by Zoe Evans
But just as we got up to the Titan booth, we saw the entire team looking on awkwardly as Clementine and her mom had a shouting match. I hadn’t really taken a good look at her mom before, but I could see where Clementine got all her good looks from, AND her attitude. Her mom had perfectly windblown hair, smooth caramel-colored skin, huge eyes, and big pouty lips. She was wearing a fitted blazer, dark, flared jeans, mile-high heels, and one of those alligator-skin bags that probably cost more than my house.
Her mom had her finger pointed directly at Clementine’s face. “Clem, did you see how much traffic that other booth was getting? Those girls and their stupid T-shirts? Get your act together and make this booth a success, or else. I mean it.” Then she turned on her heels and sashayed away, clicking open her phone and talking hurriedly to whoever was on the line.
Sheesh. I couldn’t believe she was jealous of MY booth.
“But Mom!” Clementine pleaded. “It’s not my fault! They’re closer to the entrance! That’s why everyone is going there first!” Her mom didn’t even flinch. For a second I saw Clementine’s usual confidence falter, and I almost thought she was going to cry. She slunk into her chair and took out her phone. It was definitely one of those moves to show that she was just too busy replying to all her text messages to care that her mom had just yelled at her in front of everyone.
The other Titans had started pretending they were too involved in their own conversations to have noticed what just happened between Clem and her mom. So embarrassing. I mean, I have to deal with my mom dating my gym teacher, but at least she would never embarrass me by yelling at me in front of my friends or my teammates.
I looked at Katie and could tell she was concerned. “Listen, Katie, maybe we should come back later. She seems pretty riled up.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Katie agreed. “See what I mean, though, about the way her mom treats her?”
“Yeah, I do.”
It was definitely the “right” thing to do, but then again, did Clementine deserve us being so nice? We’d started to turn around and walk away, when Clementine spotted us.
“Excuse me, but where do you think you’re going?” she asked, matching our strides.
“Keep walking,” Katie whispered to me. Then she turned to talk to Clem. “It’s not a big deal. We’re just walking back to Madison’s booth to check it out.”
Clementine followed us to the booth. We tried to ignore her, but when we got to the booth, she walked right up to it, looking like she was about to burst with anger. I had a feeling, just by the look in her eye, that whatever was about to come out of her mouth wasn’t going to be pretty. “Ha,” she said, pounding one fist loudly on our table. Her gaze fell on the T-shirt Katie was wearing. “Well, well. Looks like you ALREADY went to the dark side to check out their booth.” She picked up the edge of Katie’s shirt, and then dropped it, as if it were dripping with cooties. “Oh, Katie. Didn’t anyone tell you that the homeless look is so last year?”
Katie didn’t laugh.
“Oh, come on. Can’t you take a joke? Aren’t I hilarious?”
“Ha-ha,” said Lanie. “Can’t you leave now?”
“No,” said Clem. “I am the Head Fair Leader, and it is my job to make sure things are running smoothly. And in my position, I believe that this booth just isn’t going to work.”
“What?” I asked.
Clementine looked at her watch, as if she had a kind of Mean Girl Alarm. “You guys have to close down immediately.”
At this point, a bunch of Titans had already made their way toward all the commotion. If there’s one thing cheerleaders like, it’s a smackdown-style confrontation.
“For what reason?” said Lanie.
“I don’t need a reason. This is simply my call.” Obviously her quick fix to not getting enough visitors to her booth was to CLOSE ours. Before anyone could stop her, she started collecting our piles of T-shirts and taking the tacks and our designs down. “Katie, would you help me out here?” she said.
Katie didn’t budge.
“Hello? Earth to Katie. I’m TALKING to you.”
Finally, Katie struck back. “No, Clementine. I’m not one of your minions! And you’ve taken things too far.”
Clementine pointed one of her perfectly manicured fingers in my direction. “Oh, so you’re defending Miss Grizzly over here?”
“Yes,” said Katie, a little hesitantly. “She’s my . . . friend.”
Clem suddenly got this look on her face that screamed “gotcha.” “Aha! So you admit it. You ARE friends. What, were you too embarrassed to say it before? What ELSE do you want to admit to?” she said, narrowing her eyes at Katie. But she didn’t wait for a response. “Maybe you have some jazz shoes you want to tell me and the Titans about?”
Uh-oh.
“Clementine,” said Katie in a harsh whisper. “Please let’s not talk about this here.” She grabbed Clem by the arm and tried to lead her away, but Clem yanked her arm away.
“It seems like you’ve been keeping a lot of secrets from me lately. Secrets from your best friend. Or should we say FORMER best friend, since all you ever seem to do lately is meet with HER in your secret meeting places?”
It sounded like Clem was about to cry. Her voice was cracking a little, and her face had started to contort into a grimace. “I know everything,” she continued. “I followed you guys one day and listened from inside a closet in the classroom.”
Katie gasped. “You WHAT?”
“I heard about your little audition. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Clem now had tears in her eyes. Behind her, the Titans were tittering and whispering to one another.
Katie must have realized the time to speak was now, because it didn’t seem like Clementine’s tirade was going to end anytime soon. “Okay, let me explain,” she said, looking first at Clementine and then at the rest of her teammates. “I thought you and the Titans would never talk to me again if you knew,” she said softly. “So I didn’t tell you when I went to New York for the audition. And then I wanted to tell you, but the longer I kept it a secret, the worse I thought you’d react. And maybe you’d all want to take away my title as captain.”
Clementine shook her head. “Maybe some of our teammates would have been mad about it, but I would have put them in their place. I’d never take away captain from you. You’re my best friend. My only real friend. I tell you all my secrets. I just can’t believe you didn’t trust me with the same. It seems like the only one you trust your secrets to is Madison.”
Katie’s face filled with regret. I’m sure she felt bad about not having confidence in her friendship with Clementine.
I was completely shocked at where this conversation was going. I’d never seen Clementine so vulnerable. And also, Katie had pretty much been right on the money about this all along.
“So you switched the music at the competition, and you sent that picture of me and Luc to Evan?” I asked.
Clementine nodded.
“Why?” asked Katie.
“I wanted to get you to defend Maddy, so I could hear you admit that you guys are friends, and everything else you were hiding from me. Especially about your audition.”
“Guess I’m more selfish than you thought,” said Katie sadly. “I didn’t defend Maddy at all.” She turned to face me. “I’m really sorry for dragging you into this and not sticking up for you sooner.” Then she looked at Clementine. “Why didn’t you just talk to me about all this?”
Clementine looked at the floor. “I felt you drifting away, I guess, even before you left for New York. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing my best friend.”
Nearby, Hilary let out an angry huff.
“Oh, get over it, Hilary!” snapped Clementine. “Katie, you’re the only person who really gets me. The only one I’ve ever trusted and thought wouldn’t hurt me. But I might have taken things a little too far.”
If there were sad violins playing, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
I know
, I know, it is not nice of me to not feel sorry for Clementine, but it is hard to get over all the horrible things she’s done to me. Even if it was all because she was scared of losing her BFF.
I looked over at Katie and saw that now SHE had tears in her eyes. This was turning into an all-out sob fest!
“Oh Clem, I’m sorry for not trusting you. I know you care about me. It’s just that sometimes, you’re kind of good at hiding it. So I started thinking you’d become this person who would walk all over people just to get what you wanted—like my captain position. But the truth is, no matter what, you could never lose me.” Katie walked up to Clem and grabbed her in a giant hug.
Lanie made quiet barfing noises next to me.
“Awwwww!” All the Titans were looking on at Clem and Katie like this was the cutest thing ever. I mean yeah, it was nice to see that they’d made up, but that didn’t exactly change the fact that Clem had almost ruined my life.
Then Clementine surprised me: She asked if she could talk to me alone. (That part isn’t so surprising, because what she was about to do probably would have sent her Mean Girl reputation into oblivion. I’m sure she figured that she’d already shown the world her soft side enough today.) When we were out of hearing range, she actually apologized to me for what she’d done with the booth stuff, and the picture thing. I should have had a little recorder with me, because the day that Clem owned up to her actions and apologized to me should forever be remembered. It’s one thing to hear Clem say nice things to her best friend. Another for her to say them to ME. I have a feeling it won’t happen again anytime soon.
“I was really jealous of your friendship with Katie,” she said. “And I couldn’t believe Katie wouldn’t tell me about her audition, but instead told you. I know I took it out on the wrong person.”
Then she was like, “But if you tell anyone else I said that, I’ll completely deny it. And just WHO do you think people will believe?”
Yeah, that was more like Clementine. I was beginning to get SCARED. Having Clem turn into this supersweet person from now on would be like Lady Gaga dressing like our school librarian.
“Okay, well, thanks, Clem. I appreciate your apology. But there’s one thing you can do for me.”
“Yeah?”
“You can back me up when I tell Evan that it was you who took that photo and sent it to him. And that there obviously wasn’t anything going on between me and Luc—you just made it look that way.”
Clem nodded her head in agreement, but I could tell she didn’t really like owing me any favors.
Before she could change her mind, I raced over to Evan’s booth. Somehow he hadn’t moseyed on over with the rest of the world to hear the fight that just went down. Either he was dead set on avoiding me or his booth had been really busy.
“Can we talk?” I asked.
Evan looked up from his sketching to see how many people were waiting for their SuperBoy sketch. Zero. It was almost closing time, after all.
“Okay.”
So I told him EVERYTHING. It was like truth-vomit was pouring out of my mouth (gross). I told him how Katie had ended up being in the same hotel I was at when I went with Dad to New York. I told him about her audition and how we ended up kind of bonding. And how she invited me out with her dancer friends and that one of them was this guy Luc. I told him how Luc e-mailed Katie about his coming to Port Angeles and wanting to hang, but that I couldn’t tell Evan about it because then I’d have to explain how Katie and I had ended up friends with him. And that Clem was out to get me, so she took a photo that made it look like Luc was, like, my boyfriend or something. When I was finished, Evan just stared at me, like he was computing all these new facts I’d just thrown at him.
“Okay,” he said. “So that guy, Luc. He’s not, like, your new crush or something?”
“YOU’RE my crush,” I said, kind of without thinking.
“I’m sorry, Maddy, for acting so suspicious and weird. I just hate it when you keep things from me.”
Wow, he and Clementine had something in common. Secrets were a big no-no. I was glad Evan apologized, but HELLO! Way to keep a girl in suspense. He hadn’t really acknowledged what I’d just said to him about him being my crush. I worked up all the courage in my body and just asked him back, “Am I YOUR crush?”
Evan smiled. “Well, I uh . . . was hoping actually that maybe you’d be my girlfriend.”
“Duh! Of course I’d like to be your girlfriend.” I was smiling so big, I thought my face would break.
So then I sat down next to him at his booth and asked if he’d draw me a SuperBoy comic now that the fans seemed to be taking a breather.
And guess what he drew? A picture of SuperBoy and BestGirl, with BestGirl wearing one of my T-shirt
designs, and SuperBoy kissing BestGirl on the cheek!
“Aw, thanks, E. I love it,” I said.
THEN, just as I was thinking he’d say something like “You’re welcome” or “Glad you like it,” he leaned in and kissed me. KISSED ME! Ahhhhh!!!! (Doing crazy hyper dance as I write.) It was for real. As in we were totally official. Maddy and Evan. And for the first time in, like, EVER, seeing our two names side by side like this doesn’t seem weird. At all.
He told me we should meet up later and hang, and I definitely agreed. But unforch, I had to get back to Lanie just then in case we had any last-minute customers. Also, I was excited to tell her all about what had just happened.
As I walked away holding his drawing near my heart (because I’m sappy like that), I passed Diane and Jared sitting on the grass and laughing. I gave them a little wave. Seems like school fairs can end fairly. It was the day for people to make up and start over.