Getting Even Read online

  For a moment, they both stood there, their arms crossed, as they went for different books. Annie began to disentangle herself, and the other person said, “Excuse me.”

  “Sorry,” Annie muttered, and looked up to see whom she was apologizing to. She smiled to herself as she realized it was one awfully good-looking boy. He had a well-put-together collegiate look: He was well-dressed, with thick, reddish-brown hair and green eyes, and was a couple of inches taller than she was. He also looked just a touch older.

  The boy smiled at her. He had great teeth, thousands of them, all white and shining. “You have great teeth,” Annie declared. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “Only my orthodontist,” the boy replied, offering Annie another dazzling sample of them. “And I think that was mostly to justify the insane amount he charged for braces.”

  “I wore braces for a while,” Annie said. “But I ended up with just an average set of teeth.”

  “Let me see,” the boy said, so Annie opened her mouth for him to look.

  “You underrate your teeth,” the boy said. “Those are fine teeth.”

  Annie giggled, and the boy laughed. “I guess we’re not here to buy self-help books for our teeth,” she said.

  “Which one did you pick?” he asked, and Annie showed him. “Who are you angry at?” he asked. “Not me, I hope.”

  “I think it’s a little premature for me to be angry at you,” Annie replied. She couldn’t believe how relaxed she was being. She knew she owed it all to Image and their endless articles on how to talk to boys about just about anything. “Give me a chance though, and I’m sure I’ll manage.”

  “I’ll take you up on that,” the boy said.

  “What are you getting?” Annie asked, hoping her thumping heart wasn’t about to take a giant leap and land on the floor beside them.

  “How to Cope with Crazy Parents,” the boy said, showing Annie the book.

  “Oh,” Annie said. “You have crazy parents, huh?”

  “My father more than my mother,” the boy said. “He’s getting married again next month, and I’m expected to be part of the wedding party.”

  “That must be rough,” Annie said. “Have your parents been divorced very long?”

  “Forever,” the boy replied. “I’m adjusted to that, or at least as adjusted as you ever get. Actually, if my parents had stayed married, things would be a lot worse. They were totally mismatched.”

  “I guess you don’t like the woman your father is marrying, then,” Annie said.

  “She’s all right,” the boy said. “I’ve only met her a couple of times, but she could be a lot worse. She could be a lot older too, but that’s not for me to say. If she doesn’t mind the fact Dad is twenty years older than she is, why should I?”

  “So why is your father crazy?” Annie asked. “If you don’t mind telling a total stranger.”

  “Tell you what,” the boy said. “My name is Chris Wainwright. What’s your name?”

  “Annie Powell.”

  “Now we aren’t total strangers,” Chris declared. “So I can tell you anything you want to hear about my father. But only if you tell me what you’re so mad about. So I’ll know what to avoid in our future relationship.”

  Annie was thrilled to hear him say “future relationship.”

  “How about if we buy our books, and carry our relationship somewhere else?” Annie suggested.

  “Like Bart’s Ice Cream Parlor,” Chris replied. “Fine. Let’s pay for our future happiness and get out of here.”

  They paid for their books and then walked outside. The sun was shining brightly, and ice cream sounded perfect to Annie. The whole world was looking just a little better to her now that she had Chris Wainwright by her side.

  They walked over to the ice cream parlor, found a vacant booth, and discussed what to order. They both ended up getting sundaes, full of syrup, nuts, and whipped cream. Image would no longer be thrilled with her, Annie decided. She didn’t care.

  “You first,” Annie said, as they waited for their sundaes. “Crazy parents are bound to be more interesting than what I’m angry about.”

  “It’s a little embarrassing,” Chris replied.

  “Your father is remarrying,” Annie prompted him. “Come on, you can tell me. It’s not like we’re perfect strangers.”

  “Old friends are the best friends,” Chris said. “Okay, the thing is my father is not exactly a stranger to getting married.”

  “You have another stepmother?” Annie asked.

  “I have an army of them,” Chris said. “This is Dad’s sixth marriage.”

  “You’re kidding,” Annie said, taking a quick vow never to get angry at her parents again. “He’s been married five times already?”

  Chris nodded. “You’ve heard of serial murderers?” he asked. “Well, Dad’s a serial marrier. Every couple of years or so he meets the woman who’s going to be just perfect for him, and he divorces the last perfect one and marries the new perfect one.”

  “How awful,” Annie said. “How long has he been doing this?”

  “When he and Mom got married, it was the first time for both of them,” Chris replied. “And to give them credit, it lasted five years, which is my father’s personal best. That’s why they had me. Because they both honestly believed that the marriage was going to last. Only then Dad met perfect wife number two, and he and Mom decided a divorce was preferable to murder, so they split up. I was about three, I guess. I only have vague memories of Dad’s second marriage. I was the ring-bearer, but I was also the ring-bearer for wedding number three, when I was seven, so I tend to get those weddings mixed up. Then by number four, I was already eleven, so I was an usher. Then came a dry spell, where Dad was a swinging bachelor, and he didn’t get married again until I was sixteen, and I was best man. I’m supposed to be best man again. I already have the tux, so I guess it won’t be a problem.”

  “And your mother?” Annie asked. “Does she get married a lot too?”

  “Mom remarried when I was eleven,” Chris replied. “That was a great year. Two weddings in six months. She married a man who was substantially older and substantially richer than she was, and she immediately settled in to life as a not-very-happy society wife. You know the kind.”

  Annie didn’t really but she nodded anyway.

  “None of this is tragic,” Chris assured her. “It’s more a nuisance than anything else. Dad’s brides keep getting younger, and by wife number seven, I just may be older than she is. It’s just a farce really, but after a while it gets tiresome, and I don’t want to show up at the wedding acting as if it’s as doomed to disaster as all the rest of Dad’s marriages. It wouldn’t be fair to Mariel. I think that’s her name. God, for two years, I’m going to have a stepmother named Mariel.”

  “Maybe this time it will be different,” Annie said. “Maybe this time it’ll last four years.”

  Chris laughed. “That would be nice,” he said. “That way I could make it through the rest of my college education without having to go to another wedding.”

  “You’re a freshman?” Annie asked.

  “At Harvard,” Chris replied. “And you?”

  She thought a minute and then decided to be honest. “High school senior.” Harvard man, she thought, not bad.

  “You seem older,” Chris said. “I would have thought you were already in college.”

  “I am a woman of the world,” Annie declared, but then their sundaes arrived, and she dove into hers without caring how unwomanly she seemed.

  “What do you mean?” Chris asked. “About being a woman of the world.”

  “Nothing,” Annie said. “Just that I spent last summer working in New York, and I am incredibly bored already being back here.”

  “New York’s a great city,” Chris said. “My stepfather keeps an apartment there, and we used to go up there a few times a year. Where did you work?”

  “I was a summer intern at Image magazine,” Annie said.

&nb
sp; “Great,” Chris said, but he didn’t sound overly impressed. “Where did you live?”

  “At the Abigail Adams Hotel for Women,” Annie said.

  “Ah,” Chris said. “Just the place for women of the world.”

  “So I’m not a woman of the world,” Annie admitted. “I’m still a woman of the hemisphere.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Chris said. “In a couple of years, you’ll be just right for my father.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Annie said sharply.

  “Sorry,” Chris said. “So what are you angry about?”

  “Life,” Annie replied. “Just high school stuff.”

  “I remember high school stuff,” Chris said. “I have vague memories of those prehistoric days.”

  “I only wish they were prehistoric,” Annie said. “Right now I feel like I’m thirty years old stuck in the body of a—” She started to say sixteen-year-old, but suddenly that sounded far too babyish. And she wasn’t going to turn seventeen for another three weeks. “Body of a teenager,” she said lamely. “Teenager’s body.”

  “You don’t have to keep reminding me of it,” Chris said. “From what I remember at the bookstore, it’s a real nice body.”

  “Thank you,” Annie said, trying not to blush.

  “So you’re angry because you’re bored,” Chris said. “Anything else going on I should know about?”

  Annie shook her head. “I had a ridiculous fight with my mother,” she said. “And she was right, so that only made me madder. I mean, she wasn’t completely right, but she was right enough to show me that I was more wrong than she was, which is fighting dirty if you ask me.”

  “You live at home, then,” Chris said.

  “It seems the place to be,” Annie replied.

  “I went to boarding school,’ Chris said. “I always figured it must be nice living at home with your parents. Is your father around too?”

  “The last I heard,” Annie said, polishing off her sundae. “My parents really like each other, so I guess they’re going to stay married for a while.” She couldn’t even imagine them divorcing, but decided that might be tactless to say. Not that she and Chris were off to the most tactful of starts.

  “There are guys like that in my dorm,” Chris said. “Guys from genuinely happy families. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “A brother, Michael,” Annie replied. “He’s a sophomore at Dartmouth. How about you?”

  “My stepfather has a couple of kids,” Chris said. “But they’re both a lot older than I am. And lots of Dad’s ex-wives have remarried, and had kids, but I don’t think they’re really related to me. Sometimes they send me birth announcements, but that’s about the only contact I have with them. So basically I’m an only child.”

  “You must have been lonely,” Annie said.

  “School helped,” Chris replied. “The sorts of schools I went to, I was nothing unusual. In fact, my mother was a hotbed of stability compared to most of the kids’ mothers. So it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. And I actually do like my father. It’s not his fault he’s crazy. He’s really quite a charming man except for about two weeks when he’s breaking up his current marriage.” He paused to smile at Annie. “What about your childhood?” he asked.

  “Very intellectual,” Annie said. “Extremely unexotic. Michael and I would do things like memorize all of Romeo and Juliet’s scenes together. Only I’d memorize Romeo’s part, and Michael was Juliet. His voice was changing too, so half the time he did the part in falsetto, and the other half the time he didn’t have to. It was pretty silly. But we did go to Red Sox games four or five times a year. I guess that’s about as exotic as it got. I only made it to one game this year, because I spent the summer in New York. We went to Yankee Stadium once, but it wasn’t the same thing. Booing the Yankees isn’t much fun unless you’re at Fenway.”

  “The Sox are out of it this year,” Chris declared. “So it shouldn’t be too hard to get tickets for Saturday’s game. Want to go?”

  “With you?” Annie asked.

  “That’s one possibility,” Chris said. “Can you think of a better one?”

  “Not offhand,” Annie admitted. She couldn’t believe he was asking her out. Even if he was only a freshman, he was a Harvard man, and he was asking her out. She tried to sound calm as she accepted. “I’d like that. Actually, I’d like that a lot.”

  “How about if I walk you home,” Chris said. “So I’ll know where you live, and then I can pick you up on Saturday in time for the game. Or we could have lunch together first, so we won’t pig out on hot dogs. Or we could have lunch and pig out on hot dogs anyway. What do you say?”

  “Definitely lunch,” Annie said. “That allows us the option of pigging out or not.”

  “Right,” Chris said. “You are a woman of the world.”

  “Quick,” Annie said. “What’s my name again?”

  “Annie something,” Chris said. “Lowell, maybe?”

  “Close enough,” Annie said. “Powell.”

  “Do you remember my last name?” Chris asked her.

  “Cartwright?” Annie asked, although she knew perfectly well it was Wainwright. No point letting him get a swelled head, though.

  “Wainwright,” Chris corrected her. “Would you like to see my ID?”

  “Sure,” Annie said, and Chris took out his wallet and spread it all out in front of her. His name was Christopher Fowler Wainwright and he was just eighteen years old, a freshman at Harvard, and licensed to drive a car. Annie felt reassured looking at all the cards that spelled out just who Chris Wainwright was.

  “A girl can’t be too careful,” she said, getting up from the booth. “Being picked up at a bookstore by some stranger with beautiful teeth.”

  “These are honest teeth with honorable intentions,” Chris declared, getting up along with her. “Notice how, trusting fool that I am, I’m not asking to see your ID. You’re probably a spy, or a diamond smuggler, or something equally nefarious and interesting, and I am your helpless prey.”

  “I only wish,” Annie replied, although actually her own life wasn’t sounding too awful to her anymore. “All the best spies are recruited in high school, you know. I just happened to be out sick the day they came here.”

  “That’s the way of life,” Chris said, and he and Annie began their walk toward her home. “So you were an intern at Image, right? What did that entail? What kind of work?”

  “It was wonderful,” Annie replied, and had begun telling him all about it when she noticed Chris walking toward a newsstand.

  “The new Real Boston is out,” Chris said. “Want to get a copy?”

  “Sure,” Annie said. She almost never read Real Boston, but she didn’t want Chris to think she was too unsophisticated to. So she plunked down her seventy-five cents and bought one.

  “You were telling me about Image,” Chris said.

  “What do you want to know?” Annie asked him.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Chris replied. “How about starting with everything, and then I’ll pick and choose from there.”

  “That sounds fine to me,” Annie said, marveling at how wonderful the truth could sometimes be.

  Chapter 4

  What was she doing there?

  Annie stood, hesitating before knocking on the door. She knew she was in the right place, because there was a little sign saying “Murray Levine Associates” and the person she was supposed to talk to was Murray Levine, himself. The Boston neighborhood wasn’t so great, but the building looked respectable. There weren’t any rats running through the hallways, and everybody she’d seen looked normal enough. And the elevator worked, which had to be a good sign. But what was she doing there?

  It was all Chris’s fault, she decided, trying to force her hand to knock. He was the one who’d made her buy Real Boston. Or else it was the fault of Make Your Anger Work for You. Or else it was the fault of the school system or her parents, or maybe it was her own fault for ever having be
en born. But whoever was responsible, there she was, and in a moment, she was going to have to knock on the door or run away. Those were the only two reasonable alternatives.

  Make Your Anger Work for You had turned out to be a splendid self-help book. Its primary message was “don’t get mad, get even,” which struck Annie as fine advice indeed. Show them what they’ve lost. Make them sorry they ever treated you that way. Be so great that they’ll spend the rest of their lives regretting what they so casually tossed away.

  Annie loved the sound of that. It was strong, positive advice, the sort she could imagine Image writers handing out, if they ever wrote articles on making your anger work for you. The trick of course was to figure out a system that would make everybody associated with the Bulletin rue the day they dumped her. And that wasn’t so easy to come up with. It wasn’t as if Image was going to offer her another summer internship, and even if it did, the Bulletin had already appreciated her for the one she’d had. And even if she did get to appear on Boston Morning, unless she broke the scandal of the century on the air, the Bulletin wouldn’t care. Besides, even if she did know the scandal of the century, the Bulletin would probably get more upset if she offered it to a rival high school newspaper.

  So she was stumped, as she turned through the pages of Real Boston, hoping to find an answer there. Much to her surprise, she did. It wasn’t an obvious sort of answer, and probably the Bulletin wouldn’t care at all, but at least it would make her feel better about herself. Make Your Anger Work for You was very big on feeling better about yourself. Until you did, you couldn’t make your anger work for you.

  The answer wasn’t in any of the articles, most of which had to do with politics and the current nurses’ strike. It wasn’t in the columns, or the cartoons, or the many reviews. Instead the answer showed itself to Annie in a little ad:

  Needed: Ambitious youth to work part

  time at an established Boston public

  relations firm. Low salary. Great

  learning opportunity. Call Murray