Cameo

by Tanille Edwards

  “Yeah.” Cindy shrugged. This was truly the end of an era.

  “You dig the makeover?” I asked.

  Cindy busted out into a crazy, sinister laugh. Had she and Roger already hooked up … or … “Are you seeing Roger?”

  “No.” She smiled.

  “But you thought about it.”

  “No … okay, yeah,” she said.

  “Wow, just like that.”

  There was hope in life. Nothing was permanent—just look at Roger. Knowing that somehow made me feel like I would sleep better at night. You could become anything, and change was always happening for the better.

  “Plus, he thinks I’m smart,” Cindy said. She voice-activated his number from her address book. Unbelievable. I hugged Cindy.

  “I’m going to go. I, um … have a date. Stop by my house tomorrow during usual visiting hours.”

  “While your mom is at work?”

  “You know it.”

  Chapter 14

  “Michelle just came on too strong,” a deep voice with a slight nervous crackle said from behind me. It almost caught me for a moment, like a sticky spider web. There was some sort of neurological reaction I had, in which he would speak and I used to flash a coy grin without even thinking.

  I could even remember the first time he’d kissed me. I smiled. But my stint of brief reminiscing was quickly cleared away as he uttered, “Once she called you, I knew you figured we had hooked up.”

  I actually hadn’t figured out immediately that Craig had hooked up with her. I’d hoped it was all some type of bad thing … you know, the kind of thing that involved drinking or smoking or something that would cloud one’s judgment. I could believe that he’d made a bad choice. I just couldn’t believe he would break my heart. He’d once said to me, “I’m loving you.” What did that mean? I should’ve figured out then that he had a few screws loose.

  I didn’t get the hint until Cindy had come to pick me up the next morning and showed me the overnight gossip texts. Then I knew what that meant. He didn’t love me, he was just loving me—and whoever else came along, I suppose. I’d had a lot of doubt about his loyalty to me during our relationship. Craig continued ranting on and on. But I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t see past all of the stupid things he had done to hurt me. So I just stood there, frozen and immobilized by shock.

  Had he been waiting all month to say this? You know, people take common courtesies for granted. I didn’t have to acknowledge his presence. I didn’t have to listen to him. I felt like it was too bad for him. He should’ve tried the day after the phone call. Let’s just call it what it was: the most embarrassing call ever.

  “I couldn’t find you for the next two weeks,” he continued.

  I looked him right in the eye. He had the nerve to act as if he had tried to redeem himself but I was underneath a rock or something. So he didn’t get a proper opportunity. Please!

  “I didn’t move,” I said. The resentment dripped from my lips, which he couldn’t stop staring at.

  “I know it’s over!” he shouted.

  “You’re getting way too serious about this,” I said.

  “School … us. I don’t—I don’t know. I can’t get you off my mind,” he said.

  It finally hit me. I would never get to be angry at him again. After graduation, he would be a blip on the roadmap of my life. Good, because honestly he didn’t even deserve that. This was the first time we’d spoken since he’d kissed me goodbye on my doorstep the same night I had been dumped.

  “You’re like my whole high school memory. The good thing I remember. I’ll remember you sitting in the bleachers cheering us on,” he said.

  “That was one time!” I said. Enough of this melodrama, half of it didn’t even make sense.

  By now I could see exactly how ridiculous he was. What college was he going to anyway? I mean he didn’t take any AP classes. So I guess he’d done me a favor. I’d gotten an upgraded model with new technology. It was like comparing one of those old cell phones that looked like a walkie-talkie to a new one that was razor-thin with Internet capabilities. He took a deep breath, and then he did the unthinkable.

  “I know breaking up with you was the stupidest thing I did all year.” Was he repenting? After all this!

  “Don’t pretend you’re not shallow because you found a soul now that your reign is over and you realize in college you’ll just be a number. One of tens of thousands of kids, many of whom will be more senior than you. You hooked up with Ms. Most Likely to Be in a Padded Room in Ten Years because she told you to. But that was all you!” I said.

  “That was really stupid. I just said that,” he said under his breath. He sighed. Then he wiped his face with his mammoth man hands, perfect for catching a football. He looked like a preacher caught with his hands in the cookie jar—namely, one of the deacon’s wives. Church drama was much like high school drama.

  “We would’ve never worked past high school anyway! I can’t stand a guy that’s whipped. I can only wonder if I meant all this to you when you were shacked up with Michelle.”

  “Forgive me!” Craig blurted out.

  “You do dumb things all the time. People can’t forgive you for every single dumb thing you’ve ever done,” I said.

  “I admitted it was stupid,” he said.

  “Is that the only part that was stupid? ’Cause this part, the part where you approach me six weeks later to talk about the break-up, ranks pretty high up there.”

  “Because you’re smarter than me, does that make you better than everyone?” he said.

  “That doesn’t even make sense. This is not about who’s smarter. I’m loyal. People aren’t disposable to me.”

  My cell phone buzzed with a new text message. Thank goodness. This was getting old. “That’s probably my new boyfriend.” I shrugged.

  I walked away briskly. I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me. A hug, approval … maybe he wanted me to say it was okay to screw me over in the last quarter of the final game. Well, I wasn’t going to do any of that. It took me long enough to get over this. Plus, he lucked out. I’m the one who shared a secret part of me. What I shared with him I could never get back. I did it because I thought we’d meant something. A girl shouldn’t want that back anyway. Maybe that was what this was about, being at peace with what we’d shared. More like what I’d shared. He, on the other hand, had gladly doled himself out to more than a few other girls in our class, I’m sure.

  I realized he had done me a favor by breaking up with me. I’d thought it all along, but I didn’t feel it was actually true until right then. Before I left the popular corridor for the last time, I had to have one last look at my past and what was behind me now.

  There, in that hallway, I was leaving the girl who had once believed that people were honest and true and meant you well. Instead, the new me knew that people, even the ones closest to you sometimes did things that hurt you, and you had to be careful whom you trusted. I also knew now that shallowness was a rampant disease. Even I had caught a touch of it when I thought I was popular. Since when does who you date, who your friends are, and what you look like mean everything? Generally speaking, that is. My makeup mantra still holds true to the grave: A girl can’t leave the house without a little base, mascara, and eyeliner.

  I didn’t understand why Craig had done something that he would regret so dearly. Yet again, too bad. Everything wasn’t for me to understand. Unfortunately, a guy like Craig would spend a greater portion of his youth reminiscing about his golden years. Face it, he had peaked at seventeen.

  “I wish you the best in college!” I said softly. My scolding tone had subsided. I’d succumbed to belief in good karma. One too many public television specials, I guess. I couldn’t just leave without forgiving him. It was negative energy to hold onto the past.

  “Goodbye,” I said.

  “Bye,” he said.

  Chapter 15

  Whenever I saw Jason, it felt like time stopped. My smile, my laugh, they were a
ll different around him. Even the way I ran my fingers through my hair was different because I knew he was watching. There was a side of my life that was a private show that only he had a ticket to. He had touched my heart in a way it had never been touched before. It wasn’t any one thing in particular—it was everything he had never said that I knew he meant because of the look in his eyes, the way he always opened the door for me, and the way he wanted to protect me.

  The sun was illuminating right onto his gorgeous face. He was sporting a slight outline of a beard extending from his sideburns, dark rinse jeans, and a fresh white tee that hugged his muscles. I felt different about him.

  “Hi there,” he said.

  “Hey, babe.” I kissed him.

  We sat at the front fountain in front of the school.

  “For summer, where are you going?” I asked.

  “Where you go, I will follow. That, and I got a job at my dad’s firm as an intern,” he said. He held me in his arms.

  Carolina came walking out of the school doors. She came up to us. “What up, Jason?” she said. I guess she considered herself Jason’s friend.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi Carolina,” I said.

  “Hi?” Carolina said.

  “Where are you off to?” I asked.

  “To meet Derek,” she said.

  “Word?” Jason said.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?” I asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Are you excited about graduation?” I asked her.

  “No. I’m excited about prom,” she said.

  “Good. Well, I’ll see you around.” I walked over to her and gave her a hug. She was stunned.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Bye,” I said.

  “Bye,” Jason said. She walked away slowly.

  “What was that?” Jason asked.

  “What?” I said.

  “I thought you guys were arch enemies,” he said.

  “I know, but it turns out she wasn’t my real enemy at all,” I said. If I could forgive Craig, anything was possible. Though I must admit, I even surprised myself with this one.

  We walked around the front lawn. It would be the last time we would.

  “Are you going to remember me?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ten years from now, when you think back about high school, will you think of me?”

  “You? You’re, like, from another planet. I’ll definitely remember you.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing about you,” I said.

  His hands came at me with his fingers moving rapidly like the winds of a twister.

  I screamed out. “Ah! No, no. Do not tickle me,” I said.

  His fingers tickled my body like a pianist tickles ivory keys. I burst out into laughter. My body convulsed defensively. He laughed, taking pleasure in torturing me with his touch. There was a permanent grin on my face from ear to ear. He picked me up in his arms and swung me around.

  “Put me down, silly.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “No, you’re crazy.”

  “Only since I met you.”

  I was close enough to him for our noses to touch. I tilted my head like I was going to kiss him, and then I whispered in his ear, “Check.”

  I started tickling him.

  “Stop. Stop, Nia!”

  “Beg for mercy.”

  “Nah.” He laughed.

  “Too bad.” I continued to tickle him. He grabbed my hands. Suddenly I realized the tables had turned. He was going in for the kill.

  “You better be ready for a rematch,” Jason said.

  I wiggled my arms every which way and struggled to get my hands free. Once I got them free, I ran across the street to the park. He chased me around the park for the rest of the afternoon. It was just me and my boyfriend.

  If there wasn’t such a thing as fool’s gold, I guess one would never know the real thing. How could one tell what was fake? It felt like I had found something very close to the real thing. Every time he looked at me, I knew he felt the same way about me that he did the night he dropped me at my grandmother’s house. And somehow his opinion was the only opinion that counted in the entire world. I never imagined it would be like this. And, yeah, I think he knew the look I had in my eyes. It was a look that said I could definitely have him for breakfast and maybe seconds for lunch. Good thing prom was in two days. Phew!

  Epilogue

  First things first: At prom, Jane had a secret she was itching to tell me. Dressed in a pink, backless metallic dress that came to just above her knees and with a fantastic high ponytail filled with soft curls she looked like she had just stepped off the red carpet. But Jane was operating more like a publicist than a star. She was furiously tapping away at her Sidekick. She was definitely taking notes for the post-prom report.

  “Hey, Nia! I love your black strapless with soft violet chiffon. I would’ve never thought of that,” Jane said.

  “It is fabulous, isn’t it?” I said.

  “So, I have a secret,” Jane began.

  It wasn’t until that instant that I realized Jane was the type of girl who was going to keep tabs on everyone from high school for the next ten years, and come up with the reunion report.

  She looked both ways in the hotel lobby. Then she inconspicuously pulled me behind a tall plant near the reception desk.

  “I was going to take this to my grave.” She paused.

  Yeah, right. Not unless she was going to die in the next five minutes was this going to go to the grave with her. Jane could hold a secret about as well as a shopaholic could hold fifty bucks! I really hoped this had nothing to do with Jason because if she was going to take it to her grave I would’ve appreciated that more than knowing.

  “I know you’ve been wondering,” she whispered.

  “Wondering what?”

  “Who gave Roger the sexy biker boy makeover?”

  “Yeah, kind of.”

  “Okay, he let me cheat off him on a bio quiz. Those damn quizzes count for like 40 percent of your grade and, well, I was tied up with Derek the night before,” she said.

  “Jason’s friend, Derek? Doesn’t he date Carolina?”

  “No. He’s with me now,” Jane said sternly.

  “I see,” I said. Who was I to question her?

  “Back to Roger. He told me he really, really liked Cindy, and he wanted me to help him get her. And she told me her ideal guy was a hot, clean-cut-by-day, bad-boy-by-night-looking guy with a motorcycle. I didn’t study for the last three quizzes, if you know what I mean.”

  I arched my eyebrows so high they practically reached my hairline.

  “Phat, right?” she asked.

  “Hmmm,” I said. What they say is true … nothing is ever as it seems.

  As for Michelle, she wasn’t voted prom queen—something about a write-in vote who won by a landslide. Craig went with her to prom, though they didn’t leave together. She left with Lucy. And Gary, I overheard him telling Roger how he met his prom date, Vala. How crazy is that?

  I was never blacklisted from the yearbook. It’s a funny thing, yearbook. Roger decided it was time MIA stood its ground and put up a fight. As co-president, he put to rest the urban myth that if one crossed the popular secret society they would be ousted from the yearbook and would probably not get a job in this town after college graduation. I found out about the last part a couple of days after we had given Michelle her makeover.

  Someone had sent Gary a text about it, and he had forwarded to me. We just laughed about it. Seriously, there was life outside of this town. The smart, the un-inducted, and the inappropriately labeled “nerds” were no longer at the mercy of the popular secret society because a new story had been written at this school. This urban legend starred a girl who was neither popular nor a nerd but a superbly dressed, non-narcissist hybrid who ended up with the guy, the popular best friend, and a full page as the prom
queen in the yearbook! If ever there was a moment for a high five, now would be it!

  Forever, Nia