Page 94 of Intermission

“Right.” I turn back to Mrs. Slade. “Please believe me. I’m still a virgin. And so is Noah.” My neck and face are on fire. “The only reason I have that stupid thing is because my sister...”

I tell them the whole story. “So, you see? I don’t need it, and I don’t want it.” I pick it up. “I’m going to go throw it away.”

“Not here, please. I don’t want to take the chance of the boys seeing it.”

“Oh. Right.” Jenna has twin brothers in middle school, and a middle school boy finding a condom is never a good thing.

“I’ll take it with me, then, and I’ll toss it the first chance I get. Maybe I’ll burn it or something.” I bite my lip. This is bad. Very bad. “Please don’t tell my mom. She’s already watching me like a hawk. And she’d never believe it came from Gretchen.”

Mrs. Slade says she believes me, that we’ll keep it between us—for now—but something about the distance in her expression arguesthat Jenna’s mom will never look at me in quite the same way again.

Once school is out for the summer, there is no reason for me to study and no more Mom-sanctioned trips to Jenna’s. My mother remains almost as cold toward me as she was the day she walked in on the kiss. Thankfully, Gretchen comes home, and Mom’s focus shifts to her more pleasing, golden daughter.

Whatever.

After spending the three weeks after she finished classes at the university with Justin’s family at their vacation home in—get this—Hawaii, Gretchen’s tan makes her look even more like a movie star than usual. Her arrival and the serious nature of her relationship with Justin, the High Prince of Successful Awesomeness, thaw Mom a bit.

Justin is interning at a firm in Iowa City this summer, but he spends a lot of Sunday afternoons at our house, which Mom, of course, loves. It gnaws at my gut, how her affection for Gretchen’s boyfriend is based on such superficial things. How can she not notice what a fake he is? Or how easily Justin dismisses Gretchen’s brains—her personhood, even—but he obviously appreciates her as his personal arm candy. Ugh. It makes me sick.

I take a summer job working in my grandmother’s beauty salon, which gets me out from under Mom’s suffocating, watchful eye. It’s easy work. From the front desk of the Kanton Korner Salon, I set appointments, field phone calls, stock product, and keep the tanning booths clean. But it’s a small town, and Grandma’s is not the only salon in town. There’s a fair bit of sitting around doing nothing, too.

Unlike some stylists, who can’t seem to talk and work at the same time, Grandma Maddie has over forty years of experience doing just that. Her combs slide and her scissors snip through her customers’ hair, but she never misses a beat in conversation. My grandma is notthe sort of person who can sit still for long. One particularly slow day, she decides I need a trim.

I don’t, really, but it makes her happy, so... to the shampoo station I go.

“I hear Gretchen has gotten pretty serious with that fancy lawyer boyfriend of hers.”

“Justin. Yeah. But he’s not a lawyer yet. He still has another year of law school.”

“You don’t like him.” Grandma is very good at hearing the words people don’t say.

“Not especially, but my opinion hardly matters. The way my mom fawns over him, you’d think Justin was running for President or something.” I breathe in the sweet fruity-floral scent as the woman whose first name I share—on paper, at least—begins lathering shampoo into my hair.

“Gretchen brought him by the house last week. I thought he was nice enough. Why don’t you like him?”

“I don’t know. He seems kinda fake to me.” A bubble floats up from the sink and pops right over my eye. “It’s not gonna last. Gretchen doesn’t look at Justin the way a girl should look at a guy she’s supposed to be in love with.”

“Hmm. And how is that?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

But I do know. And itdoesmatter. I shake my head to force the thought away.

“Hold still.”

“Sorry.”

“How about you, Madeleine Faith? Any new boys in your life? Or are you still mooning over that boy your mother dislikes so much.”

“How do you know about that?”

“A woman my age doesn’t keep doing hair because she likes being on her feet all day, sweetie.” She chuckles. “Everybody knows the Kanton Korner Salon has the best gossip in town. “Also,” she adds, leaning into my line of sight to give me a wink, “Gretchen may have mentioned it.”

Interesting. Then again, Grandma Maddie could pry dirt out of a nun’s freshly starched habit, so getting Gretchen to talk about a littlefamily drama is hardly a challenge for her.

“His name is Noah Spencer.” I close my eyes to avoid getting water spray and stray suds in them. “And Mom can’t honestly claim to actually dislike him as long as she refuses to have a conversation with him.”

“Your father said they had words.”