Paula Stokes - The Art of Lainey

“Is everyone okay? Your grandmother?”

“No, no everyone’s fine,” Bee says. “It’s Leo.”

“What about him?”

She swears in Spanish. “He’s picking me up in two hours. We’re going to Tony’s.”

“The Tony’s?” I whistle. “Nice.” I’m wondering if Leo is blowing all the money I just returned to him on one date. Talk about aiming to impress.

“I know,” Bee says. “But it’s our first real date and that place is so elegant. Everything I try on makes me look fat and my hair is extra huge since it rained earlier and I look so terrible I’m thinking about canceling.”

She sounds close to tears. Bianca is always the one calming everyone else down. Who would’ve guessed she couldn’t work the same magic on herself?

“Relax,” I say. “Remember the dress you wore to the state championship dinner? The navy blue one with the sequined shoulder straps?”

“Yeah.”

“Wear that.”

A pause. Deep breath. “You don’t think it’s too short for a fancy restaurant?”

“Nah. Wear flats if you’re worried about it.”

“Good idea. Now if I only knew what to do about my hair.”

“Why don’t you come over?” I suggest. “I’ll plug in my flat iron and we can tame it down a little.”

“Really?” Bee sounds so hopeful. “Don’t you have plans tonight?”

Plans. Let’s see. Micah isn’t talking to me. Kendall isn’t talking to me. The two people who still are talking to me are going out for a romantic dinner together. My parents have a better social life than I do. “My plans are to live vicariously through you,” I say. “I’ll be waiting.”

Bianca shows up about twenty minutes later in her navy blue dress. It hugs her curves in all the right places, but the humidity from the afternoon storm has made her hair twice as big as normal. I go after it with my flat iron, keeping the heat on low so it takes out some of the body but doesn’t completely obliterate her thick waves.

“You are a lifesaver,” Bee says, watching her hair return to normal size in the mirror. “Will you do my makeup too?”

“Sure.” I dig through my top drawer where I keep all my cosmetics. “So. Tony’s, eh? Pretty swank for a first date. I don’t even think my parents can afford that place. Is that why you’re so nervous? Thought you weren’t even sure if you wanted to date Leo.”

Bianca blushes. “Well, we’ve been talking on the phone for the past few days. You’re right. He is kind of funny. And smart. And it turns out he’s thinking about going to Mizzou too.”

“Sounds promising.” I line Bianca’s upper and lower lids with deep charcoal eye pencil and hit her lashes with black mascara. I highlight her eyelids with blue and gold shadow to match her dress. I’m in the process of picking out a lip shade when I stop. She looks perfect. Radiant. There’s no need to smother her in makeup so she’s unrecognizable.

“You’re finished,” I tell her.

She crinkles her nose at her reflection. “No lipstick? No blusher? No bronzer?”

“Bronzer?” I laugh. “You’re the most naturally bronze person I know.”

Bee smiles. “I love it. I look like me. Only better.”

“You’re stunning,” I agree. “But you could have gone in your running gear with no makeup at all and you’d still be stunning.” My voice almost cracks. “You’re always stunning.”

“Lainey.” Bianca’s dark eyes turn liquid. “Are you really going to leave things like this with Micah? If you can’t talk to him, why don’t you at least text him?”

I slump my shoulders. “Because I’m afraid he won’t text back.”

“Aww.” Bee throws her arms around me. “I feel bad leaving you alone when you’re sad. Maybe we can go someplace more casual and you can come too.”

“Dude,” I say, swallowing back the lump in my throat. “This is your big date and you’re letting me make everything about me. You are totally the best friend a girl could ever have. Sometimes I wonder why you don’t just tell me to get lost.”

Bee reclines back on my bed. “Elaine Mitchell. I’ve been your friend for ten years. You’re family. Maybe I want to strangle you every once in a while, but I will never tell you to get lost, okay? I would miss you too much.”

I pull her up off my bed and twirl her around in a circle. “The best. Seriously. Go enjoy your fancy dinner. I can’t wait to hear all the intimate details.” I wink. Bianca reddens again.

After she leaves, I flop down on my bed with my laptop and skim through a few gossip websites. I can’t really get into them. I check my email. There’s a message from my brother.

Hey L—

Wow. The summer has really flown by, hasn’t it? I’m heading to London for the weekend to drink warm beer with some of my friends before we all head home. We’ve got tickets to a soccer game, oh wait, make that a football match, and I couldn’t help but think of how much you would love it. I promise to take lots of pictures of whichever players the girls tell me are cute. I’d tell you who is playing but apparently there are a ton of football teams just in London and I can’t remember the names. Here’s hoping they have cheerleaders.

See you soon,

S

I click my laptop closed and dig through the magazines on the floor next to my bed. Last month’s Soccer Illustrated has a feature on some of the London football clubs. I pore over the pictures, but none of the players are as cute as Caleb Waters. No one has his stats either.

The faded red corner of The Art of War peeks out from beneath the glossy magazines. I finally quit carrying it around, but like I said, the whole freaking book seems to be tattooed across my brain. Well, maybe not the whole book, but at least my highlighted passages. Maybe I should bring it up to work and hide it amongst the flowing locks and poufy-shirted pirotica, where no one else is likely to find it and become an obsessive warrior person.

Flopping down on my bed, I open to the very first page and start reading. I’m not sure why, if I’m just bored or if some little part of me is hoping I missed something, some secret little trick that will win back Micah. But the more I read, the more I realize there’s a lot more to it than the simple top ten list Bianca and I made.

Certain passages stick out to me now, words that I skimmed past or interpreted differently the first time I read.

Part III:

SUPREME EXCELLENCE CONSISTS OF BREAKING THE ENEMY’S RESISTANCE WITHOUT FIGHTING . . .

THEREFORE THE SKILLFUL LEADER SUBDUES THE ENEMY’S TROOPS WITHOUT ANY FIGHTING; HE CAPTURES THEIR CITIES WITHOUT LAYING SIEGE TO THEM . . .

Two pages later:

HE WILL WIN WHO KNOWS WHEN TO FIGHT AND WHEN NOT TO FIGHT.

Part VIII:

THERE ARE ROADS WHICH MUST NOT BE FOLLOWED, ARMIES WHICH MUST NOT BE ATTACKED . . .

Part XII:

NO RULER SHOULD PUT TROOPS INTO THE FIELD MERELY TO GRATIFY HIS OWN SPLEEN; NO GENERAL SHOULD FIGHT A BATTLE SIMPLY OUT OF PIQUE.

Next page:

A KINGDOM THAT HAS ONCE BEEN DESTROYED CAN NEVER COME AGAIN INTO BEING . . .

It’s like I’m reading a whole different book. Maybe Bianca missed the point. Maybe we all did. As much as The Art of War looks to be about military strategy, I’m pretty sure what Sun Tzu had really been trying to say was that the best plan was the one that didn’t require marching into battle. That the true goal of strategy is victory without having to fight.

But how does that apply to me? I’m fighting with almost everyone. Jason. Kendall.

Micah.

What do you do when you’re knee deep in battle and don’t want to fight anymore?

You stop fighting. You fix things. . .or try anyway.

I’m going to start with Kendall because as scary as she is, she’s way less scary than Micah. She shouldn’t have gone all rabid pit bull on him, but she did it to defend my honor. Besides, I kind of miss her, and if we’re going to be soccer cocaptains together this year we need to at least be civil.

She shocks me by apologizing as soon as she answers. “I shouldn’t have caused a scene,” she says, so loud that I have to hold my phone away from my ear. “I should have let it go.”

“Where are you?” I ask. “Is this a bad time?”

“I’m at Jay’s. He’s got people over.” I hear music and muffled voices in the background. “He says to tell you he misses you.”

“That’s sweet. Tell him I said hi. Look, I called to apologize too. I know you were only trying to help. I should have just admitted I liked Micah.”

“Right.” Kendall seizes on this information like she’s just secured an airtight alibi for a horrible crime. “Why would you lie to me?” she asks. “None of that would have happened if you had told me the truth.”

“Come on, K. You made it seem as if liking him would be social suicide.”

“It probably would be,” she says. “But you still didn’t have to lie to me about it. I thought best friends told each other everything.”

Which is total bullshit because Kendall tells me almost nothing. She didn’t even tell me she was back in town. Besides, I thought best friends supported each other.

“I knew if I told you that you’d harass me and try to fix me up with other guys or your brother until I gave up on him,” I say.

“Okay, you’re right,” she admits. “I would have tried to make you forget him. I mean, get real, Lainey. Dating is hard enough. Dating someone like that—it’d be überhard, like interracial dating used to be. All those questions from kids at school, the mean looks from people who assume you’re acting out some prison role-playing fantasy. It’d be like that fairy tale with the princess who falls in love with the monster.”

There’s no reasoning with Kendall, but I give it one last try. “Uh, just because Micah isn’t a pretty-boy soccer star doesn’t make him a monster,” I say. “And that fairy tale had a happy ending, in case you forgot.”

“Let’s stop arguing about this,” she says brightly. “Mohawk Boy will get over it eventually, or not. But who really cares? There are plenty of hotter guys without criminal records, and you shouldn’t sell yourself short. How about we focus on the now, as in where I’m going to take you to cheer you up tomorrow night.”

Classic Kendall move—if you can’t beat them, distract them with something shiny.

“Which means what, exactly?” I ask.

“Epic party. A friend of a friend of a girl I met on So You Think You Can Model goes to Washington University. She’s having a big welcome-back-to-campus thing. College boys, Lainey. You’ll forget all about your slew of questionable choices this summer.”

“The only questionable thing I did was make out with your brother after he dumped me,” I say. “And isn’t it a little early for the Wash U kids to be coming back to campus?”

“I think she plays tennis or something so she has to be back early for practice,” Kendall says. “Even better. A whole party full of jocks. Say you’ll go with me. I don’t want to go alone.”

“I guess,” I say. But inside I’m kind of dreading it.

I’m at work when Kendall texts me the next day:

You ready?

Me: I dunno K. Not sure if I’m up for it.

Her: Trust me. Tonight will be life changing. You get off at 7?

Me: Yeah.

Her: My jeep is in the shop. Apparently I trashed the transmission. If Jay drops me at Denali, can we take your car?

Me: Okay.

I’m too tired to even argue. Maybe she’s right and I do need to get out. Maybe I need anything that will get my mind off Micah. Thankfully he left early today, so I only had to endure a couple hours of him treating me like a stranger.

Kendall sashays her way through the front doors right at seven. She’s dressed in a skimpy sundress short enough to almost be illegal and platform sandals tall enough to definitely be impractical. The effect makes me think of “sexy circus performer.” I watch as she heads across the front of the dining room toward the corner booth.

She pulls her phone out of her purse and starts texting away while she waits for me. There are a couple of people in line. As I ring them up and help Ebony make their drinks, I see Kendall look repeatedly up at the clock on the wall and then back down at her phone.

By the time I clear the line, clock out, and flop down across from her in the booth she looks positively irritated. “Took you long enough,” she says. “I wanted to find someplace to get food before the party.”