That's What's Up!

by Paula Chase

  Jess nodded, wrinkling her nose against the hum of alcohol on Mari-Beth’s breath.

  “If Brian breaks up with her, I’ll have Breck put in a good word for you,” Mari-Beth said. She nudged Jessica hard enough to make them both stumble. “He’s so doable.”

  “Totally,” Jess said without conviction.

  She wasn’t nearly as giddy as she’d hoped to be, watching Mina bee-line her way over, Brian trailing a good fifteen feet behind.

  Even though Jess knew at least ten girls who would have paid her money to be in on the scheme that could put Brian James back on the market, right in time for his senior year, she’d only intended to send the photos to Brian and Mina. Make Mina sweat, cause a little couples tension, ruin their spring break, basically send the message, watch your back when you’re dating a hottie.

  But Mari-Beth had overruled her, insisting they send it to everyoneas an Extreme Moment. “What, are you getting soft on me? God, Jess,” Mari-Beth had sneered when Jess reminded her that the kiss pic was a private joke—only the grainy, cozy photo was meant as an Extreme Moment.

  But MB had snatched the phone from Jess and instructed the other Glams to help pass both photos along.

  Jess hadn’t had much time to think of the consequences of the massive text. She wasn’t worried about Mina so much as Sara. She’d promised Sara it was a real truce, a lie Jess could easily uphold had she only sent the kiss pic to Mina and Brian. But one that would be increasingly hard to hide now, depending on how Mina handled it.

  She dreaded the cold shoulder she’d get from Sara over this, but blocked it out.

  It’s just a little Upper hazing. Everyone’s gone through it, Jess told herself,putting on her game face. She wanted to teach Mina a lesson, well here it was—trust no one.

  She watched as Mina, only a few feet away, raced like a heat-seekingmissile that’s found its target.

  Brian’s stride was long and lazy.

  They were clearly on the outs.

  Mission accomplished ... kind of.

  The Truce: Fade to Black

  “You didn’t need to treat me that way.”

  —Maroon 5, “Wake Up Call”

  Mina’s eyes were glossy, blurring her vision. She stumbled in the cold, lumpy sand, not caring if she fell. Her long stride and set face left no doubt that she was about to confront someone. Sensing the drama to come, the clusters of people broke up, gravitating slowly toward the kerosene lamps. Some people casually idled closer to the center, while others openly trailed behind Mina, curious.

  By now they’d looked at the pictures long enough to distinguish who was in them. A few people, anticipating her direction, gathered near Craig and shot eager looks Brian’s way—maybe a fight was on the horizon. But they were disappointed when Mina walked by Craig without a second glance.

  A full twenty feet from Mina, Brian was quickly swallowed in the crowd as the loose circle of partyers became a tight fight circle. By the time Mina finally reached Jessica, the party was officially a spectatorevent.

  Brian pushed his way to the front, but made no moves to get any closer than it required to keep a clear field of vision.

  In anger, Mina’s voice was squeaky, as if she’d lost the ability to control it. “Way to set me up, Jess.”

  Jess’s voice was calm, full of mock innocence. “Mina, all I did was take the picture. You starred in it.” Jess looked at Mari-Beth for backup. Relief crossed her face when an obviously intoxicated Mari-Beth gave it, nodding along, smug, her arms crossed.

  “We’ve captured a few hundred Extreme Moments, Mina,” Mari-Bethlectured, over-loud—the way of the drunken. “What’s the big deal?”

  Mina looked from Jess to Mari-Beth, unsure who to address. She hadn’t anticipated having to take on both of them.

  She chastised herself. She hated being hated and that need to be liked had played right into Jess’s plan. Mina was sure there had been one. She was sick thinking how easily Jess had snagged her into the web.

  Except for the perpetual crashing waves the beach was eerily quiet. Someone had turned down the music and Mina felt every singleeye on her. The kerosene lamps felt like spotlights and she was center stage.

  In the face of the Glam leaders, the rest of their flunkies flanking them to the left and right, the emotions that had fueled her walk over were gone, leaving her emotionally naked.

  Mina took a hesitant glance around the tight circle. For the first time that night, she actually made out the faces of people. She blocked out the feeling of being under a microscope and focused. A few questions floated freely down her stream of consciousness—Did Jess talk Craig into kissing her? Was his apology a setup all for this? Was Bo in on it too? How many people did it take to make her look foolish? And how much of it was her fault?

  She hushed the voice that asked the last question and concentratedon the first three.

  When you knew the whole story behind her and Jess, they were perfectly sane questions. But out loud, Mina was sure they’d come off wrong.

  In the pulsing glow of the kerosene lamps it was hard to read Jess’s face. The smile in her eyes went from sincere to cunning, thanks to the shadow from twenty flickering flames.

  When Mina finally spoke, the fight in her was a thin wisp of regretand anger. With the eyes of the spectators probing her back, her words came out a petulant whine. “You didn’t have to call me a skank.”

  Jessica’s face was haughty, a reminder that Mina was new to these parts of town, clueless to the protocol. With a sense of finality, Jess schooled her. “This is what it’s like to roll with the big girls, Mina.” She swished her hair and the cunning/friendly glint returned.

  Just as Mina was about to accept, however reluctantly, that this could definitely be construed as a gesture of acceptance in Jessica’s mind, Jess’s eyes flickered to Mina’s left and she said, out of the blue, in a softer tone, “It was only a joke, anyway.”

  For a second, Mina was taken back by the near-apology.

  “It was a stupid joke, Jess,” Sara said, suddenly beside Mina. “As usual, you and the mod squad have to take everything too far.”

  A ripple of laughter made its way from the front of the crowd to the back and back to the front again. It wasn’t every day that the Glams were openly mocked.

  Mina could have kissed Sara. She stood a little straighter, relieved that someone else suspected the picture was more than an innocent Extreme Moment joke.

  Sara and Jess held one another’s gaze, making some sort of twin connection. Regret or fear passed like a ghost in Jess’s eyes before steely resolve replaced it.

  Mari-Beth frowned at Sara, but in lieu of any smart remark she rolled her eyes and waited for Jess to answer.

  “Hey, all I did was take it. Mina was the one who took it too far,” Jess maintained, her tone cranky but not nearly as “that’s that” final. She addressed her last statement to the crowd more than to Sara. But no one backed her up, sending Jess to her soapbox. “Out of all the pictures we’ve sent, no one has said anything until now.” She broke the gaze with her twin and the act gave her confidence. Arms folded tightly against her chest, she raised her voice as she polled the spectators, “Is anyone else tripping over their pics? Jake? Annie? Chandra?”

  Mari-Beth giggled and called out a few more names of those whose Extreme Moments had ranged from gross to just short of illegal.

  There were murmurs of discussion throughout the clusters, but no one objected. Jess’s eyebrow arched in a “see, it’s you.”

  “The subject line was wack,” Mina said lamely, embarrassed.

  “I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t use the original one,” Mari-Bethsaid to Jess, then raised her voice to be heard, “Extreme H to da O.”

  She laughed and the Glams cackled along. There were titters from the crowd, but realizing there would be no fight, people had begun to trail off into individual conversations and break up into smaller groups.

  “Lighten up, Mina,” Mari-Beth snorted. “Or may
be next time keep all your PDA on the down low.”

  There was some laughter from the few spectators still paying attention.

  “I wasn’t ...” Mina started and realized it was pointless. With the crowd thinning, her anger flickered fresh, dampened but alive. She stepped closer to Jess and Mari-Beth, and lowered her voice, uninterestedin being a spectacle any longer. “If it was a joke, I guess you got me good because Brian’s really hot with me now.”

  “And that’s my fault how?” Jess asked, eyebrow raised.

  Sara stepped in. The four of them made their own little cluster, blocking out any stragglers still listening.

  “Did you set Craig up to do this?” Mina whispered angrily.

  Sara’s eyes bugged. “Jess, did you?”

  “No,” Jessica snorted. Her eyes cut to Mari-Beth, nervously.

  Mari-Beth wore her bored look, checking her cell phone as if expecting it to ring any second to save her from the played-out conversation.

  Jess forced a casual tone as she said, “I was just as surprised as you when Craig did that. It was too perfect not to get on film.”

  Mina stared into Jess’s eyes, looking for the lie. But she couldn’t trust her instincts. The shadows from the lamps were playing tricks on her. And either she was crazy or Jess seemed nervous and anxious.

  “But you didn’t have to send it to everybody,” Sara pointed out.

  “Oh, I’m sure Brian will get over it,” Mari-Beth said dismissively. She stumbled away and returned to her clique, signaling to Jess that she’d had enough.

  Jess glanced over Mina’s shoulder at Brian. He stood his ground amidst the clusters, hands in his pants pockets, waiting for Mina, his face expressionless.

  “What happened to the truce?” Sara whispered. Her eyebrows knitted into angry caterpillars, an odd look on her usually pleasant cocoa face. “I thought you guys were cool for the whole break.”

  Jessica matched Sara’s whisper, infusing it with the right mix of confidence and indignation. “I already said it was a joke, Sara. I didn’t violate the truce.” Jess flashed a picture from her cell phone at her sister, of two girls, one the Homecoming Queen, kissing. “Hello, am I supposed to apologize to every single person we took a pic of?” Her grin was snide. “I’m pretty sure Heather’s not going to be happy to see this pic next to the ones in her crown on Myspace. But that’s her problem, not mine.”

  Sara scowled. “Then at least go tell Brian it was a joke.”

  “Puh, yeah right.” Jess rolled her eyes. “And tell him what? That Mina slipped on a pepperoni and fell on Craig’s mouth?”

  Mina spoke through tight jaws. “Never mind, Sara. I don’t expect Jessica, of all people, to do me any favors. I’ll handle my own business.”

  Jess’s smile was hollow as she said, “There you go. Welcome to life on the pop side.” She shrugged. “Shit happens.”

  “Yeah, especially when you plan for it to happen,” Mina said.

  “Just tell him the truth.You didn’t kiss Craig, he kissed you,” Jess said.

  The sincerity in her voice shocked Mina. But before it registered,Mari-Beth’s voice reached out of the darkness from behind Jessica, sharp and annoyed. “Jess, are you guys still talking?”

  Jessica leaned in and took a breath to speak, when Mari-Beth’s face, pinched and disapproving, appeared beside Mina. “Just be glad we didn’t put the Extreme Ho title on it,” Jess said.

  “Exactly,” Mari-Beth said, all toothy grin. “Mina, you’re right, there is a bright side to everything.”

  She and Jess cackled crazily as they walked off toward the music, leaving Sara and Mina in muted silence.

  It’s a Wrap

  “You and me, I can see us dying ... are we?”

  —No Doubt, “Don’t Speak”

  With no fight to spice things up and Mina’s pictorial crime just one of many committed over the weekend, the party went back into full swing. Music pumped at full volume, drowning out the crashing waves. The only person who cared about the pictures now was Mina and ...

  She took a deep breath and finally turned around to face Brian. He hadn’t moved a muscle since arriving in that spot.

  Mina walked a few feet toward him then stopped, thinking he’d meet her halfway. But Brian made no move to close the two feet betweenthem.

  Mina’s neck tensed. She bit the inside of her cheek raw, building the nerve to close the gap between them.

  Sara touched her arm lightly and Mina jumped.

  “I’m sorry,” Sara said. “I really thought you and Jess would ...”

  “Me too,” Mina admitted. She didn’t know what Sara was about to say. Would be friends? Would get through a weekend without drama? It didn’t matter. She was grateful for what she saw in Sara’s eyes. She forced cheer into her voice. “At least I know where I stand with her. No big loss.” She chewed anxiously at her cheek, wincing. “Not so sure if I have a boyfriend anymore though.”

  Mina hardly heard Sara’s “good luck” as she moved toward Brian and her punishment for courting disaster by bothering to talk to Craig at all.

  That reminded her. She snatched her phone out of her capri pocket, expecting it to be well past her curfew—why not, everythingelse was crashing in on her. There was twenty minutes of freedomleft. Gathering her thoughts, she blew out a long, noisy exaggerated sigh and stepped to Brian. “Can we talk?”

  He grunted and walked past her.

  Unsure if the grunt was a yes or no, Mina followed tentatively. She was relieved when Brian staked out a spot in the darkness, away from the party and closer to the pier that led from the beach to the hotel.

  He leaned against a wooden post and stared at her, his gaze dead of emotion.

  “So talk,” he barked, startling her.

  Mina swallowed hard, thought about starting with her theory about being set up, then changed her mind. She settled on the truth, as lame as it was, hating herself for taking Jess’s advice. “He kissed me. I didn’t kiss him.”

  She quickly laid out the short version of the kiss, stumbling over her words as if under interrogation. The bitter anger in his eyes condemnedher.

  “So you were with him all night?” Brian asked.

  “No.” Mina forced herself to look into his eyes, fearing that if she didn’t he’d think she was lying. She’d never seen them so black and cold. “He was only at the table with me for like fifteen minutes.”

  “This wasn’t taken at no table, Mina.” Brian thrust his phone, with the beach picture shining, toward her.

  “We were stunting ...” Mina pieced her thoughts together quickly and they tumbled out in a random mess. She thrust her hands in her jacket pocket to keep from fidgeting. “I mean, him and some of the other guys were trying to put up stunts. I was falling and he caught me. Craig I mean. It was a million other people standing there. We weren’t alone. And ...”

  Brian cut her off. “But y’all were hanging out Thursday night?”

  Mina nodded, feeling stupid that Brian cut to the chase so smoothly. In the end it didn’t matter if she and Craig were only togetherfor five minutes the night before. However long, it was frozen in two images that told whatever story the viewer wanted.

  Brian snapped the phone shut and shoved it into his pocket. “Funny how you didn’t mention that when you were talking about everything else that happened down here.” He mocked Mina, imitatingher using a ditzy-clueless girl voice. “I hung out with Sara and Jess. I missed y’all, though. We were tripping but it’s not the same without y’all here.” He snorted. “Naw, I guess it ain’t the same.When I’m here you can’t hang out with your boy, Craig.”

  Mina’s stomach lurched. Panic swarmed in her head like a cloud of pesky gnats as Brian’s words spilled on in an angry rant.

  “When were you gonna get to the part about how old boy slipped you some tongue? Or did you forget ’cause that’s just how you roll?”

  Tears of frustration welled in Mina’s eyes. “I ...” Her phone rang. She instinctively pulled
it out of her pocket and stared dumbly at the blurry numbers. She picked up and Lizzie’s voice was cheerful balm for her frazzled nerves.

  “Hey, Mi. Oh my God. Me and Todd walked like three miles.” She laughed and Mina could hear Todd in the background mouthing off about something. Lizzie chattered on. “Where is everybody? We’re near the party, but I don’t see anybody.Where are you guys?”

  Mina’s voice was thick with tears. “At the hotel pier.”

  “What’s wrong?” Lizzie asked, alarmed.

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  Mina hung up. She started to apologize for taking the call but Brian cut her off as soon as she inhaled to speak. “If he kissed you and it was all on him, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because then you would have rolled up on Craig and there would have been drama.”

  “So what, you got his back now?” Brian challenged.

  “No,” Mina yelped. She was frustrated that she couldn’t express herself. She took a quick breath and dove in, mixing in her own theory.“I’m just saying, I didn’t want you getting in a fight over this. Craig kissed me. It was stupid. He was being stupid. It wasn’t ... he was just wildin’ out.”

  “So instead of you telling me so I could step to dude, you don’t say anything?” Brian’s voice trembled with restrained patience. “So I look like a punk then.”

  “I ... no ... I mean, I didn’t mean ...” Mina’s brain couldn’t think fast enough.

  Both relief and a new wave of embarrassment washed over her when Lizzie and Todd reached them.

  “Man, my dogs are barking,” Todd crowed. He woofed like a dog then stamped his feet, pretending to hush the howling. “I think we were halfway to Del Rio Bay before we realized we walked too far.”

  “Hey, guys,” Lizzie said, hesitantly. She looked from Mina to Brian, then back at Mina nervously.

  “Where’s JZ, Jacinta and Kelly?” Todd asked, looking around as if they were hiding in the nearby sand dunes.