Breaking Walls (17 page)

She shrugged again, and I was getting really tired of her nonchalant responses.

“Listen, you don’t have to forgive me,” she said. “I’m not even apologizing, so it’s not going to weigh too heavily on my conscience if you go to your grave angry. My point is that I have my own projects to focus on—projects that actually have potential to win, and I don’t want to waste another second putting forth effort into worthless events. The dance finale? That’s nothing more than a glorified party.”
Um, excuse me. What?
She was one of the main advocates for the idea back when we were still trying to convince Gabe to let us do it! Since when had she changed her mind? “It’s never going to generate enough money to make a dent in our fundraising total. I’ve been doing a lot of promoting here lately, and it just seems to me that no one’s really planning to come. It’s kind of a huge joke.”

“You’re wrong,” I said, closing the one notebook at the table that Carla hadn’t stolen from me. “You just don’t care about it the way I care about it, so you’re not pushing as hard as you can to make it a success. That finale has a lot of potential, but not if the one person backing it doesn’t care if it’s successful or not. Quite honestly, I know you don’t care. I think you
want
it to fail because it was my idea. I tried telling you this last week. If you couldn’t do it all on your own, or you just needed some extra hands, I was happy to help.”

“
Seriously, just shut up
!” She dropped her head back and looked up to the ceiling. “If you’d just stop talking for two seconds and listen, then you’d remember that I’ve already offered to give it back.” She snapped her head back down and looked at me, sliding the notebook across the table. I started to reach for it, but her hand fell on the front with a loud thud. “But only on one condition.”

“And what’s that?” I asked. “You just said you don’t believe in the project. You don’t have time or energy to devote to it. So why is this suddenly conditional?”

“Because I’m not stupid enough to just hand it over without getting something in return.”

“And what it is that you want?” I asked, and then her right eyebrow arched. “What do I have to do?”

“I already told you that my main concern is that you’re going to blow this competition for our entire team,” she said. “And with two weeks left, I have no doubt that you’ll find a way to do that yet. So I want to ensure that that won’t happen before I have a chance to collect my check.”

“Okay?”

“I want your promise that you’ll stay away from Gabe,” she said, lowering her face even closer. “Don’t look at him, don’t talk to him, don’t even acknowledge his existence when he comes around. If he talks to you, walk away. If he looks at you, turn around. I want your promise that you’ll leave him alone, and then I’ll back off. The dance is yours to keep, and the reading night is yours to plan.”

“Simple as that?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re still aware that Gabe’s our team leader, right?”

“Of course.”

“So then how am I supposed to shut him out? If he talks to me or needs information about something, then I have to answer him. I can’t ignore him
; I can’t be rude. I wouldn’t want a bad attitude to be the reason that I lose the competition.”

“Oh, honey,” she said, shaking her head
, “your attitude will be the
last
thing that loses this for you. I already told you the dance isn’t worth the time it’s been given, and the library night is just a joke. But if it makes you feel better having control again, then by all means. Agree to what I’m asking for, and it’s all yours.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“This is my demand for the benefit of the entire team. You’re not just putting yourself at risk with Gabe, but you’re sacrificing the potential for our whole district. We could lose because of your selfishness. Stay away from Gabe, promise that you won’t do anything else to hinder our progress, and then you and I will have nothing left to talk about.”

“Yeah, here’s the thing, Carla,” I said, looking down at my hands. “Ever since that day at the park, I
have
been staying away from Gabe. I don’t talk to him at the functions. He doesn’t come anywhere near me. I saw him over at the bookstore the other day, and I went out of my way to make sure we didn’t run into one another. I’m already keeping my distance, so I don’t know why you want a promise from me when I’m
already
doing what you want me to do.”

“I just want to hear it. If you’re already avoiding him, if there’s really nothing secretly going on, then you should have no problem making that commitment out loud. So do we have a deal or not? What do you want more
. . . Gabe or your events?”

“Oh, well
. . . when you put it like that, you’re right. There’s really no question about it.”

“So then we have a deal?”

“No.” I shook my head. “No, I choose Gabe.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I was
barely
on board when you started making demands,” I said, “but you sealed your fate pretty quickly with that request.” She stared at me breathlessly, and I shrugged my shoulder in the same careless manner she’d shrugged hers when she had the upper hand last week. “I don’t have some wicked plan to chase Gabe down. I’m not breaking my neck to get his attention. I’m not gonna go out of my way to ruin anything for this team. Gabe and I
will
be around one another, and we will be in the same room. He’s our district leader, Carla. It’s inevitable for him to look at me and talk to me, and I won’t be an infant and push him away just so that I can get ahead. I will remain kind and professional, but I won’t cross that line. This team is—”

“Oh my God,
I don’t care
about the stupid team!” she said, her face flushing redder. “I’ve never cared about it. I want you to leave Gabe alone— ”

“Because you like him,” I said, nodding. “Yeah, I know.
Everyone
knows. It’s not some super-huge secret, Carla. I already know you don’t care about the team. That wasn’t a big secret either. If you
ever
cared, then you wouldn’t have treated me the way you have for the last two weeks. You wouldn’t have taken my dance plans and refused to give them back, you wouldn’t have gone behind my back and scheduled functions without telling me, you wouldn’t have stolen from me, and you
wouldn’t
have just asked me to sacrifice something I love just so you could swoop in and take what you want for yourself. You called
me
selfish, and sure, maybe I can be. Where Gabe’s concerned, I’ve been nothing but selfish. But I would’ve never done to one of my teammates what you did to me…and to Fletcher! You made Fletcher suffer just because he’s my friend. How’s that fair?”

“You’re so pathetic, Mandy,” she said. “And you’re so stupid to waste your time. You know that Gabe’s never going to fall for someone like you, right?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know that.”

“Then let me take a moment to clear this up,” she said. “You may have his eye now, and he may even be blinded enough to think you’re somehow special, but your emotional baggage will prove itself to be too much work for him in the long-run. You’re just another project, something to keep his hands busy.”

“That’s not true . . . ”

“Oh, but it is.
Boo
, you’re sad.
Ouch
, you need fixed. And
oh
! Here comes Gabe to save the day.” She stared at me deadpan. “You can’t tell me that’s never happened.”

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

“I do,” she said, raising her chest with a confident breath. “He’s the do-gooder, and you’re the project. His only interest in you is fixing you. He doesn’t
care
about you. His priority is fixing every broken thing in his path. You just happened to be the project of interest this month.”

“How can you say that?”

“Here’s the golden part, Mandy,” she continued, ignoring me. “Here’s the big kicker. The main difference between you and the
thousands
of other projects he takes on, is that you’re one that’s just a little beyond repair. You—can’t—be—fixed. At the end of the day, you will always be selfish, superficial, and patronizing, and Gabe won’t be able to help but see you for what you really are.” I looked down to the table. “Someday he’ll look through you, and he’ll see what everybody else sees. And then he’ll be overcome with the realization that there are other girls right in front of him— pretty, successful, determined girls, who aren’t so weighed down with all of that…” She smeared her hands in the air in front of my face. “All of that emotional angst you lug around.”

“Carla, you don’t know me,” I said, finally looking back up to her. “You know nothing about me.”

“I don’t need to know anything more than what’s on the surface,” she said. “You’re too much work. And someone as perfect as Gabe deserves someone as equally perfect.”

“No.”

“What do you mean
no
? That wasn’t a question.”

“It means you’re wrong
. If you think that, if you really have him so high on a pedestal that you can think that unclearly, then you don’t know anything at all,” I said. “Gabe’s not perfect.”

“But he deserves someone who thinks he is.”

“No, he doesn’t,” I said. “He needs to be with someone who’s going to accept him as he is, not fawn over him as this angel-like creature the world sees him as. He has struggles, Carla. He has a history. He has scars. Why would he
ever
want someone who’s going to ignore those things? You can’t look past someone’s imperfections just to see the silver-lining. Those scars—and everything that’s happened to cause every one—that’s who he is. He deserves someone who’s going to embrace those things about him and treat the wounds delicately. He doesn’t need someone who’s going to disregard every imperfection. Caring about someone means embracing them—
all
of them, the good and the bad.” I shook my head. “I came into this project ready to work with you to get to the place where we both needed to be. But, Carla, I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. You turned everything into a war, and it didn’t have to be this way.”

“You know what I want,” she said, still adamant to get what she’d come in for. “Walk away from Gabe, and the events are yours. Otherwise, I’ll go to Lashell tomorrow and tell her that you’ve given up
. We’ll have no choice but to pull the plug on all of your precious, little ideas.”

“Then go ahead,” I said, pushing the two notebooks back
to her. “Do what you have to do. Just leave me alone from now on, okay? I am
done
fighting with you.”

Chapter
Thirteen

“Does anybody have a clue what this is all about?”

It was Monday afternoon, and the eleven of us who made up the Sugar Creek RI team had been sitting on the bleachers in the high school gymnasium for fifteen minutes. Mr. Davies made an announcement at the beginning of the day that we’d have a mandatory meeting immediately after school. It wasn’t uncommon to get together, to talk and hash out new ideas, but the whole idea of meeting so quickly and unexpectedly had left all of us a little curious. The last time they’d called such a fast meeting had resulted in a long-winded discussion about how to deal with the press if approached with questions about what happened at the park.

“Hello
? Anyone?” Carla spoke louder. She was the only one of us who hadn’t taken a seat in the first row. She was two rows above us, her choice of seating speaking volumes about how she viewed her position on the team. “I had to call into work to make sure I didn’t miss this meeting. My manager was
not
happy.”

“I passed Mr. Davies’s room on the way in,” Fletcher answered. “He and Lashell were huddled over talking about something. It looked intense.”

“Do you think maybe we’ve already won by a landslide, so they’re just calling it quits and awarding the scholarship today?” she asked, perking up.

“Fat chance,” Fletcher turned over his shoulder to glare at her.
“The program’s only two-thirds over. Anything could change. The leading school right now may not be the leading school two weeks from now. ”

Everybody groaned. The anticipation and aggravation in the room was growing thicker by the second. The longer we waited, the more impatient we became. I, like Carla, had to call in to work to announce my late arrival. Jones was stuck covering for me until I could get to the bakery.

School had let out fifteen minutes ago, and there we sat. No teacher. No RI leaders. Just eleven students with no clue as to what was going on.

I almost wondered if Carla had stuck to the promise she’d made yesterday and told the RI leaders that I’d given up and backed out. I wasn’t convinced that that information would call for any kind
of panic, but with the way Carla had been acting lately, there was no telling what she might’ve said.

“What do you think this is all about?” Fletcher asked.

“No idea,” I said, checking my phone for the time.
Jones was gonna kill me if he was late for his evening classes
. I turned back to Carla, managed the best smile I could muster, and asked, “Any chance this has something to do with what we talked about yesterday?”