The Revenge Artist - Philip Siegel Page 0,44
about years from now. I feel like I don’t have any classic high school moments. Unless you count getting cornered by angry classmates. I wouldn’t.
“Diane, I’m going to go up and pay.” I take Mom’s cash and the cart.
“I’ll meet you outside.”
Fifteen minutes later, Diane gets into the passenger seat. She’s bouncing on the seat again, although this time for a different reason. “I gave him my number.”
“You did?”
She nods and cranks the heat.
“You’re going to go on a date with him even though you’re moving in like a month?”
She gives me a shrug.
***
My mom made so many dishes that they can’t all fit on the dining table. At the last minute, she decides to serve buffet-style. Diane and I make fun of her for again preparing twice as much food as needed.
“It’s better to have too much than not enough. How would your Thanksgiving be if we ran out of food?” she explains to us, which only makes us laugh harder. “Leave me alone.”
Diane and I sandwich her in a Williamson daughter hug. We’re the real winners here because we’ll have all weekend to enjoy these leftovers. My mom cooks way too much, but it’s always super delicious.
“My girls.” She clutches our hands and fights back tears. “I’m going to miss you guys next year. The house is going to feel so empty.”
We trade looks. Mom’s melodrama rings true this time. Everything’s changing.
“You and Dad should go to school with Becca. You can share a dorm room!”
During dinner, Fred and I text each other pictures of our food, comparing and contrasting our Thanksgivings. His newlywed sister cooked Thanksgiving for the first time. Fred texted me pictures of him trying to chew extremely dry turkey and extremely sweet cranberry sauce, each time his face mushing into different reactions. My dad motions at me to put my phone away and make awkward chitchat with my extended family. If he has to, we have to. I glance across the table at my sister, who’s also smiling at something on her phone, and I get a strange feeling that it’s Brock on the other end.
“Did you know Steve Overland at school?” my uncle asks me apropos of nothing. I think that he starts conversations in his head a minute before he asks anyone to join. “He’s played a few games for Chandler University this season.”
“We had a class or two together.” I leave it at that. I doubt he wants the whole story.
“He has a great arm.”
“He’s a nice guy, from what I can remember.” I wonder what Steve is up to today. Well, besides eating. For a promising college quarterback, I’m sure his choice of girls is limitless. Yet he’s still hung up on Huxley. He could’ve moved on, enjoyed the cleanest of slates. He really wants her back.
The Revenge Artist.
It clicks just as I reach for seconds on the stuffing. I think about Steve’s phone call. How can nobody know anything about the girl he hooked up with, allegedly? She hasn’t been seen around town. She could be a ghost were it not for the fact that everyone saw her get in a fight with Huxley. How can a girl be that well-known but that mysterious at the same time? I keep asking myself that question throughout dinner.
Once Diane and I finish cleaning up the kitchen and dining room, I go to my desk and pull up pictures kids posted online from the party. Of course Huxley’s frenemy Addison took a bunch of pictures of Huxley and the mystery girl arguing before the girl ran off. I study her golden curls and full face.
I search through Addison’s album from the party, and here and there, I see this mystery girl in the background. She’s never talking to anyone. She’s just there, lingering, observing.
Addison wasn’t the only person who documented that party. I remember glancing at pictures from Dominick’s profile. It was the last big blowout before school started up. Memory capturing had to have been at an all-time high that night. If I sort through all of the pictures and videos taken, then maybe I can get a clear idea of who this girl is. It’s a social jigsaw puzzle.
I compile a list of everyone I recognize who was at that party. I find every public profile they have across the net and click through hundreds of pictures and videos and statuses and posts. From Facebook, from Twitter, from Instagram, from sites I apparently am not cool enough to know exist.