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My mother cut my mental ramblings short. “Lance, you’re a strong, handsome young man. Do you think you can carry Tanya down the stairs? And of course, we’d love you to stay for dinner.”
“Of course, Mrs. Merritt,” my oh-so-gallant boyfriend replied, effortlessly gathering Tanya up in his brawny arms. With a smirk directed at me, Tanya wrapped her arms around Lance’s shoulders.
My hands were balled up into fists as I followed them down the stairs.
How hard would it be to give them a little shove?
I wanted her out of my life.
Whatever it took.
THIRTEEN
PAIGE
The next couple of days were a living hell. Everyone fawned over Tanya, who was hobbling around with the aid of her crutches. I swear if aliens descended upon us, they would have doted on her too.
There was one exception—yours truly, who resented having to do the littlest thing for her, just because she was incapacitated. Lance might as well have moved into our house because my parents needed him to carry her up the stairs in the evenings and down them in the mornings. Sometimes, he carried her in his arms, other times piggyback or caveman-style over his shoulder, the two of them forever giggling. More than once, I wanted to push them both down the long windy marble stairs. While my father could have likely schlepped her up and down, my mother feared he’d hurt his back, which flared up from time to time from an old tennis injury. Lance was more than happy to help out. A little too happy, if you asked me.
The physical closeness between Lance and Tanya gnawed at me like a flesh-eating wound. And it wasn’t limited to him helping her up and down our stairs. He drove her to school every morning and then back home, carried her books from class to class and, most disturbingly, hung out in her room to help her with her homework when I knew for a fact that he could barely do his own.
With both doors to her bedroom locked, I wondered what they were really doing. I often heard giggles if I put my ear to her bathroom door, other times music. I was setting myself up for doom. The inevitable. At some point, I expected to hear moans and groans that escalated into shrieks and grunts. There was a name for someone like me that I’d learned in my psych class: I was a masochist.
My only solace was my brother, Will. Hanging out with him on his geek throne, on Day Three of this madness, I told him my deepest, darkest fear: I was losing Lance to our manipulative exchange student.
“Have you confronted him?” Will asked.
“Yeah, I have. He thinks I’m acting jealous. Maybe paranoid.”
“Do you really want to know what’s going on behind closed doors?”
I pondered his question for a few seconds. Did I? Could I face the consequences of discovering my boyfriend was cheating on me with Tanya? I’d saved myself for Lance, but maybe she’d already beaten me to being his first. I felt a stab of pain in the pit of my stomach as I answered my brother’s question.
“Yes.”
Will flashed me his goofy I-can-solve-anything grin. He’d already replaced my doorknob with a new one that automatically locked from the outside when I closed my bedroom door. I needed a key to get back in, but the small inconvenience was worth it to keep Tanya out. I watched as he snapped his laptop open and began to press the keys. His dexterous fingers glided across the keyboard like a pianist’s. He flipped the computer around so the screen was facing me. I studied the image on the screen.
“What’s this?”
“A spy cam. I can order it online and have it here by tomorrow morning. We’ll ditch school early and I’ll install it. We can set up an app on both your phone and laptop and then, in the afternoon you can watch The Lance and Tanya Show.” He added air quotes.
I couldn’t help but laugh. He made it sound like some tacky talk show. Or another bad reality series.
“Aren’t you going to watch with me?”
My little brother pulled a face. “No way. Gross!”
I laughed again, my brother’s expression turning serious.
“Here’s the deal: If you see something you wish you hadn’t seen, you can’t go all emo on me. If you do, I’m done with Operation Tanya. End of.” He theatrically mimed wiping his hands clean.
“Deal!” I raised my hand to high-five him. His palm met mine with a stinging slap.
“Deal!”
Afterward, I thought about the consequences. On the one hand, I had nothing to lose.
On the other, I had everything to lose.
