Prince Charming

by S. Celi

  The color faded from Josh’s face, and pooled in his neck. He looked at me like I had just kicked him in the face. “What? How did you know about that?”

  I laughed. “I didn’t. But I do now.” I lifted my chin, satisfied to get confirmation. “So, how is Allison?”

  “Come on,” Josh said, embarrassed. His words came out fast and breathy. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

  “At least you’re getting some,” Mark muttered.

  Nathan, though, kept his icy stare on me. “See what I’m talking about here? You’re being an asshole to everyone.” He tipped his head in Josh’s direction. “That was a dick move.”

  “Whatever, we’re all friends.” I glanced at my friend and my confidence faded. “It’s fine, right? I mean, I’m glad things are going well with Allison.”

  “It’s fine. It’s whatever. Just shut up about it,” Josh replied, but he didn’t look at me anymore. He just looked like he wanted lunch to be over. Right away.

  “So, what do you want me to do about it?” I asked Nathan, belligerent.

  “I want you to fucking get your head out of your ass!” Nathan exclaimed. “You have everything going for you. You’re salutatorian, and you’re not even trying! And you’re going to Virginia. And you can get any girl you want in this school if you want her.”

  I burst out laughing. “Now, that’s where you are totally wrong.”

  “Stop acting like some kind of angry trollop,” Nathan said. “And yes, you can get any girl.”

  “I think he wants Laine Phillips.” Mark snickered, and Josh laughed some, too.

  “Whatever. I can’t get any girl.”

  Nathan rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “Should I describe you to yourself? Your big eyes? That sandy brown and blonde hair?” His voice became high-pitched as he started ticking off my physical features. “That rock hard chest? That smile?”

  “Shut up.”

  “All those hours you spend working out in your room?”

  “Shut up!”

  Nathan wasn’t wrong, though. I’d lost fifteen pounds in three months.

  “You know, not everyone in this school is against you, Geoff,” Nathan said, undaunted by my pleas. “People want to like you, but you won’t let them.”

  “They all call me Geoff Megadeth,” I replied. “They don’t like me.”

  “Why do you care? Why not just own it, instead of trying to fight it?”

  “Whatever.” I bit into what remained of my burger. “Easy for you to say.”

  Nathan nodded. “Yeah. It is. And I’m tired of it. We have just a few months of school left. Nothing to lose. We need to do something awesome. Make this shit count.”

  “Okay,” I said after I swallowed my bite. “So what is this? Some sort of challenge??”

  “Yeah, Geoff, that’s what it is. A challenge.”

  “Okay,” I said, aware I was talking out of my ass, but too stubborn to go back on it now. “I’ll take it. How do you want to prove to me that you’re going to stop being a douchebag?” I thought about it. “I think you should do something you’ve never done before.”

  He considered it. “Okay. We have AP English, and the reading guide for Macbeth is due. I have mine in my locker, but I won’t hand it in. I’ll just skip class.”

  “That’s 10 percent of our grade,” Mark pointed out.

  “So what?” Nathan glanced at him, unfettered. “I’ve never skipped class before. I bet I can do it, and get away with it.”

  “What . . . what are you . . . where are you going to go instead?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Does it matter? To my car, I guess, to listen to music. Go home. Or maybe I’ll just go to the library.”

  “That really a good idea?” Mark asked.

  Nathan and I ignored him and eyed each other, still locked in the argument.

  “Okay,” I said, convinced. “So now, what do I have to do?”

  Nathan gave me a Cheshire cat grin. “You have to ask Laine out. Here. In the lunchroom.”

  The air around me thickened. “No way. She’s still dating Evan.”

  I glanced in the direction of the table where I knew Laine sat. She did, as always, have a smile on her face, and she picked at her daily salad while one of her friends told the latest gossip about boys in school. It was as if all of Heritage spun on an axle around her, while she maintained a quiet serenity—the reigning Greek goddess of the school.

  Mark shook his head. “That’s not what I heard. She and Evan are on the out. At least, for right now.”

  “They are?” I asked, puzzled. I didn’t know about any of this. Why didn’t I? Nothing about Laine got past me. Nothing. So why hadn’t I heard about this?

  “I think it just happened,” Mark said, answering the question in my head. “That’s what I heard some girls saying in Spanish class this morning. I guess Evan broke up with her.”

  “Really?” As soon as the word came out, I knew my question sounded too hopeful, too eager. But I couldn’t help myself. “Is she upset?”

  Matt shrugged.

  Nathan slapped his hands together, and the tray of food in front of him rattled. “There. That settles it. She’s single. You have to ask her out.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, asshole.” He smiled. “Do it now.”

  “Right now?” I gulped.

  “Yep. Do it right now. And if you do, I’ll skip class. Deal?”

  I took about thirty seconds to gather my wits as I considered Nathan’s challenge. The whole time he stared at me with a sly, almost sarcastic, grin, as if he knew he was sending me to my death. At the very least, this teetered on the edge of an outcome I couldn’t guess. Who cared if Laine sent me anonymous Valentine’s Day chocolates, and friended me on social media? And what did a couple of stolen conversations matter? The rest of the Heritage student body had no idea we’d ever talked. Once I got up and walked over to her, everyone would know. Everyone. Half the senior class sat in the cafeteria at that very moment, and even more freshmen, sophomores, and juniors filled out the rest of the tables.

  In other words, I’d hear about this, no matter what.

  “You have to do it,” Nathan repeated. “You do it, and like I said, I’ll skip the next class. Okay?”

  Something twisted inside my stomach. I eyed Laine, who looked finished with whatever vegetables she had on her tray. She’d be getting up from the table soon. “Deal,” I said.

  Mark sucked in a long breath. “Oh, wow. This is going to be good.”

  “I’m so glad I didn’t go off campus for lunch with Allison today,” Josh said.

  I shut out my friends and focused only on Laine. She laughed with her friends and then suddenly stood up from the table, her tray in her hand. No one else got up, and she sauntered away from the table toward the tray return counter at the far end of the room. As she walked, I saw how guys sitting at tables all over the cafeteria followed her with their eyes. I wasn’t the only person in the room with a crush on Laine Phillips.

  But of course, I knew that.

  Pulling together every nerve in my body, I pushed back my metal chair and stood up with my tray. If I hurried, I’d manage to catch her before she walked away from the tray return, but that also meant the entire cafeteria would have a direct line of sight to me. Oh, well. No choice. Time to navigate the high school jungle. Time to man up.

  Right, then.

  With a smile to my friends, I turned and made my way to the tray return. Laine had her back to me as I walked up, carefully sorting what remained of her lunch into trash and recycle bins. Other students clanged around doing the same thing. I put my tray on a waiting metal table, and tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, Laine.”

  She whirled around, her eyes wide, and then she grinned at me. “Geoff, hey. What’s up?”

  A sophomore wearing a long sleeved T-shirt with a no-name band on it shot me a confused look. I nodded in his direction, and turned back to Laine.

  �
��So, um, did you have a nice lunch?”

  “It was okay.” She shrugged. “Just the usual salad.”

  “Yeah, I hate salads.”

  “Me, too.” Her eyes smiled at me. “They keep me thin. And, well, you know, I don’t want to get fat.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  She looked away from me. “Easy for you to say.” When her eyes met mine again though, any trace of whatever bothered her had disappeared. “You look nice today, Geoff.”

  I glanced down, shocked. “I do?”

  “Come on. You know you do.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. She thought I looked nice? Really? “Um,thanks.”

  “You look hot. You’ve lost weight, right?”

  “Well… um… yeah…” The words slid out of my mouth slower than peanut butter coming out of a jar. “I mean…I’ve been working out….”

  She laughed, and I immediately searched for what to say next. The word “hot” thundered through my head over and over. Nathan had dared me to ask out the girl of my dreams, and I’d seized the challenge, but now, as I stood in front of her, I couldn’t think of a suave way to do it, especially not now that she’d noticed me. So I said the first few words that came to my mind.

  “Listen, Laine, um, I was wondering what you were . . . um . . . what you were doing this weekend.” It came out as a statement, but should have been a question.

  “I don’t know. I have cheer practice this afternoon, and then after that . . .”

  She trailed off as a few other students stopped what they were doing to watch us talk. In fact, over my shoulder, I saw a couple of people at various tables turn their heads in our direction. Some of them had confused looks, while others gave me the kind of disdainful stare I had seen many times on Blake and Bruce’s faces. As I’d expected.

  “Cheer practice sounds fun.” What the hell was I saying? I sounded like an idiot.

  She grinned. “Yeah, it is. It will be. Monica and I are supposed to be working on some new routines.”

  “New routines? Sounds amazing.”

  Once I said it, I could have kicked myself in the face. What was I thinking? I didn’t like cheerleading. I didn’t care about it at all. Recover. I needed to recover. Immediately.

  “Well, if you aren’t too busy, I thought we might do something this weekend. Maybe Saturday?”

  A fat junior must have heard me ask this, because she burst out laughing as she placed her tray on the metal table and dumped the rest of her soup into the trashcan.

  “This weekend?” Laine scrunched up her face as she thought about it. “Yeah, I’m free Saturday night.” She leaned into me, and the familiar bubble gum smell drifted up my nose. “I guess you know I broke it off with Evan.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” I said, still seething that I’d found that information out from Mark.

  “He’s not . . . we . . . we just needed a break.” She turned her head, and looked away again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t at all. I hated Evan so much. He always loomed over everything, like a bad rash, or a bruise. “So . . . um . . . do you want me to just send you a message on Facebook, or something?”

  Why was it so hard to do this? Oh, right. Because it was her. Jesus, she was nothing but nice to me, but I never managed to make these conversations sound the way I wanted. I needed to fix that.

  “Why don’t you call me?” she said, her attention on me again.

  “Well . . . okay . . .” I replied, and then faltered again. My right hand started to shake.

  “Here’s my number—seven . . . three . . . one . . .”

  “Wait, I don’t have my phone. It’s in my locker,” I interrupted, but inside I was kind of glad I didn’t. My hand shook so hard I couldn’t have held it.

  She grinned. “Okay. I’ll message you my number on Facebook.” She took a step backward. “And you’ll call me, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll call you.” I didn’t add that I would call her every day if she wanted me to.

  “Great. Talk to you later.”

  She turned, and flounced back to her table. My eyes fell on Mark, Nathan and Josh. They all stared at me, wide-eyed, as if I had the answer to the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s dead body. I waited until I sat back down at the table to say anything. By then, anticipation had her own seat at our table.

  “So,” I said, “she has cheerleading practice tonight.”

  “Oh, man,” Josh muttered. “I knew she would turn you down.”

  I burst out laughing, still in some disbelief myself. “She didn’t. She said she’d do something Saturday night.”

  Nathan’s fork clattered against his tray. “She did?”

  “Yeah. She did.” I leaned back in my chair, and folded my arms. “So, looks like you’re missin’ that class.”

  “Damn it,” Nathan said. “I thought for sure you’d chicken out.”

  He should have known better than to make a bet with me. I didn’t like to lose.

  Josh’s mouth hung open, but Mark found some words. “Dude, you are absolutely my hero right now.”

  By the time fifth period switched into sixth, I’d been asked about my date with Laine forty times. I counted. It started with the stony glare Evan gave me in World Cultures class, where he proceeded to fart more than usual and seemed to aim it at my face. Kids stopped me in the hallway between classes. They taunted me under their breath as I walked down a row to my seat in class. They spoke in hushed voices, and greeted me with the kind of cold stare that only comes from classmates who think you’ve done something you shouldn’t have. In short, they wanted me to know how much I had overstepped my boundaries.

  I ignored it all as I took notes and wrote down homework assignments. Fuck them. Fuck the whole school. They could all go to hell on a one-way ticket.

  After class, Blake and Bruce waited for me by the car in the chilly, stale winter air. I’ll admit, I walked a little slower than I should have down the sidewalk in front of the school, and across the street to the student parking lot. I liked making them wait, and on Fridays they relied on me to get home.

  “You’re such an asshole,” Bruce muttered as I walked up to them with a big, leisurely grin on my face. His cheeks were flushed from the cold chap of the final days of winter.

  “I’m the asshole?” I said in mock protest, as I unlocked the car with the key fob.

  “You could have walked a little faster, couldn’t you?” Bruce narrowed his eyes at me. “Or was that too much for you?”

  “He was probably daydreaming about his nonexistent upcoming date with Laine,” Blake said to his brother.

  I kept my face serene. “Well, the car is unlocked now. Don’t you want to get in?”

  Both of the twins did, of course. They didn’t speak to me again until after I pulled the car out of the parking lot and turned onto North Robert Road, the long main drag that took us right by Heritage High School and the other big landmarks in town—big being a relative term.

  “So,” Blake said, his voice thick with innuendo, “we heard you took a little gamble today in the lunchroom.”

  I said nothing. I just kept on driving, with both hands on the wheel.

  “Laine Phillips,” Bruce said, picking up the cues from his brother. “Wow. Aim high.”

  My hands tightened on the leather wheel, but again, I said nothing as I stopped at a four-way stop about four blocks from the school. The stares and whispered comments from the rest of the school had been more than enough warning about this conversation.

  “Dude, the least you can do is turn up the radio,” Blake complained. He reached over from his place in the front passenger seat and twisted the dial. Jay-Z’s voice blasted through the speakers of the car. He raised his voice. “Anyway. Laine. Interesting.”

  “Not that interesting.”

  I drove the car through the intersection, and past a few quiet streets lined with brick homes built in the 1940s. I liked these houses because they reminded me
of the one I grew up in, back before Dad got sick and before Mom “reconnected” with David. And before, of course, I got stuck living with the two trollops who’d hated me all through elementary school, and who now loved to pick on me for being smarter than them. Six months to go; at the most. Six months to go, and I’d be away from this snobby little town, the terrible twins, and a suburban mindset I could never understand. By the fall, I’d live in Charlottesville, Virginia, and study at one of the best schools in the country. Six months wasn’t really that long.

  Even though sometimes it seemed like six months would take longer to pass than ten years.

  “She doesn’t like you that way,” Bruce said, as we passed St. Margaret’s Catholic Church. “She doesn’t. You’re not her type.”

  “Who is her type?”

  Bruce snorted. “Not you. Not anyone like you.”

  “She just feels bad for you,” Blake added as I turned the car onto Ammunition Ridge. “And she’s too nice to say anything. That’s how Laine Phillips is. She’s too nice.”

  SATURDAY, MARCH 2

  I REHEARSED THE phone call twelve times before I made it: five times in the shower, four in front of the bathroom mirror, twice while I ran on the treadmill in the workout room, and once more as I scrubbed the tiles on the kitchen floor on Saturday morning.

  True to her promise, Laine had sent me her phone number; she sent it right after class on Friday. The 3:25 time stamp made me grin. She did want to hang out. Blake, Bruce, and those asshats at my school were wrong. Not that I really expected them to be right. They didn’t have many brain cells, and struggled to name all fifty states on the map.

  Sitting on my bed, I dialed her number and then counted the rings: One. Two. Three. Four. Then, just when I thought she’d send me to voicemail, she picked up the phone.

  “Hey, hello?”

  I pulled the phone to my ear. “Laine. Hey.”

  “What’s up?” She sounded out of breath.

  “Are you, are you okay?” I lay back on the bed and willed my heart to stop pounding, and for thoughts about how she’d look naked to get out of my head. Focus. I needed to focus. I couldn’t let her sexy voice distract me, no matter how much I wanted it to.