“Nice?” I scoff. “Nice is the word you use when you can’t think of a real adjective. It’s what you say when something doesn’t make an impression. Socks are a ‘nice’ gift. That’s the word you want people to use about you?”
“What would people say about you?” she challenges.
It’s a fair question, but it doesn’t have just one answer. My old baseball team would go with quitter; apparently Carly would choose cheater; anyone at CP High would say loser; while my mother would say maladjusted. My dad wouldn’t sugarcoat it; he’d called me a traitor, a disappointment, and worse before he left.
I offer the words that seem truest: “Cynical? Jaded?”
“And those are better than nice?”
“Yes, because nice is for people we forget.” This answer finally silences her.
I’ve reached the edge of my neighborhood and have to turn onto Main Street. Each of the neighborhoods in Cross Pointe connects to Main Street, and each has its own pretentious name: an Estate, a Hunt, a Grove, or a Glen. “So, where do you live, Bright?”
She drops the iPod and her cell phone into the cup holder. “Don’t call me that!”
I shrug like it’s no big deal, but I know she’ll be Bright in my head from now on. This is what it takes to get an opinion out of her, a stupid shortening of her name? Nicknames probably aren’t snobby and proper enough for her. She’d probably prefer I call her by her full name, while genuflecting.
“Turn left on Main. I live in Ashby Estates.” She picks up my iPod again and scrolls. “Wait! You have ‘You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch’? Really?”
The smile she sends my way is the first nonplastic one of the night; it’s a little lopsided and a hell of a lot sexier than when she poses. I turn away.
The song’s from a playlist I made for Marcos when Carly and I took him to see Santa at the mall last Christmas. I reach over and place my hand on top of hers, ready to press the skip button.
Her skin is so soft.
Soft skin? Carly and I just—I jerk my hand back to the wheel before my thoughts veer down the revenge-screw path.
“I don’t get why you’d choose to be grinch-y,” she persists, a cheerleader tone creeping into her voice. “People would like you if you’d let them. You’re a great guy, I can tell.”
“You’re right! If I just listen to Brighton Waterford’s guide to popularity, my life will be perfect.”
She stares at me, shoulders pulled in and forehead creased. “So, you don’t want anyone to like you?”
“No, unlike you, I don’t want everyone to like me. There’s a difference.”
She abandons the iPod again, turning in her seat to face me. “Since you’re so brilliant, tell me, who should I want to like me?”
“People you respect. People you like. As long as you’re passing a class, why do you care if your teacher likes you? And why does it matter if the stoner kid whose locker is next to yours—”
“Phillip Walters is not a stoner!”
“It was an example. My point is, why waste energy sucking up to people who don’t matter? Why are you sucking up to me? I don’t matter in your life.”
I turn into Ashby Estates; more straight rows of matching houses in varying shades of dull. I wonder how often people try their keys at the wrong front door.
These McMansions alternate between models with a cross gable and those with a wraparound porch—I’m disgusted I still remember those terms from Paul and Mom dragging me along on real estate trips, so they could pretend my opinion counted.
“Everyone matters.” She sounds like she’s quoting Scripture or a manual on how to be a good person. Perhaps it’s another quote from that book. Maybe that’s next week’s sticky-note mirror message.
“Yet everyone doesn’t matter to you,” I retort.
“But it’s important to be liked.”
“Why? Because it got you a ‘Works Well with Others’ in kindergarten and prom queen now?”
She squeezes her hands into fists, and I wonder if I can make her mad enough to hit me.
“No!” I hear her swallowing breaths as she fights to calm down. Her voice is still shaky when she says, “That’s my driveway, the third one on the left.”
“Then why?” I demand as I turn the wheel.
“Because … because it’s nice!”
“Ah, and we’re back to nice,” I answer triumphantly as I put the car in park. Her house is beige. It has a cross gable.
Brighton sputters, practically trembling with repressed rage and frustration. I want her to yell. I want someone to yell at me so I have an excuse to yell back. “C’mon, Bright, use your words.”
Her mouth drops open. She clenches her fists so tightly her hands shake and she blurts out, “But you have to like me,” before bolting from the car.
16
Brighton
8:41 P.M.
16 HOURS, 19 MINUTES LEFT
Stupid! Of all the idiotic things I could’ve said, why had I said that? What happened to “Thanks for the ride,” “See you at school,” or simply “Bye”?
I refuse to let myself run up the walk to my front door. “You have to like me”? No, he doesn’t—have to or like me.
I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t.
Teflon.
I don’t care.