“You’re not going to eat those?” she sneered at me.
Oh here we go.
“Are you a model, too?” I asked her.
“What do you mean, ‘too’? You mean you are?” Janice balked.
“No, I meant ‘too’ as in, as well as Cheryl and Lisa?”
“Oh. No, I’m not. Look at my mug – ain’t no modeling career for this face!”
“Don’t say that!” I was surprised. These girls always appeared as though they thought they were too good, and yet when you scraped the surface you found that none of them thought they were good enough.
“You have striking features, and beautiful skin and you’re so willowy!” I said diplomatically.
“No, but I don’t have a beautiful face like you,” she shrugged. “If we could somehow put your head on my body we’d be on the cover of Vogue!” she laughed.
“Let’s go and look for Cheryl and Lisa,” I suggested to change the subject. “Do you think they’re here yet?”
“I think that Cheryl lured Chad into some dark corner of the campus and she has no intention of going to get Lisa!” Janice laughed sloppily.
“Seriously?” I asked, and then I remembered Cheryl trying to cook up some plot for me to help her get Chad alone away from the dance. Well I had succeeded in helping her to achieve that without even meaning to.
“But what about Lisa? We can’t just forget all about her,” I said.
“No, I guess that’s mean,” Janice sighed. “I’ll text her and see where she’s at.”
Janice pulled her phone out of her little clutch and got to tapping out a message on the keypad.
She had no sooner sent it than the response came back from Lisa that she was still up in her room waiting to hear from us.
“Ha!” Janice exclaimed as she tapped back a response. “I knew it. Chad and Cheryl never even made it over there. I’m telling her that we’re all here now and that she should just come over.”
Now I felt really bad. We should have gone over to get Lisa instead of making her walk across campus in the dark by herself.
“Come on, let’s make our way back over to the gang,” Janice said as she re-filled her plastic cup with the orange fizz. “I think Trevor likes you,” she eyed me sideways. “Do you like him?”
“Really? You think that? I thought he didn’t like me. He’s kinda rude!” I said.
“Aw, no. That’s just his way. I think he’s one of those socially inept kinds of people who overcompensate,” she noted, but I couldn’t tell if she was just being silly because of the vodka or if she meant it.
“Well, he’s Lisa’s ex, so that kind of makes him off-limits anyway,” I said and was grateful to have this defense.
“Oh who cares about Lisa. He never liked her anyway. She chased after him even though she knew…it’s all her own fault,” Janice said callously. “Besides, he’s never allowed to go out with anyone else again because Lisa liked him once?”
“I think there’s a bit more to it than that.” I tried to defend Lisa without offending Janice. These were very tricky waters to navigate!
“Whatever. There he is. Why don’t you go ask him to dance?” Janice was physically pushing me in Trevor’s direction.
“No, really. I’m fine. I’m not much of a dancer,” I lied.
I loved dancing! But not with Trevor. And I found it very suspect that Janice was trying to orchestrate something between us.
“Hey Trevor!” she shouted to get his attention, “Catherine wants to dance with you!”
“Janice!” I hissed. “I do not!”
Trevor smirked at me. I must have turned crimson.
“Oh yeah?” His voice was oily and arrogant. “Why don’t we wait for a slow song?”
“It’s okay,” I demurred. “I can’t dance – I’m terrible. Janice is just having a little joke at our expense.”
“Nah. She knows I think you’re pretty,” he smirked as he took one of my curls between his thumb and forefinger. “Your hair looks really nice tonight. You should do it like this more often.”
I smelt the alcohol on his breath and remembered that he’d been drinking quite a bit.
“Please don’t touch my hair,” I tried to say as nicely as possible so as not to make him angry. “You’ll pull the curl out and it’ll go straight again.”
“Aw, we wouldn’t that now, would we? It’s so purty,” he slurred.
And then the universe decided to play a funny trick on me and a slow song started up over the speaker system.
“Come on, let’s dance.”
Trevor put his arm around my waist and half pulled, half pushed me into the middle of the gym where the dance floor was.
I was horrified. Trevor hugged me tightly to him and buried his face in my neck. He was sweating on me.
“Trevor!” I gasped, “I can’t breathe!”
“Yes you can,” he mumbled.
“No, I really can’t,” I insisted. “Could you not hold me so tightly, please?”
He was swaying from side to side in some approximation of dancing, but because of the way he was hanging off of me I was afraid he would pull me over and we’d both end up sprawled on the floor in a heap.
“Trevor, please! You’ve had too much to drink and we’re both going to fall!” I tried to struggle from his embrace, but he only tightened it in response.
This was torture. I looked around desperately hoping to find someone to rescue me. Where were Chad and Cheryl? Janice would be of no help; in fact she had disappeared and I couldn’t even find her face anywhere in the crowd. This had to be the longest slow song ever in the world. Either that or Time itself had decelerated.
Then two things happened at exactly the same time to prise me out of my predicament. The first thing was that Trevor slipped his hand down to my right butt cheek and began squeezing it, and the second thing was that right at that precise moment I met Lisa’s eyes and realized she’d been watching as Trevor clung to me and I struggled to hold us both up.
I wrenched myself out of Trevor’s grasp and slapped him hard across the face. Then I ran up to Lisa.
“Oh my god, Lisa. I’m so sorry. It’s not what you think at all.”
But I could see from the look on her face that the damage was done. Her expression was a maelstrom of sadness, anger, dejection, and rage all balled up into one.
“Bitch!” Trevor screamed at me as he put his hand to the cheek I had slapped.
“How could you?” Lisa searched my eyes like she was searching my soul. Searching for my soul, because in her mind I couldn’t possibly have one in order to do what she thought I had done. She turned and pushed through the crowd towards the exit.
“What happened?” Janice was at my side now looking bewildered.
“Trevor was groping me and I slapped him in the face and Lisa saw the whole thing and now she’s upset!” I blurted out. “Janice – why did you make me dance with him? I didn’t want to and you know I didn’t!”
Janice looked indignant.
“I didn’t make you do anything! I was trying to do you a favor. He had mentioned that he thought you were hot and I was trying to play cupid. Jeez, remind me not to do you anymore favors ever again!”
“What’s your problem?” Trevor raged at me. “You hit me? You hit me? How dare you, you little bitch!”
I was stunned at his anger. I shrank back in fear from him. I looked at both their faces and realized I couldn’t win here. I turned and fled after Lisa, hoping and praying that I’d catch up to her.
I pushed my way through the crowd and burst out of the gymnasium doors.
“Lisa!” I shouted into the night. “Lisa!”
The nights were cool now and my skin bristled with goose pimples as I race-walked across the campus towards the dorm. Where else could she have been headed? But not only had she had a small head start, but her legs were considerably longer than mine, so I doubted very much I could catch up to her if I tried. The initial adrenaline of the moment had worn off
, and in fear of snapping my ankles as I cut across the lawns in my wedges, I slowed my pace to a brisk walk.
Finally I reached our building. There she was in the lobby waiting for the elevator, tears streaming down her face.
“Lisa!” I cried. “Please let me explain!”
“I saw you!” she spat out without looking at me. “What’s there to explain?!”
“I didn’t want to dance with him! Janice practically pushed us together!” I protested.
She rounded on me suddenly. “How could you do that to me?” Her face was wild with emotion. “You saw what he put me through! You know how I felt about him! Still feel about him! What kind of person are you?!” she shrieked.
I took a deep breath and lowered my voice, hoping it would have a calming effect on her. “Lisa, please. I need you to calm down and to listen to me. It wasn’t like that.”
The elevator doors slid open and we stepped inside in unison.
“Janice was trying to embarrass me for a laugh. She actually literally did push me towards Trevor and told him that I wanted to dance with him. She told him that – not me. I didn’t want to dance at all with anyone! I told him so, but he was drunk and being belligerent and arrogant and he insisted that we dance.”
I saw Lisa wince.
“Not because he likes me,” (although I couldn’t say for certain if that were true or not), “but because he and Janice were trying to get my goat. They were making fun of me. It was all a big joke at my expense.”
The elevator arrived and we stepped off onto our floor and turned down the hallway.
“But I saw you both…draped over each other,” Lisa sniffled.
“He was very drunk. I was trying to hold him up. I thought he was going to fall to the ground and take me with him,” I explained. “You saw how I slapped him! Did that look like I was having a good time to you?”
“I did see that. You clocked him good!” Lisa managed a stifled chuckle through her tears as we paused in front of her door.
“I’m really truly sorry. I wouldn’t go after a guy you liked, and I certainly wouldn’t dance with him voluntarily…but I swear on my life I was coerced. To make me the butt of a joke.”
Lisa hadn’t been the nicest girl in the world to me since I had arrived at Brandenhurst, but the last thing I wanted was to cause her anymore distress than she had already been through in the past couple of weeks.
She took a deep breath.
“I believe you,” she smiled weakly at me as she opened her door. “Do you want to come in for a second?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I know I should hate him,” she confided in me, “and part of me does, but the other part is still in love with him. He was my first boyfriend. He was my first…everything, you know? So I’m having a really hard time moving on. I can’t talk about it with Cheryl, she gets really aggravated at me and says I should just get over it.”
“Like she’s gotten over Chad?” I asked pointedly.
“Ha! Exactly!” Lisa looked up at me with gratitude for finally saying out loud something she hadn’t been able to.
“Do you want to fix your make up and come back to the dance?” I asked gingerly.
She sank down onto her bed and shrugged.
“I don’t know. What for? He’s there and I’ll just be obsessed all night with what he’s doing and who he’s talking to….it seems like an exercise in masochism.”
“I understand,” I said. “Do you want me to stay here with you? We could go downstairs and get something to eat?”
“Nah, I think I’m okay,” she replied. “You go back to the dance. It’s your first one.”
“I’ve been to dances before – they’re all the same!” I smiled at her.
“I think I just want to be alone and go to bed. If you don’t mind.”
She looked down at the floor and I realized this was the second time in less than a week that she’d said those same words to me.
“Are you sure? I don’t mind staying,” I offered.
“I’m sure. Go. Have a good time.”
“Okay, sweetie. I’m sorry that all happened,” I said sincerely.
“I know. It’s fine,” she said and the resignation in her voice nearly broke my heart.
I clicked the door shut behind me and wondered what I should do. I could head down the hall and call it a night, or I could head back to the gym and try to enjoy the rest of the dance. My instincts strongly pushed me to just go back to my room and enjoy a quiet evening with Stefano (oh how I wanted to enjoy a quiet evening with Stefano!), but I realized I had written my column in such a way that it was to culminate in the experience of my first social event at Brandenhurst. I sighed, and with a heavy heart I turned towards the elevators instead of my room.
I was halfway back to the dance and dreading the inevitable confrontation with Trevor. I wanted nothing to do with him ever again.
“Catherine?” I heard a voice call out to me from the shadows.
I stopped in my tracks and turned to the direction I thought the voice was coming from.
“Catherine! It’s me!” Chad was walking towards me from the dark. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you at the dance?”
I sighed. I had no idea what to say. Chad had done so much for me already. I didn’t want to burden him with my tale of his gropey, grabby drunk friend. It would be unfair to put him in such an awkward position.
“Lisa was upset about something. I ran after to her to see if she was alright,” I blustered.
“And? Is she?” he was standing directly in front of me now.
“Yeah. I think so,” I said in a small voice.
“And you? Are you alright?”
For some reason I could not understand in the slightest, his simple show of concern for me was so overwhelming that I was brought to the threshold of tears. I could feel my eyes fill up and I clenched my jaw to stop them from spilling over onto my cheeks.
“You’re not alright. What’s the matter?” he reached out and put his hand on my arm.
I shook my head wildly and stepped back from him.
“Sorry,” I choked out, “Just, please…” I turned and walked as quickly as I could away from him.
“Catherine!” he called as he caught up to me. “Do you seriously think I’m going to see you crying and let you just walk off by yourself in the dark? Tell me what happened!”
Well, it was too late now. There was no use in trying to conceal my emotions from him since he’d seen them already, so I let go and began to full-on cry right there in front of him.
“I was at the dance,” I sobbed, “and Janice thought it was funny to make me dance with Trevor.”
Chad shifted uncomfortably.
“He was drunk and he was hanging off me…then he grabbed my butt and I slapped him. Hard. Across the face,” I admitted.
“Sounds like he deserved it,” Chad said and the corner of his mouth curled up.
“Well, but Lisa saw the whole thing. Janice was mad at me, Trevor was screaming at me, Lisa ran off...I don’t know why I’m so emotional. It really wasn’t that a big of a deal,” I sniffed.
Chad reached out to brush away the tears on my cheek.
“Please don’t!” I cried as I jerked away from him again. “The last thing I need after all of this is for Cheryl to see me with you!”
He looked taken aback for a moment, but then he nodded. “You’re right. Best not to test your luck tonight, hey?”
We both stood there in awkward silence, me staring down at the ground and Chad casting his gaze about the sky.
“Well,” he said finally, “Did you want to go home? Or would you like to go back to the dance?”
I shrugged and kept my eyes firmly glued to my feet.
“You really look too beautiful tonight to waste it,” he said as he shoved his hands into his pockets. “I vote that you go back to the dance. Although if you’d rather go home, I can understand that. But whichever you decide, I’m walking you there and Cheryl
can come and talk to me about it if she has a problem.”
I let out a big sigh. He had been so kind to me.
“Dance,” I finally said with a tiny smile.
“What was that?” Chad cupped his hand to his ear.
“Dance!” I said a little bit louder.
“One more time!”
“DANCE!” I yelled at him, grinning broadly now.
“That’s my girl!” he smiled at me, and we turned and walked back towards the gym.
“Hey, where is Cheryl?” it suddenly occurred to me to ask.
He grimaced. “She should be at the dance by now, too.”
“Did you guys fight?” I asked.
“It was the same old same old Cheryl stuff. The girl will not take no for an answer. I’ve tried to be kind, I’ve tried to be diplomatic, but there comes a point…” he trailed off.
“For what it’s worth, I think she really loves you,” I suggested with trepidation.
He looked at me strangely. “Then I guess you really don’t know her very well at all,” he said.
When we reached the gym, Chad suggested we enter separately so as not to cause any more commotion. I agreed and told him that I would head straight to the bathroom to fix my face while he went on into the dance. I came out few minutes later and made my way through the crowd trying to find them all. I was nervous about seeing Trevor, but took comfort in knowing that Chad had agreed that he had deserved a slap.
But before I could find anyone, Cheryl came roaring up to me out of nowhere.
“Where the hell have you been? What on earth happened? Trevor is livid!” she lit into me.
“Whoa!” I exclaimed. Chad had done such a great job of calming me down and I wasn’t going to let even Cheryl upset me again. “I went after Lisa. She was in tears.”
“Why was Lisa in tears?” Cheryl demanded.
“Because she saw me dancing with Trevor.”
“Oh god,” Cheryl rolled her eyes with disgust.
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