Saving Face (a young adult romance)

by Dell, T. J.

  And not that she was jealous, but Alyssa didn’t like the idea of Brent admiring Jennifer’s dress. Maybe she should rethink her own coffee colored gown. Except she really liked its beaded neck line. No, she loved her dress and she wasn’t going to let Jenn get to her. This decision made Alyssa feel quite Brent-like and proud of herself. Until Jenn started asking about how they’d spent the weekend; and commenting on how convenient it must be to have him right next door. Alyssa accidentally knocked her juice into Jenn’s lap.

  “She’s so jealous.” Beth offered later. “I bet Jeff will hate her dress.”

  Jeff! Why was it so hard for her to remember the names of Jenn’s minions? “I don’t care if she is jealous. I just wish she’d keep it to herself.”

  “You’re right. Brent wouldn’t do that to you. He’s not Pete.”

  Alyssa decided not to mention that, while Brent was extremely trustworthy, that wasn’t why she wasn’t jealous. All this pretending was starting to get annoying.

  “Are you going to be at the hospital on Thursday?” Beth asked after Alyssa had been quiet for awhile.

  The varsity club was sponsoring a fall carnival for the children’s wing of the local hospital. They had done one the year before and it had gone so well they’d decided to make it an annual event. “Yeah. I think I am in charge of bobbing for apples.”

  “That sounds fun. I’m at the Jack-o-lantern table. We should have signed up together. We could have been at the same booth.”

  “That would have been good.” Beth’s relaxed comment startled her a little. She really enjoyed Beth’s company, but they didn’t usually go out of their way to spend time together. Probably because I am always so busy with Brent, Alyssa thought. Also she thought it was kind of a shame. Having a close girlfriend would be nice; next time Beth wanted to go shopping Alyssa resolved to make the time. “What about Tommy—I think he did the jack-o-lanterns last year.”

  “Well the sign ups were before we were together, so he’s in charge of one of the games. We are riding over together though. Is Brent coming?”

  “Oh, I hadn’t really thought to ask him.” Alyssa stammered. Her last attempt at mixing her two worlds had hardly been a stellar success.

  “I know he doesn’t go here—but I am sure the hospital won’t turn away his help.”

  “You’re probably right. I’ll mention it to him. But he’s been really busy lately with some class work so…” Alyssa let the sentence drop. It was a pretty lame excuse anyway. She would have to ask him now. Maybe she could try buttering him up first—let him beat her at Mario Cart? And it might be helpful if she showed up with some sort of bribe. Where could she get cinnamon roasted cashews on a Monday afternoon?

  Chapter Eight

  “Am I going to regret accepting these?” Brent joked when he opened the door. Alyssa was smiling and holding out a paper cone brimming with, now slightly cold, cinnamon roasted cashews. It was Wednesday. Alyssa talked herself into putting off seeing him until the last minute, but she was going to suck it up and ask him today—since the carnival was in less than 24 hours.

  “What? A girl can’t just stop at the corn maze and buy her best friend overpriced seasonal snack foods?” Alyssa walked past him and into his family room when he took the cashews from her.

  “Well gee, when you put it that way…” The rest of his sarcasm was lost when he downed a handful of the cashews before emptying the rest into a bowl.

  Alyssa was ignoring him anyway. Sitting on the floor she began unpacking her back pack onto his coffee table and pulling out her calculus homework. “I need you to help me with my homework.”

  “You’re an ace at math, Lyssa. What do you really need?”

  “Well well, Mister Smarty-pants, it just so happens that I don’t need help with calculus. I just thought I would start on my math homework while you proof read my Shakespeare paper.” Alyssa was pulling a second folder from her back pack and held this one out to her friend.

  Brent nodded. He didn’t apologize, but he did take the paper. English was Brent’s best subject, but he knew Alyssa struggled just to maintain the C she needed to qualify for cheerleading. Sitting on the couch Brent put their snack on the coffee table and began to read. They worked separately for the better part of an hour. Occasionally Brent would comment aloud on her paper, but he mostly made notes in the margin for her to use later. When he finished that he moved on to his own homework. And they kept working quietly until Ms. Carter served dinner.

  “Alyssa! We haven’t seen you for dinner lately. Where have you been hiding?” Ms. Carter commented as she spooned homemade beef stew into three bowls.

  “Oh I guess I’ve just been busy. Senior year you know.”

  “I do know. Brent’s been busy too. It seems like just yesterday I was taking you two to story time at the library and watching you play tag in the back yard. Now you’re seniors and soon you’ll be graduating…”

  “Mom…” Brent groaned. Alyssa giggled. Ms. Carter could sometimes be very sentimental. It embarrassed Brent, but Alyssa’s parents weren’t sentimental at all and she thought it was nice.

  “Okay! Okay!” Ms. Carter held up her hands in defeat. “Any who, Alyssa, tell me about the carnival at the hospital. I hear it is going to be even bigger this year. What a wonderful thing you are doing for those kids.”

  “What carnival?” Brent’s eyes were wide as he listened to his mother ramble. “I didn’t know you were doing something at the hospital.” He turned to Alyssa.

  “Oh. Well we did it last year too—the Varsity club at school that is. But you were already at your dad’s for the holidays so...Anyway we are doing it earlier this year, tomorrow actually. Umm. I thought you might want to come with me?”

  “Shakespeare paper my ass.” Brent mumbled as he went back to his dinner.

  “That’s a great idea!” Ms. Carter took no notice of the tension at the dinner table as she continued on about what a great contribution they were making to society and what socially responsible adults they were growing into. Alyssa hardly tasted her stew.

  “Really, Lyssa?” Brent finally spoke again after they’d finished the dishes and he was walking her to her front door. “This is getting outrageous. You never needed bribes or excuses to talk to me before. I would love to help at the hospital. I would have done it anyway you know. Even without the boyfriend pretense.”

  “It wasn’t an excuse. You know how bad I am doing in that class! If I don’t keep my grade up I won’t be able to cheer in the spring.” Alyssa shuffled her feet and refused to look him in the eyes. She shouldn’t have asked him. She could have thought of something to tell Beth.

  “Don’t split hairs Lyssa. It was an excuse. Not in all of our lives have you ever needed an excuse to come over before. Is this really how you want to spend our senior year? Everything is going to change soon, and you are missing what’s left of high school. And now you are making me miss it too.”

  “What are you talking about!?” Alyssa was pretty sure she would be embarrassed later for shouting in the middle of the street.

  “You. Us. This whole juvenile I-have-a-boyfriend nonsense. You are so important to me Lyssa, but this fake boyfriend bit is getting old. And it is making things weird with us.” Brent started pacing a small circle in front of her walk. “Maybe, it wouldn’t be so bad you know if you didn’t cheer in the spring.”

  “What! What is it you have against cheerleading? You weren’t happy when I got chosen for head cheerleader, and you’ve never bothered to come to my meets.”

  “I would come to the meets if it mattered to you, but it doesn’t. You don’t even like cheering! Why aren’t you playing softball, or soccer? I would be at every game.”

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

  “I know enough. I know this isn’t really you.” Brent held up a hand ticking off his points on his fingers. “You hate cheerleading. You had a boyfriend you never liked, you have a crowd of friends you can’t even trust to still be your fri
end if you’re single, and…”

  “Enough! You don’t get to say that to me. You don’t go to my school. You don’t know my friends. And next year when you are off at college I am going to need my other friends.” Alyssa stomped off towards her own front door.

  Much later that night Alyssa heard a knock on her window. When she pulled the cord to raise the blinds she saw Brent’s rather large frame crouched on the low roof. Oddly, the first thought to come to her mind was how much bigger he looked now than when they’d been ten and finding him outside her bedroom window was a daily occurrence.

  “What?” Alyssa shouted through the glass just to emphasize that she was still angry with him.

  “Open the window Lyssa.”

  “No.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “Duh. I mean I’m not opening the window. Go home Brent.”

  “No, before. You said ‘when you go away to college’ why not when we go away?”

  Alyssa opened the window so they could stop screaming, but she didn’t let him in. Nope. She left Brent kneeling on the roof, in the cold even though it meant letting all that cold air in through the window. She was working on principal here.

  “I just don’t think I’m going to college that’s all. I’m gonna get a job or something.”

  “You heard back from Penn State?”

  “No. I didn’t apply.”

  “We filled our applications out at the same time. Can I come in?” Brent shivered dramatically.

  “No. You may not. I didn’t send it.”

  “Lyssa, what is going on? It’s due in like four weeks! Please tell me you are just proof reading the essay again.”

  “Can we not do this now? I’m freezing and I want to close the window.”

  “You’re telling me. If I knew you were going to make me sit out here I would have at least put shoes on.”

  For the first time Alyssa noticed Brent’s bare feet on the rough shingles. She moved aside and let him climb over the window sill. “I just don’t think college is for me. I’m not sure what I am going to do yet, and I’m not good at anything like you are.”

  “Do your parents know? Whatever, that doesn’t really matter. You are sending in the application Lyssa. You are good at lots of stuff, and how do you plan on deciding what to do with your life anyway? Can’t you decide while you go to school?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Alyssa hadn’t meant to tell him about the application. Her half-plan from the day she decided not to take the application to the post office was just to let him and everyone else think she didn’t get in. Now it seemed to be less than half of a plan.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Brent was staring at her. Alyssa realized she must have been quiet for awhile. Well it was her room and she had asked him to go home. So she could be quiet if she wanted to be quiet. “Lyssa?”

  “I’m not smart. And that isn’t me asking for pity or for praise. You know what my grades are like. And college is really hard. What’s the point?”

  “Who the crap told you weren’t smart?!”

  “SSSHHH!!!! You’ll wake up my parents!”

  “Is that where this is coming from?” Brent didn’t have a lot of patience with Alyssa’s mom and dad. They were less traditional then his parents—even if they were still happily married. They weren’t bad parents they just weren’t as involved as Ms. Carter was when they’d been growing up. But they were good parents—she had rules, and a curfew, and she was punished when she disregarded them.

  “No. I told you. I just don’t think I have the grades to get in that’s all.”

  “You’re grades are good enough. And you are smart. You just aren’t studious. I can help you with your study habits if you would feel better.”

  “Can we talk about this later?” Alyssa was tired. The inside kind of tired. When you don’t want to sleep, but you don’t really want to be awake either.

  Brent just looked at her for a few minutes. “I’m sorry about before Lyssa.”

  She just nodded. It wasn’t the first fight they’d ever had and she wasn’t really mad anymore. Besides she was starting to have a sneaking suspicion that he might have been right about some of it.

  Brent climbed back to his own room. Alyssa laid down and didn’t go to sleep for a long time.

  Chapter Nine

  How many bobbing buckets would she need? Alyssa was setting up her table with individual bobbing buckets. Because of the germs. The rest of her booth looked really good. A black table cloth and orange buckets for the bobbing went perfectly with the Halloween theme. And the wall behind her was covered with construction paper black cats, jack-o-lanterns, and ghosts. All the kids would also be receiving prizes in addition to their apples, so she had a big punch bowl filled with small plastic toys. The hospital had cleared out a big common room for them. All the other walls were also hung with Halloween decorations, and everywhere you looked there were games, activities, and arts and craft tables.

  All the high school students were encouraged to wear costumes. Most of the girls were happy to dress up—a black tee shirt, a fuzzy eared headband, and a little creative use of her eyeliner transformed Alyssa into a cute kitty cat. Beth made a pretty angel. Her long blond hair looked extra shiny under the sparkly halo. Most of the boys wore their sports uniforms. So they ended up with a lot of football players, basketball players, and even a couple baseball players. Everything had come together really well and any minute the doors would be opened to the kids and their families. Alyssa should have been having fun except, well she wasn’t.

  “Alyssa! We need you.” Tommy and Beth came rushing over to her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The clown isn’t coming.”

  “Oh. Well I do have the number for the agency.” Alyssa reached for the day planner she’d been using to keep track of all the carnival information. As the most organized member of the Varsity Club she’d been elected event committee chairman. They’d spent a pretty chunk of change on the face painting clown.

  “No. There isn’t time. Couldn’t you do it? We provided the special hypo allergenic face painting kit—now all we need is someone with a little talent.” Tommy was holding out the face paint. “Brent says you’re good.”

  “She’s never lost a game of Pictionary.” Brent walked up to them. She hadn’t even known he was planning on coming.

  “Brent!” He was standing there easily—as if they hadn’t been fighting the last time they saw each other. He looked good too. Somewhere he’d found a Green Lantern tee shirt. His mom must have told him to wear a costume. The tee shirt was probably a left over from his comic book days, and it was a little tight now around his upper body.

  “Come on!” Beth grabbed her arm and dragged her over the face painting booth. “Your cat face is perfect. And we can get anyone to do the bobbing thing.” Brent trailed behind them.

  “I can take photos of the kids after you do their faces. One of the nurses said she would make sure all the families got copies if we leave the memory card with her overnight.” Tommy and Beth were gone and Brent and Alyssa were left standing there awkwardly staring at each other.

  “Oh no!” Alyssa broke the silence when she groaned and dropped into a chair. “You’re right. Things are getting weird!” She was completely serious, but for some reason Brent found her break down hilarious.

  His laughter was contagious so she started laughing too. When they were both breathing normally again the weirdness was gone. She looked at him appraisingly. “You look good, but you know—the green lantern wore a mask.” Alyssa pulled out a paint brush and shoved him into the other chair in front of her booth. When she was finished with him he had a green eye mask to go with his tee-shirt. This was just in time because the room was now filling up with kids ready for a good time.

  For the next three hours everyone did have a good time. All the kids and even some of the parents visited the face painting booth. Brent’s superhero mask was so popular that half the li
ttle boys demanded similar designs; a lot of the girls ended up as cats too. Alyssa was really enjoying herself. It should have been difficult to see how sick some of the children were, but all of them were smiling and laughing. It was actually more difficult, she decided, to feel bad for them. Instead she found herself admiring a girl pulling an IV stand decorated with pink sparkly stickers behind her. When a little boy asked her to paint a creepy spider web across his bald head Alyssa smiled and did just that. These kids didn’t need her pity.

  After packing up her booth and helping to mop up the mess around the bobbing for apples table Alyssa went looking for Brent. They’d spent most of the afternoon side by side, but she hadn’t found a private moment with him to say thank you. He was lounging in a corner at one of the now empty craft tables with a couple of boys about 12 or 13 years old.

  “No way, does Batman beat Superman! Superman can fly, has super strength, and he has laser vision! All Batman’s got is a lame utility belt. No way!” One of the boys was arguing emphatically.

  “Don’t underestimate the utility belt, dude.” Brent replied smiling. “Have you seen the stuff he pulls out of that thing?” Alyssa stood back for awhile listening to them. Brent looked more relaxed then she’d seen him in a long while.

  “Once a loser, huh Carter?” Pete sneered when he walked up. Seeing the look on the older football player’s face, the younger boys dropped their grins.

  Alyssa grabbed the chair next to Brent and sat down. “Hey Brent. You never told me—which Green Lantern are you?”

  Brent offered her a wide smile. “Hard to say—Hal Jordan was more of a badass, but I always liked Kyle Rayner. He makes me laugh.”

  “Yeah, Rayner’s a good choice. I kinda dig John Stewart, but Rayner suits you better.” Alyssa nodded.