Put Me Back Together(17)

“It’s time for a makeover, girlfriend!” she cried, her blonde curls bouncing.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the cat easing out from under the dresser and stealthily slipping out of the room. I’d never wished I were a cat so much in my entire life.

I plastered a smile on my face as Anita kneeled on the bed behind me, gathering my hair in her hands. “Should we do her hair up or down?” she asked the room at large.

“Oh, fake eyelashes!” Emily cried as she pawed through Sally’s makeup case. “I also brought those new coloured contacts I ordered. They’re sapphire blue. You’re going to look so hot you won’t even recognize yourself!”

I groaned inwardly as they crowded around me, holding up various garments like I was a mannequin.

“Are you wearing a thong?” a girl named Melissa asked me quietly in my ear.

It was going to be a long night.



The Limo was a club on the edge of town that I’d never been to before. It had three floors, four DJs, and apparently no parking. We’d been circling, trying to find a space, for ten minutes. It was a little too far from campus to attract the university crowd, which, Sally informed me, was the whole point.


“I want to meet older guys,” she said as she flawlessly applied another layer of Hot Mama red lipstick without a mirror. It was kind of impressive. “Guys our age have no money. I want a sugar daddy!”

“I thought Alex was your sugar daddy,” Emily said as she jerked the wheel to the right, finally slipping into what appeared to be the last available spot on the block.

“Alex lives off his trust fund,” Sally said with distaste. “I want a guy with his own cash, preferably lots of it, which he’ll have no problem showering all over me. Maybe even while I’m naked, ‘cause that’s super hot.”

“Way to dream big, Sally,” Anita said.

I liked Anita. Not only was she wearing normal clothes instead of the overly revealing apparel her friends favoured, but she seemed to find Sally as ridiculous as I did. I even forgave her for wearing a tiara on her head tonight. It was her birthday, after all.

“Is Alex aware of this rich man desire of yours?” I inquired as we all piled out of the car.

“What would I tell him for?” Sally said with a puzzled look on her face.

We took off our coats and left them on the backseat to avoid paying for coat check. I linked arms with Emily as we crossed the street and joined the line outside the club, shivering in our seasonally inappropriate outfits. Barely a minute had passed before Sally was nuzzling up to the beefed-up guy standing in front of us in line, shamelessly whining that her boobs were cold and would he mind warming them up for her? He looked happy to oblige.

I took a step out of line to check how far we were from the front. The line was moving pretty quickly. We probably only had about five more minutes to wait.

“Who are you looking for, Katie?” Emily said as I came back to her side. I just saw the tip of a flask as she shoved it back into her blue sparkly clutch. That explained why they were all so giggly already. I hoped nobody would throw up before we made it inside. “Oh, I know who you’re looking for. You’re on the lookout for Lucas, your secret beau!”

“Emily!” I cried, giving her a look of death as her friends all gushed at once: “Oh, Lucas!” They drew out his name until it had about five syllables, all high-pitched and mortifying.

Clearly they already knew about Lucas and me, though there wasn’t much to tell. I didn’t even want to think about how completely Em must have exaggerated the little I’d told her about my encounters with him. She probably had the two of us doing it like bunnies in his room. There were probably already rumours of our sex tape circulating campus.

“Shut up, you guys,” I said, trying to get control of the tipsy, giggling horde. “Lucas and I are just friends. Don’t you dare go telling anybody anything different.”

“Wait, didn’t he buy you a kitten?” Melissa said.

“And hand it to you half-naked?” Anita said.

“And covered in chocolate?” Em chimed in.

I groaned in the back of my throat as they veered off into a discussion of Lucas’s abs, the abs of the whole basketball team, and how many jocks Sally had slept with last semester—they were in disagreement whether it was eleven or twelve. I gratefully tuned out.

The subject of Lucas had left me feeling guilty and out of sorts. During my three-day hibernation, he’d texted me a few times. Once to ask why I’d skipped class, and another time during class to inform me that Naomi had taken the easel next to him and that he wished it was me instead. Because she smelled like cheese. I’d wanted to text him back to say she always smelled like cheese, but I didn’t think it was a good enough reply. Texting was all about being clever and hilarious. It was a lot of pressure, especially when your brain was turning to mush from watching six hours straight of daytime TV. Then, just a few hours ago, he’d sent me this text:



Lucas: Hey, disappearing act. Where’d you go?



I hadn’t replied to that one, either.

A really stupid part of me had started examining my life in the context of the creepy Facebook message late last night. Other than March twentieth, the only new thing in my life was Lucas. And—here was the really dumb part—I sort of felt like I was being punished for letting him into my life. Yeah, it was pretty crooked logic, but that’s how it felt. I’d broken my rules. I’d let him get to know me, even if only a little. I had a cat under my bed. I’d lost the tight control I usually kept on my life, and look at what had happened.