Paula Stokes - The Art of Lainey

“I could have him killed if you want,” Micah says with exaggerated seriousness. “Jason, not your dad. I bet C-4 knows people who would make it look like an accident.”

C-4, also known as Cal. Another member of Denali’s crack-team kitchen staff. He’s always going on about his collection of homemade weapons and telling everyone his locker is booby-trapped with explosives. Now there’s a guy who makes Micah seem almost normal.

“I’ll pass,” I say, wondering why he’s being so nice to me. Eager to change the subject, I zero in on his hands as he brushes some loose flour from the bottom of his T-shirt. “Why don’t you wear an apron?”

“Because aprons are for losers?” Micah swipes at his shirt again. He’s got what looks like a coil of barbed wire wound around his left wrist. It’s also caked with flour.

“Apparently gloves are too.”

“Nobody wears gloves unless the customers can see them,” he says, heading toward the door. He pauses, looks back at me for a second. “My girlfriend and I broke up a few weeks ago. I know how bad it sucks.”

I bristle again. More pity. “Why are you trying to make me feel better? You haven’t said, like, five words to me since grade school.”

He shrugs. “Bee asked me to check on you. Also, Ebony said I have to work the counter if you can’t go back up there.” Micah inches toward the door. “You know how we kitchen people tend to scare away the customers.”

My breathing has finally returned to normal. I dry my eyes again and try to pretend nothing happened, that Jason didn’t just dump me like I was a total loser. I hate that a coworker saw me break down, but it could be worse. Micah and I knew each other when we were kids but we’ve never rolled in the same circles. He hangs out mostly with other guys at work and I’m not overly concerned about what the Denali kitchen weirdos think of me. “I don’t see why Bald Beauty couldn’t man the counter,” I grumble. “That schedule isn’t going anywhere.”

“Why are you such a bitch to her?” Micah asks.

“Because she’s lazy? And bald?”

Not to mention, she’s been a bitch to me since the day we met. Pretty sure she sees me as a threat to her management position, like I’m going to graduate high school and immediately use my family connections to steal her Denali power.

Micah rolls his eyes. “It’s just a style, Lainey.”

“It’s a lack of style.” I run the tips of my pinkie fingers along my lower lash lines in an attempt to remove some of my smudged mascara. “You’d think she could help out for five minutes. It’s not like my whole world ends every day.”

Micah glances back at me as he slides out of the office. His face twists into a mixture of sympathy and disgust. “That douche bag was your whole world? I feel sorry for you.”

“I don’t need you to feel sorry for me,” I snap a little too loudly. But I mean it. I’m Lainey Mitchell, varsity soccer star. I have my own freaking commercial. I’m not a loser. I rock—I know it. And underneath whatever is going on with Jason, I’m sure he knows it too. All I have to do is figure out a way to make him remember.

Bianca and I head to my house immediately after work. We both flop down on my zebra-print comforter and I lean my head against her shoulder. “Mom knew this was going to happen,” I wail. “She said the leaves showed big changes, separation. I thought she meant Kendall!” Jason’s twin sister, my other best friend, just left town for the summer.

Bianca puts an arm around me and squeezes. “But you’ve never believed in your mom’s tea-reading stuff. Why start now?”

I’ve actually always kind of believed in my mom’s readings. I only pretend not to because—and this might be an understatement—tea leaves are not cool. But according to Mom, when she got pregnant, her doctor told her I was going to be a boy and she kept disagreeing because she dreamed I was a girl. Then her doula, aka the world’s biggest hippie, saw something feminine when she was reading Mom’s leaves and that clinched it—Mom asked for all pink baby clothes. Of course Dad and her friends thought she was having a breakdown so they bought lots of green and yellow stuff to be safe. And then I popped out looking all girly and perfect and Mom got to go around shrieking “in your face” at everyone. Well, maybe it didn’t go down exactly like that, but she’s been reading tea leaves herself ever since. And sometimes I listen.

But it’s not an exact science. She can look at a cupful of glop and pretty much see what she wants to see. And since she and the rest of the world knew Kendall had recently jetted off to New York after being selected for the special teen edition of So You Think You Can Model, I wasn’t too worried about the separation reading.

“I don’t know. But apparently this time Mom nailed it. What are we going to do?”. Okay, so it’s technically my problem, not Bianca’s, but any crisis of mine is a crisis of hers, and vice versa. That’s just how we roll.

She pulls a pair of wooden chopsticks out of her bun and shakes out her thick Latina hair. “Maybe you should try to call Kendall and see if she’s got any inside information.”

“Ooh, good idea.” Not only is Kendall closer to Jay than anyone else, she also knows how to “handle situations,” as she likes to say.

I send her a quick 911 text, but she doesn’t respond right away like usual. I tell myself it’s no biggie, that she’s probably off somewhere posing in body paint or getting an überchic pixie haircut. Still, nothing stings quite like an unanswered text message.

I wait five whole minutes and check my phone again. “I think she’s forgotten about me,” I say, only half kidding.

“She’s probably not allowed to use her cell phone,” Bianca says. “Didn’t you say they wouldn’t even let her email anyone during filming?”

“Yeah, I guess.” It’s nice of Bee to make excuses for Kendall, considering that they don’t like each other very much, which sucks because the three of us all play varsity soccer now and I wish we could hang out together. Bianca’s been my best friend forever, but being around Kendall is like getting swept away by a tornado, in a good way. She and Jason lived in Los Angeles until eighth grade when their mom got transferred here for work, and there’s just something glamorous and unpredictable about everything she does. When we go out, I never know where we’ll end up.

Kendall makes me better too. If it weren’t for her excellent assist, I wouldn’t have scored the winning goal at the championships. I probably wouldn’t have gotten together with Jason either. She pushes me to do things I’d be too scared to try on my own. Bianca finds her “a bit overbearing.”

“You’re probably right,” I tell Bee. “Maybe she’s getting ready for a shoot, being draped in some glamorous dress while a team of designers revolve around her, brows furrowed, mouths full of pins.” Kendall’s mom is the district manager of a chain of fashion boutiques and she’s always making her daughter try on outfits before she lets the buyers order them. Kendall bitches about being a human Barbie Doll, but she gets to keep all the samples. Talk about having the best wardrobe in school.

As for me, my mom’s an anthropology professor, which means all I have is the best collection of creepy tribal masks. They used to hang on the wall of my room, but last year I finally said enough and put them up in the coffee shop. You have no idea what it’s like to be fooling around with your boyfriend and look up to see a bunch of painted-up African warriors glaring at you. Major mood killer.

Now my walls are full of pictures and posters. My lower lip gets quivery as my eyes land on a framed photo of Jay and me from last year’s junior prom. Him in his tux, and me in a long pale blue gown. Both of us tall, tan, blinding smiles. We look like the little people on top of a wedding cake.

“I can’t figure out what happened.” My voice wavers. “Everything was fine last week.”

“No warning at all?” Bee asks.

I shake my head violently, and my brain is assaulted by thoughts of Jason from all sides, from the pictures on the wall, to the DVDs he loaned me scattered across my desk, to the three bottles of perfume—one for each Valentine’s day—arranged in a line on my dresser. An old soccer jersey of his that I sometimes sleep in lies crumpled on the floor. As I pick it up and toss it toward the hamper, I catch sight of my jewelry box on the highest shelf of my dresser. There are only a couple of necklaces inside it—one of which is the golden soccer-ball pendant Jay gave me when I turned sixteen.

He and Kendall threw me a pool party that night. It was epic—I bet at least a hundred people came. Then, after everyone left, Kendall distracted their mom while Jay snuck me into his room. I lost my virginity that night, and while it was everything people said that it would be—awkward and nerve-wracking and a little painful—Jason was so amazingly sweet that I wasn’t afraid. I just . . . trusted him. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. I never thought he would hurt me.

Until now.

I bite back tears. That was also the night he told me he loved me for the first time. It took him almost a year to say it, but I didn’t mind because to me that showed he really meant it, you know?

Sniffling, I turn to Bianca. “I mean, did I do something wrong?”

Bianca hands me a tissue. “This isn’t about you.”

I want to believe her, but it’s hard. I guess it sounds stupid, but a little part of me thought Jason might be “the one.” My parents met when Mom was twenty and Dad was twenty-two, which isn’t much different from meeting in high school. Even though I’m hoping to go to college on a soccer scholarship, I never planned on going far enough away to risk my relationship with Jay.

“He’s just confused,” Bee continues as I wipe my eyes. “Maybe it has to do with meeting his father for the first time.”

“I guess that’s possible.” But he didn’t seem too traumatized when his dad showed up in town last month. Especially when the first thing he did was toss Jay the keys to a sweet condo. But his parents have been estranged since before he and Kendall were born, and Kendall still refuses to speak to her dad. When all you know about your father is that he’s a professional photographer who lives out of a suitcase and never wanted kids, having him suddenly arrive and buy a place in town is probably a big deal. I don’t know. Maybe it messed with Jason’s head more than he let on. “You know what? I’m going to text him.” Before Bianca can stop me, I’ve got my phone out and I’m rattling off an “Is this about your dad?” text.

Bee chews on her naturally plump lower lip. “I’m not sure if—”

I wave her quiet with the back of my hand. Thirty seconds. Forty-five seconds. A minute. There is no way Jason is not going to answer me. He always answers me.

Another minute passes. Bianca sees me teetering on the edge of pathetic and tries to pull me back. “We need a plan,” she announces, grabbing my laptop from my desk. I’ve got about eight windows open—most of them to soccer or gossip websites, one of them to CalebWaters.com. “Oooh, Caleb,” she says, immediately distracted. She enlarges a picture of him at a red-carpet premier and turns the laptop toward me. “This will cheer you up.”

I give her a halfhearted smile. Caleb Waters is a former pro soccer player and the star of Victory Dance and Only One Shot. He’s currently shooting a movie called Flyboys in cities all across the Midwest. I’ve been checking his page a lot for updates in case they shoot some scenes in nearby St. Louis. Meeting Caleb Waters is one of my major life goals.

“Do you think Flyboys will be as good as the other movies?” Bee asks. “You know, since he doesn’t get to play soccer in it?”

“I’m sure it’ll be awesome.” I blot my eyes with the tissue again. “Maybe he’s reinventing himself as a serious actor.”

“Hopefully not.” She peers at the screen. “What good is a Caleb Waters movie if he doesn’t get sweaty and take his shirt off?”

As wrecked as I am right now, I have to giggle a little at that. Bianca may act all prim and proper most of the time, but when it comes to Caleb Waters she’s every bit as obsessed as me. I force my face back into a serious expression. “Enough celebrity stalking. We have a different soccer star to focus on, remember? I thought you were coming up with a plan to fix my life.”