The Moment Keeper Read online

  Olivia turns the corner to go to her locker and sees Emma waiting for her.

  “Hi,” says Emma as Olivia pulls her backpack off her right shoulder.

  “Hi.”

  “I miss you.”

  “Oh, really. You could have fooled me. You seem to be enjoying hanging with your new friends.”

  “They’re not like you. I only pretend to like them so much to fit in.”

  “You shouldn’t have to pretend,” Olivia says. “It takes more courage to be you, even if that means standing alone, than to be part of a crowd. And besides, a friend doesn’t treat a friend the way you’ve treated me, ditching me for them and canceling our plans.”

  Just then a group of cheerleaders see Emma and run up to her.

  “Emma,” says the tall girl with the hourglass body and endless legs. “I just asked the girls who they thought was the most popular girl in our grade. They said me.”

  The girls giggle.

  “What do you think?”

  “Definitely,” Emma says.

  Endless Legs laughs. “I just love you all.”

  Emma looks at Olivia and mouths sorry and then turns to go with her friends.

  Olivia is stunned. It’s true. The girl probably is the most popular girl in the entire ninth grade. But she knows it. She just asked the others so she could hear them say it and feel good about herself. A real piece of work, Olivia thinks.

  Tracey was a real piece of work, too. When I confronted her about the prank phone call, she snickered.

  “That’s so funny,” she said. “Leaving a message about getting pregnancy test results. I’ll have to remember that one.”

  “I know it was you, Tracey. Well, not you, you. But someone you put up to it.”

  “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk,” Tracey said. “Shouldn’t accuse someone of something you can’t prove. Are you hungry?”

  “What?”

  “I just wondered if you and your grandma need some food. I see the cans for the food bank are piling up in the lobby. I’m sure school officials won’t mind if you take some cans from the food drive home so you and Grandma dearest can eat. Since you get food from there, it would save you a trip.”

  I hung my head and walked away. I hated that Tracey always had the last word, and it usually cut the deepest.

  Chapter 24

  The super stretch black Town Car limo pulls up to Lexie’s house where Tom and Elizabeth have joined Lexie’s parents to take pictures of the girls.

  “Now, let’s get one of you and your mom and dad,” says Lexie’s mom, Lila.

  I’ve never seen so many photos taken at one time. There’s Lexie and Lila. Lexie and her dad. Lexie and her mom and dad. Lexie alone. Lexie and Olivia. Olivia alone. Olivia with her mom and dad. Olivia with her mom. Olivia with her dad.

  “We forgot about Daisy,” Olivia says.

  Daisy’s lying under the nearby sycamore tree. Her ears perk up when she hears her name. She barks and runs to Olivia. Olivia picks her up and puts her face next to Daisy’s. Elizabeth snaps the photo.

  “Anything else anyone wants to take a picture of?” Lila asks.

  “Get us getting into the limo,” Lexie says.

  More photos are taken.

  “Now, remember. Get what you want to eat at the club,” Lexie’s dad says. “I’ve called ahead and they’re expecting you.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Lexie hugs her parents and Olivia hugs hers.

  The limo driver holds the door open and the girls climb in. Black leather seating wraps around forming a “J”. There’s a mirrored ceiling with neon lighting and a cherry-wood bar stocked with fresh ice and the diet soda and water the girls have requested.

  The parents wave as the limo pulls away and Lexie and Olivia turn on the stereo and the flat screen and pour drinks using the beautiful crystal glasses in the console.

  I can’t imagine the cost of such indulgence. I have nothing to compare it to, and yet I’m happy that Olivia is happy and that she has Lexie as a friend.

  After Rachel moved, we lost touch. Not right away, but over time. Sort of how a beautiful beach changes and erodes. The beach vanishes altogether if no one does anything to stop it.

  I remember Rachel telling me about the time she went to the beach on a family vacation and how stunned she was to see that it was half the size it had been the year before. She said she watched workers dredge sand from way out in the ocean and deposit it along the vanishing beach. I wish I would have dredged in our friendship. You just don’t always know the most significant pieces of your life until they’re gone and it’s too late to get them back. There were so many times I could have picked up the phone and didn’t.

  “How’s Rachel?” Tracey asked me one day in the locker room.

  “What do you care? You never liked her.”

  “True. Although I thought she had more potential than you.”

  The other girls laughed.

  “You know, Tracey,” I said. “You’re really lucky to have a pretty face.”

  Tracey looked at me as if she had just won Publishers Clearing House.

  “Because you sure don’t have anything else going for you.” I clicked my padlock shut and spun the dial.

  “Bitch. I’ll get you back for that, you fat slut.”

  I’ll never forget how good that felt. I knew I pissed Tracey off and that things would probably get worse. But I tried to enjoy the moment, knowing that it, like the beautiful beach, wouldn’t last forever.

  “Did you hear?” Lexie asks Olivia during the limo ride to the club for dinner.

  “About what?”

  “About Mr. Miller.”

  “What about Miller?”

  “He’s gone.”

  Lexie refills her glass with more Diet Pepsi and adds a lemon slice.

  “But I just saw him yesterday in Art,” Olivia says.

  “I doubt you’ll see him again. He supposedly was doing one of his students.”

  “Oh! My! Gawd! Which one?”

  “Don’t know. But I heard she turned him in when he stopped paying her.”

  Olivia’s eyes bugged out. “He was paying her for sex?”

  “And bojos, or so I’ve heard.”

  “Bojos?”

  “Blow jobs, dummy. You do know what they are?”

  Olivia nods.

  “Did you ever do that?” Lexie asks.

  “What?”

  “A bojo.”

  Olivia coughs and spits out the water she just sipped all over her strapless fuchsia dress.

  Lexie reaches for the box of tissues sitting on the console on her right. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you cough.”

  “I’ve only ever kissed a boy,” Olivia says. “It’s not like I wouldn’t want to do more, well, maybe not a bojo, but there’s no guy I’ve ever been that interested in. What about you?”

  “I’ve definitely made out with a few guys. Not the whole way, but pretty close.”

  “Weren’t you scared?”

  “A little. But I’d been reading my mom’s steamy romance novels like forever. I knew kind of where to touch and kiss. Never got to third base though.”

  I know what Olivia’s thinking and her innocence warms me. I was a lot like her when I was her age. Not too bright in the making-out department – mostly from a lack of experience. But I didn’t have a Lexie to educate me.

  She finally gets up enough courage to ask. “What exactly are the bases anyway?”

  “You seriously don’t know?”

  Olivia shakes her head. “Sort of, but…”

  “It’s OK. I didn’t know until someone explained it to me. She was older, too. Here’s the deal. First base is French kissing. Second base is above the waist, like letting the guy feel up under your shirt. Third is below the waist. Like letting the guy finger you or giving bojos. The last base is home, which is going all the way.”

  Olivia takes a deep breath. “Got it. And you got to second base?”

  “Yeah. Lots of times. Never to
third. There was this girl at my old school, though, who cut out the crotch in her underwear so her boyfriend could finger her in class or at lunch. They were always on third base.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. She bragged about it all the time. Funny thing happened though. She was wearing a pair of her homemade crotchless panties and forgot to put spankies on under her cheerleading skirt.”

  “Uh-oh,” Olivia says.

  “Yeah. Uh-oh. She did a flip and flashed everyone and it’s all anyone talked about for weeks. They called her Cat after that.”

  “Cat?”

  “P-u-s-…”

  Olivia wrinkles her nose. “I get it. I get it.”

  “She’s the same girl who had an oral-sex party in eighth grade and invited four couples. Well, one guy had two girls because one guy had to leave early.”

  “Two girls at once?”

  “Apparently.”

  “So they all came to her house for oral sex?”

  “Yeah. She lived with her dad, who was never home. They gathered in her bedroom, which someone told me was really small, and made out at the same time.”

  “In front of each other!”

  “Guess the lights were out.”

  “Still. That’s disgusting.”

  One thing I love about being Olivia’s moment keeper is the normal teenage moments I get to experience through her. I never had these kinds of conversations with a girlfriend and while it’s kind of scary to know she’s thinking about all of this stuff, it also seems so natural and normal. Young girls are supposed to have these types of conversations. It’s part of growing up. I think I was the abnormal one. In fact, Tracey had convinced the entire school I was the abnormal one.

  After my comment in the locker room, she turned up the dial a couple notches. And this time, she got a guy involved.

  For days, I felt his dark eyes on me as I walked to my locker. His locker was across from mine and he’d stand there and watch me. He was definitely hot, too hot to be looking at me, I thought. But the more he watched me, the more I began to think that maybe, just maybe, he thought I was pretty. He even started to smile.

  Finally, I got up enough nerve to say something to him. I closed my locker and walked over as he was closing his locker. “Where’s your class?”

  He nodded. “Down the hall.”

  “Want to walk together?”

  A Grinch-like smirk erupted on his face. “If I wanted to ask an ugly bitch like you to walk to class, I would have asked you.”

  I was horrified. I couldn’t move. And then I heard Tracey. As I stood there trembling, trying to hold back the searing tears that pooled in my eyes, Tracey kissed Dark Eyes on the cheek and handed him a fifty-dollar bill. “Well done, Romeo.” Then she looked at me. “Seriously, Sarah. Do you really think anyone would actually be interested in the Goodwill Poster Child?”

  And she laughed and so did everyone else.

  I couldn’t believe it. I had made a complete ass out of myself. All that time I thought he was interested in me and he wasn’t. He was just pretending to be to make a quick fifty from Tracey. She paid him just to toy with me and lure me into his web so she could sink her fangs into me. I didn’t realize Tracey and her minions had been watching, waiting. Guess she knew, or hoped, that I would eventually work up enough nerve to approach Dark Eyes. She might not have known what I would say or what he would say, but she was paying him enough to hit as hard as he could when he had the chance. And stupid I gave him just that.

  The limo driver pulls up to the school and a crowd of teens in suits and gowns of varying styles and colors gathers to gawk. Olivia and Lexie step out of the stretch and there are whistles from the crowd. The girls look stunning – Olivia in her strapless fuchsia dress and Lexie in the black silk number she fell in love with during a model shoot for a teen magazine earlier in the year. She told Olivia she bought the dress hoping she’d have a chance to wear it.

  Olivia and Lexie find a table with some other girls who came as a group.

  “Mind if we join you?” Olivia asks.

  “You want to sit here? With us?” says a short, chunky girl with thick glasses and short red hair.

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t we?” Olivia says.

  Lexie agrees. “You’re nice. Right? You don’t bite or anything.”

  The chunky girl smiles. “I’m Delaney and this is Molly and Jackie. We’re in ninth grade.”

  “I’m Olivia.”

  “I know who you are,” Delaney says. “I’ve see you dance before and you’re amazing.”

  “Thanks,” Olivia says. “And this is my friend Lexie.”

  “You look so familiar,” Molly says. “But I don’t think we’ve ever met. Oh. I know. I know. You look like a model in one of my magazines. Doesn’t she, girls?”

  Delaney and Jackie turn toward Lexie and shrug their shoulders.

  “I totally see it,” Molly says. “I’m going to have to dig that magazine out and show you.”

  “That’s OK,” Lexie says. “I’ve heard of people having doubles. Guess the model’s mine.”

  Emma and her date walk off the dance floor and Emma sees Olivia sitting at the table. She walks over. “Nice dress, Lib.”

  “Thanks. Yours, too. You look good in yellow.”

  “Are you going to dance?” Emma asks.

  “Maybe later.”

  “I keep telling her to get out on the dance floor but she keeps dragging her feet,” Lexie says.

  “Well, see ya later,” Emma says and walks away.

  “I hate those cheerleaders,” Delaney says. “They make fun of me. One time there was a picture of Miss Piggy on my locker and I know one of them put it there.”

  “That’s awful,” Lexie says. “Just ignore them. Might even try smiling at them. Make them think you know something they don’t. It’ll bug the shit out of them.”

  Delaney laughs. “I like you, Lexie. You’re prettier than any of them and you don’t act like a jerk. You, too, Olivia.”

  “That’s because Lib and I aren’t out to impress people. If you like us, great. If you don’t, your loss.”

  Olivia agrees. “People who try to be someone special never are.”

  I wish I would have had a Lexie or Olivia in my life. I wish Rachel hadn’t moved. Maybe it would have made a difference. If I would have had someone, besides Grandma, who made me feel like I mattered, who actually loved me. But when you live your whole life being treated like dirt – people walk on you and spit on you and kick you – it’s hard to see yourself as anything else. Hell, I wasn’t even good soil. I was the severely compacted kind that nothing could ever grow in.

  I remember my science fair experiment in elementary school. I planted seeds in three different types of soil to determine which soil was best. The day I was to present my project to the class, I had to take it on the bus with me because Grandma couldn’t drive me to school. I was so careful. I didn’t want anyone bumping into it or messing it up. Unfortunately, when I got off the bus, Tracey and her minions were nearby.

  “What’s that?” asked Tracey, cracking bubbles in her mouth.

  “It’s her science fair project,” a Tracey clone said.

  Tracey pushed the girl into me. I lost my balance and struggled to keep from falling.

  Tracey and her friends laughed and walked away. I managed to get my science experiment to the classroom without any more trouble. The best part? I got an “A”, and that was something that even Tracey, who seemed to wield more power than anyone I knew, couldn’t take away from me.

  I watch as Olivia, Lexie and the girls at their table head to the dance floor. It’s crowded but they find a sliver of space toward the back.

  Olivia and Lexie pick up the beat and their bodies contort and move in ways that amaze me. Delaney, Molly and Jackie aren’t moving too much. They notice that people are stopping to watch Olivia. Lexie is still dancing, but it’s Olivia who’s taking over the dance floor.

 
“Loosen up,” Olivia tells Delaney, Molly and Jackie. “Feel the beat. Close your eyes if you want to. Just let your body respond to the music.”

  “You da shizzle,” says Lexie, trying to copy some of Olivia’s moves.

  More and more people stop to watch Olivia and pretty soon Lexie and the girls stop to watch, too. Olivia is oblivious to what’s happening around her. She’s completely in the zone and it isn’t until the music stops and people clap that she realizes they have been watching her.

  “You’re amazing,” Delaney says. “I wish I could dance like that.”

  “Thanks,” Olivia says. “And you can if you want to. I could teach you.”

  “You’d really do that for me?” Delaney asks.

  “Sure. For all of you. We can meet once a week or something. How about you, Lex?”

  “I’m totally in. It’ll be fun.”

  “I always wanted to teach dance and have my own studio,” Olivia says. “This will give me a chance to see if I like the teaching part.”

  The girls are inseparable the rest of the night. And when the limo driver comes to pick up Olivia and Lexie, the three others get into the car, too, calling their parents ahead of time to make sure it’s OK.

  Chapter 25

  Olivia stands in the hallway talking to Delaney when a girl taps her on the shoulder.

  “Special delivery.”

  “For me?”

  “Yep.”

  The girl hands Olivia several white carnations, a couple pink and several red. The student council sold carnations for Valentine’s Day and student representatives are delivering them.

  “Wow. You got a lot of admirers,” Delaney says.

  Olivia holds the bundle up to her nose and sniffs. “Want some?”

  Delaney shakes her head. “I’m not going to take your flowers, Lib.”