Page 2 of Better Than the Movies
I rolled my eyes, which madehismouth slide into a wicked grin before he said, “This has been fun, and I love your granny shoes, by the way, but I’ve gotta run.”
“Wes—”
He turned and walked away from me like I hadn’t been speaking. Just… walked toward his house in that relaxed, overconfident way of his. When he got to the porch, he opened the screen door and yelled to me over his shoulder, “Have a good day, Liz!”
Well, that couldn’t be good.
Because there was no way he legitimately wanted me to have agood day. I glanced down at my car, apprehensive about even opening the door.
See, Wes Bennett and I were enemies in a no-holds-barred, full-on war over the one available parking spot on our end of the street. He usually won, but only because he was a dirty cheater. He thought it was funny to reserve the Spot for himself by leaving things in the space that I wasn’t strong enough to move. Iron picnic table, truck motor, monster truck wheels. You get it.
(Even though his antics caught the attention of the neighborhood Facebook page—my dad was a group member—and the old gossips frothed with rage at their keyboards over the blights on the neighborhood landscape, not a single person had ever said anything to him or made him stop. How was that even fair?)
But I was the one riding the victory wave for once, because yesterday I’d had the brilliant idea to call the city after he’d decided to leave his car in the Spot for three days in a row. Omaha had a twenty-four-hour ordinance, so good old Wesley had earned himself a nice little parking ticket.
Not going to lie, I did a little happy dance in my kitchen when I saw the deputy slide that ticket underneath Wes’s windshield wiper.
I checked all four tires before climbing into my car and buckling my seat belt. I heard Wes laugh, and when I leaned down to glare at him out the passenger window, his front door slammed shut.
Then I saw what he’d found so funny.
The parking ticket was now onmycar, stuck to the middle of the windshield with clear packing tape that was impossible to seethrough. Layers and layers of what appeared to be commercialgrade packing tape.
I got out of the car and tried to pry up a corner with my fingernail, but the edges had all been solidly flattened down.
What a tool.
When I finally made it to school after scraping my windshield with a razor blade and doing hard-core deep breathing to reclaim my zen, I entered the building with theBridget Jones’s Diarysoundtrack playing through my headphones. I’d watched the movie the night before—for the thousandth time in my life—but this time the soundtrack had just spoken to me. Mark Darcy sayingOh, yes, they fucking dowhile kissing Bridget was, of course, as swoony as hellfire, but it wouldn’t have been sooh-my-God-worthy if not for Van Morrison’s “Someone Like You” playing in the background.
Yeah—I have a nerd-level fascination with movie soundtracks.
That song came on as I went past the commons and made my way through the crowds of students clogging up the halls. My favorite thing about music—when you played it loud enough through good headphones (and I had thebest)—was that it softened the edges of the world. Van Morrison’s voice made swimming upstream in the busy hallway seem like it was a scene from a movie, as opposed to the royal pain that it actually was.
I headed toward the second-floor bathroom, where I met Jocelyn every morning. My best friend was a perpetual oversleeper, so there was rarely a day when she wasn’t scrambling to put on her eyeliner before the bell rang.
“Liz, Ilovethat dress.” Joss threw me a side-glance between cleaning up each eye with a cotton swab as we walked into the bathroom. She pulled out a tube of mascara and began swiping the wand over her lashes. “The flowers are so you.”
“Thanks!” I went over to the mirror and did a turn to make sure the vintage A-line dress wasn’t stuck in my underwear or something equally embarrassing. Two cheerleaders surrounded by a puff of white cloud were vaping behind us, and I gave them a closed-mouth smile.
“Do you try to dress like the leads in your movies, or is it a coincidence?” Joss asked.
“Don’t say ‘your movies’ like I’m addicted to porn or something.”
“You know what I mean,” Joss said as she separated her lashes with a safety pin.
I knew exactly what she meant. I watched my mom’s beloved rom-coms practically every night, using her DVD collection I’d inherited when she died. I felt closer to my mother when I watched them; it felt like a tiny piece of her was there, watching beside me. Probably because we’d watched them together So. Many. Times.
But Jocelyn didn’t know any of that. We’d grown up on the same street but hadn’t become actualgoodfriends until sophomore year, so even though she knew my mom had died when I was in fifth grade, we’d never really talked about it. She’d always assumed I was obsessed with love because I was hopelessly romantic. I never corrected her.
“Hey, did you ask your dad about the senior picnic?” Josslooked at me in the mirror, and I knew she was going to be irritated. Honestly, I was surprised that wasn’t the first thing she asked me when I walked in.
“He wasn’t home last night until after I went to bed.” It was the truth, but I could’ve asked Helena, if I’d really wanted to discuss it. “I’ll talk to him today.”
“Sure you will.” She twisted the mascara closed and shoved it into her makeup bag.
“I will. I promise.”
“Come on.” Jocelyn stuck her makeup bag into her backpack and grabbed her coffee. “I can’t be tardy to Lit again or I’ll get detention, and I told Kate I’d drop gum by her locker on the way.”
