The Bet (Persaud Girl)

by Mott, Teisha

  “Nathan…”

  “Yes Dr Persaud?”

  “You can go now.”

  “Thank you sir.” Nathan gathered his books and slowly left the lecture theatre and made his way towards Dr Miller’s Sports, Government and Society Class. Dr Persaud wanted him to fix Andie’s broken heart, and fix it fast before he found out how her heart had come to be broken in the first place. Nathan had no idea how he would do that when Andie would not even talk to him. He had been trying for days, and could not get through to her.. He had to give Mrs Persaud and Samantha credit though. They were always cordial when they told him that Andie did not wish to speak with him. Even Rosilda was not unkind the one time she had answered. She had said that she was vacuuming the house, and Andie was not allowed back inside until she had finished.

  Nathan sat in Sports, Government and Society class, as distracted as he was in International Economics. He doodled Andie’s name across the page of his notebook. He missed her so much. He would try and call her again that evening. Hopefully, she would talk to him this time.

  ***

  It was Saturday night. Andie lay in the darkness of her bedroom. It was only seven thirty. Her parents had gone to dinner with some of Mrs Persaud’s clients from Izzy, New York, and Samantha had taken Christopher to the movies. If last Saturday had not happened, Andie and Nathan would have gone with them. Christopher had not been happy with the arrangement, but he was willing to live with it. Andie was alone at home with the exception of Rosie, Theresa and Nursey. She was happy to be alone, except for the moments when her mind focused on Nathan.

  “Oh well,” she thought darkly. “It is better to have loved and lost…”

  The phone rang. It must be Fern. Fern had taken to calling her every twenty minutes under the guise of asking her opinion on a Calculus problem, but in reality to report on how dejected Nathan was. After her initial disappointment after finding out about the bet, Fern had become Nathan’s strongest advocate. She batted for Nathan every opportunity she got, begging Andie to give him a chance. It boggled Fern’s mind how well Andie was doing for someone who had lost her first love. She did not know how shattered Andie was on the inside.

  The phone rang twice more.

  “What?” Andie answered wearily.

  “Hi… Did I wake you?”

  Andie froze, horrified. It was Nathan. She had been successful in circumventing his calls for one week. Her luck had run out, and he was on the other end of the phone line, his voice causing chills to run down her spine. Andie didn’t think. She simply reacted, replacing the receiver so gently that it did not even click.

  The ringing began again. Andie’s heart began to race. She knew it was him. It rang three times. Her father’s words earlier that week came back to her.

  “You’re going to have to talk to him sometime, punkin,” he had said. “You can’t avoid him forever.”

  Her father held the belief that nothing solved a problem faster than talking it out. It was all right for him to say. He had no idea what had transpired. As far as he knew, she had a disagreement with Nathan, and it would sort itself out in due course.

  “I may not be able to avoid him, but I don’t have to talk to him!” Andie declared stubbornly.

  It was apparent after ten rings that Nathan was just as stubborn as she was. He was not about to stop calling. She picked up the telephone and put it to her ear, but did not say a word.

  “Andie?” Nathan said. “Are you there?”

  No response.

  “C’mon, Andie! Please talk to me!”

  “Talk to you about what? I have nothing to say to you.” Andie snapped.

  "Andie, please!” Nathan said. “If you’d only let me explain…”

  “I’m too tired to listen to your pathetic attempts to defend yourself, Nathan,” Andie was scared her voice would crack and she would start crying again. She refused to cry one more time because of Nathan. “Goodnight, and I’d appreciate it if you would stop calling.”

  She hung up as gently as before, resisting the urge to crash the receiver down. That would be a waste of energy, and already she had wasted enough energy on Nathan Hansen – eight weeks’ worth to be exact.

  Andie lay under the covers, remembering the sound of his voice. Tears ran down the sides of her face, as she remembered what it felt like when he held her close, and when he touched and kissed her. He had told her that he loved her, and she had believed him. Only, it was a lie. What hurt more than anything, was that she loved him. Even after finding out about the bet, she still loved him. Why did she love him still? It would be so much easier if she could rotate her feelings and hate him with every fibre of her being, but she couldn’t. Andie could not stop the tears from coming harder and faster. She buried her face in the pillow to muffle the sobs that came from her throat. She felt hurt, angry and betrayed, but most of all she felt stupid – stupid for believing he loved her, stupid for falling for him and more stupid for still loving him, and still crying for him night after night. The little voice in her head – the one she was convinced had told her to trust him in the first place, screamed at her to listen to Nathan. Allow him to explain. Perhaps there was a viable, justifiable reason for his actions. Andie put the pillow over her head to try and block the voice out. She would never listen to him. She would never allow him to work his slimy way back into her life or her heart. If she could not hate him, she could protect herself from him, by not getting close enough for him to hurt her again.

  303

  The Bet

  chapter thirteen

  Nathan held the phone to his ear for a full minute, listening to the deafening dial tone. He was literally out of ideas. He did not know what else to do to make Andie talk to him. Nathan realised that his only option was to let her go. He had to work out in his head what made Anne Dru Persaud so perfect, and so special and so wonderful – what had caused him to fall in love with her. Once he had done that, he would be able to find a way to get over her. He would be able to find a way to move on with his life, forgetting that a red-headed eighteen year old, with pink skin and eyes so brown they looked black, had once been a part of his life. But Nathan did not want to get over her. What he wanted was to turn back time. He wanted to go back to the day when Jeremy Malcolm had come up with the bet. He would have shoved his Sprite bottle down Jeremy’s throat, and that would have been the end of the argument; except that he would not have met Andie at all. He wanted to at least go back to one week ago. If he could, he would have told Andie about the bet, and his decision to not go through with it.

  Nathan sighed. It was pointless to wish that he could turn back time. That was impossible. It was best to stick to things that were even remotely possible. He was back to wishing that Andie would at least talk to him.

  Someone was knocking on his bedroom door.

  “Come in!” He called.

  It was Micah. “You using the phone, brethren?” Micah asked.

  Nathan shook his head. “Take it.”

  Micah took the phone. He looked curiously at Nathan. “She still not talking to you?”

  “Nope!” Nathan stood, and moved towards his desk. He picked up his International Economics text and turned to the chapter that Dr Persaud was discussing in the previous class.

  “And you just going to take it like that?”

  “Then what you expect me to do?”

  “Put out some effort!” Micah suggested. “Call her more often. She must take the call one day – but let her know that you are not giving up.”

  “I called her probably over a million times this week,” Nathan pointed out. “As a matter of fact, when I called just now, she answered the phone, and flung it down in my ear.”

  “And you call her back?”

  Nathan nodded. “And she screamed at me and told me not to call her anymore – then hung up the phone in my ear! Again!”

 
“Okay! So she is pissed!” Micah commented. “But put yourself in her shoes, Nathan. Can you blame her?”

  “I know she has every right to be upset,” Nathan agreed. “But she doesn’t know how much she means to me. She doesn’t know that I was not going to go through with it. And until she listens to me, and allows me to explain, she never will, and even if she does condescend and listen to me, she’ll probably think I’m lying!” Nathan sighed. His eyes filled with tears, and he quickly blinked them away, while mentally chastising himself for being a cry-baby. “As far as Andie Persaud is concerned, I am scum. I chatted up to her, and told her I loved her just so I could sleep with her. To her, I am public enemy number one. And by the looks of things, I will be forever.”

  “Forever is a very long time, my friend!” Micah pointed out, trying to pacify Nathan in some way. “She’s just upset now. She will soon cool down and talk to you again. Did you forget that you have the girl weak? Girls don’t forget those kinds of things easily. They have memories like elephants, and they don’t only remember the bad things – they remember the good things too.”

  Nathan recalled what Andie had said to him in her Aunt Phoebe’s suite that night. She had told him that she loved him, and nothing he said or did could change that. Less than forty-eight hours later, she was screaming at him in the courtyard of Los Matadores, telling him how much she hated him, and that she would never forgive him. Micah was talking nonsense about Andie not forgetting that she loved him. She obviously forgot that in record time!

  Nathan sat at his desk. “Remember the good things, my ass?” He snorted. “Don’t bet on it!” He put on his headphones and turned to his International Economics text, indicating to Micah that the conversation was over. Micah took the hint, and left him alone. Nathan listened to Westlife’s “Mandy”, as he read his notes. He recalled the night at Bella Mia when he had danced with Andie. That was the first time he realised he was falling for her. Everything was perfect then...Nathan realised he would not be able to listen to ‘Mandy’ again without thinking of her. He removed the headphones, and for the millionth time wished that things could go back to the way they were.

  ****

  Micah spotted Samantha as she made her way from the last Probability and Distribution Theory class before final exams.

  “Samantha!” He called, hurrying up to her. “Hey Samantha!”

  She paused to see who had called to her. Micah waved when he realised that she had seen him. Much to his astonishment, instead of waiting for him, she made a face, pulled on her sunglasses and continued on her way.

  “Samantha!” Micah could not believe that Samantha was actually walking away from him. He had noticed that over the past week, she had not been talking to him much, but he could not believe that she was actually cold-shouldering him.

  He caught up with her.

  “Hey, where’s the fire!” He panted, increasing his strides to match hers.

  “What you want, Micah?” Samantha did not look at him, or slow down.

  “Right now, I wouldn’t mind if you slowed down a bit!” Micah kidded. “We don’t have another class for the next hour!”

  “I have somewhere that I need to be!” Samantha returned sharply.

  “How you did on the midterm?” Micah asked. “Dr Goldsmith said only four persons got A’s. I bet you are one of them?”

  “What does that have to do with you?”

  “We studied together,” Micah said. He was now certain that Samantha had a grievance with him. “I’m just curious…”

  “Well, in case you’re ‘curiosity’ goes any further, just know from now that if another bet is in the making, and I am the subject, it won’t work. I’m not my little sister!”

  “What?” Micah was stunned.

  Samantha stopped suddenly in her tracks, and turned to face Micah. “If you are chatting me up to wear me down so that you and your little friends can prank me as you did Andie, its not going to happen!” She repeated.

  “Why you think I would do something like that?” Micah spluttered.

  “Because that’s what you idiots do!”

  “You don’t use Nathan and Jeremy’s fat to fry me!” Micah argued. “I didn’t have a thing to do with their bet.”

  “So you didn’t know about it? You weren’t in on it from the very beginning?”

  Micah did not answer.

  Samantha shook her head. “Just as I thought. I knew Jeremy Malcolm was scum. Nathan has just shown his true colours, but you, Micah… I thought you were different!”

  “Don’t you judge me!” Micah warned. “You don’t know anything about me,!”

  “You are just as bad as Nathan and Jeremy!” Samantha snapped. “You knew about the entire scheme and you did nothing about it. I asked you, Micah. I asked you, and you told me nothing was up.”

  “I am not Nathan’s conscience, Samantha!” Micah snapped back. “And yes, as a matter of fact, I did know about the bet. I was there the very second it came into Jeremy’s mind. And if you had taken the time out to ask, I would have told you that I talked to Nathan about it. I told him it was a bad idea, and he should tell Jeremy Malcolm to piss off. But Nathan couldn’t let Jeremy win, and he went along with it. He made a mistake, but he tried to sort it out.”

  “Mistake?” Samantha spat. “Plotting and scheming to have sex with my sister is what you classify as a mistake?”

  “Yes, mistake!” Micah retaliated. He was annoyed with Samantha. “Oh – I’m sorry. I forgot the word ‘mistake’ isn’t in the dictionary of Miss Samantha Persaud – the world’s only perfect human being.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Always prim and proper with perfect hair, and perfect grades and perfect attitude towards everything!” Micah was slowly losing his temper. He was shouting, and persons were curiously witnessing their argument.

  “Micah Elliott…”

  “It’s too damn bad that the stick that is lodged so far up your ass doesn’t allow you the luxury of looking around and realising that less perfect people than you occupy this planet, and that group includes Nathan. You don’t think he knows that he is wrong? You don’t think he’s sorry? You don’t think he wants to fix his error? But of course, neither you nor your sister are willing to even give him a chance to explain.”

  “Sorry because he got caught!”

  “No, sorry because he is madly in love with your wretched little sister!”

  “Micah!”

  “What?”

  “Nathan is in love with her?”

  “Yes!” Micah nodded. “And that is why he told Jeremy he was not going to go through with it.” Micah sighed. “He loves her Samantha, and all this nonsense is just driving him totally crazy!”

  “Are you lying to me?”

  The glare in Samantha’s eyes would have caused a weaker man to crack.

  “No!” Micah declared. “I’m telling you the truth. Nathan is devastated. I know Nathan, Samantha, and I have never seen him so weak over any girl before he met Andie. He wasn’t going through with the bet. I was right there when he told Jeremy it was off… they almost got into a fight because Nathan wanted out and Jeremy refused to squash it. So Jeremy decided to get back at Nathan by getting to Andie.” He sighed. "Look…Nathan is really suffering. Couldn’t you talk to Andie?”

  Samantha sighed. She looked at Micah, hoping that he was telling the truth. She thought about Andie, too. If Micah thought Nathan was devastated, then he would not have imagined how Andie had been. Andie had become more sullen and withdrawn than she had been before meeting Nathan. She dragged herself around the house, and played with her food, and ignored everybody. On more than one occasion, Samantha had gone into the bathroom in the middle of the night, and heard crying coming from Andie’s bedroom.

  Samantha recalled the previous Sunday morning. She had been sitting with Andie and Fern by the pool studying fo
r finals. Andie and Fern were going over Politics questions, while Andie’s favourite Westlife CD played in the background.

  “If we look at one question on the British Government, one on the American Government, one on the Caribbean before 1962 and one on the Caribbean now, we should be able to answer three questions,” Fern said, trying to predict the exam. “That is if Professor Brown decides not to mix the questions.”

  “Why don’t you just study everything you’ve learned over the semester?” Samantha suggested. “That way, whatever question comes in whatever form, you will be able to answer it, and guarantee your A!”

  “It’s impossible to know everything,” Andie disagreed. “Besides, I don’t care about getting an A for GT11A. At this stage I only want to pass.”

  “Since when don’t you care about an A in GT 11A?” Fern demanded. “After all the stress you and Nathan put in to get that A for your course work paper…” Her words had escaped before she realised her error.

  “What does foot taste like, Fern McNally?” Samantha shot, giving Fern an icy glare.

  “This has nothing to do with that certain person whose name I refuse to call,” Andie said, unconvincingly. “Right now I just have so much to do that I…” She stopped speaking. Her favourite song had started. It took her back to a night about six weeks before when she had been sitting in the gardens of Bella Mia cuddled up with the beautiful boy she loved. As the band sang, he had held her, and they had danced… Tears filled Andie’s eyes. She got up quickly and turned off the CD.