The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back Read online

  "Then I'll have to go to college and keep my grades up and work. It won't be easy." She sounded tired.

  "You should just ask Dad for the money," I told her again.

  She started piling lo mein on top of the rice. "So, that was Jake on the phone. And I broke up with him."

  Whoa. Way to change the subject. My mouth hung open, until I realized nobody wanted to see chewed up cashew chicken.

  "I know I probably should have done it in person, but I just wanted to get it over without having to face him." Ella hated confrontations of any kind. It's why I had to take care of Melanie Robbins at summer camp when we were twelve. Ella wouldn't. She kind of let people walk all over her.

  "How did he take it?"

  "Fine. He seemed more surprised than anything else."

  "And you're okay?"

  She smiled at me. "Totally fine."

  That dangerous spark of hope had leapt back to life in my stomach. I reminded it that 1) I was still really mad at Jake and 2) I had zero chance of ever dating him.

  It didn't listen.

  I heard my dad singing as he came over to the table and sat down. I made out the words "girl" and "poison." Both my father and I had no singing skills, but you put up a karaoke machine and we would be the first ones in line. Yeah, we were those people.

  "Wait. Why are you singing?" A new, anxious and uncomfortable feeling commandeered my stomach. My dad only sang for one reason.

  "I'm not." I noticed he didn't look me in the eye.

  "You are. You're singing one of those 1990s hip-hop songs."

  "So?" he asked defensively.

  It only meant one thing. "You're dating someone." I saw the gleam in his eye, the corners of his mouth tugging up. Then a worse possibility occurred to me. "Is it someone I know?"

  He sat silent for a few moments, like he was deciding whether or not to tell me anything. "An art teacher at your school. I met her at the open house the other evening. Delightful woman."

  "Not Mrs. Putnam." His satisfied expression indicated that it was indeed Mrs. Putnam. "Dad! She's married!"

  "Was," he corrected as he handed me his salad. I passed it on to Ella. I couldn't think about rabbit food right now. "Her divorce was finalized three months ago."

  "So you're her rebound guy?" Rebound I could handle. That meant it wouldn't last long and she might not end up hating me too much when she started hating my dad.

  "We'll see."

  "But Dad, I like her."

  He gave me a wolfish grin. "I like her too." My dad was pretty good looking as far as fathers go. He had the same mouse brown hair that I did (I mean, I thought it was still that color. I'd been dying it for so long I didn't really remember). We both had the same green eyes, the same fair skin, and were both tall. But for some reason it looked good on him and it made me look like a troll.

  "Speaking of women I've dated, you have a Skype appointment with your mother tonight."

  Now I really couldn't eat. "What?"

  "She was upset that you didn't call her on your birthday."

  "Um, it was my birthday. Shouldn't she have called me?" My dad just shrugged and I knew exactly how Pearl would have felt about it. She would have thought that because she gave me life, I should call her on that day and praise her for it. "I don't even want to talk to her."

  "At least you have your mom to talk to," Ella said in a small voice that made me feel like total crap. What could I say to that? Technically, she was correct. My mother was alive, hers wasn't. But at least she had had a mom. Someone who had loved her and taken care of her and raised her. Bill might not be the best dad in the world, but he' was there every day. Pearl had never even been there.

  "You're supposed to be on the computer with her in," Dad looked at his watch, "five minutes. Afterwards, there's a Dodgers game on. You want to watch it with me?"

  Dodgers baseball was one of the few things that got my dad out of his studio. I grew up watching games with him. It was our daddy-daughter time. But I didn't know if I'd be up for it after having to talk to my mother. "We'll see," I told him.

  I knew better than to be late, especially when I'd been told she was already mad. I got up and went to my room to get my laptop and make sure the web camera worked.

  I thought I had lucked out when she missed my birthday, but apparently this was my penance. I hated that I had to talk to her at all, but I was pretty sure my dad had threatened to stop alimony if she didn't contact me several times a year. Unfortunately, all of our conversations basically consisted of what a disappointment I was and how much I sucked in general.

  My parents met at some artist retreat/hippie commune. I didn't know the details, because I had a don't ask, don't tell policy when it came to Dad and his ex-wives. I did know that they got married two weeks after meeting each other. Dad's excuse about their quickie marriage was, "What can I say? I'm a romantic." I'm pretty sure that's code for "I'm an idiot."

  They divorced ten months later (surprise, surprise) and she left me with him because she needed to find herself in New York. Personally, I thought she should go back and check again and see if she could find a nicer version of herself there.

  Most of my dad's divorces came down to one thing—the time he spent in his art studio. No one could handle it. They all wanted more attention, time and love. None of them could accept him as he was. He'd even married other artists like my mother, who you would think would understand, but then he had to deal with the competition angle. It wasn't his fault he was so successful, but my mother in particular couldn't deal.

  A request came in from my mother and I let out a deep sigh before I clicked the accept button. An image of Pearl Li Mitani appeared on screen. My mother is one-half Japanese. She has smooth creamy skin, long black hair, and cat eyes that tilt slightly upwards at the end. Like I mentioned, I look exactly like my dad. I apparently didn't inherit anything physical from her. Dad once said that if I hadn't looked so much like him he definitely would have had a paternity test done. The day you found out your mother was a skank was a very sad one.

  She was also the opposite of every stereotype you might have of Asian women. Instead of being sweet, polite, or submissive, she's loud, rude, judgmental, and in-your-face. I blamed her for all of my negative personality traits. Plus, she was a really crappy mother. She made those Tiger Mothers look like kittens.

  "Your hair is ridiculous."

  No hi, how are you, I miss you. Nope. We started with the insults.

  I dealt with her the only way I knew how. "Why, thank you Pearl. Your hair looks lovely as well. It's always nice to get a compliment from your mother."

  It frustrated her, as it always did when I ignored her attempts to get a rise out of me. You basically had to ignore ninety-nine percent of what my mother said or else you'd get so mad you'd come up with increasingly creative and inappropriate ways to make her be quiet. Do not ask me how I knew this.

  "Are you padding your bra?"

  "Oh my Buddha, Pearl. No, I'm not." I folded my arms across my chest. That lets you know how long it had been since she last saw me. And I enjoyed sneaking in an "oh my Buddha" reference. She found it offensive. Hence, my use of it.

  "How are your grades?"

  "My grades are fine. It's only the second day of school."

  Ella crept in my room behind me and I could see her from my camera. Which meant my mother could see her too. "Forgot my laptop, sorry," she whispered as she hurried out.

  "Ella's still there, I see." Pearl never liked Ella. It reminded me of how sunlight repelled darkness. The two couldn't coexist.

  "She lives here." Unlike you, I refrained from adding.

  I wondered what way the conversation would go now. Odds were she would either yell at me about not honoring my Japanese heritage or interrogate me about applying to Wellesley.

  To my surprise she asked, "Is anything new happening at school?"

  I felt a pang of regret that we didn't have anything approaching a relationship because even if I never admitted
it to anyone else, I would have loved having a mother I could talk to about Jake Kingston. I wanted advice. I wanted to know that I was normal. I wanted to know that things would get better, that I wouldn't always feel so helpless and hopeless where he was concerned. I wanted to talk about how Jake made me feel earlier today.

  But I couldn't.

  I had to tell her something. "Um, I decided to run for senior class president."

  "You're running for senior class president?" Only she said it the same way someone else might say, "You're going to eat dog food?"

  "Yep."

  "Be sure to emphasize that you are Japanese-American."

  And there we had it. We took a slight detour to get there, but we had arrived.

  "I'm just American, Pearl." Her eyes narrowed and I knew it was time to move in for the kill. "I mean, I don't know what good it does me to be one-quarter Japanese. I didn't get any of the good traits. I suck at math. I'm uncoordinated so there's no way I could ever be a ninja, and I think Harajuku fashion is weird. On the flip side though, I am a very bad driver." To be honest, I was proud of my heritage. But I would never let Pearl know that. It's why I refused to tell her about my anime/manga obsession. She'd take too much satisfaction in my loving something Japanese, and then lecture me about wasting my time on such a meaningless art form. Because the sculptures she made out of actual trash were so much more meaningful and important.

  So instead I gave backhanded stereotyping insults, hoping it would tick her off enough that she wouldn't speak to me for another six months.

  "Mother," she corrected. She wanted me to call her "Mother" as a sign of respect, so I basically called her Pearl every chance I got. I guess I'd called her Pearl one too many times.

  I knew what she was doing and why, but I chose to play dumb. "Mother? Is Grandma there with you?"

  "No, I'm reminding you to call me Mother."

  "Sure thing, Pearl." I knew this made me sound like a total brat, but you had to know her.

  She glared at me and then said, "We will resume this discussion when you stop being so deliberately obtuse." She disconnected from our video chat.

  I let out a squawk of indignation. Had my own mother just called me fat?

  Chapter 7

  The next morning at school the rumor mill was spiraling out of control. I heard whispers and snatches of conversation saying that Jake had tired of Ella and dumped her. "Hey! She broke up with him!" I told a group of juniors, but I could tell none of them believed me.

  I ran into Ella right before English and expressed my total outrage over the gossip.

  She just shrugged. "People will believe what they want to believe."

  "What if Jake started the rumors?" It would be one more thing to hold against him.

  "He wouldn't do that. But even if he did, if it makes it easier for him to let people think he dumped me, I'm okay with that."

  See? She was too good to be true.

  I stood there staring at her. "How are you not mad?" I'd want his head on a pike. Okay, not really because it's Jake, but a little maiming might be in order.

  She spun the dial on her locker and pulled the door open. While putting her books away, she said, "I try not to sweat the small stuff. But like I said, Jake just wouldn't do something like this. His friends, maybe, but not Jake." She got what she needed for her next class and shut her locker.

  "Everything will be fine. Go to class." Ella said as she pushed me in the direction of my classroom.

  She walked away from me and I saw several sets of eyes follow her, and heard the dramatic "whispers" and giggles as she passed. It wouldn't do me any good to go to each of those people and tell them the truth. Jake Kingston was always the dumper, not the dumpee, and he had the trail of broken hearts to prove it.

  Including mine.

  My English class was only a few doors down from the headmistress's office. Angry all over again, I stalked over to the bulletin board outside Ms. Rathbone's office, grabbed the pencil hanging down, and wrote my name in big block letters right under Jake's.

  "So, you're running for president too?" I could hear the amusement in his voice.

  I turned to see Jake smiling down at me, as if he found me funny. "Apparently." I dropped the pencil and went to class. He followed slowly behind me. I threw my bag on the floor and took out my notebook, determined to ignore him. I didn't watch as he slid into his seat and made a point to not study the back of his head.

  The bell rang, and Ms. Aprils stood up from behind her desk. She was an extremely tiny woman, and reminded me of a small, brown mouse with her bland brown hair and the beige wraparound sweater she always wore. She took an upside-down hat off of her desk and shook it a few times. I heard rustling paper.

  "For your first project of the year, you will be assigned a classic work that you will retell in a new medium. You will select your work by pulling it out of this hat." She held it slightly higher so that everyone could see it.

  She walked through the aisles, stopping every so often to allow one of the students to pull a paper out. "Last year we had a puppet show. Another group did an online blog of the character's internal thoughts," she said as she shook the hat up again. "Someone else told the story through a series of tweets. I want you to use your world to tell this tale."

  Ms. Aprils walked right up to me and gave me the evil eye as she held the hat out in front of me.

  Please not Twain, please not Twain. She'd fail me for sure no matter what I did if I got him. I reached in and took a folded strip of paper. I opened it and read the words Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I tried really hard not to smile. I couldn't have picked a better book. I loved Jane Austen, and Pride and Prejudice was my favorite.

  She walked past Jake and stopped at the girl in front of him so she could draw out a title. "The project will be due next Friday." As soon as I picked my paper, I had been thinking I could do a manga retelling, turn it into more of an adventure story by making the Bennet sisters warriors. But I didn't know if two weeks would be enough time.

  "And we're going to be working in pairs."

  A small groan rumbled through the class, while some girls started whispering and planning to be paired up together. That should be somewhat better. Maybe I'd get paired with someone exceptionally smart and hard-working and we could get the project done quickly.

  "I thought the easiest way to select partners was to simply have you turn around. The person behind you is your partner."

  I made a strangled noise. I was last in the row. No one sat behind me. Which meant…

  Jake turned around slowly and my heart actually stopped. Literally stopped. Like, I worried they'd have to take me to the emergency room to jump-start it back up again.

  "You have the next ten minutes to confer briefly with your partner."

  "What did we get?" Jake asked. I handed him the strip of paper. He looked at it and then back at me. "I don't really know this story, sorry."

  He gave me the movie star smile, and a marching band started a beat in my stomach. Right then I didn't know who I was more mad at—me for still responding like that to him, or Jake for being a total douchebag yesterday and pretending like we were best buddies today. Jerk.

  "I think that's sort of the point. That we read the book first and then decide how to retell it." To my disgust, my voice cracked while I was talking to him. I could feel my face starting to flush.

  The paper fell from between his long, lean fingers on to my desk. "I'm not sure I'll have time to read a book and do the project. Isn't there like a movie version or something?"

  "A couple," I nodded, looking down at the paper on my desk instead of his dark brown eyes. "I actually own the most recent one. We could watch it at my house."

  "So, you know the story."

  I nodded again.

  "That's good."

  Jake leaned toward me so that I could smell his yummy boy cologne smell. It was confusing my senses and scrambling my brain. "Any ideas?"

  He was all smiles, brow
n twinkling eyes and shiny dark hair. I had lots and lots of ideas when it came to Jake. Unfortunately, he was talking about the project.

  "I…I was thinking we could do a manga retelling. You know, like anime but in a graphic novel."

  He looked slightly insulted. "I know what manga is." Then he leaned in closer. What was that cologne? I didn't know what it was, but it made me feel like one of those girls in the Axe commercials who throw the guys on the floor and start kissing them. I had to lean back in order to control myself. I also tried to single-handedly suck all of the oxygen in the room into my lungs and hold it there. If I didn't breathe, I couldn't smell him.

  "And that sounds like a good idea," he said. Then he did something so unexpected I was amazed that I didn't spontaneously combust.

  He reached out and took my right hand in both of his. My first thought was that my hands which had always seemed too large actually looked small next to his. My second through fiftieth thought was Jake Kingston is touching me! Jake Kingston is touching me! Actual tingles started everywhere that he touched and raced up my arm. His hands felt warm and strong. I didn't need to worry about holding my breath, because I had forgotten how to breathe.

  Jake turned my hand this way and that way and smiled lazily as if he knew exactly the effect he had on me. "Since it sounds like you already know the story so well, maybe you could just draw everything up and put my name on it. No need for both of us to be tortured. Once you finish, we could grab some dinner and you could tell me what to say in our presentation. What do you think?"

  My mind seized on the "grab some dinner" line and realized that Jake had just asked me out! To dinner! I had imagined this moment so many times that it didn't feel real. But it was real! Jake had just asked me to "grab some dinner" with him! Everything inside me started to melt until I realized what he had actually said.

  Wait.

  My Jake blinders fell off and instead of everything being soft and hazy it was painfully sharp and bright.

  I realized he was messing with me, and I was gullible enough to be falling for it. Again. Flirting was as normal and natural for Jake as being a slob was for me. I felt so incredibly stupid to be taken in by it. He was trying to charm me into doing the work for him. I was so, so dumb.