The Mirror Sisters (The Mirror Sisters 1) - Page 63
“Have no expectations,” she said. “Then you have nothing to lower in order to be pleased.”
For a moment, we said nothing, and then we both laughed. Mother laughed, too.
And for the first time in a long time, we were all laughing together.
12
At breakfast on Sunday, Mother told us that she had invited Darren Paul to come to dinner at our house Friday night. This little romance she had begun had instantaneously stirred up the gossip she was hoping for. The silence we were so used to now in our house was shattered. She seemed to be on the phone all day having conversations with women she had hardly spoken to during the last year or so. She appeared to relish the attention. Haylee and I quickly realized that as long as she was so occupied with her own romantic adventures, she wouldn’t hover so closely over our social lives, whatever they might be.
I was skeptical when Haylee told me she was through with Jimmy Jackson, but she didn’t call him all weekend. He didn’t call her, either, which made her angrier. She wanted to be the one to do all the disrespecting and dumping.
“He’s taking me for granted,” she told me on Sunday night. “He’s in for a surprise.”
He sauntered over to us almost as soon as we entered the school building Monday morning.
“Hey, girls, what’s happening?” he asked with a smug grin on his face.
Neither of us replied, but he tagged along.
“Hey, what’s the rush?” he said as we quickened our steps toward our homeroom.
“Sensitive stomachs,” Haylee said. “Bad odors make us sick.”
“Huh? Oh, I get it. Sorry you missed me Saturday night,” he told Haylee just as we joined the other girls in front of our homeroom.
She turned on him. “Don’t flatter yourself. I found our old jack-in-the-box, and that gave me the same laughs and thrills you could.”
“Ha ha. I have a thrill for you,” he said, and tried to put his arm around her.
“Take a bath before you approach someone,” she said, moving away from him.
He turned crimson. He looked at the other girls, who were amused and amazed. “Big deal, twin,” he muttered. “You’re about as hot as yesterday’s hamburger.”
“Which is probably still in your pocket,” Haylee retorted. None of the girls laughed or smiled at that. Everyone held her breath, waiting for his response.
“I’m not wasting my time talking to you,” he said, and walked off, as if her rejecting him was as meaningless to him as tossing away a gum wrapper.
She then wen
t on to lecture the girls about wasting their time with immature boys. Suddenly, she sounded like the prude in our family.
“You have to have more respect for yourself,” she said. “You don’t ever want to be labeled. Don’t act desperate,” she continued. “Once they think they have you, they’ll treat you badly. Never commit entirely to any boy—at least, any boy here.”
If I closed my eyes, I could think I was hearing Mother talking. Because of how easily Haylee had driven off Jimmy, the girls surrounding her looked very impressed. Even Melanie was awestruck, and I knew she considered herself the leader of our pack.
“What did he do to deserve the brush-off?” she asked.
Haylee glanced at me and then turned back to all of them and said, “He opened his mouth—and not while we were kissing, either.”
There was a moment of silence and then loud laughter. Haylee smiled at me and nodded in the direction of our homeroom.
Matt was standing near the doorway. He wore the look of a frightened puppy, glancing at me and then shifting his eyes down quickly. I stepped forward and paused in front of him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you over the weekend,” he said. “I started to a few times and stopped, because I wasn’t sure how to begin and how you would react.”
“I felt the same way. I guess it was good that we both had time to think about it.”
He watched the others around us and then shifted left a few steps so we’d be beyond their hearing range. “Look. You have to understand what happened. I was dozing off because of what they put in our drinks, and then I looked up and saw who I thought was you coming out of the bathroom, your bathroom. What was I to think? It was dark and—”
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