Free Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret by Vicki Grant Page A

little bit. He has to.
    This could be my only chance.
    He gasped again. I should go to him.
    I peeked around the tree, my heart all full and ready as if I was waiting for him to arrive on that very first date, and then I realized what an idiot I was.
    Nick wasn’t thinking about me. He wasn’t crying. He was gasping because he was doing push-ups.
    What else would he have been doing? It was twelve-thirty. When he was on the late shift at Jitters, he always worked out at noon. He always ran from his place to Larry O’Connell Field because it was exactly 5K. (I was the one who’d driven the route to check the distance for him.) Now he was going to do sit-ups and crunches and lunges, then he’d run around Citadel Hill, down Spring Garden Road and home. Shower, shave, at work by three.
    My life had been totally destroyed, but Nick was still running on schedule.
    I rolled back to the far side of the tree and covered my face with my scaly hand. The image of him with his sweaty hair and bare chest was tattooed on my eyelids. I knew then that I’d never get away from it, ever, even if I wanted to.
    He was perfect. And I wasn’t.
    No wonder he’d dumped me for Carly.
    I hid behind the tree until Nick got up and ran away.

Chapter 12
    A week later, I was sitting at the dining room table, actually having dinner with my family again. If I smelled bad, nobody was mentioning it.
    â€œYou must be exhausted!” Mom said, and dished me out a sumo-sized helping of pasta primavera. (She was a big believer in slender, but skinny scared her. It had a bad-mother ring to it.)
    â€œOh, yeah. Beat,” I said. Exhaustion—real or faked— was my best friend these days. It gave me a reason not to talk, a reason not to finish my dinner, a reason to excuse myself from the table early and watch how-to cleaning videos in my room.
    Mom smiled and shook her head like poor thing . Or maybe it was more like thank god . The truth is we were both relieved I was getting out of bed most mornings now and going to work. It occupied my time and, in a weird way, actually made life easier for everyone. It providedmy family with a story they could live with: I had a job. I was doing something productive. They didn’t need to worry about me any more. There was still a chance I’d get myself all straightened away in time for university in the fall. They didn’t need to know the truth.
    I could tell by the way Dad scratched his ear when the subject first surfaced that he wasn’t keen about his honour roll daughter becoming a cleaning lady even for the summer, but he came around. Mom just did her PR thing and spun it into something he could like. Betsy has her own business! That shows gumption, enthusiasm, energy! They were both so proud and excited No one needed to concern themselves about me being lonely any more either. They could stop saying embarrassing things like, “I ran into Annie-Mae MacKinnon today. Sweet girl. Why don’t you give her a call?” Or, “I see they’re having a dance at the Saraguay Club this Friday. Could be fun …” That part of my life was all taken care of now. I had a new friend.
    It was ironic, really. What if I’d dumped all my old friends and shown up with Dolores two months ago? What if—and this was even better—Hank had announced he was dating Dolores instead of pretty little Marnie Breed? How fabulous would my parents have thought she was then? I could just hear them buzzing away behind their bedroom door, frantically trying tofigure out some politically correct, morally responsible but absolutely foolproof way to get Dolores out of our lives.
    Under the current circumstances, though, Dolores was “a great girl. One of a kind!” Her only fault, apparently, was that she was a bit of a slave-driver. I was too pooped after work to go out and have fun.
    Mom just totally made that part up, but who cared? If that’s what she needed