Outcast (16 page)

“I don’t know. It’s just that I never saw you wear anything like that before. I took you for the one-piece type.”

“Maybe I should put my T-shirt back on.” I grabbed for it, covering the pushed up cleavage it created at the center of my chest.

“If you have it, you should show it off. Right?” I sensed something in her words. Jealousy? Or was it over protectiveness? “Just…”

“What?” I asked her.

“Nothing.”

I wondered if Grace was thinking back to the seventh grade.

Then seriousness dissolved. “Maybe I should get one of those,” she said, pretending not to evaluate her chest as she massaged suntan lotion on it. “Besides, I bet Mike will really like it.”

That’s what I was afraid of.

He and Jake returned with two boogie boards and a tray filled with soda that sloshed over the sides of the cups. They set everything down near us. Mike eyed me and raised his eyebrows.

“Nice suit!”

Jake’s reflex reaction to Mike’s words kicked in, and he looked at me, too. He quickly averted his eyes, perhaps realizing he shouldn’t be staring at his sister’s friend in a state of undress.

I felt thankful for the sun for hiding my reddened cheeks.

“So who wants to play in the waves?” Jake asked.

Grace and I looked at one another and shrugged a
why not
? Then all four of us headed for the water. Modesty pushed its way to the forefront, forcing me to cross my arms over my chest. Once my body was adequately hidden in the water, I felt comfortable again.

“How come you didn’t get four boards?” Grace asked.

“I thought we could share.”

I figured the two of them conspired at the concession stand. Mike probably concocted the plan so that he and I would be forced together again. He definitely wasn’t making progress any other way. But Grace could see my feelings written out in the air like a thought bubble from a comic strip.

“I’ll share Mike’s.” She
was
remembering Jerry Searfus and protecting me again.

I smiled gratefully. But now I was with Jake. I talked myself through it.
I can do this
.
He is just my best friend’s older brother. He means nothing to me. He has a girlfriend, and you’re interested in someone else
. But the other side of my head, the less rational one, the one that was easily influenced by a pair of blue eyes, a few muscles, and a smile, took over.
No matter how much you try to deny it, he’s incredibly good-looking and sexy. All you have to do is look at him
. The only thing I could do to save myself was to direct my gaze somewhere else.

“You know what? I really don’t want to use the boogie board,” I lied. “I think I’ll just play in the waves.”

“Come on,” he beckoned. Why couldn’t he have yellow smoker’s teeth when he smiled or beady rat eyes? Why did he have to be so ridiculously good-looking?

I splashed my way over to him while reminding myself that he was just being brotherly. The trouble was, I didn’t feel all that sisterly.

The sound of the artificially-generated wave rose from where the horizon would be.

“Ready?” Jake smiled.

All four of us started paddling toward the shore. The water erupted into a miniature tsunami. It exploded, and the force of the wave rode up under us. I felt my bikini top jump over my breasts like it was searching for a life preserver. I tried to pull it back down while still clinging to the board. I was afraid that I would throw Jake off balance if I let go to adjust my top. As the water diminished to mere ripples, I struggled to secure my top back in place. But as the machine sucked the water back for the next big production, I stood fully exposed. I knew I hadn’t tucked myself back in time. Jake saw my breasts. I knew it. And I was sure he wasn’t the only one. I was too ashamed to look around to see who benefited from my embarrassment.

I made my way back to our little spot on the beach and hid under my T-shirt and the shade of my sunglasses. I heard Jake calling to me, but pretended not to notice. The rest of the day I refused to set foot back in the water. No one mentioned anything about my humiliation, but I knew they were aware of it. At least Jake knew, and he was really the only one who mattered.

At home, I raced to my bedroom, still mortified at losing my top at Big Surf. I tore the bathing suit off of me and stood in the mirror examining my breasts to see what Jake saw. They were small. He was probably having a good laugh right now. I should have worn my water-park-friendly suit. Grace was right: I was a one-piece type. I didn’t know what I was thinking by wearing the bikini. Who was I trying to impress? Instead of feeling attractive like I did in
Florida
, I felt like a joke. I was the little girl who played dress-up in her mother’s bikini.

I slipped into shorts and a T-shirt and tossed the bikini into the garbage. Even if I eventually had the body to pull it off, it would always be a reminder of the shame I felt at Big Surf.

I flipped through a few pictures in my art book, then picked up the phone and dialed. I paused after the first five numbers, not sure if I could continue. I punched the final two without dwelling on what to say. If I did, I knew I’d set down the receiver before a connection could ever be made.

One ring. Two. A male voice answered.

“Hello?”

“
Chad
?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s Noelle.”

We met at
Chaparral
Park
.
Chad
sat on a bench near one of the exercise challenge stations. He smiled and stood when he saw me. Dewdrops of sweat glistened on his face. His skin was tanned. Visions of Trina and him frolicking at Big Surf splashed through my mind. I drained them from my thoughts.

“You look good,” was all I thought to say to him.

“You, too.”

Now that he was here, I didn’t know what to say.

“So what’s wrong?” He seemed a little more
to the point
than I wanted him to be.

My eyes wandered the circumference of the park, hoping to find a reasonable excuse for inviting him. Very little activity took place on the smoldering hundred twelve-degree day. A few ducks waded in the pond, a girl on roller blades spun lethargic circles around the path, and two boys dipped their fishing poles into the water. I looked back at
Chad
, still not knowing what to say. He waited patiently for me to utter something.

“Why’d you come?” It was a question I really wanted answered.

“Because you asked me to.”

I inched down on the bench. It was in the shade, but the temperature still felt like the inside of a heated oven.
Chad
eased back down beside me. If our conversation had been a game of chess, it was my turn and the timer was running. I wanted to ask him about Trina; about us. If there still could be an
us.
Instead, I remained mute.

“You don’t really have a problem you want to talk to me about. Do you?”

Checkmate. He found me out and I was open to complete annihilation. In retrospect, he probably knew all along.

“I did. I mean, it wasn’t a problem…” I couldn’t lie. “I was upset about someone…”

“A guy?” He interrupted me.

“Yes. No.” I thought about Jake and the bikini top. I considered telling him about it when it occurred to me how trivial the whole thing sounded. The reason I called
Chad
and asked to see him was because I wanted another chance. I skirted around the issue. I couldn’t drum up the courage to blurt it out.

“I wanted to see you because I made a mistake.”

“With the guy?”

“Yes, the guy.”

“He must be pretty special.”

“He is.” I swabbed the perspiration from my forehead. It wasn’t just the heat anymore.

“What happened?”

I organized in my head the words I wanted to say, but
Chad
interrupted them with his prompting. “You said you made a mistake.”

“I did.” I faced him, and his walnut eyes met mine. “I pushed him away when I shouldn’t have.”

“Can’t you call him and tell him how you feel?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“He’s here right now.”

“Noelle…” He turned toward me, acting more candid than I wanted him to be.

“I know. It’s too late.” I said it before he had the chance.

“I’m dating someone now.”

“Trina.” I emitted a heavy sigh and rolled my eyes. “Why her? Out of everyone in the entire school, why did you have to pick her?”

“I didn’t.” He became defensive. “I picked you.”

“But Trina?”

“That’s not fair, Noelle. And you know it. You pushed me away.”

Our voices grew louder with each sentence we spoke. I waited for the skater to pass then unleashed a torrent of emotions on him. “I told you. I didn’t want to hurt Grace.”

“And now you don’t mind hurting her?”

“She has a boyfriend now. She’s over you.” I felt defeated, frustrated. “But I’m not.” I looked everywhere but at him. I stood and headed down the pathway to where I thought I could catch the bus home. Just like the moment I lost my bikini top, I revealed too much of myself.

“Noelle, don’t walk away.”

He caught up with me, grabbed hold of my elbow, and prevented me from continuing down the path.

“I don’t want you to leave. Not with all this…” he gestured to himself then to me, “…between us.”

“Us? There is no us. You just made that perfectly clear.”

I jerked my arm free from his. I disliked him touching me, trying to exercise control over me. I wanted the conversation to end. I played my feelings out for him like a reel of film, and now they all lay out on the cutting room floor.

“Tell Trina I said
hi
,” I yelled sarcastically as I stormed for the bus stop.

Summer shuffled by like an elderly man. Despite the heat, I jogged. It was a ritual, a good way to vent my frustrations without talking to anyone about them. I went to mass every week as promised. My mother seemed thrilled. In a sense, I looked forward to the start of the school year in August. But when it finally arrived, I dreaded that I had to go. Nothing seemed to make me happy.

Junior year. Becca’s senior year. For someone who was entering her final phase of high school, Becca seemed less than happy. Ever since
Florida
, she’d been acting moody and unpredictable. Any of the relics from our two weeks of camaraderie in
Smyrna
Beach
were now buried by time. She was difficult to be around.

And somehow, someway, Grace coerced me into taking Acting with Father Dodd again.

“It’ll be lots of fun. Plus Father Dodd really likes you.”

The real reason I took the class and joined the Drama Club was so that I could see
Chad
. I knew I’d be torturing myself, but it was better than not knowing and always wondering.

I stepped back into school as though I’d never left. Unfortunately, Grace and I didn’t have the same lunch hour. I didn’t know what I was going to do all by myself in the cafeteria. Study, hang out in the bathroom, or feign sickness, I supposed. Yet another thing to dread about the school year.

In Mr. Wagner’s Chemistry class, we paired up with our year-long lab partner. Mr. Wagner made the decision through his highly scientific approach: he drew names the night before.

He was a squatty man with a thin comb-over. He wore only tones of gray: a walking tribute to Ansel Adams. He gesticulated constantly, so much that his motions overshadowed his words. Instead of taking notes on the molecular structure of hydrogen and oxygen, I tried to decipher what musical composition he directed with his arms. It looked like
Toccata and Fugue
.

He exuded a passion for chemistry and seemed to relish the grimaces from students when they didn’t like their lab partners. For some reason, I thought Mr. Wagner would take vulgar pleasure in pairing me with Margaret. Instead, my partner was a new girl: Cassandra Pascarella.

When we met at the lab station, she didn’t smile. She looked striking, but not necessarily pretty. Her naturally curly hair shone with pomade. It looked like a mixture of dark brown and Tuscan red. She had the nose and mouth of a horse, but her eyes were shaped like those of a cat with the same intensive stare. I hated cats.

“I’m Noelle.”

“I got that when the teacher said your name,” she quipped.

I ignored her, didn’t even flinch at her comment. I had enough enemies in this school. There wasn’t room for another. Apparently, she sensed my aloofness and attempted to goad me even more.

“You look like a chemistry nerd. You going to get us an A on all our labs?”

I knew I didn’t look like a nerd anymore; she was trying to stir trouble before we even used the beakers and Bunsen burner. Margaret and her partner positioned themselves at their assigned station right next to ours.

A gust of courage coursed through me. “No, I’m more of a D student. Hope you don’t mind.”

She smirked. “Then I guess we’re a perfect match.”

I suffered through half the day, with the worst of it yet to come. I still had to endure English and Acting III with Trina. As I made my way to the cafeteria for my solitary lunch, I saw
Chad
for the first time since the park. He leaned against a locker in deep discussion with Trina. It was one of those fly-on-the-wall times. I wanted to be one.

Their discussion came to an abrupt end with the slam of Trina’s locker. She stomped away, leaving him alone. As he moved away, he glimpsed me and smiled meekly. But he didn’t bother to say
hi
or to come over. He merely sauntered away.

Lunch. Chop suey, a block of white rice. Did the school overcook everything? I chipped at the maggot-white cube on my plate. I really needed to bring my own lunch.

As I nose-dived into the first chapters in Chemistry, Cassandra—who preferred to be called Cassie—dropped down next to me at the table.

“I see you opted for the San Quentin special.”

“Yeah.” I shoved it away.

Trina and Liana strolled up to my table, maintaining a safe distance. Trina leaned in my direction.

“Well, if it isn’t little Ms. Wannabe. I don’t know what he sees in you.” The queen bee stung me with her words, but I wasn’t going to respond to someone who talked to me that way. What I really wanted to do was tell her where she could stick her attitude, but I couldn’t find my nerve. Cassie watched with icy aloofness.

“You better watch your back,” Trina warned and stormed away.

“And that was…?” Cassie questioned.

“Just some snobs who get their kicks from bothering me.”

“And you put up with that shit? No one would ever speak to me like that. Ever.” Her tone was threatening. With her predatory feline eyes, she watched them move through the hallways with the ignorance of grazing sheep.

Grace was giddy in Acting class. She and Henry had taken to holding hands in the hallways now. He had just dropped her off at the theater.
Chad
and Trina entered separately and took seats at opposite ends.

Father Dodd seemed unusually somber. He dragged himself to the front of the class and took role call; his voice was monotone and nearly inaudible.

The year was not off to a good start. Everyone, with the exception of Grace, showed signs of moodiness. I glanced over at Trina, wondering what she had in store for me this time. And why she and
Chad
weren’t glued to one another anymore.

Cassie and I got along well in Chemistry. She wound up being much smarter than she initially led me to believe. She appeared defiant, but proved to be extremely thoughtful and intelligent. She mastered the periodic table of elements, their boiling points, and chemical symbols. Often, we completed our lab before everyone else. One day she caught Margaret copying our research.

“May I help you?” Cassie glared at Margaret with her penetrating stare. Margaret’s eyes widened at the confrontation.

“No…just thinking.”

“And your thoughts just happened to linger on our research notes?”

Margaret assumed a defensive sneer I hadn’t seen since the sixth grade. “I wasn’t cheating, if that’s what you’re implying.”

Cassie refused to back down. “I didn’t imply anything. I think I made myself quite clear.”

Margaret’s look pleaded with me. I turned toward the front of the room.

Cassie’s eyes feasted on Margaret’s weakness. When Margaret finally averted her gaze, Cassie returned to the table. “What’s up with these kids?” she said to me. “They think they’re untouchable.

It seemed I finally had an ally in Cassie.

Cassie had moved to
Scottsdale
from
Santa Monica
. She possessed a don’t-mess-with-me attitude. She was born and raised in
California
and had a boyfriend, Shane, who still lived there. They talked to one another every other day.

“Your phone bill must be huge.”

“My dad pays for everything.”

I felt comfortable around her. I could be myself. So I told her about it—my history with Trina & Company. I figured she’d understand. I sensed that she felt a sort of hatred for the group, too.

At lunchtime, I abandoned the ritual of the cafeteria to go outside with Cassie. She smoked. The smell of burned tobacco permeated her Downey-rinsed clothes. She sparked a Camel and leaned against the wall. Of course, school policy prohibited smoking on the grounds, but Cassie struck me as the kind of person who found ways around the rules. She extended the pack to me, but I waved it away.

“Sounds like you need a healthy dose of revenge.”

“I don’t know.”

Cassie took a drag on her cigarette. She sucked in the vapor, let it dance on her tongue, and then blew it out.

“But you’ve thought about it.”

“Maybe.”

Of course I entertained evil thoughts about Trina. I filled pages of my journal with them. But that’s where it ended.

“You want revenge? I’ll tell you about revenge.” A stream of smoke leaked through her teeth.

Just then, Father Timothy rounded the corner of the building. He read our guilt like memorized bible verses and hurried over. It looked like a pink slip was headed our way. Cassie attempted to tuck the cigarette behind her khakis.

“Smoking, I see.”

I remained silent, not knowing how to respond. I had nothing to worry about anyway; I wasn’t the one with the cigarette between my fingers.

Father Timothy looked around. His willowy body stooped over like the branches of a tree.

“You know you’re not allowed to smoke on school grounds.”

Cassie moved to extinguish her cigarette.

Father Timothy motioned to stop her. “Ah, I’ll let it slide this time, especially if you let me bum one from you.”

Cassie held out the pack of Camels to him, and he took one. She pulled out a lighter, offering the flame to him. Cassie took one last pull and knocked the cherry from the tip. She threw the butt of her cigarette down and crushed it with the tip of her loafers.

“See you later, Father.”

But Father Timothy was too caught up in his addiction to acknowledge us further. He drew short puffs through his thin lips and closed his eyes. He lost himself in a cloud of smoke.

Cassie moseyed back to the cafeteria. I followed.

“I didn’t say anything about revenge,” I said, picking up our conversation where it had been dropped.

“Hey, I get the picture. This group treats you like shit, and you let them do it. That’s cool with me. How long did you say they’ve been working you over?”

I felt uncomfortable talking about it. I wished I hadn’t mentioned anything.

“Five years.”

“Yeah, why don’t you continue being their doormat? Footprints look good on you.”

She took off, leaving me alone with my own thoughts. And hers.

Frustrated, I slumped into a library chair and tossed my backpack on the table. I considered studying, but became caught up in Cassie’s words. Maybe she was right. Maybe true revenge against that group was the only way to free myself, to free Grace. We needed to regain our dignity, show them we couldn’t be pushed around. But how? I didn’t know how to get revenge against someone. Where was I supposed to start?

I must have been lost in my thoughts for a long time. When I glanced toward the clock, I noticed a pair of eyes invading my personal space. It was
Chad
. His smile startled me. He stood from his lonely place at a corner table and walked toward mine.

“I’m supposed to be in study hall, but I wanted to talk to you. You have a minute?” he asked.

For him, I had all the time in the world.

“Trina and I broke up.”

Chad
and I ventured off campus, walking to the nearby Circle K.

The door jangled as we pushed our way inside.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said as I studied the nutritional content on the back of a Kit
Kat like it was the formula for the Pythagorean Theorem. I briefly glanced up to measure his reaction.
Chad
rifled through an endcap of sunflower seeds and Corn nuts; a twenty-four ounce soft drink balanced in his other hand.

“You should be.” He looked up at me and all I saw were coffee eyes and dimples. “It’s all your fault.”

“So it wasn’t true love after all?” I opted for the
Kit Kat
and headed for the register.

Chad
slid next to me, paying for everything before I had the chance. His arm brushed against mine, causing the hair on my arms and legs to bristle. He grinned. I could sink into those dimples.

The door chimed as we exited. The heat, like the blast from a hairdryer, reminded us that summer had not yet eased its grip on the Valley.

“But when I saw you over the summer, everything was fine between the two of you.” I peeled back the wrapper on the candy bar. He didn’t answer. He stopped on the sidewalk, setting his cup on the bench of the bus stop.

“What happened?” I continued, not giving him the opportunity to answer.

He gave me his full attention, but he wasn’t really listening. “Did she find someone else? I mean it seems like she wants to be with you. I saw her this morning and—”

“No. No one else,” he said, touching his eyes to mine. I felt a murmur in my heart, ripples in my stomach, from the way
Chad
looked at me. He brushed his fingertips against my own.

“Then what?” I asked as my arms tingled with anticipation, and my words nearly caught in my throat.