Breaking Walls (12 page)

I nodded. It was the most I could muster.

Finally pushing himself off the door of Room 115, he joined me in the middle of the hall. His hands found his pockets as I crossed mine at my chest. We started moving slowly toward the front reception area, neither of us walking all too quickly.

“How’ve you been, Mandy?” he asked, glancing down at me from the corner of his eye.

“Fine.”

Don’t ask him. Don’t ask him how he’s been.
Freeze—him—out.

I’m here, Gabe. I’m standing right in front of you, and I’m not going anywhere.

Shut up! That was before. That was
before
you found out about him and Bailey. You don’t owe him anything. Not now.

“Hey, while I’ve got you,” I said, talking loud enough to drown out the voices in my brain
, “can I run something by you?”

“Sure,” he said, and we stopped off at the reception desk to sign out. Gabe signed his name first, passing me the clipboard after he was done.

“Have a good evening, Gabe,” the cute receptionist said, and he nodded to her with a smile.

“You too, Sara.”

“Miss Parker,” she nodded. “Thank you for visiting Evergreen.”

I smiled and nodded, turning away just as Gabe did, and we both walked through the glass doors.

“So what did you want to talk about?” he asked, scanning the parking lot for my car. I pointed over to the back corner of the lot, suddenly realizing that we were parked only two cars away from one another. We walked in that direction, still moving slowly.

“Well, do you have an extra minute?” I asked. “I have a notebook in the car. It’s just an RI thing.”

“Oh.” He kept his hands in his pockets and his eyes focused on the ground. “Okay, yeah. What kind of thing?”

“Just an event proposal,” I said. “Lashell left early last night, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to her. I know we’re getting close to the end, and I have a really great idea. I just thought that maybe you could look over what I’ve outlined, give me some feedback.”

We stopped off at my car, and I reached in the backseat to grab my bag. I threw it up on the hood, unzipped the largest pocket, and opened it, but the notebook was gone.

“Oh,” I said, closing my eyes. I could’ve sworn I’d packed it last night before I left for the church. “It’s not here.”

Okay.
Think
. Where was the last place I had it? I put together a list of ideas in the notebook, called Julia and the library, printed off a mock-flier at home, and then dropped both of them in the bag before I headed out to the—

“It’s okay,” he said, glancing down at his watch. “I don’t need to see anything, just tell me what you had in mind. What’s your plan?”

“Oh, okay, sure,” I said, taking a few deep breaths.
Crap
! This is exactly why I hadn’t pitched it in the first place! I needed those visual aids to help me through my presentation, to really drive the point home. I couldn’t believe I’d lost them! “Because we’re running short on time, I wanted to guarantee as many days as we could to advertise the event. I was thinking of maybe doing it the last Thursday of the program. The 17th.”

He shook his head. “That won’t work. We already have an event that night.”

“We do?” I asked, but then I quickly shook it off. “It doesn’t matter. Any night will work. I wasn’t married to the idea. I’m just spit-balling here.”

“What’s the event?”

“Well, as I’m sure you’re aware,” I started, trying to steady my nervous breath, “the Sugar Creek Public Library cut funding to the children’s reading program last year.”

He scrunched his brow and tilted his head back, watching me from the corner of his eye.

“I know that one of the big aims for the Raddick Initiative is community outreach,” I said. “I thought we could host a kid’s reading night at the local library. It’ll be something very similar to the program they used to run, but it’ll be completely volunteer-generated. The library’s already agreed to lending the space and books. I’ve secured refreshments. Even with a short amount of time to generate some buzz, if we can gather up a small group of kids, it’ll be amazing. If the first night goes well, then maybe we can continue after the RI program adjourns. I’m excited. I mean, I met this one little girl— ”

“Mandy, just stop,” he said, putting his hand up. “I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t know if you’re working as a team and you guys got your wires crossed, or if great minds really do think alike, but Lashell already approved this idea last night.
”

“No, no she left before—”

“Carla proposed the event yesterday evening. We’ve already agreed. It’s a great idea.”

“She
what
?”

Oh—my—God. I looked back down to my empty book bag and closed my eyes. I’d left it hanging in the kitchen while I worked the line out front last night. I’d left my coat, my purse, my bag—all of my plans for my big proposal—right there, right within her reach. And she’d taken it.

“Listen, I hate to cut this short, but I’ve gotta run,” he said, looking down to his watch again. “Fletcher’s show— ”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, blinking. “But Gabe, listen—”

“It was good catching up with you, Mandy. I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with for the program.”

Chapter Nine

The drive back to Sugar Creek was a long one, and not because of the traffic. In only a matter of minutes, something changed for me. Something snapped. Not only had Carla kept my original dance plans to deliberately stand in my way of succeeding in the competition, but she’d gone into my book bag, stolen my personal property, and used it
against
me to further herself in the competition. What kind of malicious monster does something like that?

“One student, please,” I said, sliding money across the table. I collected my change and ticket for the show and met up with a familiar face. Mary Chris, another one of Georgia’s friends and a writer for the school paper, was covering tonight’s performance for review in the
Sugar Creek High Herald
.

“This place is packed tonight.” She scanned the crowd. The seating was first come first serve, so Mary Chris and I snagged a couple of empty seats a few rows from the back. “Do you see the rest of your RI group?” she asked, looking over the buzzing crowd. “I saw a few of the juniors on the way in.”

“Yeah, me too.”

With Fletcher being backstage and ready to tackle his lead role in
Little Shop
, I knew I wouldn’t see his face anywhere in the crowd. He’d be backstage getting into costume and make-up, or whatever it was that stage actors did in the ten minutes leading up to the opening number.

As I, like Mary Chris, looked around the growing crowd of people scattering to find seats, I eventually spotted each and every other member of our district’s RI team. Gabe came in shortly after us and sat near the front. He draped a jacket over the chair next to his as if to save the spot for someone—Lashell, I assumed, since he’d told his mother that she’d be here.

Mary Chris opened the program and read over the actor bios before she got down to business and jotted some pre-performance notes. As she did that, I looked back to the crowd and watched as Carla and her friends took the empty row directly behind Gabe’s. She leaned up, placed her hand on his shoulder, and he turned fully in his chair to meet her gaze. They sat talking for a few minutes, and she flipped her hair, smiled, and laughed . . . you know, all the flirtatious moves she’d perfected in his presence.

When he turned back in his chair to face the stage again, Carla got up and left her friends alone in the row. She was headed for the auditorium doors that connected to the high school’s main hallway—most likely headed in the direction of the bathroom.

I excused myself from my seat to follow her. I didn’t know what I was going to say or do. All I knew was that Carla had betrayed me once, and that might’ve been my own fault. But what she did last night was beyond forgivable. She
couldn’t
think that I would just walk away and not say anything. She had to have known that I would eventually find out what she’d done. And while I was fully aware of the fact that this probably wasn’t the time or place to confront her, I kept powering down the hallway, stomping louder with each fast step I took. I couldn’t talk myself into turning around.

“Hey,” I said, catching up with Carla in the empty bathroom down the hall. She stood in front of the mirror applying her lip gloss, but the wand stopped on her lips when she caught my reflection behind her.

“What do you want, Mandy?” she asked, dipping the wand back into the tube and twisting it shut. There it was, the familiar, nasty tone she’d given me back at the diner. I should’ve known she reserved it for the times when we were alone.

“You and I need to have a talk.”

“So you cornered me in the bathroom?”

“I’m not cornering you,” I said.

“What do you want?” she asked, turning to face me.

“If you would’ve asked me yesterday, I would’ve said
that I wanted to clear the air,” I started. “Because I did. I still don’t know what I did to upset you, and maybe I’ll never know. If it’s really because of what happened at the park, then you need to understand that I didn’t do that as some underhanded attempt to get pity from everyone. I don’t want to win like that. I only showed up at that park because I truly thought it was the last chance I’d ever have to say goodbye to Gabe.”

“You could’ve lost the whole competition for us with that stupid stunt, Mandy.”

“And I’m sorry,” I said again.
How many times was she going to make me apologize?
“I would never intentionally do anything to risk losing this competition—not for you, not for me, not for any of our friends—”

“Surely you don’t think
we’re
friends,” she said, tucking the lip gloss tube into the front pocket of her purse.

“No, I don’t. But as members of the same district team, I
don’t understand why we couldn’t put the hostility behind us.” She gnawed on her lip. “Why did you have to make this so personal?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe I just like the fact that you’re desperate for my approval.”

“It’s not your approval that I’m after,” I said. “I just wanted us to get along for the sake of the program. See, I got left out of the loop on some pretty crucial information this week. I found out on Wednesday evening that you’d organized the Neighborhood Enhancement project, and for some reason, Fletcher and I never heard about it.”

“You know, I’m pretty sure I told both of you,” she said, scratching her head. “Then again, maybe I forgot.”

“You didn’t want me there, and quite frankly, after the way I found out about it, I didn’t want to be there,” I said. “You organized that event last-minute and intentionally kept us in the dark. And I get that you’re out to sabotage my chances at winning, but what did Fletcher ever do to you? He deserved to know.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I
do
. You never told me, you never told him, but you made sure everyone else knew, didn’t you?

“It’s my word against yours,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what the truth is; it only matters what Gabe and Lashell believe, and they believed me.”

“Are we seriously going to do this?” I asked. “You
can’t
keeping letting your anger get in the way of what we’re trying to accomplish as a team. We’ve been in this together from the start. We should go out the same way we came in.”

“If you cared anything about this team, Mandy, then you would’ve thought about the
consequences before you charged the stage at the park and risked forfeiting the entire competition for
all
of us. You were stupid and selfish, and now you’re getting what you deserve. I will lie, cheat, and steal my way through this program if it means crushing your hopes and dreams the same way you nearly crushed all of ours. You don’t deserve to be here, and you know it. This program is about collaboration and positive change, and the
only
thing you’ve cared about from the start is yourself. No one as selfish as you deserves to be anywhere near this program.”

I stared at her, blinking so slowly that my eyes stung every time my eyelids fell.

“Carla,” I said, feeling a lump in my throat as it grew thicker.
Couldn’t she hear herself?
She’d lie, steal, and cheat to win, and yet she had the nerve to call me selfish? “I
love
this team. I am so proud of everything we’ve already accomplished and everything that we have to look forward to. And yeah, you’re right. I
can
admit that I was selfish by showing up at the park, and I’m so, so sorry. I’ve apologized a dozen times, and I’m trying to make this right. I’m not asking you to be my best friend or to even like me. I just want us to get over this petty arguing and move forward.”

“You only want my forgiveness because you want the
reins of your stupid dance back,” she said, crossing her arms at her chest. “But guess what? You’re not getting it.”