Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys)(10)

“Yeah, it’s no big deal,” he says. “I should have thought of it before.”

“You should have.” But I smile because I’m kidding. Mostly.

“I have to go do a thing,” he says. “I didn’t have time to tell you earlier, but it’s all in here.”


I catch the Passenger Manifest as he tosses it to me. It’s impressive because if you combined our athletic abilities, you might come up with the skills of a sad kindergartner. “Go do a thing. We have Family Night tonight.”

“Rock on with that.”





CHAPTER THIRTEEN



The Sad Animal Project, by Reid


I learned today that Jane works as a volunteer at Paws for People, which is this animal rescue charity that finds homes for abandoned animals. She couldn’t be a better person.

So I’m going to “accidentally” walk past Paws for People tonight. Next door there’s an organic coffee place that’s pretty cool, so I’ll go there and then “stumble across” the rescue place. Jane will be there, and I can pretend to really consider getting some sad animal.

Then tomorrow I can talk to her some more about it, show her how I’m researching whatever its health condition is or maybe what breed it is, and do this for a while so we have to talk every day. Then finally I will have to tell her I literally just found out my brother’s allergic, so I can’t. But by then she’ll be used to talking to me every day, so we’ll keep doing that and before long maybe she’ll fall in love with me. And since I’m already in love with her, it’ll be great and easy once it actually starts.

Probably she’ll be volunteering with some jerky douchebag and none of this will actually happen, though. I won’t even go in if I spot any jerky douchebags.

Crap. This is doomed.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


I don’t know if Family Nights were Mom’s or Dad’s idea, because they present everything as a United Front. The two of them read more books than people in, like, library school, so I’m sure it was advice from some parenting manual that led them down this road. Tonight at least we’re out at the Palace, which isn’t as fancy as its name would have you believe but is pretty much my favorite Chinese food around.

“What’s new with you, Riley?” Mom asks. “Besides the Gold Diggers?”

Apparently, I had been communicating by always answering every question about what was going on by mentioning the band and only the band. I can’t help that it’s the most important thing in my life, and, anyway, do Mom and Dad really want to hear about Lucy and Nathan doing it or how wonderfully worn-in Ted’s hoodie looks?

“Yearbook’s okay,” I say.

“The Roar!” Dad says with a crazy grin. It’s a pretty lame name for a yearbook, but Dad thinks it’s the Weirdest Ever. “I wish—”

“That every school’s yearbook was the sound their mascot made?” It’s not a bad joke, but he’s only made it twenty-seven thousand times.

Ashley rolls her eyes with flair she probably picked up from reality TV villains who aren’t there to make friends. For once I am totally on her side.

“Anything else?” Mom asks, as if Dad hasn’t interrupted and I haven’t interrupted him. I think this is how Mom maintains her sanity.

“Not really,” I say.

Mom and Dad share a look like they’re forming a mind meld to decide whether or not I’m joining a cult or doing drugs or being the worst student Edendale High School’s ever seen.

“Aren’t you going to ask what’s up with me?” Ashley asks.

“Absolutely, Ashley,” Mom says, folding her hands in her lap and looking right at Ashley. “What’s new with you?”

Ashley tells a long and confusing story about her friends Jenica and Hayley and their usual lunch table, and I’m sure the insides of my parents’ brains are flashing images of the smart and articulate and yet easily-amused-by-the-same-joke-ten-times children they expected to produce.

Lucy calls while I’m out, and since it’s been crazy long since we’ve talked on the phone, and because I feel bad about my lack of involvement with the fancy lemonades, I call her back when we get home. She answers with an enthusiasm that makes me feel like a bad person. I wonder if I am a bad person. I wonder if she is, too, in a different way from my bad-person-ness. I wonder if everyone is a bad person, somewhere, deep down. Probably not Jane Myatt, with her constant attention to the rescue of damaged, overstocked, and irregular animals. Probably not Garrick, with his devotion to school and science and the quest to end diseases that get you just because of who you’re born as. And probably not Ted Callahan, because I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what’s inside his head and heart, and there’s never been one hypothetical bad item of note.

“My parents can be so annoying,” I say. It is the safest topic ever. “Ugh, have you started your English lit yet?”

“Yeah, I worked on it for a while. It isn’t bad once you get going.”

Lucy always says things like this, but it’s only because she’s smarter than I am.

“Do you think we could really end up playing the dance?” she asks. “Sometimes I feel like Nathan and Reid have these ideas that are more than we can actually do.”