I wished. “Not while Cooper’s mom is still grounding him. She’s definitely a bad influence. And get this, when she has vacation time, she likes camping in areas that are so remote, she has to carry in all her gear for miles. She told my dad that we should try it.”
Harper clicked her tongue. “You’re going to have to start lifting weights in order to carry all your stuff.”
“No wonder Cooper is so tough,” Kinsley said. “His idea of a vacation is not dying.”
I nodded in agreement. “The whole thing is just a search-and-rescue mission waiting to happen.”
Kinsley picked up her script again, a sign she was ready to get back to practicing. She pressed open the book to her next scene and shot Harper a glance. “If you want to talk to one of the football players, I wouldn’t wait for Madeline to throw a party.” She leaned closer to Harper. “We both know her truce with Cooper might not last, and then Madeline will pull something that gets her grounded through Christmas or sent off to one of those wilderness camps with Cooper.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said.
“He isn’t the only one with cute friends,” Kinsley went on. “I could introduce you to some of Jonathan’s.”
Harper perked up at that, and our scene was forgotten while the two of them discussed how Harper could casually run into some of Jonathan’s friends. They decided the football game tonight would be a good place.
Harper was cute, bubbly, and had no problem talking tonew people. She would probably have a date to homecoming in no time. I really ought to work on my bubbliness ...
“Hey, why don’t you sit by us tonight,” Harper told me, obviously not grasping the nature of what it meant to be grounded. She was the sort who never got in trouble with her parents.
“I can’t,” I reminded her. “I’ll be stuck sitting with my father and Ms. Nash.”
“Bummer.” Harper gave me a sympathetic look. “But there will be other times.”
I wondered again if I would see Boden at the game tonight. If he was there, I’d have to pretend I needed to go to the bathroom and then figure out a way to bump into him. Might be hard if he was sitting parked in the middle of the bleachers.
I didn’t hear more of Kinsley and Harper’s plans because Mrs. Russel called me to the stage to run through one of my scenes. After I recited several lines, she told me that my rendition of Dolly was too high-strung. “You’re a successful matchmaker,” she said, hands circling the air for emphasis. “You should exude confidence.”
“I don’t think that’s how matchmaking works,” I replied. “Especially since you never know what men will do next.” Okay, I didn’t actually say that out loud. I just thought it.
I tried saying my lines more confidently, even though I figured that real matchmakers were always worried about men going off the rails.
Toward the end of rehearsal, while Mrs. Russel worked on a scene I wasn’t in, I gave Claire a bag with four shirts in it.
She looked at it in confusion. “What’s this?”
“You wouldn’t let me pay for the shirt I ruined,” I explained, “so I said I’d give you something of mine.”
Surprise flitted across her face. “You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.”
She glanced around to make sure no one was watching and opened the bag. “Which one are you giving me?”
“All of them. I think the olive-green shirt goes well with your coloring. The black one is sophisticated. The white one is more versatile. You can dress it up or dress it down. And the red one is for when you want to impress someone.”
She held up the black one. “I’ve never seen you wear any of these.”
“Right. That’s why I’m getting rid of them. I want to make room in my closet.”
I’d been trying to be nice without it seeming like a big deal, but she had another one of thoseYou don’t live in the real worldlooks on her face. I might as well have been Marie Antoinette announcing to the starving peasants that they could eat cake.
For the record, I wasn’t the richest kid at our school. A lot of people lived in bigger houses and drove cars that put my little convertible to shame. The difference between me and the other rich kids was that my father donated more money to the school, so we seemed wealthier to people who didn’t know that a luxury-class BMW costs twice what my car did.
Claire stared at the bag, wavering. “You really didn’t have to,” she said again.
“I don’t have a little sister to give my clothes to, so what else am I going to do with them? If you don’t take them, they’ll just end up at Goodwill.”
The wordGoodwillseemed to decide the matter for her. “Well, I guess if you’re just getting rid of them anyway ...” She shoved the bag into her backpack. “I’ll see if they’ll fit.”
