“Maybe…”
“No maybe,” she said, “definitely.”
“If I concede that, will you concede that if you date the right person, getting into a relationship can be a good thing, too?”
She hemmed a moment. “For people older than us? Sure.”
“Terri! It can work now, too. Grace’s parents met in high school.”
She held up a finger. “Exception, not the rule.”
I threw my head back. “Relationships can be good things, when they’re the right ones.”
“You’re not going to know what’s right until you figure out what you like.”
She could be exasperating at times. “And what does the track have to do with any of this?” I asked, power walking to keep up with her stride.
“You can’t date unless you have someone to do it with.” Terri gestured around us. “I brought you to the boys.”
She had to be kidding. “At the track? You do remember it’s Grace who gets up every morning to work out, not me, right? I’m not the exercise buff here.”
“Yes, but since someone,” she said, giving me the side-eye, “doesn’t want to go to the mall anymore since the guy she just dumped works there, and it’s two thirty in the afternoon on a school day, I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” I asked, lowering my voice as three guys on the track team passed us on the left. “Chase them down? I swear, I don’t know how you meet so many guys. This is impossible.”
“No it’s not. They’re just people. You say hello. You talk. That’s it. I do it at parties and things all the time. You just have to get over your fear. Be the out-there-in-your-face girl you used to be.”
“I don’t know,” I said, taking in a deep breath. “Are you working on your art school applications?” I asked, changing the subject before she egged me on to go talk to a stranger or something.
“Yes, but I don’t know what the point is; my parents aren’t going to let me go.”
“You leave that to Grace, Luke, and me,” I told her. “The Tuesday after Halloween your parents will be completely swayed into sending you wherever you want to go.”
Terri’s mouth quirked. “What are you planning?”
“Not telling,” I said, huffing slightly, as we began another lap.
“You’re really not going to say? Not even a clue?”
“I’m really not, and I made the others swear to keep their mouths shut, too. So quit trying to pry something out of them.”
She shook her head at me. “Anyway,” she said, “how’s the yearbook coming along?”
“There is so much work.”
“You have Lissi.”
I threw my head back. “Don’t remind me. I emailed her some stuff to work on. I’m trying to avoid face-to-face contact at all costs.”
Terri elbowed me lightly. “You got this, and I’m still on board to design the cover and hand-draw all the page headers. Hopefully, that will help.”
“It will. You’re great.” Her lettering work was beautiful. “And I appreciate it.”
“It’ll be fun,” she said. “And the college applications. How are they?”
I let out a sigh. “I’m still bummed I can’t apply early decision to Columbia.” I needed to wait so I could beef up my extracurricular activities and show off my senior-year grades. “But my application is looking pretty solid to me. I just hope they see it the same way. If I’m not in New York next year, I’m going to lose it.”
“There’re a lot of schools in New York, you know,” she said.
“Yeah, but Columbia is my dream.”
“Marc’s,” she mumbled under her breath, but I caught it.
“And mine.” This wasn’t like going to soccer games or watching superhero movies. New York was something I’d wanted even before I noticed boys. My aunt took me there for my birthday when I was ten. We saw a Broadway show, went shopping, ate sooo much food. The trip made me fall in love with the city.
“Look, I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” she said, her voice soft. “It’s just, have you even visited the school? You keep saying how much you love New York and that’s why you want to be there, but Columbia is like its own little campus. It’s not even in the parts of the city you’re constantly raving about.”
“But I can get there. It’s not like Connecticut. New York has tons of ways to get around that don’t involve owning a car.”
“I know, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to Columbia. I’m just saying you should see what else is out there. You’ve had this idea since freshman year that you needed to go to this particular school, but it doesn’t mean there’s not something better.”
I sucked in my cheeks. Columbia was incredible. Marc and I had spent hours talking about it and looking over the website. I even slept in T-shirts from the school. It had everything, but I hated to admit that Terri may have had a point. There was a chance I hadn’t really looked into the other schools in the area.
“If we’re just going to talk about college,” I said, pivoting back to our initial conversation and away from one I was over, “could we at least do it over fries at Scobell’s, not on a track?”
“Your Scobell’s ban didn’t last long.”
“I already went with the volleyball team, and you can only pass up their shakes for so long. But I’m standing by my decree to never have another date there.”
“Third time’s the charm.”
“I doubt that.”
“Okay,” she said, “noted. Let’s find you someone to take someplace other than Scobell’s.”
“Really?”
“Did you think I forgot the reason for bringing us to the track?” Terri asked. “Come on, we’re here—you might as well make the most of it. Plenty of hot guys have passed us. Pick one.”
“They’re running! I can’t keep up,” I objected.
“They stop; they take breaks. Look, there’s one at three o’clock, sitting on the bench, tying his shoes. Go get him. You got this. Go!”
The way she said it, the way she was pumping me up, just struck me as funny. It reminded me of when we played Rocky when we were younger. Grace, Terri, and I first watched the movie when it popped up on TV one Saturday in fifth grade. For about a year afterward, every time we’d go upstairs or had to run somewhere, we’d pretend we were Rocky training for his big fight. “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows,” I quoted from the film.
She didn’t miss a beat. “Go out and get what you’re worth,” she quoted back.
Before I knew it, I found myself running in slow motion while humming the Rocky theme.
“What are you doing?” she asked, laughing.
I put my arms in the air in the victory sign and continued on my slow sprint. “Beating you around the track.”
The next thing I knew she was next to me, and we were neck and neck in a snail’s-pace race.
When we made it to the other side, where the guy was now standing, I slow-moed my way to victory. “Chaaaampioooooon,” I said, dragging out the word and jumping up and down in exaggerated, sluggish movements, while Terri languidly fell to the ground in defeat.
We attracted a little crowd. We should have been embarrassed, but we weren’t. We were totally amusing ourselves, and apparently a few others, too. The hot guy and some people in the vicinity applauded. I bowed. “Thank you all very much.” I extended my arm to Terri, who curtsied.
Feeling particularly emboldened by my little stunt, I walked over to Mr. Hottie. “Think I earned a place on the track team?”
“Indoor track is taking sign-ups,” he said.
“Are you on the team?” I asked. I channeled my inner Terri and gave him a big smile and maintained eye contact.
“I am,” he said.
Make Terri proud, I told myself, and upped my flirting game. “Then maybe I should sign up.” I winked.
“Yeah,” he said, and nodded. “We could use more people. My girlfriend would love having anothe
r female on the team.”
Girlfriend?!
Oh God. Awkward. Was it okay for me to sprint away? We were on a track. My gut was churning, but instead of from fear, it was from laughter building up inside me. Of course he’d have a girlfriend. Why would I think anything would go right when it came to my love life?
“Nice,” I said, not knowing what else to say, “I’ll get right on that.” I gave him a thumbs-up and pointed in front of me. “Got another race to finish.” Then I went back into slow-motion-sprinting mode and headed straight to the parking lot. I kept it up all the way there, Terri once again my faithful running partner.
When we got to her car, we both doubled over with laughter.
“That,” she said through her giggling fit, “was awesome.”
“OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod.” I couldn’t control my breath. “All that, and he had a girlfriend.”
“I know,” she said, gasping herself. “That’s what made it even better. The look on your face, and then you started that pantomime running.”
She waved her hands, trying to calm herself down, but she wound up in another laughing fit, which only made me laugh harder.
“What’s so funny?” someone shouted at us from afar.
“We are!” I yelled back, causing Terri to snort-laugh.
“Look,” she said when we finally got some of our composure back, “this was good—you put yourself out there. So what if you didn’t wind up with the guy? It will make the next time you try to talk to someone even easier. And think about the story you have now. Grace is going to crack up when you tell her.”
“What came over me?” I asked, getting into her car.
“Maybe a sense of fun?” she said, putting the key in the ignition. “I missed this side of you.”
“What are you talking about?” I put on a fake pout. “I’m always fun.”
She turned to face me. “Yeah, but you used to do things like this all the time. Remember the eighth-grade dance, when you pulled Grace and me onstage during that Kevin Wayward song and made us do that bizarre interpretive dance? Or the talent show in seventh, where you had us perform dramatic readings of kid songs?”
I laughed. “I still stand by that. It was epic. Row, row,” I said in my most serious voice, “row your boat.” I paused for five seconds. “Gently. Down the stream.”
“Yes,” she said, “it was. We always did stuff like that, usually because of you, and then when we started high school, and you started seeing Marc, it stopped.”
“It didn’t stop.”
“It kind of did,” she said.
“Hey,” I objected. “We’ve reenacted those dramatic readings millions of times. You’re usually the one who refuses.”
“Yeah, you, me, and Grace have done a lot of stuff, stuff I usually put up a stink about, but it’s always in private. Until the whole Brooksy thing, the only time I’ve seen you do something even a little wild in public was when you’d cheer at one of Marc’s or Grace’s games. And even that was fairly tame.”
Was she right? I mean, we didn’t have a talent show in the high school for me to take part in, even if I’d wanted to. But we did have dances … and I never jumped onstage or did anything showy there. It totally would have embarrassed Marc. He was more subdued, but he’d never told me to tone it down. I just did.
I guess I had done a lot of things for Marc, but I hadn’t completely given up things I liked. Had I?
If I was honest, I knew the answer, because I’d just done the same thing with Spence.
I didn’t even give anyone the chance to know the real me. I hid myself, hoping it would make me seem like a better choice. The thought made me cringe.
Well, I was not doing that anymore.
From here on out, I was going to work on finding the old Cam, the real Cam. The Cam who did outlandish dances and ridiculous performances and didn’t care what anyone thought. The Cam who had fun and knew what she wanted.
I hadn’t known she’d disappeared, but now that I did, I was realizing just how much I missed her. And I was going to do everything I could to get her back.
Chapter 29
“I think I may need a live reenactment of that,” Avery said the next day at lunch after I shared my track story.
“Forget that,” Nikki interrupted. “Can we get back to this whole you dumping Spence thing? I’ve been thinking about it all night, and I’m still kind of in shock here.”
I told them everything about the breakup yesterday. I didn’t think it’d be possible for Nikki to have any more questions. She’d already asked me a gazillion. But apparently I was wrong.
Avery elbowed her.
“What?” Nikki protested, tossing a chip in her mouth. “It was all Spence this, Spence that, and then, snap, just like that, no warning, he’s gone.”
“I think it’s good,” Meg said.
“Yeah,” Naamua agreed. “No offense, Cam, but you guys didn’t seem to have that much in common.”
“No offense taken. He was a good guy, but you’re right, he wasn’t for me.”
All four of my lunchtime crew—Avery, Nikki, Meg, and Naamua—nodded. If you had told me a year ago I’d be hanging out with a group of cheerleaders every day, I wouldn’t have believed it. But somehow, over a fairly short period of time, the four of them had turned into good friends.
“So who is right for you?” Nikki asked, raising her eyebrows up and down.
“No clue.” I took a bite of my turkey sandwich. “That’s the million-dollar question.”
“I bet we can come up with someone,” she said, and made a little circle motion with her finger at the rest of my friends at the table.
Was she serious? “I don’t know, Nikki.”
“Well, I do. We know so many people. It wouldn’t be hard. Let us play matchmaker.”
Before I could even think about objecting, Nikki had her phone out and punched up GroupIt. “Okay, Naamua, you’re up first. Ooh. There are some hotties on your friends list that I don’t know. Holding out on us, huh? All right, let’s see here. Cam’s future boyfriend. What about Andre Paiva, Kel Wala, or Tony Benedetto?”
“Nope, nope, and nope,” Naamua said. She put up three fingers and lowered them one by one as she ticked off her reasons. “Incredibly old picture—he’s a friend of the family who’s like forty; lives in LA; has a girlfriend.”
“Okay,” Nikki said, looking back at her phone. “Alberto Medina, what about him? He’s really cute, too.”
“Yeah, and I’m sure his boyfriend agrees with you,” Naamua said.
“Maybe it would be better if we went through our own lists,” Meg offered. “Would probably save a lot of time if we each picked someone we knew ourselves.”
Nikki stood up.
“What? What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I just had an amazing idea,” Nikki whisper-shouted.
Avery tugged at her arm. “Why don’t you sit back down and tell us about it?”
“Okay. You know The Bachelorette? I love that show. We do our own version starring Cam. There’s the bonfire in the park this Friday. We each bring a guy, and Cam can pick who she likes the best. Four dates, one night.” Nikki was bouncing in her seat. She turned to me. “You can even bring a rose and give it to your favorite suitor.”
“Nikki!”
“What?” she asked incredulously.
“This is my life, not a reality show,” I said.
“Why can’t it be both?”
I turned to the others for help. Meg shrugged.
“I don’t know,” Naamua said.
“What’s not to know?” Nikki asked.
“Like, maybe the guys will be annoyed that we’re trying to fix them all up with the same girl,” Avery said, being the voice of reason.
“Oh please, it’s going to be at a party. If Cam doesn’t like them, or they don’t like her—no offense, Cam—they move on, meet someone new. Think about it, what guy our age wants a blind date anyway? They’ll like this better. We’ll just mentio
n we have someone they should talk to. It’s not like we’re going to tell them a bunch of people are trying to fix Cam up.”
“Or we could—a little competition might be fun,” Meg said.
Nikki nodded. “Now you’re talking.”
“No,” I said, vetoing that idea. “If we do this, and I repeat if, we don’t mention the other guys.”
“This is sounding like a yes,” Nikki said in a happy singsong voice.
I squeezed my wrist. “I don’t know.”
“We need to do this,” Nikki pressed. “These parties are all the same. Let’s spice things up a little … and help your love life,” she added. “Come on, come on, come on.”
I looked to Avery.
“Well,” she said, bobbing her head back and forth, “it could work. I mean, you’re supposed to talk to a bunch of different people at parties anyway—so what if they’re planned, right? It will be efficient, and it could be pretty amusing. I guess it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s a brilliant idea,” Nikki stressed again. “Be our Bachelorette.”
I thought about what Terri had said the other day.
The old Cam wouldn’t have said no, I reminded myself. She would have cracked up over the idea and immediately jumped on board.
“Okay,” I told Nikki, “count me in.”
Chapter 30
“We’re here,” Grace said as Terri pulled the car into a spot at one of the parking lots at Brooksvale Park.
Tonight’s bonfire was being held by the lake on the north side of the park. There was a pavilion and a little raised stage where a student band was going to perform. Normally the area was off-limits at night in the fall, but an exception had been made for tonight. The bonfire was a Brooksvale High tradition that had been going on forever.
The three of us got out. “You know, Cam,” Terri said, looking me over, “I like the red sweater dress and all, but I really think you should be wearing a ball gown. You know, seeing as you’re the new Bachelorette.”
“Who knew you were so funny,” I deadpanned, but she knew I was kidding. The whole idea of a mass setup was absurd, but it was also oddly intriguing, and they thought so, too.
Finding Mr. Better-Than-You Page 15