Laurie Faria Stolarz - Bleed

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Copyright 2006 by Laurie Faria Stolarz

All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion Paperbacks for Children, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

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First Hyperion Paperbacks edition, 2008

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Printed in the United States of America

Designed by Elizabeth H. Clark

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

eISBN-13: 978-0-7868-3855-4

ISBN-10: 0-7868-3855-8

This book is set in Bembo.

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Table of Contents

For all who bleed

SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 10:50 A.M.

Saturday morning. In my room. Just me and Vanessa and Roland making love on the canopy bed. I love watching them do it. The way Vanessa rolls on top and dangles her hair in his eyes and mouth. The way Roland presses his fingertips into her shoulders so shell lean closer and kiss him, with tongue, just as her hair swings free of his mouth.

Nicole? My mother knocks on the door.

Yeah? I click the TV off and grab a book from the bedside table.

She comes in, a pile of fresh towels propped up on one hand like a tray-carrying waiter. For your bathroom, she says, making her way in there.

Uh-huh. I flip the book open to the middle and pretend to read.

Whats on your agenda for today? she asks.

Since I dont feel like explaining, I just shrug and turn a page.

You can always put in a few hours at the hospital.

Volunteering on a Saturday? Is she crazy? I fake a smile that tells her to leave. Thankfully, she does.

My agenda, as she calls it, has been the same for every Saturday morning this summer. Sleep in till nine. Shower, dress, and breakfast until nine forty-five. Watch Fridays TiVod episode of Sands of Time (since Im busy volunteering at the hospital on Friday afternoons), taking full advantage of the extra thirty-minute window Ive left open to rewind over the juicy parts. Tame down my frizzy hair with a few squirts of spray gel (this needs to be done hourly), and apply a fresh coat of lipstick (Nude Glowmy favorite shade). And then, just before eleven, I fetch a tall, freezer-chilled glass of raspberry iced tea, my mothers pair of pearl-plated bird-watching binoculars, and do a stopover at the mirror on the way to my bedroom window.

Since its about that time now, I hustle through the preparations and then take position in front of the window to watch Him mow the lawn next door. To watch those calves. I love his calvesdirty and sun-bronzed, the most adorable wisps of short, honey-colored hair that make capital Cs and inverted Js at the front and back of his legs. The look-out-David, Michelangelo-sculpted cuts.

Him = Sean OConnell. The one, I truly believe, I was put on this earth to be with, to make real, live soap-opera love with. Except, hes my best friend Kellys boyfriend. Reason #47 why my life sucks.

He looks more tired than usual today, like the sun has drained all the blood from his body and replaced it with boiling water. I wonder if hes hungry, if I should bring him something to eat.

I edge the curtain open wider and watch the white of his T-shirt wilt to a pale peachy color as sweat drips down from his shoulders and neck. I study the way his teeth pinch his bottom lip each time he looks up toward the sun. His shoulders round forward as he turns the mower away from the house, and the small of his back slopes downward like half of a valentine heart.

After a couple weeks of watching him at the window, I commented to my mother about the Harriss well-maintained lawn and shrubbery, the perfectly square holly bushes, and how the sidewalk has been shaved of the dandelion patches that used to sprout through the cracks. I suggested that she hire Sean to do our yard, too. But she was able to see through that suggestion, and told me she wasnt ready to throw away good, hard-earned money so I could get chummy with my best friends boyfriend.

I sit back on my bed and imagine what Sean might want to eat, what I might bring him. A Popsicle? But the juice would probably drip all over my fingers by the time I made it over there. A couple of oatmeal-and-raisin cookies? But those are from a box.

Lucy, my velvety white cat, trots into my room and sits in the square patch the sun has painted on the hardwood floor. I click my tongue for her to come and join me, even kick the bubble of covers down to make room for her on the bed. No deal. I have to resort to force. I snatch her up from the floor and plop her onto my lap, doing my best to scratch at her cheeks the way she likes and rub behind her ears. But she runs off to take her place on the window perch in the living room, like the traitor she is.

The other day I sat on my bed, trying to conjure up a list of all the ways Kelly has betrayed me since we were eight. It took me four whole hours to come up with three instances. I pluck the notebook from beside my bed and flip to the page, mostly filled with doodles of three-dimensional squares, and vines of daisies and roses. I read the occasions of betrayal softly to myself: 1. In fourth grade Kelly slipped a secret-admirer note in my desk at school and signed it with Ricky Malicks name. When I had our friend Maria go up to Rickys friend Mike at recess, to ask him if Ricky really liked me, Mike snatched the note and read it aloud to everyone in our class. They laughed at me and Ricky, and Ricky never spoke to me again after that. 2. In eighth grade Kelly got asked to the junior-high dance by Billy Ready, the same guy I liked. I knew she knew I liked him, even though I never told her I did. But obviously, my feelings didnt matter, because the two of them ended up going together while I stayed home and played with Lucy. 3. Just last year Kelly told me shed come with me to get my hair straightened at her favorite hair salon for the sophomore semi. Apparently, her aunt knows someone who works at one of those trendy places on Newbury Street, and Kelly always gets a huge discount. But she blew me off instead. She told me that she had to help her mother clean the house, but I later found out from Maria that she went to the movies with Chuck Wagner, a senior on the soccer team.

Of course, none of these relationships worked out. Kelly only keeps her boyfriends for a few months maxaside from Sean, that is. I think she likes the chase more than anything else. Plus, its not like she and Sean are going to get married or anything. So theyve been going out for eight monthsbig deal. If she hadnt left to visit her dad, she probably wouldve broken up with him by now anyway.

I turn another page in the notebook. For every one of Kellys betrayals on my list, theres an example of when shes been really great. Like the time she stayed up all night on the phone, listening to me cry over how Ferris Beckman dumped me for baton-twirling Monica Piramachi. The time she told Ms. McManus, our history teacher, that the cheat sheet on the floor was hers, not mine, because she was acing history anyway. And the time in seventh grade when she told the school nurse that it was she who needed a maxi pad, super-absorbency, because I was too embarrassed to ask.

Ive tried to find things to distract myself from all this. Yesterday, I cleaned out my closet and dresser and brought all my old clothes to the Salvation Army deposit box on Canal Street. And earlier today I rearranged my photo albums so they make sense. I took out all the pictures that dont mean anything to mepictures of my older brothers friends; a picture of a cute boy that came with the frame Im using to hold my middle-school graduation picture; pictures of my parents friends babies, kids I dont even know. Pictures I put in there merely to fill up the pages.