All of it. AnyLies’s txts. Our meeting with Graff that morning. Brittany and Community Club that afternoon. The girl on the train. The Eden hacker. The video on the big screen. The creep who kept clutching his belt. My guardian angel in the fake fur who’d played interference. How the video had attached itself to StitchBtch, and last but not least how there was a guy outside my house and he sure seemed like he was waiting for me.
Strung together in one long run-on sentence, it sounded crazy paranoid. As the primos traded raised eyebrows (brow dexterity clearly ran in the family), it wasn’t hard to tell what they were thinking.
Mac’s girl is small-chested and psychotic.
I almost apologized, but stopped myself, hearing Audra say, “Why are girls always apologizing for talking? Is there some kind of word limit we have to abide by that boys don’t?” Instead I stayed quiet and waited for their verdict.
“I’m calling the police,” Mac said.
“And telling them what?” Victor asked. “A dude asked for directions outside her house thirty minutes ago?”
“Right,” I said. “It had to be a weird coincidence. He couldn’t know I live there, right?”
“Your parents own your property?” Alfie asked. When I nodded, he poked me in the arm. “Ding—there you go. You said your vid is linked to your mom now. Search your moms. Bam. Find the real-estate listing from when they bought your house. Boom. Address.”
“Nah.” Caleb waved a hand at all of this. “It’s even easier than that. Anyone in her contacts can just WhereYouAt her. You guys ain’t heard? You don’t need your contact’s permission or anything. You just need their Doc digits and BAM! Current frickin’ GPS location. I mean, it’s expensive, like twenty-nine ninety-nine, but still.”
“That is nonsense.” Rupey ran a hand over his face.
“Is there anything to block it?” Mac asked.
“Not this week,” Caleb said. “Yo, Alfie, hermano. Cerveza me.”
Now that I had stopped crying and the immediate drama was over, Mac took his arm away. The stoop fell silent. I sniffled.
“Need a tissue?” Alfie dug around in a takeout bag.
“I got it.” Rupey waved the wadded-up one I’d thrown at him, like it was a white flag. “Sorry, just, you know, I can get kind of protective.”
“It runs in the family,” Alfie said. “It’s our one admirable quality. Along with Mac’s useless addition skills. Hola, hermano, ever hear of a Doc?”
There was a simultaneous low burble of laughter.
“Need a cerveza?” Caleb offered me his.
“Need us to beat some people up?” Victor burped.
I blew my nose. “Yeah, only about five hundred thousand of them.”
Again, the low appreciative laughter. Now I got why Mac surrounded himself with these guys. It was the same reason I surrounded myself with Mac. Life felt better in their company.
“Mugrosos, not that we don’t enjoy your clever repartee—”
“Ooh, ‘repartee,’” Rupey interrupted. “Look at the novio go all French for the girl. Réplica’s not good enough for you anymore, cuz?”
“All-caps BUT I need to talk to the lady in private.” Mac offered me a hand. “I kinda, like, need to apologize for what a dick I was yesterday.”
“A super-huge dick,” I said as Mac pulled me to my feet.
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I groaned. Caleb hid his face in the crook of his elbow. Victor choked on his beer. Mac held up his hands, feigning innocence. Alfie made a quiet extended laugh noise that sounded like “Huh-huh-huh-ahhhh.”
“So immature.” I rolled my eyes. “You guys are worse than my brother.”
“Lo siento, you’re the one who said it,” Mac laughed, then pounded fists with Rupey. “And all I have to say is, thank you for noticing.”
“Meet me at the park on Saturday. We’ll get tacos.”
It was the first week of senior year, lunch. One second I was considering a browning avocado roll, wondering where they sourced the nori from; next Mac was there, spinning his Doc between his fingers, smelling freshly showered, and setting my weekend agenda. I glanced over my shoulder to check that he wasn’t speaking to the girl in line behind me.
“What,” I said in monotone, “am I the last Park Prep girl you haven’t been with?”
He laughed. “There might be a couple freshmen I missed. Come on. Sunshine. Tacos. Saturday. Noon. I know you’re free. I checked your G-Calendar. I’ll meet you on the library steps. Perfect gentleman, I swear.”
My lips turned down but my shoulders lifted up; my head tilted forward. Without my consent, my body had agreed. I immediately regretted its decision.
“Ugh,” Audra’s avatar said, then made a tsk sound later that night. (Thank you, Teen Sounds extension pack.) “Why are you stressing? It’s one daytime date.” Then Sharma txted:
sharm & Mac equals good guy. Aside from kissing addiction.
“Ooh, it can be like a test.” Fawn flapped her hand at me over FaceAlert. “See if he gropes you. If he doesn’t, he’s changed. If he does, you have to promise to tell us everything that comes after. I heard he does this thing with his thumb that will melt you.”
On Saturday, when I got to the library, Mac was already there, holding a daisy. When I tucked it behind my ear, he grinned. And not like a wolfish grin, just a pleased one. Over the next four hours we teased each other, talked nonstop, and eventually held hands. We walked through the park, cut over into Sunset Park for tacos, and circled all the way back to the library. I never expected that this amalgamation of bad-boy stereotypes might also be funny, genuine, and kind. It was a great date. But, I mean, Mac had had a lot of practice.
Once we were back on the library steps, Mac untangled the wilted daisy from my hair and tucked it into his jacket pocket.
“And now I’m going to kiss you.”
He did. And, well, whoa. If I had been with anyone else, it would have been the perfect, expected end to the best non-school-related afternoon of my entire life. But as we kept kissing, all I could think about was Fawn’s test. We hadn’t crossed into Groping, but we weren’t exactly in High Five country either. I pushed him away.
“I’m not interested in being one of your mannequins.”
That’s what I liked to call the girls Mac screwed around with. It made it easier to think of them as interchangeably pretty and empty-headed. Mac took my hand, ran his thumb along my lifeline. Was this what Fawn had meant? Because it didn’t make me feel slushy so much as flammable.
“You know, I’ve liked you since I saw you wearing that green dress at orientation.”
The best I could describe what Mac was wearing the first time I saw him was “boy gear”—pants, shirt. And that was only a guess. Trying to shake off its misgivings, my heart did a fluttery jig.
Telling it to chill, I softly replied, “You’ve had a funny way of showing it.”
He flashed his lopsided smile, shrugged.
“Yeah, I kinda, like, went through a slutty phase.”
“Three years is a kind of long ‘phase,’ no?”
“Which must be why I’m so totally over it.”