Wicked Sweet Read online

  For Callie

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chantal - C is Only for Cupcake.

  Jillian - Reality Check.

  Chantal - Crushing on Abnormal.

  Jillian - Beginning.

  Chantal - Swoon.

  Jillian - The Surprise Ending.

  Chantal - Tantrum.

  Jillian - Choices.

  Parker - Keeping Score.

  Chantal - Hope.

  Jillian - Home.

  Chantal - Chocolate Chip Hope.

  Jillian - Friday.

  Chantal - The Effects of Chocolate.

  Jillian - Falling.

  Chantal - Fallout.

  Jillian - Competition.

  Chantal - Blackout.

  Jillian - Home.

  Parker - The Call.

  Chantal - Invincible.

  Will - Central Control.

  Chantal - Spectator Sport.

  Jillian - Party Paranoia.

  Will - The Competitive Edge.

  Parker - The Laundry Room.

  Jillian - Oh. No.

  Chantal - The Cake.

  Jillian - Rescue.

  Parker - Now What?

  Chantal - Split Ends.

  Jillian - Neurosurgery.

  Chantal

  Jillian - Alone.

  Chantal - A Social Retard Cake.

  Jillian - Call Waiting.

  Chantal - Shrunken Diameter.

  Will - Geniustastic.

  Chantal - Revenge.

  Will - The New Deal.

  Chantal - Vampire Vanilla.

  Parker - Shoe Gazing.

  Jillian - Lightning Strike.

  Chantal - Diva Encounter.

  Will - This Charming Man.

  Chantal - Blindness.

  Parker - Not a Masked Man.

  Jillian - Not Cinderella.

  Chantal - A Planning Princess.

  Jillian - The Unexpected and Unexplained.

  Chantal - Crushing.

  Jillian - A Charming Morning.

  Chantal - Circle Perfection.

  Will - Stoked on the Bridge.

  Jillian - A Complicated Morning.

  Chantal - Secret Keeping.

  Parker - Acoustic.

  Chantal - Cake Deux.

  Will - Mr. Chrome.

  Jillian - Role Model.

  Parker - Magnanimous.

  Chantal - Friday Night Cake.

  Will - Che.

  Chantal - Fraud.

  Jillian - Waiting for Parker.

  Will - Disappointment.

  Chantal - Surprise Visit.

  Chantal - The Final Delivery.

  Jillian - The Morning.

  Parker - The Unbearable Morning.

  Chantal - Sugar, Sugar Hangover.

  Will - Batons?

  Chantal - Rule Change.

  Parker - The Non-Fight.

  Jillian - Dad 4?

  Chantal - Two Days. Two Cakes.

  Will - The Cake Bitch.

  Chantal - Dilemma100

  Jillian - Sinking.

  Will - The Ten-Pound Tumor.

  Chantal - Fallout.

  Parker - Negotiation.

  Jillian - Around the Word. Wednesday Morning.

  Chantal - Cheetahs Always Get Caught.

  Parker - Bee Yourself. Really. Bee Yourself.

  Chantal - Delicious, with a Delicate Crumb.

  Jillian - Special Delivery.

  Will - Cheetah?

  Chantal - More Than a Ride.

  Jillian - The Debate.

  Parker - The Hockey Tournament.

  Chantal - Hiding.

  Will - Holy Shit.

  Jillian - Never Underestimate a Brainiac.

  Chantal - On Stage.

  Will - Rat in a Trap.

  Parker - Reaction.

  Chantal - Finally.

  Jillian - Saved by a Tiara.

  Chantal - An Unlikely Heroine.

  Parker - Facing Will.

  Will - On My Way.

  Chantal - The Perfect Friendship.

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright Page

  Chantal

  C is Only for Cupcake.

  When Jillian slips off her T-shirt, I swear I break out in hives. She must know I’m not prepared for my best friend in a string bikini. Suprises like this are for spontaneous people—not for me. Now I need more than cupcakes. I need an antihistamine.

  It’s midafternoon, school is out for the year, and girls and guys from our class carry coolers of beer down the hill, looking for towel space near the water. Jillian and I sit at the top, under the tree we’ve claimed since the third grade. Everyone else wants to be close to the lake, the sun, and each other. I concentrate on the pattern of beach umbrellas and towels: circle, rectangle, circle, rectangle. I try not to stare at Jillian’s bikini triangles.

  “Chantal, quit staring,” Jillian says.

  “I didn’t expect … a bikini.” I stare down at the small hills in my one-piece. I am so lacking in this department. “But it’s … nice. It fits.” Barely.

  “Good. I was worried you’d think it was too, well, you know.” She unzips her shorts, lets them drop to the towel. Two strings connect her bikini bottom pieces. Silver studs situated, uh, strategically, sparkle. She smoothes down the fabric while she waits for my response. “Isn’t it hot?”

  I nod. I smile. I look to see how many people are gawking at us. Well, her. But the surrounding girls and guys are spreading on tanning lotion, opening their drinks, laughing with each other. My skin prickles. I scan the hill and mountains around us for signs of impending disaster, but Williamson’s Lake is the same. For nine years, it’s always been like this: Jillian, me, and a day to plan our summer project.

  While Jillian adjusts the triangles over her parts, then brushes her hair into perfect blond waves, I unpack my beach bag. I need a cupcake. I open the grocery store cello pack: chocolate cupcakes, white frosting, silver balls of sugar. The signature summer sweet.

  I hand one to Jillian.

  “Oh,” she squeals. “We match.” She holds the cupcake next to her right boob. “White and silver.”

  Next time, I’ll definitely buy a different combination.

  She takes the tiniest bite of chocolate and vanilla, sets the rest of her cupcake down, rubs tanning oil over her flat belly. “We should get you a bikini, too.”

  I open my mouth to protest.

  “You can tell your mom it’s mine.”

  I reach for my sunscreen, SPF 50. “She’d know that you couldn’t fit into an A cup.”

  “I think she’d be okay with a … modest … bikini. We’ll go for playful instead of sexy, but you need padding. Cleavage is bikini success.”

  I stare at the shadows between Jillian’s breasts. I have seen way more of her C’s this year than I expected; tight sweaters, low tank tops. I thought they were the only hand-me-downs from her Vancouver cousin that fit. I thought that Jillian’s new sexy was, almost, unavoidable. I thought reusing was better than buying something new. Practical, that’s me.

  “Remember the first principle of design? Form follows function. I can’t wear a bikini. I like to dive off the platform. And swim, really swim.”

  “But what if you had two different functions, and, therefore, two different forms?”

  It’s the way she looks at me when she says it—her eyes unsure, her mouth sort of between a smile and a frown, her jaw tensed. I swallow. My eyes narrow with suspicion. Two months ago she started rating guys—few got above a seven and Jillian said she wouldn’t date anyone below a ten—and now she shows up in a bikini, just when the town is about to be overrun by eligible guys without shirts.

  “Tell me you’re not going for maximum exposure to ge
t a guy’s attention.” Summer romances don’t work, she should know that. Last summer a girl from our class hooked up with a lonely sixteen-year-old from a tourist’s family and stowed away in the back of their RV. They sent her back four states later.

  “You need a different bathing suit.”

  “Because?”

  “It’s the summer? We’re going into our senior year? We’re both good-looking?” She hits me with the same sort of intensity I see when she’s practicing the points and counterpoints for a debate. “We can attract attention without compromising our principles.” Jillian rolls her eyes, just the tiniest bit. “Wearing a bikini doesn’t mean we’re on the dessert menu.”

  I tilt my head as she goes on to list, again, how much potential my features have. My un-blond and untamed hair needs short, straightened bangs. Dyeing my eyebrows darker will frame my eyes, even when I’m wearing my glasses. And her favorite: a shopping trip on victoriassecret.com will be our secret. I’m lucky, she says, runway models have androgynous shapes like mine. This is the fourth time she’s called me androgynous since she started running like a fiend. My head aches. I could use another cupcake, but I look at Jillian’s. She’s taken two tiny bites. Even with all the preservatives, the frosting is beginning to melt.

  “I’m only five-three. And I like cupcakes. I’ll never be a model.” I’ve offered this point before. Back then, it stopped her argument.

  “Brain surgeons can be hot, too.” Clearly, she’s been practicing.

  “I guess.” I imagine my future as a brain surgeon, what it would be like having guys whistle at me in my white lab coat, my hotness startling them like Jillian’s does now. “But I think neurosurgery is pretty hot all by itself.”

  “Think about the surgeons on TV.”

  “They’re all old.”

  “Exactly. And they’re still not bad, are they? We can be young, hot neurosurgeons.” Jillian’s pink fingernail glides along the top of her cupcake. She licks the frosting from her finger, reaches for her sunglasses, and shifts to catch the sunlight.

  I tell her that when we’re in med school the last thing we’ll need are boyfriends. I detail how I ended up trapped in a girls’ bathroom stall during last period today, stuck listening to a whole my-boyfriend-dumped-me drama. I remind her that we made a pact in ninth grade that we’d never put a guy above (a) our friendship and (b) getting good grades. “Remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  She stretches out on her towel and I pop the last of my cupcake in my mouth. As it dissolves on my tongue I detect an aftertaste I’d missed before and almost tell Jillian not to finish hers. But there’s no point, she’s abandoned it to the ants anyway. This is not how our first day of summer is supposed to go.

  Jillian

  Reality Check.

  I should have started preparing Chantal sooner. If my upgrade from a one-piece upsets her this much, a meet-up with guys could end in a meltdown. I convinced myself that the subject matter, our all-A’s physics study group, would put us in Chantal’s comfort zone. Now I know she’s not there yet. But time is running out, next year we’ll be seniors.

  In ninth grade the “no guys” rule made sense. I mean if you had a mother like mine who popped out boy babies every time a new guy text messaged her, you’d tell your best friend you didn’t want to have a boyfriend, either.

  But you grow up. At least I did. A couple months ago I was coming out of Cooper’s grocery store carrying three heavy bags, struggling not to drop them, when I heard a voice.

  “Need some help?” A deep voice with an accent, maybe French or Italian.

  I didn’t turn around. I mean, we’re a tourist town; nearly every girl in my class has a story about an older guy hitting on her. Last year a guy who was old enough to be my father stopped to ask for directions to the farmers’ market. I helped him and I was about to leave when he put his hand on my shoulder and asked what I was doing later. I still remember his slimy palm. Girls don’t forget their first encounter with slime.

  So that’s why I didn’t turn around. But I dropped a grocery bag. And Mr. So-Not-What-I-Expected picked it up and followed me to the minivan. He was young. Like, my age. With shocking dark hair. And great teeth.

  Hockey equipment fell out when I opened the trunk. As we piled it back in, I snuck looks at him and I caught him doing the same to me. I imagined him asking what a hot girl like me was doing in a grocery store parking lot in the middle of nowhere. I was about to say something, suggest we go for coffee even, when I realized he was staring into the grocery bags. Diapers. Formula. Baby wipes. He looked up at me and tilted his head. I guess he was a Mr. Right for a few seconds.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said. I slammed down the hatch door.

  “Yeah, no problem,” he said in his sexy accent. He was gone before I could give him one last look of longing.

  I made a critical assessment of myself in the rearview mirror. My knotted hair was pulled back in a light gray headband bleached out from being washed in hot water with crib sheets. No makeup. I wondered if my breath smelled like the only thing we had left for breakfast—peanut butter on leftover garlic bread. And still, he saw something in me. I needed to refine the something. And get away from the teen-mommy image. Fast.

  I haven’t told Chantal about this turning point because she’d call me out as shallow. I’m still trying to figure out if that’s what it is—my shallow, vain side trying to edge out my common sense side. And I guess I thought this meeting with Parker and Will would be a good test.

  I know they aren’t interested in us, really. We’ve known them since grade school and even if Parker is one of the hottest guys in our class, he’s been Annelise’s boyfriend forever. I must have imagined the chemistry between Parker and me when he said he wanted to meet up today; I thought he checked me out and that our eye contact was longer than usual. The guys say they want to talk about our study group and it’s possible that’s all it really is.

  I knew I was guilty of a minor case of best friend betrayal when I carried the bikini into the changing room. But shallow girls don’t get top grades in physics, I need to remind Chantal. And potential neurosurgeons can have fun, too.

  Chantal

  Crushing on Abnormal.

  “So …” I unzip my backpack; take out my spiral notebook and pen. “Summer projects.” I turn to the first clean page. This is the best part of the first day of summer, meditating on the productive potential of free time. Brainstorming ideas. Harmonizing options. Making the list. Happiness dances in my brain while buttercream frosting slides on my tongue.

  “The lake. Parties. Camping.” Jillian doesn’t even sit up. She just calls them out.

  I write her words. The dance music fades. Our projects are about investigation, exploration, and self-improvement. Our self-improvement. Jillian knows I hate camping. “Well … these seem more like events, not projects. And … there is no way I’m going to convince my mother to let me go camping, unless it’s in your backyard.” Ever since we suggested hiking for a summer project a few years back, my mother started building a file of news stories about campers getting attacked by black bears, grizzlies, and cougars.

  “We could tell her we’ll be in my backyard.” Jillian’s words come out practiced.

  “But we’d go … ?”

  “Where everyone else is.”

  I think I get it now. She doesn’t want a summer project. She wants me in a bikini on a towel next to her or in a tight T-shirt at a bonfire party or in the front seat of a car with a guy while she’s in the back with someone else. I always knew that one day she’d insist we do the usual high school girl stuff. She’s told me over and over I need to get out more, take a risk. But why would she pick today? The best day of my summer?

  I reach for another cupcake, strip off the paper wrapper and shove half of it in my mouth. The frosting globs onto my uvula and gets stuck on my tonsils. The metal taste is overpowering now. With each breath in, I exhale a smaller amount until, the cake gone, I am trapped
in my own air. I need to exhale. I start to gasp.

  “Chantal? Are you alright?” Jillian slaps me on the back. “Breathe.”

  “I can’t be allergic to cupcakes. I can’t.” My hands form a parenthesis on either side of my head. I get like this sometimes, all worried, and I think I’m going to have an asthma attack. Although the doctor says I don’t have asthma I’m just waiting for the right trigger.

  “You’re not allergic. You’re just …” She hands me her water bottle.

  “I’m neurotic.” She doesn’t say it, but she must think it, because this is part of who I am: Chantal, girl with anxiety attacks. I silently thank her for understanding.

  She waits for me to recover. We watch a swarm of junior high kids swim out to the dock in the middle of the lake, cover it with so many bodies we can’t see the wood planks. Their shouts bounce off the mountains that surround us. “Do you ever wonder if we’re missing out?” Jillian asks.

  “On?”

  “Fun.”

  Crud. I want to eat more cupcake, but I’m sure I’d end up in the hospital. “Our summer projects are always fun: you loved the krumping video, didn’t you?”

  “I hated flatland synchronized swimming.”

  “It would have been better if you knew how to swim.”

  “Remember my brothers booed us?”

  “And threw pinecones at us!”

  Jillian retells the horror of flatland synchronized swimming from the beginning: the research phase; our flatland adaptations; and how we wore earplugs, swimming caps, and flippers because we wanted to evoke water. I reminded her how hard we were laughing when we performed—so hard our cheeks were still sore the next day. Lifelong learners like us find inspiration everywhere.

  “We were such nerds back then,” Jillian says.

  “It was only last year.” We laugh like we love to laugh. My sides ache with happy pain.

  “You’re the greatest,” Jillian says.

  “You, too,” I say.

  “But I’m not flatland synchronized swimming this year.”

  “Only in my memories,” I say. As I’m about to suggest creating a private fashion show for a summer project—thereby combining Jillian’s need to make me over and my need to plan the next eight weeks of my life—Jillian interrupts.

  “So … who was in the bathroom anyway?”