Confectionately Yours #2: Taking the Cake! (14 page)

L
ook, Sarah was difficult. It was embarrassing to go out in public with her. I know I’m not supposed to say that, but it’s true. She was in her own world most of the time, and loud noises could sometimes make her scream. She would hit herself. People would stare. First at her, then at us. Then at her again.

Marco has always loved Sarah. She drives him nuts, too, sometimes, of course. But they have their own equation — she’s calmer around him. He’s the little brother, but he likes to protect her. I’ve seen him take on much older boys who were teasing her. I know it must be hard for him without her here.

Still, I think it’s better that she’s gone.

I’ve said before that Marco never really liked to have friends over at his house. Well, one of the few times I was
there, I noticed that there was a lock on the outside of Sarah’s bedroom door. I realized then that Marco’s parents must be locking her in there sometimes.

It sent a shiver through me.

I don’t know — maybe lots of parents do that. But mine never would have. It struck me as wrong, and maybe even dangerous. Marco’s parents were strict — the lock on the door made me wonder about other ways they might “discipline” Sarah.

I never told anyone about that. I never even mentioned it to Marco. It felt too scary.

Anyway, that’s why I’m glad that Sarah went away.

Glad for Sarah, I mean.

D
on’t chicken out
, I tell myself as I scan the nearly empty hallway. The first bell hasn’t rung yet, but people are milling around, heading to lockers.
Just pretend you’re Meghan.
What Would Meghan Markerson Do? Meghan would tell Devon how she felt; that’s what she’d do. She wouldn’t beat around the bush, either. She’d hire a skywriter or set off fireworks or something.

I look down at the cake pop in my hand. It’s covered in white chocolate, and has a single red candy heart stuck to the top. I finally got the chocolate to go on evenly, and this looks like it could be on the cover of
Cake Pop Monthly
magazine. It’s the Hayley equivalent of fireworks.

I like to think I learned something from the moment I let pass by with Marco. I should have said something about the test then, when we were alone in the tree house. Now I’ll
never get that moment back, and we’ll probably never talk about it. Maybe we won’t need to. Maybe Marco felt as bad as I did. But I don’t know.

I check my watch, then dig my assignment notebook out of my purse and pretend to scan it for some kind of Very Important Information. Really, I’m just waiting for Devon to head toward his homeroom, hoping to catch him before the first bell rings. I look over my shoulder and say a tiny prayer of thanks that Artie is nowhere in sight.

“Hey, Hayley!” Devon gives me that warm smile, the one that melts my kneecaps and makes me feel like I’m going to ooze all over the floor. “Is that for me?”

He knows!
My face is practically consumed in flames, but I force myself to hand him the cake pop. Suddenly, the red heart seems incredibly obvious, worse than skywriting. “Um, yeah.”

“Seriously?” Devon smiles. “I was kidding!”

“Oh — you were? I — I just wanted to preview the cake pops, you know, before I put them out at the fund-raiser….”
Not true. Stop talking. You’re messing everything up!

Devon takes a bite out of the cake pop. “Oh, man — I’m going into sugar shock! This thing is awesome!”

My heart flops like an awkward toad. “You like it?”

“You’re some kind of crazy cupcake genius, Hayley. I really owe you for doing this fund-raiser. Honestly, I kind of can’t wait until this whole play is over. I’ll finally have some free time.”

“Well, uh — hey — do …” It’s really hard to think when all of the blood in your body is rushing to your head. “Uh … do you want to go to —”
Can hardly breathe!
“A movie, uh, next weekend? Or something? Since you’ll have time …” I try to gulp in some air.

“Oh, sure,” Devon says as he takes another bite of the cake pop. “That might be …”

I’m hanging there, waiting for the end of that sentence. Fun? Boring? Weird? Awkward? But just as I’m about to say, “What would it be, Devon?” a pretty girl with dark hair and large brown eyes steps out of a classroom and grabs on to Devon’s arm with a possessive smile.

It’s Trina Bachman, and she’s hanging on Devon like a Christmas ornament.

“Hey, Trina, taste this,” Devon says, holding the cake pop to her lips.

“Mmmm,” she says as she nibbles a bite. Then she touches her lips as if she’s afraid her lip gloss might have been mussed by a crumb. “So sweet.”

Devon cocks his head and smiles at me. “So — we’ll chat later?” he asks.

My throat has swelled so much that I can hardly force air through it. But I do. I manage to whisper, “Sure,” as Devon walks off with Trina. Now I know why he broke up with Artie. It was because of another girl — but that girl wasn’t me.

Why did I think this was a good idea?
I wonder as hot tears threaten to choke me.
I’m not Meghan Markerson.

There’s a reason I thought she was crazy. Maybe she can confess her feelings without getting her heart crushed … but I guess I can’t.

S
ee me after class.

I’m staring at the note as the seconds click by on the clock above Mr. Carter’s desk.

See me after class.

We’ve been back from our holiday for three days, but Mr. Carter has just handed back everyone’s tests. Everyone’s but mine. And Marco’s. He gave us each a note.

Meghan noticed, of course. She frowned when she saw that.
What’s up?
she mouthed, but I just shook my head and looked over at Marco. He was staring at his desk, cheeks burning.

I can’t stop those last ten seconds from slipping away. The bell rings, and I gather my things and head to the front. Marco trails behind me, looking at the floor, the whiteboard,
watching the other students file out — his eyes are everywhere but on mine.

Mr. Carter is glaring at Marco as we step up to his desk. Our teacher rolls his chair backward a bit and folds his arms across his chest. He waits until the last student has filed out and says, “I know that one of you copied off of the other during the last test.” His eyes flicker to my face, almost with a look of pity, then settle back on Marco.

“How do you know?” Marco asks.

Mr. Carter opens a folder and pulls out the tests. He points to a problem he has circled on the second page. I see it immediately — I made a careless error while simplifying one of the fractions in the problem. “Fourteen divided by two does not equal six. It’s possible for one person to make a sloppy mistake like that, but not for two students to make the same sloppy mistake. A
second grader
knows what fourteen divided by two is.” He hisses on the word
second grader
and sneers at Marco, and I just wish I could punch him in the face.

“I think that one of you copied from the other, but I can’t prove who did the copying,” Mr. Carter says. “So. The grade on these exams — minus this mistake — is a ninety-six. Since one of you did the work, and one didn’t, I’ll be generous” — he grins the ugliest grin I’ve ever seen — “I’ll
let you split the grade.” Then he narrows his eyes and looks at Marco. “In case you can’t do the math, that’s a forty-eight for each of you.” He sits back in his chair, smug. “Unless one of you wants to confess. Then each of you can have the grade you really earned — a zero and a ninety-six.” Mr. Carter stares hard at Marco, as if he hopes to bore a hole through him with his gaze. Marco has turned pale, and looks like he’s about to throw up.

Mr. Carter wants him to squirm,
I realize, and before I know what I’m doing, I hear myself say, “It was me.”

Mr. Carter’s eyebrows go up. “What?”

“It was me,” I repeat, “I did it. I cheated.”

The room is silent for a long moment. Mr. Carter clearly did not expect this outcome. “I —” he says after a moment. “I —” But he can’t seem to finish the thought.

“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.” I feel tears burning at the back of my throat, and I can’t take anymore, so I turn and run out.

“Hayley!” Marco shouts. I hear his footsteps behind me, and feel him grab my arm. The hallway is still crowded with students going to classes, and a few people stare as I try to shake off my friend. “Let go.”

Marco places his hands on my shoulders. “Hayley, what did you just do?”

“Just say thank you,” I tell him. “Okay? You know you can never pull your grade up from a zero. I can.”

Marco shakes his head.

“You were never going to tell him, anyway,” I whisper.

“I would have,” Marco insists. “I was about to.”

I look him dead in the eye. “Then why didn’t you?”

The question hangs there between us for a moment, dark and ugly. Here it is — my Meghan Moment. I’ve finally said it.

“I don’t care,” I say at last, because I can’t think of anything else. Marco’s hands fall away from my shoulders.

I walk away from him, and he lets me.

“Are you okay?”

I feel a gentle tug at my elbow, and when I turn, I see Meghan standing there, watching me with a worried expression. “What’s wrong?”

The tears do strangle me then, and I have to struggle to force words out. “Everything” is all I manage to say. “Marco and Devon and my dad and even Artie — just … everything.”

“Yeah, I heard about Devon and Trina. Sorry.”

“You said you thought he liked
me
!”

She winces. “It’s kind of hard to tell with Devon. Don’t you think? I mean, I think maybe he’s kind of flirty
with everyone. I think even the lunch ladies have a crush on him.”

I sigh.

“Come on,” Meghan says, pulling my arm. “I want to show you something.”

I’m like a limp rag — too boneless to resist — as she herds me to the stairwell. “Where are we going?” I ask as I follow her up two flights of stairs.

“One more,” Meghan says.

“To the roof?”

“Yep.” She touches the red bar on the door that reads
FIRE ALARM WILL SOUND
.

“Wait!”

Meghan ignores me, and the door is silent as it swings open.

“You’ve done this before.”

“Yep,” Meghan agrees as she leads me out onto the black roof. Beyond us is a blue sky. A stiff breeze blows by, making me shiver. Meghan walks to the small overhang at the edge of the roof. She sits down on it.

“You’re making me nervous,” I tell her.

Meghan laughs. “As usual.” She waves at me. “Come here.”

“Are you going to push me over?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

I walk over. When I look down, I can see the center courtyard dotted with clumps and clusters of students. I can see Artie and her new friends on the steps almost directly below us. I see Marco’s soccer friends. After a moment, he joins them. I’m high above them all; it’s easy to imagine that they’re dolls, or pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that I need to put together.

Meghan follows my gaze, and her eyes land on Marco. “You told me once that I don’t know what Marco’s life is like. You’re right. But I know that it’s probably really complicated. And I know that he cares about you and doesn’t want to make you miserable.”

I shiver a little and hunch inside my sweater. I’m not dressed to be outdoors. It’s lunch period — everyone else has grabbed their jackets.

Meghan’s gaze shifts to my face. “Still, he’s got his life, and you’ve got yours. You can’t fix everything for him.”

“No.” My voice is a whisper, and it nearly disappears on the wind.

“Everyone looks so small from up here.” Meghan looks up at the white clouds on the blue sky. “And I guess we look small from up there.”

“You mean, like, from God’s point of view?”

“I’m talking about perspective, Hayley.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Meghan purses her lips and folds her arms across her chest. “‘Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.’”

I think about that for a moment. “Bumper sticker?” I ask.

“Of course — I have zero deep thoughts of my own. But I’m thinking about Artie, too. I have no idea what her life is like, either, or why she’s acting like a stone cold …” Meghan shrugs. “I don’t know — stone. And I have zero clue what’s up with your dad, except that his brain isn’t really where it’s supposed to be right now, you know? But I do know that it sounds like your dad has a lot going on in his life and Artie is totally jealous of you. And I think they’ll probably both get over it.”

I remember the day Artie confessed to me that she had a crush on Marco. But Marco was never as close to Artie as he was to me. He even kissed me once, but that’s a whole other story. At first, I didn’t believe that Artie was jealous of me. But in my heart, I know that Meghan is right. You don’t just turn on a friend that way for no reason at all.

Maybe all of that stuff with Devon was just her way of trying to get even.

Now I really feel sorry for her. For both of us. Our friendship is over — and for what? “What if they don’t get over it?” I ask.

“Life goes on,” Meghan says. “This stuff will all pass, one way or the other. I swear, Hayley, in ten years, you probably won’t even remember how miserable you were, or anything else about this day.”

The bell rings, and I watch the little people below me start to trickle toward the front double doors. In a few moments, I’ll have to walk back down the stairs, rejoin them. But, right now, I feel light, like I’m closer to the sky than the ground. I look over at my friend, who is watching me with a sweet smile on her face. Her blue eyes are laughing, and — suddenly — I realize that I’m happy to be up here with her, free from the drama below. “You’re wrong, Meg — I
will
remember this day,” I tell her, and I mean it.