by Paula Chase
Only a few parents littered the bleacher. The coach discouraged but didn’t prohibit spectators during practice or trials.
Sitting side-by-side on the bleacher, with no space between them, Kelly and Angel could hardly be called spectators. Angel turned to look at her. Though Kelly kept her face looking out at the Olympic-sizedpool, she wasn’t paying attention to a thing going on in front of her.
“So, did you let any other dudes get at you since you blew me off ?” Angel’s eyebrow cocked and he paused, giving Kelly a chance to answer.But she took the fifth and held her peace. He chuckled softly. “I’ma take that as a yes. It’s cool though, you with me now. Right?”
Kelly’s earnest laugh rang out, echoing. She covered her mouth and lowered her chuckle. “First of all, you’re dead wrong. I wasn’t dating anyone.” She almost admitted he was her first boyfriend to begin with, but didn’t. She teased him, “And second, you called me so much that if I was seeing someone else you would have run him off.”
Angel laughed. “Good.” His face turned serious, reminding Kelly how quickly he could move from one emotion to the other. “What’s up, mami? You finally gave in, so you obviously feeling a brother. Are you saying if I hadn’t called to say I gave up dealing you wouldn’t have let me get back with you?”
Kelly’s eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
Angel appraised her as if trying to read her thoughts, making Kelly shift nervously. She cleared her throat, waiting.
“No,” Angel said after a tense few seconds. “I gave it up like I promised. It just trips me out how you so pressed about something I don’t even do around you.”
Kelly started to object but Angel defused the argument he saw coming by knocking knees with her. “It’s all in the wind, mami. I was just trying to see where your heart was. It’s swazy.” He chuckled. “I’m drug free.”
Kelly wondered aloud, “So what did your uncle say when you told him?”
“He pissed,” Angel said, in a tone Kelly recognized immediately. That’s all he was going to say about that. She wanted to press further. Was there some ritual Angel had to go through to get out of the game, like when people get jumped into a gang? Or did she watch too much TV?
Her shoulders shook as she laughed silently.
“What’s so funny?” Angel smiled.
“Nothing. It’s just ... you’re always so secretive about that. But then you expect me to tell you the truth all the time,” Kelly admitted.
“You think you want to know everything, but you don’t. Trust.” Angel glided his fingers over the back of Kelly’s hand and dipped his fingers between hers. The two of them stared down at their hands, lost in thought.
“Can I ask one more thing?” Kelly said. Her heart beat faster as she anticipated Angel’s no. He surprised her by nodding yes. “Is everythingokay at home? I mean you didn’t get kicked out or anything, right?”
“Naw, nothing like that.” Angel knocked knees with her. “What, you think I’m Mafioso?”
Kelly giggled, embarrassed. Uh, yeah, I do, she thought to herself.
“Look, I was doing my uncle a solid. Now ... you know, he can handle his business and I’m gon’ handle mine.” Angel flashed a smile, then knocked shoulders. “So, what’s up for the weekend?”
Without hesitation, Kelly shared her plans to head to O.C. with Jacinta and Lizzie, the next day. Angel was amused and surprised and told her so. “Where this bad chick come from? You sneaking out?”
“Please, like you weren’t the one who turned me bad.”
Angel threw his hands up in surrender. “Un-ah, don’t put that on me.”
They shared a soft, couples laugh, as Kelly turned her hand over and took his hand in hers, loving how the blood immediately raced to her fingers.
“So what would happen if I showed up in O.C. tomorrow night?” he whispered, his mouth tickling her ear.
“Where would you stay?” Kelly frowned.
“Don’t worry about all that.You want me come down there?”
“I do but ...” Kelly turned to look Angel in the eye. “Would you come by yourself? You know Jacinta and Raheem ...” Kelly wasn’t sure what to say about them.
“Those two don’t know what they want,” Angel snorted. “They were just together last weekend.” Angel laughed as Kelly’s eyes widened. “Oh, your girl didn’t tell y’all that?”
“She did ...”Well technically she hadn’t. But Kelly figured Cinny had her reasons. “But I mean she said they argue a lot too.”
“Okay, argue,” Angel laughed. “Maybe they do. But not all the time.”
Kelly knew what he was trying to say. But Jacinta seemed determinedto keep things off with Raheem and Kelly respected that. She shook her head. “Don’t come to O.C. if you’re going to bring Raheem.I don’t want to be the one who starts something.”
Angel’s lips tightened.
“So you gon’ put Raheem and Cinny over me and you?”
A different type of heat crept up Kelly’s neck. She swallowed hard, as if that would cool her down. At first, she and Angel had been the reason Jacinta and Raheem argued. Now it was the opposite.
Talk about your doomed connections, Kelly thought, glumly.
But just as quickly as he’d gotten angry, Angel changed again. He leaned back, his elbows on the bleacher behind him. His low speakingforced Kelly to swivel on the bleacher to face him. “It’s cool, you want have your little girls’ weekend in O. C.” He grinned, leaning up, close to her face. “No boys allowed, huh?”
Kelly smiled, relieved. “No boys allowed.”
Except JZ, Brian and Todd.
Cliiiiccckkk
“Don’t look back at a new direction.”
—Jordin Sparks, “Tattoo”
While Kelly and Angel canoodled at the pool, in O.C. Mina stared at the TV and it stared back at her. She had no idea what she was watching. She looked down at her cell phone, willing it to ring with news of the first outing.
When would the huge mass-texting that Sara had told her about, begin?
Last night Jess had bragged that the whole simul-text was her idea.
“All the right people will know where to come hang out,” Jess had said, openly proud, as if she’d invented text messaging. She’d gone on to explain that she and the rest of the Glams would also be capturing Extreme moments with their picture phones and digicams and texting the best ones around.
According to Jess, this spring break would live on like a mobile scrapbook, serving as people’s wallpaper forever.
As long as forever meant until the next hot photo came along, Mina had thought but kept to herself. She changed her cell phone’s wallpaper whenever she was bored. She was doing it now as she waited for the message ... any message that got her away from the torturous everydaynessof the close, boxy hotel room she shared with her parents.
Mina punched buttons on her phone, stamping away her boredom by cruising through her photo library for the millionth time. She thought about the text to come, wondering where tonight’s big blowout would be. This was her first official event as an Upper. She’d downplayed her excitement last night but she was wound up as tight as a yo-yo right about now, bursting to get into the middle of the spring break madness.
She flipped her cell phone open, checking to make sure it was on.
“I’m tripping,” she muttered, but triple checked that the phone had a signal (just in case) before quietly snapping it shut.
It was six o’clock and her phone hadn’t emitted a peep yet.
Her heart skipped as she wondered if she’d been left out of the loop. Every DRB High Upper was right now, as she sat bored to tears, out getting their party on. She knew it. Jess’s ultimate revenge, dangling the carrot in front of her only to swipe it and take a huge bite as soon as Mina went to touch it.
She’d be forced to head to dinner with her parents, nothing short of torture now that O.C. was crawling with DRB Uppers and the Blue Devils cheer squad.
; She swung her legs off the bed and onto the floor, sitting erect as if a signal had sounded that only she could hear. Her father glanced quizzically over the top of the paper at Mina for a second before burying his head again.
Mina’s knee began a jittery tap. She flipped the phone open again and just as she considered texting Sara, the cell vibrated in her hand. She opened it, stopping the thin buzzing tingling up her wrist.
The cavalry has arrived, she thought as she looked down at the message:
mt n lot in 3 mins goin 2 Guidos
Within fifteen minutes, Mina, Sara, Kim and Joss were making their way slowly through the crowded restaurant. Every few steps, one of them stopped and chatted with someone before resuming the crawl toward the booth gauntlet.
As far as Mina could figure, the hostess, in a vain attempt to keep the students in one area of the restaurant—and presumably out of the way of any non-Blue Devils customers—had sat all fifty people on the left side of the pizzeria, squeezed into seven booths. Some of the booths had too many people, several only a few—most people stood in the aisle between the two sets of booths, three per side, or hung over them.
One mega U-shaped booth sat at the end of the gauntlet, overflowingwith people.
Mina stared agape at the brimming pizza joint.
If anyone ever needed proof that the Uppers were the real, honest-to-Godmother of all cliques, an odd assortment of anyone deemed popular, there it was in 3-D at Guido’s Pizza—the beachfront twin of Rio’s Ria. Among the crowd was the student government president;captains of the baseball, soccer, lacrosse and football teams; a few from the theater set; and the “It’s Academic” crew and members of the Geek Squad, the school’s savviest techies.
If there had been any customers there before who were O.C. regulars,they were either long gone or racing to pay their check to get out of Dodge. Guidos was bona fide Blue Devils territory.
In the very first booth, Mari-Beth Linton held court, flanked by Jess and Simone. The other four Glams were packed into the other side of the booth, the ultimate ladies-in-waiting, ready to jump when the Queen said so.
Kim and Joss stopped at the booth to talk to Mari-Beth. Mina waved absently to Jess and was surprised when Jess threw her hand up in a casual hello. She and Sara milled through the crowd, hugging, wavingand joking their way to the booth Cassidy was holding for them.
It was the last booth before the mega U-booth.
“We already ordered a pepperoni pizza,” Cassidy yelled over the din. “Is that cool?”
Wide-eyed, Mina nodded, less in answer to Cassidy than at the sight of the newly designated Blue Devils section of Guidos. She fought and lost the battle to hide the awe that took root when the full scale of it hit. She was in the middle of all this, not an invited guest or bystander,but one hundred percent a part.
An insane urge to giggle assaulted her.
She wanted to grab Sara’s arm and ask, “Am I really here? Or is this one of those real-feeling dreams?”
She hated real-feeling dreams. The kind where your entire body is so invested in the dream you’re convinced that it’s happening, until you wake up and realize it’s not. They were worse than a mirage. She almost always emerged from those dreams angry and near tears that it was all a dream.
She’d dreamed a scene like this dozens of times. If it wasn’t real she was going to have one doozy of a fit in the morning.
Sara knelt, her back to the table, talking to some of their squad mates in the booth behind them. Needing to share her amazement with someone, Mina leaned up as far as the table allowed and hollered over to Cassidy, “Can you believe this?”
She figured if anyone could relate it would be Cassidy, a fellow Junior Varsity squad mate turned Select Varsity. A few months ago they’d been the grunts doing all the work for pep rally and games. Now they were cooling out with the Varsity captain—on an elite competitive squad at that.
It was beyond wild.
Cassidy obviously agreed. She grinned as her head tick-tocked back and forth.
Mina openly marveled at every booth, craning her neck and turning in the seat to look behind her. Her eyes swept the room. She ticked off the Uppers she knew personally and those she only knew indirectly. Finally, her eyes stopped at the mega booth just behind Cassidy. It had gone from overflowing with people to only five. Her mouth went dry at the sight of Craig, laughing it up just inches away.
She stared, daring herself to look until he looked back.
What would she do if he looked over? Wave? Snarl? Roll her eyes?
Craig had publicly tongued down Kelis at a party, making Mina the fool du jour. Then he’d proceeded to dump her, abruptly, in the middle of the hall at school when she wouldn’t up and forgive him on the spot. Yet Mina always felt like crawling under a rock when she saw him, as if she’d been the one who did wrong.
Every time she tried to muster the righteous indignation that should have accompanied the memory of their messy breakup, all she ended up feeling was a twinge of regret that things had ended so badly. She hated being hated.
Secretly, she longed for her and Craig to be frenemies, if nothing else. She could live with that. But the thought of making the first move to bury the hatchet sent a jolt to her heart. She reasoned, if any burying of the hatchet was going to be done, Craig should be doing it. After all, he’d have to remove it from her back first.
And there it was, for the first time—anger, hot and heavy on her chest.
Craig was the dogger, she was only the doggee. He should ...
Craig flicked the rim of his hat up and Mina could see the full handsomeness of his light brown face—chiseled jaw and nose and slanted eyes just like Pharrell. He and the producer/artist could be related. Mina could barely listen to a Pharrell song without feeling a fizzle of anxiety and bitterness in her stomach. Craig’s eyes narrowed to slits as he laughed along at a table-wide joke.
He was such a jerk.
But a cute one, she had to admit.
Their well-circulated breakup story hadn’t tainted his reputation any. He’d gone through two other girlfriends since then. Not that Mina was counting.
She forced her eyes away before Craig noticed her, losing her solitary game of chicken.
They’d been doing a good job of pretending the other didn’t exist. It might be bad luck to break the silent pact. She joined Sara’s conversation.
By the time the pizza arrived, the table had gone through four rounds of visitors and she’d lost track of where Sara, Cassidy or Kim were. It didn’t matter. For every person that hopped up and moved on, another moved into their spot. She was never without four or six people at the table to talk to and another half dozen at the one behindher.
Next thing Mina knew, Simone Simmons was next to their table. She shooed people out of the way, clearing a tiny space around her. “Cliiiccckkk,” she shouted, swishing her straight, black hair and positioningher camera at the booth Mina was leaning over.
All the other Glams, except Mari-Beth, pulled their cameras out too. They each chose a spot along the gauntlet between the booths and began snapping.
Kim, who was on her way back to the table, scrambled over to Mina and pulled out her cell. “Come on, Mina.”
“What?” Mina asked, as everyone around her scuttled into randomgroups.
“Every time they yell ‘click,’ jump into a picture or take one with your cellie.” Kim held the cell up to capture them and the baseball player sitting with Mina, squeezed in. Another dove over the table to get into the shot. His foot skidded past the pizza on the table, right into their server’s elbow, sending a whole tray of drinks to the floor.
He offered up a half-hearted “my bad,” but the server was already muttering and picking up the plastic cups. She stalked off to replenishthe drinks as the photo groups broke up and went back to their table-hopping.
Mina noticed that the server picked up fast—sure to avoid the Blue Devils’ section whenever her super-server senses told her a photo op was on the
horizon.
Kim got up and moved to the other side of the table. She nibbled on a slice of pizza as she moved over to let Chuck, her boyfriend, sit down. Giggling, she caught Mina up on what was happening several booths away.
Drunk with the vibe, Mina chomped on a slice of pizza, nodding along to the juicy bits Kim doled out.
This was exactly what she thought it would be like to be an Upper. It was friggin’ awesome.
She scooted over when Bo, a Varsity football player and former crush, slid into the booth beside her. She and Bo had a little flirt thing going on earlier in the school year, but he was with Kelis now. Mina was surprised, but it seemed like they really liked each other.
A little into himself, Bo was dark skinned and hot-bodied fine.
“Hey Bo,” she said, purposely dialing it down from flirt to buddy. She didn’t need any more drama with Kelis.
Even through the heavy scent of garlic in the pizzeria, Bo’s Irish Spring soap smell tickled Mina’s nose. He helped himself to a slice of pizza. “What up, Mina?”
Mina exchanged a raised eyebrow with Kim and they laughed. “Hungry much?” Mina teased.
Chuck gave Bo a pound. “Wassup, dawg? You better lay off the mozz. Coach will pitch a bitch if you come into tryouts out of shape.”
“Man, please,” Bo said through a mouthful of pizza. He stood up and pulled up the polo that hugged his well-toned body. “See this six-pack? Your boy is ripped.”
There were a few hoots of approval from the table beside them.
Mina admired his abs slyly, sharing a sneaky giggle with Kim. They both exploded into laughter as Mina looked down at a text from Kim that said, “hot hot hot.”
Bo gave Chuck another pound and sat back down, beaming. Still sniggling, Mina asked, “Is Kelis coming down?”
“Naw.You know how hard it is for y’all fresh fish to roll with the big dogs,” Bo said, every bit as arrogant as Mina remembered him from the summer. It was one reason why things never went beyond a crush for her.
Some people are so much cuter when they never talk, she thought, hoping Bo would move on.