The Cheerleaders(38)

Ginny glances at Petey and drops her voice to a whisper. “Are you sure you want to talk about this in front of him?”

“Don’t worry about him,” I say. “Look.”

I say Petey’s name at normal volume. Once, twice, three times before shouting: “PETER THOMAS CARLINO.”

“What?” He doesn’t look up from my phone. With one finger he’s building a new settlement. With the other hand, he’s spooning ice cream into his mouth.

I turn back to Ginny. “See? We’re good.”

Ginny swirls the tip of her spoon through her ice cream, nudging at a piece of Butterfinger. “Jen not being on the list doesn’t mean anything. Just that Ethan liked her.”

“The last thing she wrote to him was yes.”

Petey’s voice finally breaks the silence. He points to my untouched McFlurry. “Are you gonna eat that?”





FIVE YEARS AGO


OCTOBER




I don’t know. If Jen was being honest, that was how she would answer Ethan McCready’s question.

Do you want to talk about it?

Jen didn’t know. She did want to talk about how shitty she felt, but she didn’t want to talk about it with Ethan McCready. And it wasn’t because people thought he was a loser and a creep. She couldn’t look at him without thinking about that kiss all those years ago.

She wondered if she would like it if he kissed her again; she wondered if he even wanted to.

The day after he gave her the note, Jen had slipped it through a slit in his locker with trembling fingers. Yes.

Immediately, she wanted to take it back. Becoming friends with Ethan McCready again was not the most rational response to whatever weirdness was going on with her and Jules and Susan.

But he kept invading her head. Every thought she had over the past few days seemed infused with Ethan.

Even now, as she observed herself in the mirror of the dressing room at Addie’s Closet, she imagined Ethan seeing her in her prospective homecoming dress.

Everyone wore short dresses to homecoming, which made Jen anxious. Tall girls and short dresses were a recipe for disaster. She’d picked a dress that seemed like it would look the least vulgar on her. It was covered in rose-gold sequins, with a keyhole halter top.

She knew the boys at school thought she was hot. Hot was their word: Jen Rayburn is the hottest girl in our grade. Jen never knew how to feel about it, though. She had done things with boys; just last year she’d made out with Chase Kenney at the movie theater, eventually having to shrug away from him when he guided her hand into his pants. All she felt afterward was disgust with guys and how they only wanted one thing from girls.

And now here she was, imagining Ethan McCready’s gaze running up her legs, to the place where the hem of her skirt met her thigh—

The curtain sectioning off the dressing room opened. Jen jumped back, her face warm, as if she’d been caught doing something gross. “Jesus, Jules.”

“Sorry.” Juliana stepped into the dressing room with Jen. She was wearing a lacy black-and-gold crop top and a long tulle skirt. It was the type of outfit only Jules could pull off.

“You look frigging awesome.” Jules stepped around Jen, tugging at the hem of her dress like a seamstress. “You’re getting it, right?”

“I don’t know.”

Addie’s Closet was the only boutique in town. Most girls drove forty minutes to the outlets in Ithaca, but cheer practice had been sucking up most of Jen’s weekends, and between Monica’s ballet classes and Petey’s playdates, her mother didn’t have time to take her.

Mrs. Berry had dropped the girls off at Addie’s and said she’d be back in an hour. Susan was still dillydallying by the sale rack. She was the most indecisive person—Jen knew she’d wind up coming back to Addie’s with her mother tomorrow. She watched Susan hold a black sheath dress up to herself and then put it back on the rack.

Juliana finished up at the register and joined Jen at the door. “Suz! Ready to go?”

Susan sighed. “I guess.”

The girls filed out of the store and across the lot, waiting until the sign across the street flashed to WALK. The Sunnybrook McDonald’s was unnecessarily nice—the fa?ade looked like an old farmhouse, with a giant gold foil M over the doorway instead of those tacky arches. Above, the sky was turning the color of sherbet.

McFlurries and fries obtained, Susan slid into a booth by the window. Juliana and Jen followed, setting their Addie’s Closet shopping bags on their laps.

Susan swirled her straw through the top of her ice cream. “I’m not going to find anything.”

“Maybe if you weren’t so anal,” Juliana said.

Susan threw a French fry at Jules. Jen stole one from the packet on Susan’s tray while she wasn’t looking. Suz could be absurdly territorial when it came to her food.

“So,” Susan said. “Anything you want to tell us?”

Jen’s insides frosted over. She didn’t like the way Susan’s voice had cooled. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw you put something in Ethan McCready’s locker this morning.”

Juliana, who had just had her hand on Susan’s tray, froze with a fistful of fries. “McCreepy?”

Jen felt a flare of annoyance. “Don’t call him that. You guys can be so mean.”