn’t makes a difference, so I yank out the hair dryer, turn it to full blast, and wave hot air against the page. I try to dry out the whole journal—page after page after page—but no matter how long I work, I can’t totally fix the damage.
I howl in frustration, yanking the hair dryer plug from the socket and tossing the journal to the floor. Defeated, I sink down onto the edge of the bathtub, where all the memories from tonight begin to wash over me.
Gemma was right: a friendship plan is messed up.
The truth is, I don’t want to be Gemma’s fake friend; I want to be her real friend. But I’d be lying if I said that’s how this started. When Gemma ran into me outside school on that first Monday, I only saw her as part of my Master Plan—a way to get into Amberleigh’s group and Alex’s heart. My stomach turns at the thought. How could I be so shallow?
It was messed up for me to think of Gemma as a means to an end. It was messed up to hope that Alex and Amberleigh would break up. Thinking like that? It’s self-centered. Mean. And how does that make me any different from Amberleigh Allen herself?
So much for sweet justice. Turns out the girl who got her just deserts today was me.
I thought I’d at least feel better letting off steam today, but I’m only queasy—the way I feel when I gorge on too much queso and guac before the main course. Today doesn’t count. No one’s going to remember it in the morning when the clock resets. So why do I feel like crap?
I guess it’s because I’ll remember what I’ve done.
I didn’t have to be a jerk to Mike Brot. Sure, he can be annoying, but that wasn’t a good reason to make up my poop story. I didn’t have to send Ms. Maffett on a wild-goose chase, either.
Then there’s Arlo. I’m still so mad at him; and somehow, even after saying and doing the meanest things I could think of, I don’t actually feel better. Not at the end of the day.
Nothing’s changed.
My phone goes off, blasting the Relevane theme song. Cami’s call. But I don’t answer. I don’t have the strength. Instead, I finally start to clean up my knees.
As I unwrap a Band-Aid, I get a terrible thought: What if this is the way it’s always going to be? No matter how much magic, no matter how many second chances—what if my first-day curse really is unbreakable? Maybe Q. S. Murray wasted her magic on me. Maybe I’m a lost cause.
I used to think my first-day curse was a sign that I was a hero in the making. Now? I’m afraid that I’m not like Torin the Rogue or Sage Miriel. Maybe I’m like the wretched Prince Lorace, Princess Dexalva’s brother, who was cursed from birth to suffer all his livelong days. Someone’s got to play the sucky characters, right? What if that’s my fate, while people like Amberleigh get to be the heroines?
Ugh. Prince Lorace. I feel for you, dude.
There’s a sharp jab in my abdomen. It feels like a ticked off lobster is in there, scraping and snapping its claws. Cramps. They’re worse tonight than they’ve been before. I rummage until I find a bottle of ibuprofen stashed in one of the bathroom drawers. I take a tablet, washing it down with tap water. Then, dejectedly, I pick up my journal from the floor and leave the room.
I hear voices down the hall. Dads are talking in the kitchen, same as they were last night, and curiosity gets the better of me. I sneak toward the open door, stopping right outside.
“I thought my approach was more direct,” Da is saying. “But now . . . and the band . . . I did everything wrong.”
“That isn’t true, Sean,” I hear Pop say. “Arlo can’t doubt how much we love him. We’ve disagreed about his plans, but we haven’t said we won’t support them, either. We trained him to assert himself. To spread his wings. Well, he’s a teen. That’s part of the job description. We spread ours when we were his age, didn’t we?”
There aren’t any words after that—only the sound of Da crying. I can imagine the scene inside the kitchen, with Pop scooted close to Da at the table, arms wrapped around his shoulders. Tonight, I avoid the squeaky floorboard and sneak back to my room. When I crawl into bed, still clutching my hyacinth journal, I’m not thinking about my cramps anymore.
Dads aren’t angry about Arlo leaving—not from what I can tell. They’re not yelling about how he’s drifted away from the family. They’re not saying that they hate him. They’re just . . . sad.
A scratchy grip tightens around my throat. Tears leak from my eyes, streaming down my face. What if I don’t hate Arlo, either? What if that’s why I don’t feel better after screaming my heart out at him? Because I don’t hate him. I’m just sad, too.
As hard as things have been with Cami leaving for Florida, and as tough as school has been for these four days—I thought that Arlo would be here for me, at least. I thought that part of my life wouldn’t change. But no. That, too.
A memory hits me.
Barficorn, Arlo said, when he dropped me off. I love you, okay?
I think about the way he said that, with the off look on his face.
Since last night, I’ve been blaming Arlo for leaving me with no warning. But what if he did try to warn me, in his own way? What if I was too distracted to notice?
I swallow, trying to get rid of that scratchy feeling in my throat. When I can’t, I open my hyacinth journal to the Master Plan. The paper is still damp, warped around the edges from all the hair drying, and the ink has smeared, but my goals are readable. I take a pen from my bedside table, wondering if I’ll even be able to write without tearing straight through the paper. But somehow, it works. I’m able to dig new words onto the page.
It’s a fourth goal:
Make things right with Arlo (’Cause I’ve taken him for granted all this time.)
My theory about the magic has to be right. My magical time loop has to keep looping. This can’t be the Monday that I get stuck with. I need another chance to do things differently.
I stare at the new words on the page, hoping—begging—for that second chance. Then I close the journal and hold it to my chest, and I keep holding on as weariness wraps around me, dragging me off to sleep.
16
“WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!”
I wake to the sound of rain on the roof and Arlo’s voice shouting from downstairs.
I open my eyes to a galaxy of plastic planets above me.
Yes.
Excitement whooshes through my body. Yes! It’s Monday again!
I throw off my bedcovers, and there are my knees, perfectly unscraped. No Band-Aids. No trace of last night. Which means no terrible pool party. No one at school will remember what went down yesterday night.
I heave a giant sigh of relief. Then, I head for the door.
I’m padding down the hallway as Arlo yells, “Dads. Get down here, quick!”
He grimaces when he sees me at the top of the stairs.
A lump clogs my throat at the sight of Arlo. His hair is soaked with rainwater and impatience burns in his eyes. Hours from now, he’ll be gone. But I don’t want to scream about that anymore; I’m too worn out. I just want to focus on the goal I scribbled into my hyacinth journal last night: I want to see if I can make things right.
“That’s a weird look on your face, Barficorn.”
We’re in the back room, helping Dads unpack boxes. I’m holding out a damp beaded flapper dress for Pop to inspect, and Arlo’s airing out the pages of an old book called Breakfast of Champions.
It’s boring work. I’ve done it twice. But this is different from those other times. Today, I know what this moment is worth. It might be the last time in a long time that all four of us Lantzes are together, in the same room.
“I’m thinking,” I tell Arlo. “Guess that makes my face look weird.”
Pop lifts a velvet dress out of a box and shakes his head. “It’s going to take all morning to wash and line dry these.”
“I could stay home from school to help,” Arlo says.
“Nice try,” replies Da.
“What?” Arlo balks. “It’s for a good reason.”
I frown. I remember Arlo saying this, but it doesn’t make much sense to me now. Why would he offer to work at the shop when he knew that he was going to leave us? Wouldn’t he want to get out of this place as soon as possible?
Maybe Arlo feels guilty. Maybe he thinks of this morning as his last chance to do something for the family.
A last hurrah, I think pensively.
“Well,” Pop says, “I don’t think Vivian would appreciate her chauffeur bailing on her.”
“You wouldn’t mind, would you, Barficorn?” Arlo turns to me, a sparkle in his eye. “Eighth grade’s a joke, anyway.”
“Speaking of which,” says Pop, “you two should be heading out soon. Da and I can handle this mess from here on out.”
I glance resentfully at the clock. Pop’s right: I have to get to school. There’s no way he or Da would approve of me bailing, so I’ll play along. I get ready upstairs, and I don’t forget about my period. How could I, at this point? I put on my usual first day getup—no fringe vest today—and slip the hyacinth journal into my backpack as a reminder of my new goal.
I clomp down the stairs just in time to catch poor Trixie whining. Heaving a sigh, I let her out front and watch her do her business. By the time I return to the back room, Arlo’s wearing his flip-flops. It’s only once we’re in the car that I snap off the radio and tell him, “Let’s skip.”
Arlo blinks at me. “Beg your pardon?”
“You’re right,” I tell him, adjusting the toggles of my rain jacket hood. “Eighth grade is a joke. Let’s get pancakes instead.”
I can practically see the gears whirring in Arlo’s brain, invisible steam blowing out his ears. I know now that Arlo had always planned to skip school, and I bet he’s deciding if he should be an accomplice to me skipping, too.
“I don’t know about that,” he says eventually. “It’s your first day. You might regret it.”
“Trust me,” I say darkly, “I won’t. And you won’t get in trouble with Dads. I’ll tell them you dropped me off at school, and I just didn’t go in.”
Arlo doesn’t seem convinced.
“Look,” he says, “just because I’m not a fan of school doesn’t mean—”
“No, I know,” I interrupt. “I’m not planning on skipping all of eighth grade. Just today. I’m improvising. That’s what life’s about, right? Like music.”
Seconds tick by. Arlo stares at the gearshift, contemplating.
“Pancakes, huh?” he asks.
“Pancakes,” I confirm.
That settles it. Arlo shifts the Civic into gear, and we both know where we’re headed without saying the name aloud. Arlo and I have had the same favorite breakfast spot since I was five: Magnolia Cafe. It’s pretty much an Austin institution, and lucky for us, it’s only five minutes away from home.
It’s a rainy weekday morning, so the café’s not too busy, and Arlo nabs a spot in the tiny parking lot. Together, we walk up the ramp to the front door, passing the neon sign that says, Sorry, We’re Open.
The host seats us right away, at one of my favorite booths, right under a hanging pterodactyl skeleton. Arlo and I both know what we want without peeking at the menu. He orders a coffee, I order a milk, and we both ask for short stacks of the cornmeal banana pecan pancakes. Then there’s the pièce de résistance: an appetizer of Mag nachos—that’s nachos smothered in cheese and sour cream, topped with jalapeños fresh enough to burn off your taste buds.
