Shut Out(24)

“Here you go…. Don’t you dare spill it on my rug, or my mother will kill me!”

Sixteen girls squeezed into Susan’s bedroom on Friday night after the Hamilton Panthers lost to the Oak Hill Tigers (I said my boyfriend was a quarterback, not that he was a good one). Sixteen girls in one bedroom—and believe it or not, that wasn’t even everyone who’d taken the oath. Ellen reported that she’d gotten all of the soccer players’ girlfriends to join the cause. But, as to be expected, a few girls couldn’t make the sleepover for various reasons.

But sixteen of us showed up, and that was more than enough to have me on edge. I found myself on the floor, in the corner of Susan’s room, with my knees pulled up to my chest, counting and recounting the girls, the tiles in the ceiling, the Lakers posters on Susan’s wall—anything just to relax a bit. But with everyone talking over one another and tossing pillows and carelessly passing around overflowing bowls of food, relaxation seemed pretty far out of the realm of possibility.

I knew that the strike was my idea and that meant I should be the leader here, but I couldn’t shake the thought that I would have had a much better time on a nice, quiet date with Randy.

“Hey, listen up!” Chloe shouted over the chatter. Everyone fell silent and turned to look where she was standing, right in the middle of the room. She was dressed in her skimpy pink pajamas, with her curly brown hair pulled up in an alligator clip. “All right,” she said. “So Lissa asked us all here so we could have a little fun and share stories about our scheming and shit, and eat brownies and… and what the f*ck? Why am I doing this? Lissa, get your ass up here. You’re the one running the show.”

She reached over to me, her reassuring smile like a secret between us as she pulled me to my feet. Then she dragged me into the center of the room.

“Take it away, babe,” she said, plopping down on the floor and grabbing her fifth brownie from the Tupperware box I’d brought from home.

The girls instantly began forming a circle around me, like first graders during story time. A few sat on Susan’s bed. Others were lying on their stomachs or sitting cross-legged on the carpet at my feet, looking up at me expectantly.

“Okay,” I said, tapping my fingers against my leg. I could do this. Now that the girls were still and quiet and attentive, I could handle it. “So Susan thought it would be interesting to share our stories about what has happened so far in our efforts to end the rivalry. Does anyone have a good story?”

“I do,” Kelsey said, raising her hand.

“Bet you ten bucks it’s boring as f*ck,” Chloe whispered, much too loudly, to Susan.

Kelsey shot her a death glare before turning back to me. I gestured for her to continue.

“So Terry came over Saturday night unexpectedly. I’d mentioned that my parents weren’t going to be home, but I hadn’t, like, invited him or anything. So he just shows up out of nowhere with this big goofy grin on his face and a bottle of wine he’d convinced his brother to buy him. He totally thought my saying my parents were out of town was a cue that he was going to get some. Which, duh, is stupid anyway.” She shook her head. “Whatever. When I told him no, he looked like a hurt puppy. He just kept asking if I was mad at him. I told him no, but he didn’t believe me. So you know what he did next?”

I looked at Chloe, silently begging her not to say anything.

She stayed quiet.

“He totally made me dinner. Like, he went into my kitchen and cooked me a f*cking meal. Since when can he cook? But anyway. Yeah. He was so sure I was pissed that he would do anything to suck up. It was so cute… and lame. Mostly cute.”

“So, in other words, Kelsey has a girlfriend now,” Susan joked.

A few girls laughed. Others called out things like, “Lucky! Seth never cooks for me!” Even Chloe smiled and shook her head. I wondered if, like me, she was imagining Terry—a stout, muscular boy with a constant five o’clock shadow—wearing a pink apron and bustling around a kitchen.

“Wow, Kelsey,” Chloe said, grinning at her. “Your boyfriend becomes a housewife and Lissa’s turns into a canine. Interesting transformations for the first week.”

Suddenly everyone was looking at me again, expecting an explanation. I felt the heat creeping up my neck. I hadn’t intended to share my experience. I preferred to keep my private life private, except when I decided to share with Chloe.

“Tell them,” she said. “Come on. It’s hilarious.”

Traitor.

“Randy, um, begged like a dog. Literally.”

The girls laughed, and Chloe nudged my leg, urging me on. I sighed.

“He rolled over onto his back, showed me his belly, gave me doe eyes. He made puppy noises and everything.”

“Gives ‘doggie style’ a whole new meaning, huh?” Chloe said, and everyone busted out laughing again.

Even I cracked a smile.

“I doubted you before, Lissa,” Kelsey said, her usual sneer contorted into a—holy crap, sincere?—smile. “But now, I think you’re right. I bet it’ll work, and thank God, because this fight needs to stop. This was a good idea, Lissa. Seriously.”

Coming from Kelsey, that was huge.

And she wasn’t the only one with a story to share. I watched as several of the girls stood and told their stories. All of them smiling at me when they reached the end. All of them laughing and proud and confident. All of them really believing that my plan was going to be the one to end the rivalry. Their confidence made me confident.