by Meg Cabot
We all collapsed where we were, draped all over the risers.
Then Mr. Hall pointed at me.
"You," he growled. Really. Growled! "Stand."
I stood. My heart was beating fast. But only because I'd been doing jazz hands a few seconds before. I wasn't scared or anything. After all, it had been an accident. I hadn't done it on purpose. Surely Mr. Hall understood that.
Mr. Hall, it turned out, understood no such thing.
"Miss Greenley," Mr. Hall said. His face was still red, and there were large half moons of sweat under his armpits. He seemed oblivious to his own personal discomfort, though. All of his attention was focused on me.
"Is it your intention," he asked me, "to undermine and ruin this choir's performance while we are at Bishop Luers?"
I glanced down at Tough Brenda to see what she made of this question. I'd have looked to Trina for help, but she was keeping her face turned resolutely to the wall.
"Um," I said, since Tough Brenda's response was only an infinitesimal shrug, showing me that, as far as she knew, there was no right answer. "No?"
"Then why," Mr. Hall thundered, loudly enough to make the kid holding the cymbals almost drop them in his fright, "did you throw Catrina Larssen's hat into the orchestra pit during that last number?"
I looked at Steve, hoping for some backup on this one. None seemed forthcoming, at least from the baritone section. Steve's Adam's apple bobbed like a piston, but he didn't open his mouth.
"Um," I said finally. "It was an accident."
"AN ACCIDENT?" Mr. Hall screamed. "AN ACCIDENT? And do you know what that little ACCIDENT would have cost us if it had happened at Luers? DO YOU?"
Since I hadn't the foggiest idea, I said, "No."
"Ten points!" Mr. Hall roared. "Ten points, Miss Greenley, can mean the difference between first place and NO PLACE. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT, MISS GREENLEY? FOR THIS CHOIR NOT TO PLACE AT LUERS?"
I looked at Trina again. Had we been speaking, I knew that at this point, she would have raised her hand and said, Mr. Hall, it was my fault, not Jen's. I should have caught the hat, but I didn't, or something to that effect.
Except that if Trina and I had still been speaking, she wouldn't have let the hat fall into the tuba in the first place. So really, the whole thing was her fault.
Only I couldn't stand there and say that. Mr. Hall, it wasn't my fault. It was Trina's. Because you just don't do that.
So instead, I said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Hall. It won't happen again." Even though I knew it would. Because Trina was never going to catch that hat.
"Sorry isn't good enough," Mr. Hall yelled. "Sorry doesn't make it right! You have been sloughing off all year, Miss Greenley. It's like this choir is a big joke to you. Well, I will have you know that the Clayton High Troubadours are anything but a joke. We have won top honors at Bishop Luers for the past five years, and this year isn't going to be any different, despite your efforts to sabotage our performance. I don't know if your little tryst with Luke Striker has gone to your head, missy, but allow me to assure you, he's the star. Not you. Now either you work with me, or you walk on out of here. The choice is yours."
Then Mr. Hall picked up his baton and rapped it on his conductor's stand.
"All right, people, let's take it from the top one more time," he said. "And let's hope that this time, Miss Greenley will show us a little more courtesy."
Here's the thing. Last week, I might have let it go. For Trina, because this was her thing, really. I was just along for the ride. She was the one with the big solo. She was the one who'd talked me into joining the stupid thing in the first place.
If this had been last week, I might have been all, Okay, Mr. Hall. I apologize, Mr. Hall. I'll practice real hard to get it right, Mr. Hall. Just to make things nice and easy for everybody.
But this wasn't last week.
And I didn't care about making things nice and easy for everybody.
I cared about making things right.
So I stepped down from the risers, walked around to where my street clothes were sitting—in a pile against the wall with my books—and scooped them up.
"Excuse me, Miss Greenley," Mr. Hall said. "Where do you think you're going?"
I looked over my shoulder at him as I made my way up the steps to the doors to the hallway.
"You told me to work with you or walk on out," I said. My heart was banging hard against my ribs. I had never sassed a teacher before. Never, not even once. But I didn't care what happened to me now. I told myself I didn't care a bit. "So I'm walking on out."
"Stop being so dramatic. Really, this is the kind of behavior I'd expect from Miss Larssen—" he glared at her darkly "—not you, Miss Greenley." He pointed to the empty space on the riser where I'd once stood. "Now get back to your place. Let's take it from the top, people."
"But." I stayed right where I was. "You said I had a choice."
"This is a class, Miss Greenley," Mr. Hall said. "You can't just leave in the middle of it."
Which is true. You can't just leave in the middle of class. Not without a hall pass. If you did, you could get detention, or worse, a suspension. Maybe you could even get expelled. How would I know? I'd never walked out in the middle of a class before. I'd always been a good kid. You know, the girl next door. The kind of girl who'd never quit anything in the middle and leave everybody in the lurch.
Mr. Hall knew that. Which was probably why he added, "You can't just leave."
And which might just be why I replied, "Watch me."
And walked away.
"Miss Greenley," I heard him scream. "Miss Greenley! Get back here this instant!"
But it was too late. I was already out of that choir room and heading down the hall, straight into the ladies' room, where I changed—my hands trembling—back into my normal clothes.
And you know what? Not a single person came after me to see if I was all right. No one asked Mr. Hall if it was okay to check on me. No one worried, the way I always had about Cara, that I might need a shoulder to cry on.
No one. No one at all.
Not even Trina, whose fault it all was in the first place.
Want to know why? Because the only person at Clayton High who'd ever cared enough to run after anyone to make sure she was okay was me.
Maybe that's why I took my dress—my hundred and eighty dollar, one hundred percent polyester Troubadours dress, with the sequined lightning bolt down the front—wadded it up, and threw it in the trash.
Ask Annie
Ask Annie your most complex interpersonal relationship questions.
Go on, we dare you!
All letters to Annie are subject to publication in the Clayton High School Register.
Names and e-mail addresses of correspondents guaranteed confidential.
Dear Annie,
There’s a guy that I like as more than just a friend, but he seems to think we’re only buddies. He asks for my advice on girls, and has gone out with all my friends but never me. It just kills me! Should I come out and tell him I like him? What if that makes things weird between us, and he doesn’t want to be my friend anymore? I wouldn’t be able to stand it if we weren’t friends. Help! What should I do?
Tired of Sitting at Home Whilst He’s Out With Other Girls
Dear Tired,
I have news for you. The two of you aren’t friends now. You can’t be friends with someone you have a crush on. You have a choice, either decide that as a couple, the two of you aren’t meant to be, or ask him point-blank why he’s asked out everyone you know except you. Either he’ll mumble something incoherent (in which case you’ll know he’s not attracted to you), or he’ll say never knew you were interested, and ask you. Either way, you’ll have your answer.
Annie
THIRTEEN
I thought it would take days before I'd be able to look back at what had happened in choir that day and laugh. Maybe even weeks. I mean, it had been pretty upsetting and all. I had defied a teacher, walked out on a
bunch of people who were depending on me, and probably irrevocably severed ties with my best friend.
But it turned out it only took about three hours before the humorous side of the situation hit me. Because that's how long it was before the staff of the Register made me see it. The funny side, I mean.
Scott Bennett especially.
"You did not" he said, when I got to the part about stuffing my dress in the trash.
"No, I really did," I said.
I have to admit, the reaction of the paper's staff to the whole thing had given me confidence in myself and my decision. I had sat through the rest of my classes that afternoon expecting a summons from Juicy Lucy, who would undoubtedly call my parents, if she didn't just outright suspend me.
But no summons came from the vice principal's office. Nor did one come from Dr. Lewis's office Or even Ms Kellogg's. Mr. Hall apparently hadn't reported me.
Or more likely, he had, and no one from the office cared. Because it was, after all, me. And what kind of trouble was Jen Greenley likely to get up to, wandering the halls instead of sticking to her riser like a good little girl?
Scott and Geri and Kwang and the rest of the Register's staff made me lighten up about it, though. They didn't know anything about Troubadours, really. Except that Kwang had been going to join them on the bus to Luers, to cover the event for the paper. Since the Clayton High sports teams lose every game they play, people were putting a lot of stock into the Troubadours pulling through for the Roosters.
"Now who'm I gonna sit by?" Kwang asked with a groan, since without me there, he'd have no one to joke around with on the bus.
"There's Trina," I pointed out "And Steve."
"Theater types," Kwang said disgustedly.
"I can't believe you just threw it away," Scott said, still referring to my dress. This was the part he couldn't seem to wrap his mind around. That I'd thrown away my dress.
And I guess it was pretty weird. I mean, considering it had been kind of expensive.
But that had been the point. I had paid for that stupid dress with my own money. Baby-sitting money. Money I could have spent on . . . I don't know. But something I actually liked.
"What do you think I should have done with it?" I shook my head. "I mean, it's not like I was ever going to wear it again."
"Yeah, Scott," Geri said. They had reached a point in their new, unromantic relationship where they could tease each other again. I wasn't quite sure if this was a good sign or a bad one. But I was relieved that neither of them seemed to be pining for the other. In fact, lately, Geri seemed to have been in a pretty good mood. "What, you think there're a lot of places where a girl can wear a red dress with a lightning bolt down the front?"
"Yeah," Kwang said. "You think she should maybe wear it to the Spring Fling with Luke Striker?"
Everyone laughed really hard at that one.
Then Geri suggested we go back to the ladies' room where I'd dumped the dress, fish it out of the trash can, and have a ceremonial burning and/or burying of it. Scott had a better idea, though: We should pour chemicals from the darkroom on it—since it was made of so many unnatural fibers—and see if we could make the dress explode.
I felt weird about going so near the choir room so soon after what had happened—I didn't want to run into Mr. Hall or Trina or anybody—so I declined to go on the "recon mission" to collect the dress. Instead, Geri went with a couple of the freshmen girls. They came back empty-handed, though. The custodians had already taken out the trash.
This led to a lot of jokes about what if one of the custodians found the dress and decided to keep it, and the hilarity that might ensue if we happened to catch one of them wearing it. You know, beneath his coveralls.
It was stupid, I know. But I swear I almost wet my pants, I was laughing so hard.
Which was why, after the meeting was over, I didn't hear Scott say my name. Because I was still laughing too hard.
"I'll give you a ride home if you need one, Jen," Scott said.
I swear, he said it so casually that at first I didn't quite realize the enormity of the situation. You know, because he says it every day, practically I just went—remembering that Trina wasn't speaking to me and that I wouldn't be able to count on a ride from Steve anyway, since they were broken up—"Oh, cool, thanks."
I got my backpack and followed Scott through the long, empty hallways to the student parking lot. We chatted casually along the way. Scott said he'd heard Avril Lavigne couldn't ride a skateboard to save her life, and didn't that make her a big phony; and I defended her, saying that she'd never professed to be a skateboarder herself, just that she hung out with skateboarders.
This naturally led to a discussion of the merits of skateboarding, and if we were rebuilding civilization, like in Lucifer's Hammer, would we let skateboarders into our new Utopian society (Scott: Absolutely not. Skateboarding is not a useful skill. Me: Maybe. Because skateboarders often understand things like physics. They have to, while building those half pipes and all.)
It was just so . . . easy. Walking down the hall and talking to Scott, I mean. Like we'd been doing it our whole lives.
Except that we hadn't. There'd always been a third person along I just didn't happen to notice—then—that she was missing.
It was still a beautiful spring afternoon when we got outside. The sky was like this big blue overturned salad bowl in the sky. It was hard to believe there were planets and stars and stuff spinning around behind it. In fact, in the old days that's what people used to think—that the sky was like this huge colander over the Earth and that the stars were the light from heaven, shining through pinpricks in the protective covering of sky. People were all scared of the sky cracking and letting in the full force of the light of heaven, which they thought would kill us all....
I was mentioning this to Scott as we got to his car and he was opening the passenger door for me. It wasn't until I found myself staring down at the passenger seat—the empty passenger seat, the one in the front—that it hit me: Geri Lynn wasn't with us. Geri Lynn wasn't with us, because Scott and Geri Lynn had broken up. Scott and I were alone with each other.
Scott and I were alone with each other for the first time ever.
I don't know why that realization made me feel so . . . weird. I mean, Scott and I talk all the time, at lunch and at the Register meetings.
But the truth is, there are always other people around then. And, okay, maybe they aren't taking part in our conversation. But they're still there.
Being alone with him like this . . .
Well, it was just weird.
Like the front seat thing, for example. I'd never sat in the front seat of Scott's car before. Ever. I'd always been in the back, behind Geri Lynn. All I'd been able to see from back there, as a matter of fact, was Geri's big blond aurora of hair.
But from the front seat, it turned out, I could see all this stuff I'd never noticed before. Like Scott's CD collection, for instance, which included so many artists that I also had in my own . . . Ms. Dynamite and Bree Sharp and Garbage and Jewel.
And the fuzzy dice hanging from his rearview mirror with see ruby falls printed on them.
And Scott's hand on the gearshift, just inches from my thigh Scott's big strong hand, the one that had lifted me up, up, up toward that stupid log. . . .
I think I would have been all right. I think I would have been able to handle the weirdness of being alone with Scott in the front seat of his car if—wham—the memory of all those times Trina had said I should have asked Scott out hadn't came flooding back. You're perfect for each other, Trina's voice was suddenly saying, over and over, in my head. Why don't you ask him out?
Shut up, Trina, I said right back at her. But, you know, inside ray head. Shut up!
It was amazing to me how my ex-best friend could ruin even a perfectly innocent thing like a car ride . . . and without even being there!
I don't know if Scott noticed how I'd suddenly fallen silent. I don't see how he couldn't. I
mean, normally we talk a mile a minute to each other.
But, I swear, once I heard Trina’s voice in my head, telling me I should have asked Scott out, I couldn't think of a single other thing.
Except for maybe all of those hearts in Geri Lynn's date book. Those I couldn't get out of my mind, for some reason.
Scott didn't seem to mind my sudden muteness. In fact, he took advantage of it to say, as we turned down my street, "Can I ask you a question, Jen?"
What could be less threatening? He wanted to ask me a question. That was all. Just a question.
So why did my heart start to pound so hard inside my chest? Why did my palms suddenly feel all sweaty? So why was I having trouble breathing?
"Shoot," I managed to wheeze at him.
Only I never did get to find out what Scott wanted to ask me, because we had pulled up in front of my house . . .
. . . and seven or eight reporters rushed at the car, each of them shouting questions of their own at me.
"Jen, Jen," one of them was crying. "What color will you be wearing to the prom? Can you just give us a hint?"
"Miss Greenley," another one shouted. "Hair up? Or hair down? Teens want to know!"
"Jen," shrieked a third. "Will you be going with Luke to Toronto, where he'll be filming his next project?"
"God," Scott said, about the reporters. "They're still hounding you?"
"Pretty much," I said. And took a deep breath, trying to slow down my still wildly beating heart. "What was it you wanted to ask me, Scott?"
"Oh," Scott said. "Nothing." Then he grinned and, pretending he was holding a microphone, pointed it into my face "What does it feel like to be the envy of millions of girls across the country, Miss Greenley?"
"No comment," I said, with a relieved smile. Joking He was joking around with me. So it was all right . .
. . whatever it was.
Then I jumped out of the car and into the cluster of reporters.
"See you tomorrow!" I called to Scott.