November 29th
School is a relief after this weekend. It didn't start off too bad. I told Dad that Mary Anne's boyfriend was coming with me, and he was iffy about this until he met Derek, liked him instantly, and made me angry that he can't do MY boyfriend the same courtesy.
I was pleased, however, when Derek bumped my seat up to first class with him, which was very cool. I'd never sat in first class before. It was wonderful. I don't think I could ever go back to coach. Though I will have to the next time I fly. Oh well. It was nice. Round trip, too.
The flight to Stoneybrook was long. I sat next to Derek and wondered if he was mad that Christian and I pretended to be him on the phone. So, instead of wondering about it the whole trip, I decided to ask.
"Are you mad?"
"Huh?" He looked up from his magazine. "What?"
"Mad. About what Christian and I did."
"Calling Mary Anne's dad pretending to be me?"
"Yeah."
"Not really. I wasn't really that comfortable with the idea. I told Mary Anne that she needed to tell her dad if she wanted me to come."
"Is she in trouble?"
Derek shook his head. "Nope. Not at all. I think her stepmom, your mom, I guess, intervened there. But I'm allowed, going to eat turkey-"
"You do eat meat, right?" I asked.
"Yep. I'll eat it all."
"Good. We weren't sure."
Derek smiled. "I have to admit, that I'm pretty relieved."
I nodded. "Me too. Um... is Mary Anne mad at me?"
"A little bit. But it should be fine."
Should be.
We watched a stupid movie and then it's not long before we land. We rushed through the terminal, given that our flight was thirty minutes late. I knew Mom wouldn't care, but Richard had probably been crawling the walls the second our flight didn't 10:48 exactly.
Surprisingly, though, Mom is the only one there.
"Mom!" I exclaimed. I gave her a huge hug.
"Oh, my baby girl," she said, holding me for a moment.
We released and I introduced Derek, whom she seems to like okay. But, of course, that's not the real test.
"Where are Richard and Mary Anne?" I asked as we stand around baggage claim. I only packed a carry-on, but Derek had a suitcase.
"At home cooking. They're baking pies. We have way too many pies for one family to eat."
"Pies?" I repeated.
"Don't worry, there's soybean pie and sugar free mixed berry."
"Great!" I replied, a little more enthusiastically than I felt. Derek got his bag and we went out to the car.
It's cold. It's snowing. It's Stoneybrook.
Mom turned the car heater up on high and I put my hands up to the vents. I forgot to pack gloves. Mom handed me a pair.
"You knew I didn't pack gloves?" I asked, amazed, as I put them on.
"No, Mary Anne did. She has a sixth sense about these things," Mom replied.
Hmmm, I thought, maybe Mary Anne isn't all that mad.
Oh, I was wrong. So wrong.
Later, 29th
Mom pulled into the driveway and we go inside. I'm still not used to this rental house. They're working on renovating the barn into a home. Hopefully they'll be done by this coming summer, but while staying next door to Claudia is cool and all, it's weird. And the house is way too small for the three of them, let alone the five of us.
"I wish Jeff could have come," Mom said.
"I know he's looking forward to coming for Christmas," I replied, not sure if it was the truth. All I know is that if there was one more person, the house might have exploded.
"Dawn!" Richard greeted me happily, giving me a half-hug.
Hopefully this good mood will transfer over to Derek, I thought.
And it did. Richard and Derek shook hands and Richard seemed to like him a lot. Everyone does, I guess.
Mary Anne ran into the living room. "Derek!" She squealed. She ran into his arm and they embraced. He lifted her three or four inches off the ground. They didn't dare kiss in front of Richard which was a smart move.
Since it was late, Richard and Mom went to bed. Mary Anne, I could tell, was tired, since it was 11:30, but Derek and I were on California time, and it was only 8:30 to us.
However, I left them in the living room and went up to the spare bedroom that was mine and pulled out the book I brought. I spent my first night back in Stoneybrook reading. I forced myself to sleep at one in the morning.
The next morning, Thanksgiving, I woke up to a house full of lovely smells. Even the turkey smelled pretty good, I had to admit. I took a shower and went down to the kitchen to see what I could do to help.
"Good morning!" I said brightly.
"Morning," Mom said.
Mary Anne sort of grunted at me.
"What can I do to help?" I asked. Mom was mashing potatoes, Richard was basting the turkey, Mary Anne and Derek were making stuffing.
"No," Mary Anne said, "sorry the family left here can take care of everything."
"Well... then I'll just..." I left and went back upstairs. I finished my book and went back downstairs. Everything was cooking. Mom was sitting on the couch reading a book, sitting next to Richard who was watching the football game. Mary Anne and Derek were nowhere in sight.
So I put on a coat and gloves and went outside. It was cold. So I wandered down the sidewalk.
"Dawn?"
I turned and looked at the Kishi's. Claudia was sitting on the front stoop smoking a cigarette. She jumped up and ran out to the sidewalk and hugged me. She looked great as usual, though, black boots, orange tights, brown skirt. I had no idea what top she was wearing since she had a short black coat on, but she had handmade looking turkey earrings in.
"How's it going?"
"Okay," I said. "What about you? What's...?"
"Bad habit," she said. She took a final drag off of it and tossed the butt in the snow. "I've taken the path of a bad baby-sitter."
"Oh?"
Claudia laughed a little bit. "Well, as you can guess, high school is sort of killing me. So I got some shady cheat sheets and well, became regularly shady. And then I got caught and I became a shady hero."
Despite the absolute horror of what Claudia was saying to me, for some reason, her matter-of-fact way of saying it made me smile. "I'm guessing Kristy wasn't too happy."
"Oh, god, no. When she found out, I'm officially dispelled from the Baby-Sitter's Club. Well, even if there is none. I'm a bad example."
I laughed. I knew this wasn't a laughing matter, but I couldn't help myself. Somehow, Claudia just made things seem a lot lighter than they were. "That sounds about right."
"It was a long time coming. I mean, if she knew that I slept with Rico over the summer, I would have been out of there long ago. There's no a bad example to children like premarital sex."
"WHAT?" That wasn't laughing. That was a SHOCK.
"Yeah, that's not common knowledge." Claudia seemed a little sheepish. "But what can I do about it now? Nothing. That's sort of my new things. Take every moment as it happens and don't sit around freaking out about it."
"That sounds pretty good."
"So how are you? How are things going with Christian?"
"Good, good. Things with Mary Anne aren't going as smoothly."
"I didn't think so. When I asked her about your visit, she sort of shrugged it off."
I nodded. "Yeah, it's just... bad." I told her about Mary Anne's big plan and how Christian and I foiled it, but even though it seemed to be working out for the best, she's still angry.
"No idea," Claudia replied. "You never know what's going to set her off."
Novemeber 30th
Thanksgiving dinner was actually fairly peaceful. I kept my head held pretty low the entire time, being pretty short yes-and-no answers about things. Mary Anne took the time to make jabbing comments about my living situations.
After desert, Mary Anne and Derek disappeared. I helped Mom and Richard (well, mostly Richard) clean up since I hadn't done any of the cooking. After cleaning, I went upstairs and I did something wrong.
I have to pass Mary Anne's room to get to mine. And when I heard the muffled sounds I stopped in the hall. I could see a tiny stream a light coming from her room into the hall. She hadn't shut the door all the way. So I was bad and I peek in.
It was all I could do not to gasp. From the look of it, Mary Anne and Derek were making up for lost time. They were totally making out on her bed. Derek wasn't wearing a shirt and his hands were up the backside of Mary Anne's skirt. She didn't seem to mind.
Well, if Claud could sleep with Rico, Mary Anne and Derek could hit second base. Or third. I have no idea. But they were hitting bases. That was for sure.
Instead of gasping, or barging in to remind them about the uses of a condom, I just shut the door the rest of the way so when Richard came upstairs he wouldn't see that.
However, one of them heard the click of the door because by the time I reached my room, Mary Anne's door swung back open.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Just closing your door the rest of the way before you get caught doing something you shouldn't be doing," I said. "No need to thank me. Really, Mary Anne, I know nice things to say are so hard for you."
Mary Anne didn't say anything. She went back into her room. The door was clicked shut all the way. I heard the lock.
I went back into my room. Once again, I made myself sleep. This was really the worst vacation ever.
Friday and Saturday, things didn't get better. Anything I wanted to go and do, Mary Anne was already going and doing with Derek and I didn't want to be a third wheel, and Mary Anne didn't want me around anyway.
I visited with Claudia again, I saw Kristy (at different times since from what Claudia told me, they aren't really friends anymore). Stacey was in New York visiting her Dad for the holiday so she wasn't around.
Claudia and I went Christmas shopping on Friday. I've never been shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. It was like a busy Saturday times five hundred. The stores were packed, and I ever saw two people fighting the aisles over a toy that would only be 29.95 for the next two hours. It was annoying, though, that Claud needed to go out of the mall every so often for a smoke break. That was a habit I'd really like for her to break, but I live on the other side of the country, what can I do?
Great. Now I'm starting to sound like Mary Anne.
Finally, we got a break and sat at the Pizza Express which was dead. Not surprising, considering it was the day after Thanksgiving. We ordered a pizza (Claudia and I sort of semi-argued about pepperoni, until she finally agreed to forgo it, as long as I didn't try to put broccoli on it) and started talking.
"So... cheating at school and smoking and suddenly you and Kristy aren't friends?"
Claudia made a face. "It's not that... well, it is that, but I kind of conspired with the enemy."
"What? I don't understand."
"Okay, so Stacey, which she hooked back up with Ethan, did she tell you?"
"No," I said.
"She did. Anyway, so after all the secrets Stacey spilled over the summer, when Kristy got back to Stoneybrook, she pitched a fit about them. Kristy has started some weird conservative agenda. Probably from making out with Justin or something. So Kristy kind of broke things off with her, and then all my shit came up, and Kristy isn't friends with me. And because of that, Stacey and I went looking for a new group of friends. Which infuriated Kristy more because she sort of assumed that we would be wallowing in low self pity for not hanging out with the president of the BSC."
I had to giggle because it did sound like Kristy.
"So we started hanging out with Cokie Mason and Grace Blume."
I nearly spat out my water. "What?"
Claudia laughed. "Calm down. Once she didn't have Mary Anne to battle with over Logan, and she spent the summer in a loser's existence because all of her friends were away at camps and stuff, she sort of mellowed out. And she's dating Logan now and it's working out really well. Plus Stacey and I can still be friends with Logan without it being weird."
I nodded. "Wow, though. Wow."
"I know. If you'd asked me a year ago who I'd be hanging out with in high school, Cokie is the last person. But... she's actually kind of cool. And when she starts to go mega-bitch, Stacey just yells at her. Which Stacey has kind of graduated to "leader" because she's the only one in the group who's given head."
"The only one?"
"Well, I have, and Cokie has. I mean, Cokie and Logan do it all the time, but Stacey's done it on guys two years older, and... well, Sam Thomas. Which pisses Kristy off even more because Sam found out that she found out and grosses her out all the time. When their mom isn't around."
"I can't believe... things just sort of fell apart over here," I said. "Things are finally on the right track over in Palo City."
"Maybe it's a balancing act," Claudia said. "Things fall apart there, they're fine here. But things go well there, they fall apart here."
"Maybe," I said. "Why can't they just balance all together?"
Claud shrugged. "I don't know."
Saturday I saw Kristy, but that was a brief visit. For some reason I didn't want her finding out my faults. She looked the same as she did when I last saw her in July, but she talked differently. So I just asked her about the lacrosse team, her siblings, and I told her that everyone from Palo City says 'hi' and she ended the conversation abruptly.
Sunday I just hung around the house. I found some books of Mary Anne's (I think they were for school) and read those.
"Hey."
I looked up from the book. Mary Anne was standing in the doorway. "Oh, do you need this?" I asked.
"No."
"Then what?" I asked.
"You had no right to do what you did. You totally betrayed my trust-"
"Technically Christian betrayed your trust."
"You were in on it! It doesn't make any difference. I can't trust you at all, Dawn Schafer! I don't think I can ever again."
"It's not that big of a deal," I said. "Everything worked out, didn't it? Derek's here, Richard likes him, you got to see him, there wasn't any faking. It worked out. You're just pissed off that I was right. You should have told him long ago, and even if it took dishonest means, it still worked out."
"The end doesn't justify the means!" Mary Anne said.
"Sure it does," I said. "In this case it does. And you better be able to trust me because I'm the only one who knows what went behind almost closed doors."
Mary Anne's face turned red. "You better not tell. And no impersonations."
"Whatever. I'm sick of making promises to you and you holding them over my head. It's not my job to hide all your dirty little secrets."
She stared at me.
"What? Trying to remember what a virgin looks like?"
Mary Anne's red face seemed to explode. The old Mary Anne would have cried. This Mary Anne grabbed the thing nearest to her hand which just happened to be a vase, and threw it at me.
It missed me by a long shot, but it did shatter.
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?" I asked.
"Just butt out!" Mary Anne yelled. She stormed out of the room. I don't think that confirmed what I said to be true. At least not all the way. But I really have no idea.
I think it's pretty needless to say that I don't think Mary Anne and I are friends anymore.
She didn't even come to the airport to see Derek off because that would mean staying in the car with me. Derek and I flew in first class in complete silence.
I'm dreading Christmas.
