Paula Stokes - The Art of Lainey

Kendall makes me better too. If it weren’t for her excellent assist, I wouldn’t have scored the winning goal at the championships. I probably wouldn’t have gotten together with Jason either. She pushes me to do things I’d be too scared to try on my own. Bianca finds her “a bit overbearing.”

“You’re probably right,” I tell Bee. “Maybe she’s getting ready for a shoot, being draped in some glamorous dress while a team of designers revolve around her, brows furrowed, mouths full of pins.” Kendall’s mom is the district manager of a chain of fashion boutiques and she’s always making her daughter try on outfits before she lets the buyers order them. Kendall bitches about being a human Barbie Doll, but she gets to keep all the samples. Talk about having the best wardrobe in school.

As for me, my mom’s an anthropology professor, which means all I have is the best collection of creepy tribal masks. They used to hang on the wall of my room, but last year I finally said enough and put them up in the coffee shop. You have no idea what it’s like to be fooling around with your boyfriend and look up to see a bunch of painted-up African warriors glaring at you. Major mood killer.

Now my walls are full of pictures and posters. My lower lip gets quivery as my eyes land on a framed photo of Jay and me from last year’s junior prom. Him in his tux, and me in a long pale blue gown. Both of us tall, tan, blinding smiles. We look like the little people on top of a wedding cake.

“I can’t figure out what happened.” My voice wavers. “Everything was fine last week.”

“No warning at all?” Bee asks.

I shake my head violently, and my brain is assaulted by thoughts of Jason from all sides, from the pictures on the wall, to the DVDs he loaned me scattered across my desk, to the three bottles of perfume—one for each Valentine’s day—arranged in a line on my dresser. An old soccer jersey of his that I sometimes sleep in lies crumpled on the floor. As I pick it up and toss it toward the hamper, I catch sight of my jewelry box on the highest shelf of my dresser. There are only a couple of necklaces inside it—one of which is the golden soccer-ball pendant Jay gave me when I turned sixteen.

He and Kendall threw me a pool party that night. It was epic—I bet at least a hundred people came. Then, after everyone left, Kendall distracted their mom while Jay snuck me into his room. I lost my virginity that night, and while it was everything people said that it would be—awkward and nerve-wracking and a little painful—Jason was so amazingly sweet that I wasn’t afraid. I just . . . trusted him. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. I never thought he would hurt me.

Until now.

I bite back tears. That was also the night he told me he loved me for the first time. It took him almost a year to say it, but I didn’t mind because to me that showed he really meant it, you know?

Sniffling, I turn to Bianca. “I mean, did I do something wrong?”

Bianca hands me a tissue. “This isn’t about you.”

I want to believe her, but it’s hard. I guess it sounds stupid, but a little part of me thought Jason might be “the one.” My parents met when Mom was twenty and Dad was twenty-two, which isn’t much different from meeting in high school. Even though I’m hoping to go to college on a soccer scholarship, I never planned on going far enough away to risk my relationship with Jay.

“He’s just confused,” Bee continues as I wipe my eyes. “Maybe it has to do with meeting his father for the first time.”

“I guess that’s possible.” But he didn’t seem too traumatized when his dad showed up in town last month. Especially when the first thing he did was toss Jay the keys to a sweet condo. But his parents have been estranged since before he and Kendall were born, and Kendall still refuses to speak to her dad. When all you know about your father is that he’s a professional photographer who lives out of a suitcase and never wanted kids, having him suddenly arrive and buy a place in town is probably a big deal. I don’t know. Maybe it messed with Jason’s head more than he let on. “You know what? I’m going to text him.” Before Bianca can stop me, I’ve got my phone out and I’m rattling off an “Is this about your dad?” text.

Bee chews on her naturally plump lower lip. “I’m not sure if—”

I wave her quiet with the back of my hand. Thirty seconds. Forty-five seconds. A minute. There is no way Jason is not going to answer me. He always answers me.

Another minute passes. Bianca sees me teetering on the edge of pathetic and tries to pull me back. “We need a plan,” she announces, grabbing my laptop from my desk. I’ve got about eight windows open—most of them to soccer or gossip websites, one of them to CalebWaters.com. “Oooh, Caleb,” she says, immediately distracted. She enlarges a picture of him at a red-carpet premier and turns the laptop toward me. “This will cheer you up.”

I give her a halfhearted smile. Caleb Waters is a former pro soccer player and the star of Victory Dance and Only One Shot. He’s currently shooting a movie called Flyboys in cities all across the Midwest. I’ve been checking his page a lot for updates in case they shoot some scenes in nearby St. Louis. Meeting Caleb Waters is one of my major life goals.

“Do you think Flyboys will be as good as the other movies?” Bee asks. “You know, since he doesn’t get to play soccer in it?”

“I’m sure it’ll be awesome.” I blot my eyes with the tissue again. “Maybe he’s reinventing himself as a serious actor.”

“Hopefully not.” She peers at the screen. “What good is a Caleb Waters movie if he doesn’t get sweaty and take his shirt off?”

As wrecked as I am right now, I have to giggle a little at that. Bianca may act all prim and proper most of the time, but when it comes to Caleb Waters she’s every bit as obsessed as me. I force my face back into a serious expression. “Enough celebrity stalking. We have a different soccer star to focus on, remember? I thought you were coming up with a plan to fix my life.”

“Right. Sorry. A life-fixing plan.” Bee opens another window to a search engine. “I don’t think I’ve fixed your life since that time in seventh grade when you tried to give yourself highlights and ended up looking like a crooked skunk.”

I shudder. “Thank God that color fixer stuff worked.” I lean over Bianca’s shoulder while she types in various permutations of “how to win back your ex-boyfriend.” Hundreds of thousands of hits come up. “Wow. A lot of people get dumped.” I feel a tiny twinge of relief. Somehow, it’s better knowing I’m not the only one.

“Yeah, but I’m not sure if we’ll find anything useful.” Bee scrolls through a bunch of websites that are trying to sell thirty-dollar e-books with “secret psychological techniques.” Some are written by people whose grasp of the English language is debatable.

Undaunted, Bee keeps clicking. A pink-and-gray page pops up. “This one looks good.” She nibbles at a pinkie nail. “Tips from Maverick the Master Dater, MD in Loveology.”

“Clever. Probably some thirty-year-old virgin living in his mommy’s basement, but what do I have to lose?” I read over her shoulder. Maverick has a basic list of Dos and Don’ts.

• Do keep on living. Even though you’re sad, you need to keep going to school or work.

• Don’t wallow. It’s pathetic, and you don’t want him to realize how much the breakup has affected you.

“I can do those,” I say. “I’m pretty sure my parents wouldn’t even give me the option of bailing on my shifts at Denali, and I definitely don’t want to seem pathetic.”

Next:

• Don’t contact him. At all. No emails, text messages, phone calls, letters, unannounced drive-bys, etc. for at least three weeks. Men inherently crave what isn’t readily available. If you stay away, he’ll wonder why. And he’ll come sniffing around to find out.

A strangled sound works its way out of my throat. “Three weeks without any contact from Jason would seem like several lifetimes. No way,” I tell Bianca. “Find something else.”

A rattling sound from the floor makes me flinch. Bee’s backpack is vibrating. While she digs around for her phone, I click desperately through links from so-called relationship experts, but they all seem to say the same thing: the best way to win back a guy is to avoid him . . . for weeks!

“There has to be a better way,” I say.

Bianca peeks quickly at the text message and puts her phone away without replying. She holds up a tattered red-and-black paperback.

“Maybe there is.”

“The Art of War?” I raise an eyebrow. It sounds vaguely familiar, like I heard it referenced in a movie or something. It also sounds as old as dirt. “Why do you have that?”

“Seriously? It’s on our summer reading list. Don’t you ever do your schoolwork?” Bee slaps me on the leg with the book. “It’s by a Chinese military strategist named Sun Tzu. It’s mostly about war, but people have applied it to all kinds of scenarios—business, law, college, sports, relationships.”

I squint at the cover. It figures brilliant Bianca would turn to some dusty schoolbook for advice. “You think a dead Chinese guy can help me get Jason back?”

“A dead Chinese warlord,” Bianca corrects.

My eyebrow creeps up even farther. “My world is ending and you’re channeling your inner warlord?”

Bee smiles. “Hear me out.” She flips the book over and starts reading the back cover. “‘Master Sun Tzu’s military treatise is required reading on battlefields and in boardrooms. Countless people of all ages have benefited from his wisdom.’” She tosses the book to me.