“This is cute… right?” I asked hesitantly, holding up a greenish-yellow sweater-thing with big coffee-colored buttons for Tegan’s inspection. She slowly took it from my hands and just stared at it. I couldn’t read her expression at all, which just made me all the more nervous. I’m not gonna lie, my heart was beating pretty furiously against my chest in anticipation. God, it was like forging my parent’s signature for the first time in third grade and turning it in for inspection by grumpy old Mrs. Heinemann.
Tegan looked up. The corners of her mouth lifted a bit in a smile and I felt a feather of hope raising from my stomach as she lifted up the sweater with both hands.
And then she proceeded to smack the hell out of me with it.
“You useless, good-for-nothing teenage boy that can’t shop for crap!” Tegan shrieked at ear-piercing levels. I was too busy defending myself from her unrelenting blows to cover my ears in response. With one final whack, she stopped beating me with the garment and threw it back onto the “Sale” pile.
“W-what’s so wrong with it?” Immediately, my hands shot up to protect my face as I braced for possible impact. Seeking no imminent threat, I lower them and open my eyes to face Tegan’s narrow-eyed glower.
“What’s. Wrong. With it?” Tegan growled at me. “Are you asking what’s wrong with it?”
“Yes. I mean no! I mean… just don’t hurt me!”
I threw my hands up again just in time because Tegan started pummeling me with her girl-claws screaming, “You don’t buy a puke-colored fugly-as-hell, shapeless granny sweater for a teenage girl on her sixteenth birthday! The hell’s the matter with you!”
“Okay, okay, I get it. Stop scratching me!” We made quite a sight. A small redheaded girl clawing a scrawny teenage boys’s face off with her nails in the middle of J. Crew.
Tegan sighed. “Well, what does she dress like?”
I frowned. “Natalie? You’ve seen her before around school.”
“Well, yes, but I need to know what she looks like from your point of view. What sticks out in your mind. I can’t get her a present using my own knowledge. It’d be too awesome; she’d get suspicious.”
Rolling my eyes at her arrogant logic, I say, “Well, she likes wearing flowy dresses, I guess… usually never above the knee, I’ve noticed. Err, she wears weird socks all the time…. Um, oh! And she always wears colorful sweater-things. Like the one I picked out.”
“A cardigan?”
“Sure.” Huh. So that’s what it’s called.
Tegan put her hand on her hip and surveyed the entire store by turning in one slow circle in place. I watched her as she snapped into action, walked across the store and picked up a dress on the other side. She walked back to me, shoved it in my hands, and said, “Buy this.”
The dress was made from some thin floral-printed white material layered over a silk underlay of some kind. It was delicate and pretty. Suited Natalie fairly well, I must add.
Until I saw the price tag.
“F-f-f-f-fahh,” I spluttered. A hundred sixteen dollars? For a dress?
“Laurie, be a man and spend outrageous amounts of money on your girlfriend. It’s part of the job description of boyfriend.” Tegan urged.
“It certainly is not! You know how many gigs I had to play to save up for my future car? This is like ten of them all put together!”
YOU ARE READING
The Adventures of a Scrawny Musician and a Compulsive Liar
Teen FictionThere's not much that's special about Laurence. His grades are average, his athletic skills are average, his social skills are nonexistent, and his muscles? Psh, don't even start. However, he does have one talent: music. Scrawny ol' Laurence can pla...
