“With that amount of lipstick, you could paint a fucking zoo.”
I was currently at the mall with the girls. We’d been dragged out here by Michelle, who insisted she was out of lipstick, which apparently was a national fashion emergency.
This may come as a surprise, but I’m not particularly fond of make-up shopping.
“Oh c’mon honey,” Michelle laughed, “I’m almost done. Besides, you should look for some stuff yourself.”
“I have two whole tubes of lipstick. I think they’re enough. And I’ll always have the museum you’re setting up just two streets away from me,” I pointed out. Michelle, however, replied with a twinkle in her eyes.
“You have to start making an effort, now that good-looking people are taking you to fancy restaurants and symphonies and other rich-people dating destinations.”
I facepalmed as everyone else sniggered. “It was just a dinner,” I growled, “and a very dismal one, at that.”
“Dismal?” Jenna asked wide-eyed, “They serve cold food at Vincent’s? That’s definitely gonna hurt their rep…” her voice trailed off as we stared at her blankly.
“Jenna, dismal means small. Insufficient. It doesn’t mean cold,” Terri tried to say this in the gentlest way possible, and I held back my chuckle so as to not hurt Jenna’s feelings. She was sensitive about…well, everything.
“But why would it be dismal?” Terri asked seriously.
“I don’t know,” I sighed, “it’s just that there were really little portions and everything was slimy.”
The three girls blinked at me, clearly unsatisfied.
“Well, you know how I find it hard to consider something food if it isn’t cheesy or doesn’t contain spicy meat or tomatoes or jalapenos or something,” I added a bit defensively.
“Oh yeah,” Terri giggled. “Remember the veggie regime?”
I shuddered at the memory. Last year, Uncle Tom had suddenly become very worried about my unhealthy intake of calories, so he decided to reconstruct my diet. It consisted of “healthy food” according to him; to me, it was all tasteless crap. He’d even revoked my pocketmoney and called all my friends’ parents, thinking I’d try to sneak food out from them. However, since the fridge was stocked with things that didn’t fall under the category of food in my dictionary, I went a whole week without a single meal, which prompted Uncle Tom to let me go back to my normal dietary habits. Apparently he hated the idea of my dying from starvation more than the idea of me becoming obese.
“Well, you should get used to it,” Michelle warned me, “That’s his lifestyle, and it’s sweet that he wants to share it with you. Besides, you said so yourself, you guys have so much in common!”
I hadn’t really figured out how I felt about that, though.
As the conversation moved on (Thankfully) to other topics, I let my gaze wander. My eyes soon found a killer drum set displayed in front of a shop on the other side of the building, well away from the make-up department.
“Hey guys? I’m just gonna go check something out, ok? I’ll meet you at the entrance in fifteen minutes.” With that, I jogged out of the store and headed towards the drums that had caught my attention. A stranger must have found it very weird to see someone like me staring longingly at a drum set. I was dressed in a pale blue T-shirt that said “Three Days’ Grace” in large grey letters over a grey pair of skinny jeans, my hair loosely braided to one side and rectangular glasses perched on my nose. Apart from the name of the band, I didn’t exactly look like drummer material.
I sighed wistfully. The set was a beauty, colored black and silver, sleek and shiny. My fingers itched to grab hold of the drumsticks and play along to the Nirvana number being blasted through the stereo a couple yards away. Sadly, it was way too expensive. Besides, I had Clang at home. Clang was the name of my drums, the ones I got on my eighth birthday.
Don’t look at me like that. I was eight, so I named it what it sounded like when I played, “Clang”. People had pet cats named “Meow”, I had a drum set named “Clang”. Don’t judge me.
So, anyway, even though the set was old, it still hadn’t fallen apart, which meant I wasn’t getting a new set anytime soon.
“So I guess a drum set is the only thing that can make Megan Riley shut up,” the calm voice of Alex Richards sounded from behind me.
I turned to face him before scoffing. “Don’t act like you know everything about me.”
“Most girls would love to let me know everything about them,” he said with a wise look on his face.
I looked him up and down. He was wearing a blue shirt over a gray T-shirt and black jeans, and a pair of converse on his feet. His hair had the typical I-just-got-out-of-bed-I’m-so-cool look, and his sharp features were pulled into a smile that made a girl passing by bat her eyelashes. To my surprise, though, instead of smirking like a typical player, Alex blushed and scratched the back of his neck, his smile fading and his eyes turning to the floor.
“Holy shit,” I said between laughs, “You get embarrassed when girls flirt with you?”
“Don’t act like you know everything about me,” he threw my line back at me. I just laughed harder. And these weren’t beautiful tinkering laughs like the ones in movies, either; they made me sound like a horse. Alex was polite enough to point that out. “You sound like a frikkin horse.”
“You look like a horse,” I retaliated. However, this seemed to annoy the flirty girl, who was passing by again. “What are you talking about?” she said, “He looks like a sex god.”
As she walked off with a seductive sway to her hips, Alex turned as red as a beet, making me laugh even harder. “That was priceless,” I informed him between snorts, “but you sill look like a horse.”
“You smell like a horse.” I knew this was a complete lie, because I smelled like the body wash I’d used in my shower earlier, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t horse-scented.
“You smell like horseshit,” I countered, even though this was also a lie. The dude smelled like chocolate.
“You smell like a horse’s…butt.” He said after staying silent for a minute. That cracked me up again
“If it takes you that long to think of a comeback, you should probably not say anything at all. Saves you from a lot of embarrassment.”
“Yeah, well, I guess my comebacks died along with your ability to laugh like a human,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Damn, that one was good.
He ignored my dirty look and continued, “Anyway, it’s a good thing I bumped into you. Makes my work a whole lot easier.”
I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “What work?” I asked slowly. In response, he just grinned cheekily. A second later, his face transformed into a look of complete despair and hurt, and he started screaming at the top of his lungs, “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME??!!”
“Do w-what?” I stammered incredulously, suddenly afraid of whatever his answer would be. His scream had already made half the people loitering that particular area of the mall turn their attention towards us. He seemed oblivious to this as he continued. “I LOVED YOU WITH MY HEART AND SOUL AND YOU THREW ALL THAT AWAY JUST TO HOOK UP WITH YOUR OWN BROTHER??”
By now everyone was whispering and pointing at us; looks of sympathy and disgust started appearing on their faces as they realized the weight of his accusations.
“You did not just say that,” I hissed at him, but he continued. “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’D DO THIS TO ME. AFTER ALL THE PROMISES AND ALL THE VOWS, YOU PICKED YOUR BROTHER INSTEAD OF ME?” He had a pained expression on his face, and at that moment I realized what an annoyingly good actor the motherfucker was. I finally managed to gather my senses, and addressed the whole crowd, “I have no idea what this dude’s talking about.”
“Does he please you more than I do?” he said in a tone which was a few decibels lower, but it didn’t matter; he had the attention of about twenty people around us. “He’s better than me in bed, isn’t he?”
“Seriously,” I said in a slightly louder voice, “I don’t know this guy. Do any of you people know this guy? He must have escaped from the mental ward of Jacksonville General.” The reference to that particular place disoriented me for a moment, and taking the chance, Alex continued his act.
“That’s why you cheated on me with your brother didn’t you? Because he has a bigger pole than me? I know I should’ve suspected something when I saw you groping him last week.”
“For God’s sake, I don’t even have a brother!” I exclaimed. Then, yelling about “crazy assholes harassing innocent passers-by and posing a threat to society”, I sprinted away from the scene, leaving a triumphant Alex and a group of extremely confused strangers behind.
I ran up the escalators to the floor above, not pausing until I’d reached the very corner of the food court. I quickly walked into the little milkshake store and slipped into a booth, not keen on being spotted by anyone. It took me a few minutes to get my breathing under control, and still, I was too mad to notice Alex before he plopped down next to me.
“Fuck off before I slice you to bits with a knife,” I muttered at him.
“Hate to point this out to you, but you don’t have a knife.” There was a hint of a laugh in his voice. As a reply, I kicked him on his shin under the table. There was a sharp intake of breath next to me, followed by a very satisfying groan.
“Look,” he said, “That was just payback for wetting my pants at school yesterday.”
“You should really drop this whole thing about my non-existent brother.”
“Oh sure I will. As soon as I hear that apology.”
“Wait, you want me to apologize?” I feigned surprise to mask the anger welling up inside me. “Of course I’ll apologize! You’ll just have to wait for a bit though,” I said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Alex fell for the act, and asked, confused, “How long?”
“Uhh…you know, until hell freezes over?”
Alex scowled. “Someday you will apologize for that terrible ordeal you put me through. I’m just trying to help you retain your dignity when you do.”
“You do realize I’m going to put you through hell for this, don’t you?” I asked him out of sheer curiosity.
“Sure you will,” he nodded sarcastically. Right then, a woman came to ask us for our order. I hadn’t really planned on eating anything when I came in, but all the running had made my throat dry. So, I ordered a Ferrero-Rocher Shake, which was basically a creamy chocolate drink with bits of Ferrero-Rocher in it. Alex wrinkled his nose at my choice before ordering a Cotton Candy Blend for himself.
“What?” I asked defensively, “I like pralines. And dark chocolate.”
“That milkshake just has way too many crunchy bits to it,” he said with a disgusted expression.
“Well, at least I don’t drink stuff that looks like a ballerina’s closet.”
“Oooh, did you just come up with that? It was really witty,” Alex smirked. I just huffed in response. The truth was, I was too mad to think of anything smart. Alex seemed to sense this, so he scooted closer to me before asking, “You’re still mad at me aren’t you?”
“You just said a bunch of nasty stuff about me, in a mall full of strangers. I love you for that,” I said drily.
“You do, don’t you?” Another waft of chocolate, mixed with some kind of cologne, wafted by. “Okay, sitting next to you when you have that murderous expression on your face is like my worst nightmare, but this place sells really good milkshakes which are irresistible. You see my problem, right? So, how about this: I’ll crack some extremely lame joke and pretend like I think it’s funny, so that you can consider yourself to be the smarter and cooler person here and let this all go.”
“I know I’m the smarter and cooler person here, Alex,” I said sweetly. He rolled his eyes at me, just as our drinks arrived. “Well, you’re a bit full of yourself,” he commented.
“That’s cuz I’m awesomesauce,” I declared before taking a long sip from my glass. The scrumptious drink helped me calm down. A few more sips, and my rage had started to ebb away, and was replaced by the usual annoyed feeling I had whenever Alex was around.
“Awesomesauce? And here I thought you were the smartest kid in our class,” Alex sighed dramatically. “Children these days, making up weird words as they speak…Pathetic, I tell you.”
Despite myself, I actually let out a laugh at this, but then quickly faked a cough. I didn’t want Alex to think I found the stuff he said to be funny.
“You even cough like a horse,” he said, scrunching up his nose.
“Why do you always scrunch up your nose like that? Is it because you can’t bear the smell of all that shit coming out of your mouth?”
He opened his mouth to spit out some kind of super-lame comeback when the waitress returned with our bill. I tossed it to Alex, not even bothering to look at the figure at the bottom. “Thanks for paying,” I said brightly.
“No way. I’m not paying. You pay,” he shot back.
“How is that even fair? I only ordered something because I had to, and you’re the reason I came in here in the first place. After harassing me about my phantom brother, the least you could do is pay for my milkshake!”
“No, you don’t get it. You have to pay.” There was a sense of urgency in his voice. “This is all the money I have with me.” He placed a nickel and three pennies on the table.
“Well…that’s a problem,” I said slowly, pulling out the loose change in my pocket, “because this is all I have with me.” I held out my palm for him to see two quarters and a dime.
We had a total of 68 cents between us, and, needless to say, our bill was for a much larger sum.
“Shoot,” Alex breathed out. “What do we do now?”
I threw a quick glance at our waitress. She was a large woman in her thirties, with a permanent frown on her face. She looked pretty scary with beefy arms, a thick neck, and a faint moustache.
“We could just run,” I whispered to Alex.
“Run? Yeah, we could run,” Alex seemed to be weighing our options. “I’m pretty fast, and so are you. Only…only there are surveillance cameras, and they’ve already seen our faces. So they’ll definitely report us to the police, and then the fuzz will show up on my doorstep and haul me off to prison where I’ll be forced to smoke by the inmates. Or do drugs. Or maybe get raped!!” By this time every feature on his face screamed terror.
“Seriously?” I couldn’t help but snort at his overreaction, even though the situation was tense. The waitress was already shooting us furtive glances.
“Maybe we should just stab ourselves,” Alex suggested wide-eyed.
“With what, forks?”
“I was thinking about the toothpicks, but yeah, forks could work too.” This guy clearly turned into a headless chicken whenever he was under a stressful situation.
“Very plausible theory,” I nodded sardonically, “but I could also try giving my friends, who happen to be in the mall, a call. See if they have any money. Although you could always hide a few toothpicks up your sleeves, ‘cuz you never know when you’ll be in a desperate situation.”
In ten minutes, Terri had showed up and paid the bill, I’d recounted the story to the girls, and everyone, including Alex, was busy laughing at his reaction.