all that be enough?
When I flip to the last page, Bert’s signature jumps out at me. Then mine. I suck in a breath of cool air.
My tears taste salty and bittersweet as I stare at the document that ends my old life and launches a new one.
New and improved.
CHAPTER 6
From: [email protected]
Date: 11/6 Thursday
Subject: Judd
Hang up your phone! I’ve been trying to call you! I’m hyperventilating! He’s coming over again! Right now! If you get this message, call me on my cell at midnight in case I need an escape. ~ Erin
Stuffing my phone into my jean pocket, I hurry to the closet and look inside. What was I after? I scan the shoes on the floor, the clothes on hangers. My mind whirls, my heartbeat’s skipping. I am seriously having a panic attack.
I tug off my girly pajamas, the ones Nana gave me for Christmas last year, and wiggle into my newest pair of hip-hugger jeans, the skintight T-shirt I bought yesterday, and a pair of pink rubber flip-flop thongs.
After hurrying into my bathroom, I get started on my face. Blush on my cheeks. A little red lipstick, then a whole lot more. I blot my lips on a square of toilet tissue then apply mascara. Several coats. My hand shakes so much that the wand bumps my cheek, smearing black across it. “Not now!” I snarl, as I reach for the toilet paper roll again and knock over a perfume bottle. It clatters as it falls, making my heart thump all the harder. The last thing I need is to wake up Mom or Nana.
When my cheek is finally clean, I bend over at the waist and ruffle my hair, then straighten again and spray it. I step back and take another long look at myself in the mirror. Something’s not right…something…I glance down at my chest. The jellyfish!
I return to the closet and put on a bra, then find the silicone inserts I borrowed from Suz’s sister. When they’re in place, I check my reflection again.
A girl I don’t recognize stares back at me. A girl with wild hair, too much makeup and a big set of ta-tas, as Suz always calls them. A phony. A fake. A Britney Spears clone with brown hair instead of blond. Exactly the kind of girl I can’t stand. So why am I doing this?
I cross my arms, turn away from my reflection. Because I’m sick of being boring, straight-laced Erin. Because I’m tired of sitting home with Mom while everyone else is out having fun. Because Judd wouldn’t give the real me a second look.
Judd. Judd Henderson.
I met him Saturday night at The Beat. He’s twenty, about to be twenty-one, a junior at North Texas. He thinks I’m also twenty, and that I’m a junior at S.M.U. At the club, he didn’t look twice at Suz, though she stood right beside me. He walked straight over and asked me to dance.
We danced all night. Then, when his ride was leaving and he had to go, he kissed me. Nothing major, just brushed his mouth against mine and said he’d call.
He did. Night before last at ten. I almost died. He wanted to come over so I had to come up with an excuse really fast. I said I was sick. Strep throat.
He said he was sorry and promised not to kiss me. Not on the lips, anyway.
Just the thought of him kissing me again anywhere, especially with Mom and Nana close by, almost gave me explosive diarrhea, so I said that, according to the doctor, the strep throat was highly contagious and he shouldn’t even come in the house.
So what did he do? He came to my window.
Like, how romantic is that? Totally romantic, if you ask me, no matter what Nana says. I’m pretty sure she hinted about Judd yesterday in front of Mom. She must’ve seen him at my window. At least she didn’t come right out and say it. Which I can hardly believe.
Anyway, for maybe the best forty-five minutes of my life, Judd smoked cigarettes and talked to me in a low voice through the window screen. He told me he likes how I act all quiet and shy, but my look says something different. I didn’t tell him that my “look” is the act, and that quiet and shy is the real me.
Before he left, Judd laughed and said hanging outside my bedroom window made him feel like he was back in high school. I said it did me, too. Then I remembered that I am in high school, and I felt even phonier than I do now.
Judd promised to call again to check on me and, a half hour ago, he did. Since I can’t pretend to be sick forever, and he’d probably think it weird that a twenty-year-old woman would have to sneak out of the house to meet a guy, I told him Mom caught my strep throat and that the house is still pretty much off-limits. So, I’m meeting him out front at eleven-thirty.
Except for the strip of light beneath Mom’s bedroom door, the hallway outside my room is quiet and dark. I decide it might be safer to go out my window again instead of risking her hearing the front door open and close. That way, I won’t have to worry about the security alarm, either. I duck back into my room and lock myself in. What I’m really doing, though, is locking Mom and Nana out.
Ten minutes later I’m beside Judd inside his pickup truck, which is parked at the curb in front of my house with the engine and headlights off.
Judd turns down the music. “You sure you don’t want to go somewhere?”
I shake my head. “I still have homework to do. I can’t stay out long.”
He pulls a pack of cigarettes off the dash and offers me one.
“No, thanks.” I point at my neck. “The strep. I mean, I’m well and everything, but I don’t want to push it yet.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. I won’t smoke, either, I guess.” He tosses the pack back where he found it. “Sorry I didn’t call yesterday. School and work have been kicking my ass.”
“Where’d you say you work?”
“At the convenience store on campus.” Judd reaches across the seat, tucks my hair behind my ear. “Just part-time. Until I graduate.”
“Oh.” I nibble my lower lip. Oh? Oh? Why can’t I think of anything else to say? It’s like my mind erased the second he touched me. “I don’t work.”
“Maybe you should.” He smiles. “Then you could rent a place with some friends and we wouldn’t have to sit out in front of your mom’s like a couple of teenagers.” He looks out the window at the house then shifts back to me, tracing the curve of my ear with a fingertip. “Let’s go for a ride. I passed by a park on the way here.”
My heart does a backflip. “I can’t. Really.”
I have the strangest feeling. Like there’s this hum of energy between us, a current of electricity stretching from Judd to me, connecting us. Being this close to him makes me excited and freaked at the same time, though I don’t know what I’m freaked about. It’s not like we weren’t even closer on the dance floor Saturday night. But this feels different. Tonight, we’re alone.
Judd takes my hand and jerks his head,
