I blushed, thinking about wearing pajamas in front of Raj. Raj didn’t seem all that worried about it, though. “I’ll wear my flannels with the duckies and bunnies,” he said.
I hoped he wasn’t kidding. I planned to go with leggings and a hoodie, which was what I normally wore to bed anyway. It wasn’t all that different than what I was wearing to school—the leggings were jeans, and the hoodie was a sweater, but it was pretty close.
I just had to get through one more day of calculus before everything would be out in the open. I knew things would most likely only get harder, but at least I wouldn’t have this fidgety feeling of hiding stuff all the time, along with the fear that Ms. Davenport would somehow look at my face and figure out what I knew. One way or another, I needed this to be over.
Today wasn’t that day, though. I sat in class and daydreamed about what we would say to her when the confrontation finally happened. I couldn’t quite decide on the right words, though I hoped they’d come at the appropriate time. Now it was just a matter of deciding what the appropriate time was. That was part of what we were going to figure out tonight.
I got through class without making eye contact with Ms. Davenport at all, and the rest of the day went by quickly. Alex and I did our junk food shopping and headed to Raj’s house. I felt a wave of guilt as I remembered what had happened there the first time, but I reminded myself that we were well past that now. And Raj was not, to my serious disappointment, wearing ducky/bunny pajamas; he was in a plain white T-shirt and sweatpants, which didn’t make him look any less cute.
Raj started getting the snacks all set up as Alex and I went straight for the couch, each one of us grabbing an armrest.
“Movie first, then talk?” Alex asked. “Or talk first, then movie?”
“I vote talk first,” I said. “Let’s get this mess over with. I made a list.” I got my little notebook out of my bag.
“Of course you did,” she said.
“What kind of list?” Raj asked. He brought bowls of chips and M&Ms over to us and set them on the coffee table, then plopped down in the middle. The couch was super comfortable but wasn’t huge, which meant that Raj was just one cushion away, and I felt very aware of how close he was. Last time we hadn’t been sitting next to each other; Alex had sat in the middle. I bet she’d changed her seat on purpose. Ever the matchmaker, even at a time like this.
“It’s a list of everything we need to do.” I looked down to read what I had written. “First, we have to decide when we want to set the meeting. And where. Then we have to figure out how to send a blocked message—”
“Covered,” Alex said.
“Okay, but then we have to agree on what to write.” I looked up. “Is that everything, do you think?”
“Very thorough,” Raj said. “Most impressive.”
“Any ideas?”
“We have to meet her someplace public enough that she can’t make a scene, but not so public that people can overhear us,” Alex said.
“Coffeehouse?” Raj asked.
She shook her head. “A little too public, I think.”
“What about somewhere else downtown?” I asked. “Those picnic tables near the park? They’re set a little bit back from the street but not too far, and people walk by there all the time.”
“Won’t we be cold?” Alex asked.
“Not if we’re doing it this weekend. It’s supposed to be in the low fifties, and we can always bundle up.”
“Okay, I can manage that,” Alex said.
“That brings us to the second item on your list,” Raj said. “The when.”
“I think we should rip off the Band-Aid,” Alex said. “Do it tomorrow. Don’t give her a lot of time to think about it.”
“Works for me,” Raj said.
I nodded. The sooner the better. The stress was really getting to me, though despite it all I was having a good time, sitting with the two of them, planning how to make things better. I just wished we were talking about something else: where the next party was, or what we were all going to do after school, or whether going to prom was fun or stupid. Anything other than this.
“I was thinking I’d send one of the Mark pictures, and then say ‘I’m going to need a favor. Await further instructions,’” Alex said. “You know, use her lingo.”
“And then we wait until later to send the next one,” I said. “Make her stress out for a while.”
“Getting a bit vindictive there, are we?” Raj asked, but he flashed me a big smile as he said it.
“Believe me, I’d be happy to do worse,” I said.
“Uh-oh, have we turned Perfect Kara into Carrie?” Alex asked. “That’s totally what we should watch tonight.”
“We’ll do nothing of the sort,” Raj said. “I have control over Netflix, and we’re going to watch something charming and funny that will make us all forget our troubles.”
“What did you pick?” I asked, forcing myself not to yell at Alex for bringing up Perfect Kara.