Outcast (12 page)

March. The winter was dry, deeply alive with the promise of forest fires in the high country. Only the hardiest of wildflowers peeked from the stone and dirt on the roadside. Most remained fugitives within the recesses of the ground.

The Easter holiday approached, but I felt no sense of renewal or rebirth.

Chad
and Trina
were
a couple. There was no denying it. They were constantly together. Instead of the Trina & Company of the past, it was now Trina & Company &
Chad
. The only upside to their relationship was that Trina and her friends stopped picking on us. Not much of an upside, considering what I had given up. Grace and Trina stayed away from each other—two magnetic poles pushing the other away. To Grace, Trina had stolen
Chad
from her when, in reality, she had stolen him from me.

On Ash Wednesday, we went to church. Everyone filed in by homeroom. I went to the nurse’s office with a throbbing headache. She took inventory of my symptoms, diagnosed me with dehydration, gave me a sixteen ounce glass of water and two pills of ibuprofen, and forced me to lie down for ten minutes. By the time I left with a pass in hand, my homeroom had gone.

I pushed through the school doors and skirted across the lawn to the foreboding, stain-glassed structure of the church. I tiptoed to Sister Maggie, my homeroom teacher. She glanced at the pass, silently waving me to a spot at the end of a pew. The only open seat was next to
Chad
. I hesitated. Sister Maggie gave me a shove with her look.

I sat beside him, and his cheeks pinked.

“Hey, Noelle.” He sounded sheepish, perhaps sorry. Likely, it was just my imagination.

I noticed Trina two rows ahead of us. She turned to smile at
Chad
, but immediately frowned when she spotted me.

As we waited for the procession of students in the rows ahead of us to get blessed with ashes,
Chad
finally turned to me. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” More than he knew.

“I’d like to be friends,” he whispered under the organ music.

I started to answer, but felt the harsh glare of Trina as she stood to make her way out of the pew. Her hatred for me far outweighed the peace and love the church was intended to represent.
Chad
’s eyes followed my gaze. It suddenly grew clear to him. He paid her a smile thick with guilt. I waited for her to turn before I answered him.

“I can’t.”

“Why?” His tone was a plea.

“I don’t want to be your friend.” I confessed. I wanted to be so much more.

Hurt blanketed his face. 

Beyond the fact that an initial attraction existed between us that would never let us just be friends, Trina would never allow it.
Never
.

We stood to exit our pew, as well. Trina maintained an almost constant watch over
Chad
as she received the blessing from Father Timothy. Hypocrite.

“Why are you with her?” I blurted.

“Noelle—”

“Why?” I pushed.

“I wanted to be with you, but—”

I cut him off. “But her? She’s...so beneath you. So…you’re better than that.”

“Shhhh,” came Sister Maggie’s warning.

The row in front of us filed out. Yet
Chad
looked at me as if we were the only two people in the church.

“I—”
Chad
started to say, but the guy behind gave him a shove.

We resorted to silence as we humbly made our way to the altar. When we returned to our seats, stigmatized by the blackened charcoal on our heads, there seemed to be unfinished words between us, but what could we say? What could we do?

Mass ended. The music blared. The final procession began. Everyone stood, anxious to return to class.

But there
was
one more thing to say.

“I wish…” I started as we neared the exit.

“Me, too.”

I thought I saw a trace of something in his eye, but I turned away as I saw Trina push her way out of the sea of churchgoers.

A torrent of hope washed over me. Did he mean what I thought he meant? Or was he simply referring to friendship? Nonetheless, I felt elated as I returned to the school with the rush of fellow students, all blemished by the cross of ashes placed on their foreheads. Grace caught up with me.

“What are you so happy about?” she asked.

“Nothing.” I needed to stop lying. “I need to run to the bathroom before class. Want to come?”

“Can’t,” she said. “Henry’s helping me with my science project.”

I wandered into the girls’ bathroom on the second floor. I tucked myself into a stall at the far end. While there, a collection of voices walked into the restroom.

“God, I need to get this shit off my forehead. Totally ruined my makeup.”

“I know. What the hell? I hate Ash Wednesday. It’s so…gross.”

I recognized the voices. Trina. Liana. I stayed in the stall, studying the graffiti on the door, waiting for them to leave.

“I am totally going to get that bitch.” Trina continued a conversation that obviously began before they reached the bathroom. She seemed to have it in for everyone. “If she thinks falling off a ladder was bad, just wait."

My brain instantly sent a jolt to my heart, making it palpitate in ways that I feared would send me into cardiac arrest. She was talking about me.

“Flirting with him in church? What a bitch!”

The conversation was peppered with the sounds of toilets flushing, water running, and the winding of the paper towel machine. Out of fear, I stayed as silent as possible.

“Since her
makeover
during the summer—”

“Plastic surgery is more like it,” Liana interrupted.

“Whatever! She thinks she’s God’s gift.”

“It’s not like you have anything to worry about. I mean, come on.”

I peered through the crack in the door to observe Trina smiling at her image in the mirror. Her expression quickly dulled to a frown as additional thoughts crept into her head.

“True, but I still want to teach her a lesson.”

“How?” Liana’s voice jumped an octave in her excitement.

“I’ll think of something.”

The bell rang, sending the two of them out of the bathroom. I flushed the toilet and exited the stall. I felt jittery, not sure of what they might do. I wondered if I should tell
Chad
. If he realized how mean and vindictive Trina was he might just dump her. Maybe he already knew, but didn’t care. Grace was the one person I really wanted to tell, but couldn’t. Telling her would mean confessing all the truths I kept hidden from her in the past. I didn’t need her dramatics on top of everything else right now. I decided to go it alone.

The Spring Fling. I had no intention of going. Grace and I could hang out and possibly go to a movie that night. The last thing either of us needed to see was Trina groping
Chad
. The mere thought nauseated me.

I had straight
A
s again in all of my classes, I made the honor roll, and I was ready to embark on eleven weeks of probation from Saint Sebastian High. Nothing could destroy my good mood.

On the bus ride home, Grace was unusually quiet.

“I’m so glad school is almost over. I cannot wait until summer vacation.” I had a hard time strapping down my enthusiasm for the end of the year.

“Henry asked me to The Spring Fling,” Grace blurted.

Silence explained.

“That’s great.” Without wanting to, I sounded disappointed.

“I knew you’d be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad,” I said.

“You want to go with him, don’t you?”

I felt like the two of us were involved in separate conversations. How did she possibly gather that I wanted to go to The Spring Fling with Henry?

“No! Of course not.”

“Of course not? Do you
suddenly
have a problem with Henry?”

“I don’t
suddenly
have a problem with him. I’ve
always
had a problem with him. And so did you.”

“He’s not as bad as I thought, Noelle. He’s really funny and nice.”

I’d give him the nice part, but I certainly didn’t consider him to be funny. Irritating, annoying, and aggravating—those were words I would use to describe him. Definitely not funny. But I didn’t want to argue with her. Grace had come a long way. If she could see Henry for all that he was, maybe she could see Trina for all that she was, too.

“You’re right. I’m not being fair.” My words called a truce. “So I guess you’re going to The Spring Fling.”

Grace beamed. “Now we need to get you a date.”

“Oh no. I’m not going.”

“Come on, Noelle. We have to go together.”

“After what happened at the Homecoming dance, I don’t think so.”

“It’ll be different this time. I swear.”

“No one’ll go with me.” I thought of
Chad
, the only person who would have gone had things worked out differently.

“We’ll find someone. I promise.”

I hoped she would forget.

Becca had a new boyfriend—Kevin. So she was going to the dance, too. She and my mother fought endlessly about the dress she would wear. Becca found a lime green strapless number in a
Victoria
’s Secret catalogue.

“I will not have my daughter wearing underwear for a dress. You’ll look like a prostitute.”

“A prostitute would be lucky if she could wear a dress like that.”

“And if you wear a dress like that, you’ll be lucky if you get to go outside the house.”

My mother picked out a long-sleeve, conservative dress from the women’s section of a department store that someone would wear to a dance if she were—say—sixty.

“No way!” Becca protested. “This isn’t
The Beverly Hillbillies
.”

“You are not wearing one of those trampy handkerchiefs that designers today call dresses.”

“Handkerchiefs? Really mother?”

“It’s this one or nothing.”

“We’ll see about that,” Becca muttered under her breath. “Too bad you’re not going,” Becca stabbed, “then mom would have someone willing to wear her hideous dress.” Clearly, she was still resentful about
Chicago
.

Lunch hour. Since Henry asked Grace to go to the dance, they sat side by side, whispering to each other.

It seemed like a good day to ditch the second half of school, but then I realized I couldn’t call P. I was still mad at her.

“Henry and I were talking,” Grace finally included me. “We have an idea.”

They looked at each other.

“Henry has a friend.”

I knew where this was headed. “I’m not going to the dance.”

“He’s pretty nice.” Henry pulled out all the stops in creating an attractive picture. “But he’s not as good looking as I am.” Henry’s face hovered inches from his plate as he shoveled food into his mouth. I waited for him to laugh like he just delivered the punch line to a joke, but he was completely serious. “Of course, he’ll have to get permission from his parents first.”

“Why? Is he Episcopalian or something?”

“No, he’s in seventh grade.”

I looked from Grace to Henry then Henry to Grace. Neither smiled. Apparently, that wasn’t a punch line either.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“About having a friend?” Henry seemed puzzled.

“No, about the seventh-grade part.”

“No, he’s really in seventh grade.” The food continued to make its way into Henry’s mouth.

I turned to Grace who shrugged. Then she nodded.

Henry must have noticed the disturbed look that had formed on my face because he continued. “If it’s any consolation, he’s older than the rest of his classmates. He was held back a year due to some trouble with aptitude tests.”

Great! My best friend and her new boyfriend want to fix me up with a seventh grader who should be in the eighth grade, but is too behind to pass the standardized test. Furthermore, his own best friend wavers on the fact that he’s nice, and he’s not as good looking as the ugliest guy at our school. What? Did I have loser written all over my face?

“I’ll pass.”

“It’s the aptitude thing, isn’t it?” Henry casually asked.

“I’ve got it!” Grace declared. “I’ll talk to Jake.”

My heart suddenly raced. I tried to remain as casual as possible as I pictured myself going to the dance with Jake.

“No worries,” Grace assured me.

“You won’t get another chance with my friend, Bob.”