All the Way

by Megan Stine

  But hey—I know how to share. Feel free, boys, to give her a call. No one ever called me selfish.

  Needless to say, I was in shock. I mean, total, utter, shock. Was he Satan or something?

  The phone rang, jolting me out of my stupor.

  “I can’t believe this,” I said, seeing Ariel’s caller ID. “I mean, is he totally insane? How can he write that stuff when nothing happened last night?”

  “Nothing?” Ariel sounded like she wasn’t about to believe that.

  “Nothing!”

  Ariel was silent.

  “Okay, I kissed him a lot in the backseat of his car, okay? But that was totally it. I mean, totally. When he tried to feel me up, I pushed him off and got out of the car and freaking walked all the way home from the lake!”

  “Oh my God,” Ariel said. “So he’s . . . what? Just trash-talking you to make Molly jealous? I mean, why would he do that?”

  “What do you mean why? It’s just what you said—to make Molly jealous! Duh!” I practically shouted the answer at her. “Sorry . . .” I forced my voice back down to a normal human register. “I’m a little upset. This is the first date I’ve had all year. Why the hell did he have to go and write crap like this about me?”

  “That’s Joey,” Ariel said. “He never does anything in a small way.”

  “Unbelievable. And he actually seemed nice last night,” I moaned. “Until he went all King Kong on me in the backseat. We were having a good time . . . I thought.”

  I guess Ariel didn’t know what to say, because she was really quiet. I got the feeling she thought I was a fool for expecting someone like Joey Perrone to treat me decently.

  “What am I going to do?” I asked her.

  “Tell everyone you know to spread the truth about what really happened,” Ariel suggested.

  “Uh, right. So let me know when you’ve got that done,” I said. “Because you and Gina are about it.”

  Ariel was quiet for a minute. “Look, don’t you sit next to Isabel in English? What if you told her that Joey’s just lying? Maybe she’d tell Molly, and then it would get around that Joey was just making it up . . .”

  “Maybe,” I said, but I doubted it. The way Isabel was shooting daggers at me last night, I doubted she’d want to help me clean up my rep.

  Right then I got call waiting from Rachel, so I hung up and went through the whole thing again with my best friend. It was weird, though. Rachel didn’t seem to have any good ideas at all about how to handle it. How could she? She didn’t know Joey or Molly or anyone at my new school.

  “I’m going to call him,” I said after we’d hashed it through a few times. “I mean, I can’t just let him say this stuff and get away with it.”

  “You go, girl,” Rachel said. “Call me back right after.”

  I ran downstairs to our kitchen—another disaster area, thanks to the renovation—and found a phone book so I could look up Joey’s number. Then I went back upstairs, locked myself in my room, and dialed his house.

  “Hello?” It was a little kid, a girl. Suddenly the thought of Joey having an innocent cute little sister made me feel like he’d not only trashed my reputation, he’d somehow damaged her life as well. I felt sorry for her.

  “Uh, hi. Can I speak to Joey?” I asked.

  “Hold on,” she said politely. Then I heard the phone drop with a clunk, possibly on the floor, and I waited for what seemed like five whole minutes. Finally he picked it up.

  “Yeah?”

  “Joey, this is Carmen,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said coldly. “I can read the caller ID.”

  “Well, what do you think you’re doing, writing about me that way on your blog?” I yelled at him, letting out all the anger I’d been trying to keep under control. “You know all that stuff you wrote is lies.”

  “Just doing you a favor,” he said with a small prickish laugh.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Hey, take it as a compliment,” he said. “I’m just trying to make you look hot. You know—like everything you’re not.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said, spitting the words. It sounded lame, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “You’d never get another date at Norton if people found out what a prissy little virgin you are,” he said nastily.

  “Jeez!” I shouted at him. “How can you stand there and talk that way to me in front of your sister?”

  He didn’t answer. He just hung up on me.

  Unbelievable!

  I threw the phone onto my bed and then stomped around the carpeted room for a minute, fuming.

  Well, at least I called him. That part felt good. I wasn’t going to take this crap without putting up a fight.

  I called Rachel back.

  “Oh, no,” she said while we were talking. “He just posted another entry about you.”

  “What?”

  My throat felt tight. What now? I wondered. I dashed over to my computer and refreshed the page of his blog.

  Subject: Buyer Beware

  Yo, guys. Word of warning: if you take Carmen out, be prepared to listen to a long, boring yak about her stupid miniature pig collection. Not that she talks about it while she’s doing it . . . and not that getting into her pants isn’t worth a little chatter . . . but the girl can’t shut up about her stupid pig collection. Don’t blame me if you end up crying “Wee Wee Wee” all the way home.

  My throat closed up, and I choked back some tears, but I tried not to let Rachel hear.

  “What an asshole,” Rachel said, cold as ice. When Rachel gets mad at someone, she really gets mad. You don’t want to be on her bad list. “How did he know about your pig collection, anyway? You never even let me touch most of them.”

  “I know,” I said, shaking my head and wishing I knew some horrible, painful, endless form of death I could inflict on Joey. “We got bored during the second half of the game, and started playing truth or dare. He asked me what one thing I’d sell my soul for. As a joke, I said it was my miniature pigs.”

  My miniature pigs are seriously important to me. My dad gave me the first one when I was five years old, after he’d been away on a two-month-long trip. I told Joey that I’d do practically anything to keep from losing that pig.

  “He’s a real piece of work,” Rachel said. “I wish I were at Norton, believe me. You and I could slap him down in under a week.”

  That much was true. Rachel was loyal, and when her friends were crossed she could get really spiteful. Right now I wouldn’t have minded if she’d worked a little of her voodoo on Joey.

  “Well, you’re not, so I’m going to have to deal with it alone. I just wonder what will happen at school tomorrow. Do you think everyone will have read his blog? Do you think they’ll believe it?”

  Rachel was silent again. What could she say? She had no idea what life was like at my new school.

  I was just going to have to wait and see. And face it all alone.

  Chapter 4

  “Oh my God, Carmen, everyone’s staring at you.” Ariel nudged me and mumbled under her breath as we walked through the hall to homeroom Monday morning.

  “I know.” I pasted a semiconvincing smile on my face and kept walking.

  This was exactly what I’d been afraid would happen, which is why I had gone out Sunday afternoon and bought a new little multicolored bolero cutaway cardigan at Urban Outfitters, to layer over my skinny turquoise knit top and jeans. I wanted to look so fabulous that I wouldn’t care what Joey had written or what everyone was thinking. I’d just suck in my breath and walk through the halls and hold my head high, proud to be me, like nothing life-changing had happened.

  It was a good act, anyway. I should get an Oscar.

  “Uh-oh. Don’t look now, but there he is.”

  “Where?” I tried not to be too obvious about looking around.

  Too bad she didn’t warn me in time, because before I could spot him, Joey banged right into me a few feet away from my locker. />
  “Ouch!”

  He didn’t even say excuse me. He just let his burly shoulder smash into mine, and his heavy backpack swing into my ribs, and then kept right on walking.

  What an animal. But I was sort of glad he didn’t stop, because I could feel everyone in the hall waiting to see if I’d go off on him, waiting for the fireworks, waiting for me to either call him an asshole or fall all over him with more unleashed sexual passion or something. Instead, I just ignored him and opened my locker, like I didn’t have a thing to say to him, like he was just a turd under my foot, not to be bothered with.

  Two Oscars.

  “Are you okay?” Ariel whispered, hanging at my side for moral support.

  “I’m fine,” I lied, trying to be stronger than I felt right then, trying to make it true. My shoulder hurt, and more than that, my face was beginning to feel hot. I could tell a lot of people were staring at me.

  Had they all read his Web page? And did they all believe what he said? Or did they know it was a bunch of lies, and they were waiting to see how I’d murder him?

  Or maybe they were just staring because we’d been seen together at the game Saturday night . . . and now I was one of the people everyone thought of as datable.

  Okay, so I was kidding myself with that last one. I like to call it “being optimistic.”

  I grabbed my American Government book and hurried into Mr. Mori’s class, bracing myself as I walked in the door. Guess who’s in my Am. Gov. class?

  Yeah. Molly. Plus two of her friends.

  Luckily, Molly sits way in the back of the room, and I sit up front, so I didn’t have to pass her. But Amber and some other girl who were closer to me started whispering. I heard the words slut, wiener, and pig and then a lot of snotty laughing.

  Great. Now Molly’s friends were making fun of my miniature pig collection?

  Of course I wanted to melt into the floor or run out of there in tears. But I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t going to let them win.

  I’m a quality person, I kept telling myself, a good student and a nice girl. So nothing Joey Perrone said about me was going to turbo-sink my life.

  That was before I saw the drawing on the board.

  Someone had sketched out a cartoon of a bunch of little pigs in a house, staring out the windows, begging to get out. The speech balloons said, “Help us! Save us! Save us from Carmen! HELLLP!”

  The icing on the cake was the sign over the door to the house. It had my last name: Salgado.

  It was a pretty good drawing, too.

  Wow. I couldn’t believe how mean people could be. At that point, I was fighting back tears. I tried not to let anyone see.

  I held my head up high and raised my hand four times in class—way more than usual—just to show everyone that I wasn’t ashamed of myself or too embarrassed to speak or anything. But inside, I was seriously hurting. This whole thing was so unfair. How could everyone believe Joey and think I was the kind of slut he made me out to be?

  Of course the answer was easy: they didn’t know me. No one at Norton knew me well enough to know the truth except Arial and Gina. No one realized that I was so far from a slut, it wasn’t even funny.

  And in a weird way, I knew it was partly my fault. I hadn’t really tried to fit in at Norton. I hadn’t tried to make many friends. I had figured I didn’t need them.

  The rest of the morning was more of the same. Except that two of Joey’s friends—Ryan and Matthew—gave me big smiles and said “Hi” when I passed them in the hall. But I knew that all they wanted was a piece of the action Joey had described on his blog.

  By lunchtime, I was a wreck. Holding your head up can be exhausting.

  “You want to go eat outside?” I suggested to Ariel and Gina.

  “It’s a little cold, don’t you think?” Gina said.

  Yeah. It was freezing out. I guess I just wanted a break from all the pressure of being on display and having to act like I didn’t care.

  “Okay, we’ll stay here.” I headed for the cafeteria line. “But don’t be surprised if I pig out.”

  “Bad choice of words, don’t you think?” Ariel said. “Considering?”

  “Oink, oink, and I don’t care who hears me!” I said defiantly.

  We went through the cafeteria line, and I opted for two servings of tapioca pudding instead of lunch—I needed some comfort food. Then we found a spot at our regular table.

  Of course everyone stopped talking the minute we sat down.

  Please just let this day end, I thought.

  But it dragged on forever.

  So here’s a brief recap of the afternoon: (1) another cute guy whose name I didn’t know made a point of saying hi to me in the hall; (2) Molly’s friend Isabel muttered, “I’m surprised you have time to do your homework, with your active social life,” when I turned in my essay in English, and Tyler North smiled when he overheard her; and (3) someone left a sticky on my locker with a phone number and the message “Call me next time you’re in the mood.”

  Could I really survive another eight weeks of this till school was over?

  I didn’t even care about the prom anymore. I just wanted to be a nobody again. I hadn’t realized how lucky I was when I was invisible.

  Chapter 5

  When the last bell finally rang, I hurried toward the door where I usually met Ariel to ride home with her. (Some days Ariel drove; some days my mom let me take our Honda Civic.) I couldn’t wait to get out of school and away from all the gossiping and the stares.

  But as I was about to leave, I noticed Mr. Richards, the drama teacher, putting up a poster in the front hall. It said:AUDITIONS!

  Norton High School’s Spring Term Musical

  GUYS AND DOLLS

  Leads and Chorus Parts

  Thursday after school in the auditorium

  Be There!

  Cool! My face lit up for the first time all day. With all the Joey drama going on, I’d totally forgotten about the upcoming musical. I’d been planning to audition for it all year. I’d always wanted to have a part in a school play, and this was my last chance. And besides, the one guy at Norton I had a huge crush on was guaranteed to be in the cast. Tyler North was the school’s most talented actor/singer. According to Ariel, he had been fantastic in last year’s production of Rent, and he was totally likely to get a big part in this year’s play.

  I ran out to the parking lot and over to Ariel’s car.

  “The musical auditions are Thursday,” I announced happily, feeling so glad to have something positive to focus on. “The sign just went up.”

  “Really?” Ariel looked psyched, too.

  “Are you going to try out?” I asked her. Not that I didn’t want the competition—I thought it would be cool to do the musical with Ariel. I just didn’t want her getting my part, the big lead opposite Tyler North!

  She nodded. “I think so. Is it Guys and Dolls? That’s what I heard, but everyone hoped Mr. Richards would change his mind and do Phantom instead.”

  “No, it’s Guys and Dolls,” I said. “Wow, Phantom would have been great, wouldn’t it?”

  “There are more parts in Guys and Dolls, though.”

  “True,” I said. “They did it at Woodward Baines a few years ago, and I remember the cast was huge.”

  “So you already know all the songs and everything?”

  “No, I didn’t try out. I didn’t even go see it, so I have no idea what it’s about. Do you?”

  “Um . . . guys? And dolls?” Ariel played dumb. “Don’t ask me.”

  “Wouldn’t it be amazing if I got a lead part opposite Tyler North?” I blurted out. “Then we’d have to hang out together all the time at rehearsals, and maybe he’d start to like me, and ask me out, and we’d start dating, and then he’d take me to the prom!”

  Okay, I was getting carried away.

  “You’ve got to get a part first,” Ariel said. “Maybe we’d better go rent the video and figure out which parts we want to try out for.”
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br />   “Yeah.” I snapped back to reality.

  Hey—can you blame me for wanting to think about something happy for a change? I’d had a pretty bummed-out day.

  “Blockbuster it is,” Ariel said, starting her engine.

  “Great.” I flipped on the radio to K-Rock so I could sing along and get my voice warmed up.

  I was halfway through the second chorus of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” when a terrible thought hit me. My stomach clenched.

  “Does Joey sing?” I asked Ariel, who had pulled into Blockbuster’s parking lot.

  “No way. Are you kidding? He’s such a homophobe, he wouldn’t be caught dead doing a musical. And don’t worry—Molly couldn’t carry a tune if her life depended on it,” Ariel added. “If she sang in the shower, I think the water would turn off in protest.”

  “Excellent,” I said as we headed into the store. I really didn’t want Molly or Joey anywhere near the high school musical, spoiling my fun. “Oooh, look. The new season of The OC is out on DVD!” I noticed, veering off in the wrong direction.

  “Hold on.” Ariel grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the musicals. “We’ve got trouble.”

  As she jerked me around, I saw what she meant. There, smack in the middle of the musicals aisle, was a gorgeous girl with long wavy black hair, cherub lips, and pale blue eyes, holding the one and only copy of Guys and Dolls.

  I recognized her right away as one of Molly’s friends—the other girl who’d been sitting with Molly’s crowd at the donkey ball game Saturday night.

  “Who is that?” I whispered to Ariel.

  “Natalie Anschell,” Ariel whispered back. “She’s got a voice like Mariah Carey. You should have seen her last year, tearing up the stage in Rent. I know Mr. Richards will cast her.”

  Shit. I knew the competition would be tough—Ariel had already told me there were a lot of senior girls who could sing and act really well—but it sucked coming face-to-face with one of my rivals so soon.