Cupcake Girl Read online

The megaphone blared the start of the girls’ race, and Lexie said, “Oh, that’s me—gotta go.” I glanced up and saw her ponytail swinging as she jogged over to the starting line. I didn’t really want to watch her race, but I couldn’t resist those long, graceful strides. She ran well and finished fourth.

  But even though I didn’t walk over to congratulate her, it wasn’t long before she found me. “Hey, good job,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “That was awesome.”

  “Well, I wasn’t in the top three, but I guess it wasn’t bad.”

  “Yeah, you did great.” I still didn’t look at her.

  Lexie sat beside me on the bleacher. “You seriously aren’t upset about taking second, are you? I mean, you beat your personal record and everything.”

  “Nah, I’m not mad about that.” I waited for her to ask what was really wrong, but she didn’t. Almost before I could stop myself, I said, “Come on, I grew up with Jake as an older brother—I’m used to taking second place.”

  I wondered if she would get my slight barb, but she confidently said, “You’ll get it next time. And hey, do you want something to eat? I could go grab you a cupcake.” The smile had returned to her voice.

  “Thanks, but I’m not really in the mood,” I replied. “I’m actually heading home now. Could you catch a ride home with someone else?”

  “Oh, yeah. No big deal.” She hesitated for a second before reaching over and lightly touching my arm. “Really good job today, Max.” She turned to go.

  My heart ricocheted at her touch, and I wanted to stop being an idiot and go after her. Would I really sulk around and shut her out because she had a crush on Jake? She had always liked him, so what was the big deal?

  “Lexie, wait!” I called.

  She spun around and waited while I jogged to catch up with her. “Actually, cupcakes sound great,” I said.

  Her smile made me glad I’d swallowed my pride. Because in the end, I knew it was okay to be second best to Jake—even where Lexie was concerned—since second best was still first- best friend.

  4

  Complications

  By the end of our junior year, things started getting complicated. And it wasn’t just my relationship with Lexie—it was everything.

  She and I always competed with the school swim team during the spring, but right before the tryouts in March, she announced that she wasn’t going to do swim team at all.

  “What do you mean, you’re not going to do it? You’re probably the best swimmer on the team!” I protested.

  Lexie lifted an eyebrow and gave me a pleased smirk. “Hmm, I think I better get that little compliment on camera.”

  “Come on, you know what I mean—”

  “Oh, no. This is seriously too good not to document.” She pulled her phone out of her backpack and started recording. When I ducked out of view, she laughed and held the phone to film herself.

  Using her best TV reporter voice she said, “This is Alexa Duncan reporting live from Hot Springs High. I’m here today with top swimmer, Max Rogers, who took second place in regionals as a sophomore and is just three seconds from beating the school record in the two-hundred-meter swim. You could say Max makes it a personal pastime to blow his competition out of the water. But now he says someone else might hold the reputation for being the best swimmer in the school. Could you please repeat your recent statement? For the record, that is.”

  Lexie wasn’t going to let me off the hook, so I looked at the camera and admitted, “Okay, okay. I said you were the—”

  “I’m sorry, could you please be more specific? Could you provide this person’s full name?”

  I looked right at her phone’s camera lens. “I, Maxwell James Rogers, said that Alexa Renae Duncan is the best female swimmer in the school.”

  Lexie erupted in mock protests and dropped her reporter’s voice. “Oh, now it’s the best female swimmer, huh?”

  “Yes, you will absolutely be the best girl on the team this year—even better than the seniors. You can’t quit.”

  Lexie’s smile faded, but with her phone camera still recording, she regained her composure. She looked at the phone again. “There you have it, folks—a rare compliment to the best female swimmer in the school. This is Alexa Duncan, signing off.” She turned off her phone and acted really busy as she put it away.

  “Seriously, Lexie—you can’t quit.”

  “Sorry, my mom won’t let me do it this year. She wants me to do really well on my AP tests, and I’m totally drowning in Physics class. There’s one subject I can barely tread water in.”

  “Come on, I’ll help you with Physics. You can’t quit— think of how boring my life would be without you.”

  “I’m sure you’ll survive—”

  “But if you’re not on the team, we won’t spend five or six hours together every Saturday waiting around for five or six minutes of competition.”

  “Tempting as that may be, I really can’t, Max.” Something in her eyes told me she meant it.

  I dropped the subject that day, and as the season progressed I only occasionally harassed Lexie about abandoning me. But that season, swim team just became work. I still enjoyed the challenge of pushing myself physically to see what I could do, but without Lexie there to joke around with, the fun was gone.

  Swimming wasn’t the only thing that became complicated. Lexie was right about the schoolwork—things got so busy with finals and preparing for AP tests that I often felt like I was drowning in work, too.

  And there’s something about the end of your junior year that makes your future seem awfully close. I took the ACT in the spring and started getting flooded with mail from colleges and universities. I am not kidding—sometimes I got three pieces of mail in a single day. But for some reason, I wasn’t ready to make that decision. I would have started throwing the letters away if it weren’t for this college trivia game Lexie invented. I needed to be somewhat prepared, because at any given moment she would throw out random facts from the junk mail she was obviously reading.

  “What university is located in Bellingham?” she asked one day. “You have ten seconds.”

  “Uhh—is it in Oregon?”

  “Not Oregon, but close,” she prompted. “Seven seconds.”

  “Okay, if it’s not Oregon, I’d say Washington. Washington State?”

  “So close. It’s Western Washington University—have you got their mailer yet? The campus looks beautiful.”

  “I don’t know. If I did, I probably just threw it into a box with the rest of them,” I admitted.

  “Well then, you probably won’t know the answer to this one: Name at least three colleges with the Aggie as a mascot.” Lexie looked down at her watch. “Ten seconds, go!”

  “One’s a no-brainer—New Mexico State, and then there’s the one in Texas.”

  “Texas A&M. Yes.”

  “The other is, the other is most definitely—” I stroked my chin in an obvious stall tactic.

  “You’ve actually got around twelve more to choose from, but only four seconds to do it in.”

  “Twelve more?” I said. “Okay, okay—I have no idea. Honestly, I don’t have a clue what an Aggie even is.”

  “And you call yourself a New Mexican! I thought Melissa went there.”

  “She and my parents both, but that doesn’t mean that any of them morphed into some greasy Scottish delicacy.”

  Lexie giggled. “It’s not haggis! Yuck! ‘Aggie’ is a nickname for a farmer, like someone with a background in agriculture.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad I don’t have to eat it, or be eaten if I go there. Your mascot should never be food.”

  “Agreed,” she said, laughing again.

  Her trivia questions prompted me to open a few of those school ads, but I just couldn’t get into it like she did. Maybe I was secretly hoping she would choose a school and I could follow where she went. When I was ready to think about it, all that mail would be waiting in the shoebox under my desk.

  I had decided
to leave the state for school, even if that meant breaking the tradition set by everybody in my family. Since New Mexico State apparently ran in my blood, it was just expected that I would go there as well.

  Melissa followed in my parents’ footsteps, driving the whole two hours south to Las Cruces. Jake was setting his sights northward to UNM in Albuquerque. My parents were already freaking out a little about that, so I wondered what they would say if I went to New York or Florida. I didn’t want to upset them, but I had this haunting feeling I could be in T or C my whole life, and that I should use my college years to become the person I was meant to be.

  5

  Post-Test

  When I finished those darned AP tests, I knew the only place for a proper celebration was with Lexie at the lake. I texted eight times before calling, but I got some monotone message that her phone was disconnected. I finally walked over to her house.

  “What’s with your phone?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s my mom—she cancelled her phone last week, and then yesterday she decided it was too expensive to keep mine and totally cancelled the service. I swear, I’m starting to worry that she’s going to disconnect the electricity to save money. Today she brought home this,” Lexie said with mild disdain, pulling out an antique-looking cell phone. “She switched it to some pre-paid plan I can’t text on, can’t receive calls on, and can only call out on. It has about eighty-six seconds on it, only to be used for an emergency—a very short emergency you can explain in three sentences or less. I’ve tried every argument I can think of, but she’s not budging.”

  “That totally sucks, doesn’t it?” I stalled while mentally problem-solving. “So, let’s ask my dad if you can work at the marina this summer. I know he doesn’t pay great, but I’m sure it would cover a cell phone bill, or at least more than three sentences worth of emergencies.”

  Lexie smiled but didn’t really look at me. “Hmm—that’s nice of you.” Then she pulled out her old phone with a remorseful look. “I seriously think we need to read this one its last rites.”

  “We could always put it in a blender or something.”

  “No!” Lexie protested before protectively cradling the phone. “Come on, baby—he didn’t really mean it. Let’s take you inside where you can safely wait for Mom to change her mind.” Lexie put both phones in the house, saying something about not wanting to get them wet, and then we walked down to the lake. She didn’t feel like swimming, so we took the jet ski out for about an hour, and then anchored it so we could sit out on our island and talk.

  After a big test, Lexie always liked to review each question and compare answers, even though she knew it drove me crazy. We’d taken the U.S. History exam just a few hours earlier, and she was so quiet I wondered if something was wrong.

  “What, you’re not going to ask me what I wrote in my essay about the Continental Congress?” I asked.

  Lexie gave a halfhearted smile. “Actually, I think I finally agree that we should forget about the test and just enjoy right now.”

  “I don’t know—we could have a stimulating conversation about the implications of the Emancipation Proclamation.”

  She gave me a real smile this time but didn’t reply, so I said, “What’s wrong? You seem quiet.”

  She blew out a breath. “It’s just that I have to leave again tomorrow, and we’ve got that whole Physics packet due. Plus I’m still a little behind from last time I left.”

  “You’re going to your grandma’s again? What’s up?”

  Lexie rubbed her palms against the sandstone, not meeting my eyes. “She’s not doing great. She went in for a bunch of tests last week, and they think she’s got cancer.”

  “Wow. That’s bad. What kind of cancer is it?”

  Lexie continued rubbing the rock, watching her hands. “Some long, deadly name that no one will ever remember. It’s a rare form of cancer that’s all over in her abdomen. She’s got two or three tumors, and they’re worried there are more.”

  “That doesn’t sound good. Will she be okay?”

  “I don’t know. My mom’s little sister actually died of this same cancer. The survival rate isn’t great, especially with this cancer, since there aren’t many symptoms. They usually don’t catch it until it’s too late, but since we know that it runs in the family the doctor found it before it spread too much. At least that’s what we’re hoping.”

  “That still sucks. I hope she’s going to be okay.”

  “Me too.” We were both quiet for a minute before Lexie announced, “This is depressing. Maybe we should talk about Benedict Arnold after all.”

  “Yeah, there’s a cheerful subject. I knew I wasn’t going to get off the hook on that test so easily.”

  She smiled, and I was almost succumbed to that crazy impulse to kiss her again. I was relieved when she didn’t resume test-talk. I called, “First one to the jet ski gets to drive!” and waited for her to dive into the water. Even with her slight head start, I rubbed it in when I got to the jet ski a solid thirteen seconds before she did. If it was summer, we probably would have stayed on the water for a few more hours, but we still had two weeks of school and a schedule full of finals, so we came in early. I didn’t complain, since the water was still kind of cold.

  We headed to my house in search of food, but even before we arrived it was obvious something was wrong. The closer we got, the louder the yelling was—my dad and Jake were at it again. Makes sense that Jake, the guy who excelled at everything, was even good at yelling. He burst out the front door and stormed to his car, peeling out as my dad barked, “Don’t you walk out on me! We are not finished with this conversation!”

  But trust me, they were finished, at least until my brother decided to show his face again. And if the past few weeks were any indication, my parents and I wouldn’t see him again until at least the next day.

  I was embarrassed, and there was an awkward moment as my dad turned and slammed the front door, not even acknowledging that Lexie and I were there.

  I frowned. “Wow, I wonder what that was about.”

  “Do you want to eat at my house?” she asked. “Maybe if I lure you in, you’ll stay and help me with my Physics homework.”

  “Physics on Friday night? Are you kidding?”

  “Come on—I never have time to do hsomework at my grandma’s. And this time I might stay until Monday or Tuesday, so I’ll get even further behind.”

  “You’re missing school again?”

  “Probably,” Lexie said, “but maybe I can talk my mom into coming home Monday night.”

  We walked in silence before I finally blurted out, “Sorry you had to see that argument.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Things get stressful toward the end of the year. Besides, Jake is choosing to be a Lobo, and that’s got to really tick off a die-hard Aggie like your dad. “

  I laughed a little. “Trust me, it does. It’s weird, but they’ve been fighting so much lately. And you know Jake—he’s normally not that kind of guy. But my dad insists that Jake stay here for the summer to help at the marina, and Jake is ready to go.”

  “To Albuquerque?”

  “Yeah. He wants to go now to get a good job, but my dad says he’ll spend most of his money on room and board. Dad also needs his help at the marina—I don’t know how we can do the summer without him.”

  “But Jake doesn’t see things that way?” Lexie said.

  “I guess not. He’s usually so cool, but lately he’s even being a jerk to me.”

  “Maybe he’s just pushing away.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “It’s probably hard for him to leave your family. I bet it’s easier for him to leave if he pushes away than if things were normal and you were really close.”

  “Huh. I never thought of it that way, but I guess it makes sense.”

  “Jake probably doesn’t even realize what he’s doing.”

  We reached her house and stood outside for a few minutes. “Maybe I should s
tart calling you Dr. Duncan,” I said, “’cause you’d make a great shrink. How do you know all this stuff?”

  Lexie smiled. “Come on, it’s just a guess. Besides, I’m not even going to finish high school if I don’t figure out this assignment.”

  “It’s not that bad—I finished it in class. Come on, I’ll help.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that. But let’s eat dinner first. My mom made enchiladas last night but I wasn’t in the mood, so we’ve still got a ton.”

  “Wow, and I was hoping you’d say something like that—your mom’s enchiladas are awesome.” Even a physics tutoring session on a Friday night goes down a little better with green-chile enchiladas.

  6

  Gone

  With finals, school projects, Jake’s graduation, and all the end-of-year parties and activities, the next two weeks passed in a blur. The last day of school brought a deep sense of relief and the thrill of freedom. I felt like I’d just taken off a pair of ten-pound ankle weights, but as soon as I got home I could tell something was wrong. The house was just too quiet.

  I went from room to room, hoping to find my mom or Jake to celebrate my newfound freedom with a traditional last-day-of- school pineapple-berry smoothie, but no one was there. I wasn’t worried until I poked my head into Jake’s room and noticed his mattress was bare and the top of his dresser was clean. He might have been a lot of things, but no one would accuse him of excessive cleanliness, or even substandard cleanliness. I usually avoided his room, since frankly there’s not much room to walk around, but the floors were strangely absent of heaps of dirty clothes. One of his dresser drawers was open, so I reluctantly peered inside, already knowing it would be empty.

  I’d hardly let the emptiness sink in before I heard the front door and my mom’s strained voice. “Max? Max? Are you home?” She found me in Jake’s room and gave me a hug.

  Where is he?” I asked.

  “Oh, Max—I’m sorry. He and your father argued again this morning and, well—”

  “But where? Albuquerque?”

  “It was just a matter of time. School starts in August so he only had two and a half more months anyway.”