25 Roses

by Stephanie Faris

  Sun was beaming up at us when we returned. She had that proud mama look, which made me feel better. I’d been worried she wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore if I was with Alex.

  “Ashleigh’s doing her best, but I’m not sure she can beat Kaylee,” Gillianni commented.

  We all turned and looked at the silliness taking place just a few feet away. Sure enough, Kaylee had shoved her way in front of Kurt and was being her usual charming self, while Ashleigh sat off to the side, ignored.

  She looked over at us and, all at once, the four of us motioned for her to come over. Why would she want to sit over there being ignored when she could come hang with us?

  Nobody seemed to notice as Ashleigh rose to her feet and started toward us. Even more reason for her to leave.

  “Forget him,” Sun said as Ashleigh plopped down, looking miserable. “He’s not worth it.”

  “I know,” Ashleigh said. “I don’t really like him all that much anymore. He’s kind of dull. I just hate for Kaylee to win.”

  “I don’t think she is winning,” Sun commented.

  We all turned around. Kurt stood up, a slice of pizza in one hand and his bottle of water in the other, and walked away. That left Kaylee staring up at him, her mouth hanging open.

  “Fail!” Alex said, loudly enough that it made me nervous. What if Kaylee overheard and marched over here to tell him off? But if she heard, she didn’t respond. She just shrugged and turned back to her friends, who leaned forward to console her.

  “Give me a break,” Gillianni said around a mouthful of pizza. “They act like Kaylee’s the first person to ever be rejected.”

  “Not the first person,” I said. “But it’s probably the first time in her life anybody ever said no.”

  “He didn’t even do that,” Alex said. “He just got up and walked off. Total burn.”

  I turned and looked at Kaylee again. She was totally acting like nothing had happened, but I knew she was embarrassed. I didn’t think anyone was paying attention but us, but she was leaning in toward her friends like she didn’t want anyone to look at her.

  “Kurt said no to her,” Ashleigh said.

  We all turned to look at her. How would she know that? She’d left before he got up.

  “He was telling us he was too busy to go out with anyone,” Ashleigh said. “But Kaylee kept pushing and pushing. He looked like he wanted to run when I was sitting there. That’s why I was glad when you guys waved me over. I was just hanging out because I thought he might like me, but obviously, he likes no one right now. He just didn’t want to be mean to Kaylee when she walked up to him. If he doesn’t want to talk to me, I don’t want to talk to him.”

  I nodded. That was a great attitude to have. As I looked over at Sun and Gillianni, I could see them running that through their thoughts. Good. Maybe it would help them, too.

  “So I guess Mia’s time as Stanton Middle School’s matchmaker has come to an end,” Ashleigh said dramatically.

  “It’s about time,” I said. “That’s a lot of pressure.”

  “Speaking of pressure,” Alex said, nodding at something behind me. I turned to see Kaylee bearing down on us. Her gaze was directed at me.

  As I braced myself for her to yell at me, I realized she didn’t really look angry. She had that sneer again. The sneer was worse than anger. It scared me.

  “So,” she said as she stopped just in front of me. “Looks like your little game didn’t work.”

  “What game?” Ashleigh asked, because I didn’t have the nerve to. I didn’t want to hear whatever she was about to say. I didn’t have a good feeling about this.

  “That whole rose thing,” Kaylee said. “I’ll bet you think nobody knew, but I figured it out.”

  It felt like the entire world around us had gone into slow motion. All I could do was stare up at her, speechless.

  “You figured it out,” I repeated.

  “You know, Kaylee, nobody asked you,” Gillianni said. She’d risen up on her knees and was staring Kaylee down, a hand on each hip.

  “Nobody asked me, you’re right,” Kaylee said. “But they should have asked me. In fact, the rest of you should have put it all together by now.”

  “Put what together?” Sun asked. She was on her knees as well. I had my own little team behind me. Of course, Kaylee’s group of friends was even larger.

  “The rose thing,” Kaylee said. “All that silly froufrou language.” She looked around and sighed. “Didn’t you think it was weird that they were all signed by a secret admirer?”

  “Everyone signs cards as secret admirer,” Ashleigh said. “What’s your point?”

  “Fine. I’ll show you.” Kaylee reached into her back pocket and held up a piece of paper. I would know that piece of paper anywhere. It was a copy of one of the lists Ashleigh and I had used to take down notes for cards when we sold Valentine’s Day roses. That list had been given to the office for their records. I didn’t think a student could get a copy of it. I figured Kaylee had found it while in the principal’s office, making announcements.

  Without giving any of us a chance to respond, Kaylee tossed the piece of paper toward us. It landed on the floor in front of Ashleigh.

  “I hate to ruin the pizza party by giving your little secret away,” Kaylee said, but it was obvious she was loving every minute of this. She looked at my friends behind me. “Mia bought a bunch of roses to help us win, then put the names of losers on the list. The committee wrote those names on the cards, and those losers got roses when they wouldn’t have normally. This proves all your roses were fake. Read the list if you don’t believe me. It’s all right there at the bottom in the same handwriting. And it’s all the people who shouldn’t have gotten roses.”

  Ashleigh had already picked the list up, and now she looked down at it. “This doesn’t prove anything,” she said.

  “Everything on that list is in the same handwriting with the same dorky wording,” Kaylee said. “Some are even written exactly like the others. Not very original, but I guess everyone can’t be Shakespeare. Did you get the roses I put in your locker?”

  I widened my eyes. “That was you?” I asked.

  Kaylee smiled at my friends. “I put some roses in Mia’s locker to let her know I’d seen that list she’d made. I saw her turn it into the office Valentine’s Day morning and knew she added all those names. I wanted her to know she wasn’t getting away with it.”

  “Wait a second,” Alex spoke up to say. “You’re telling me that Mia cheated? She’s the reason we had a lock-in?”

  “I was trying to help everyone,” I said. “I wanted us to win the lock-in, but mostly I wanted you guys to get roses. I know how much it sucks to sit there every year, while people like Kaylee get a billion roses and we get none.”

  Silence. All around us was noise, but the small group gathered around us was dead quiet. I looked at Ashleigh to see if she was mad at me, but mostly she just looked confused. I couldn’t blame her. I felt pretty confused myself.

  “I think it’s great,” Sun suddenly said. I turned around and saw her facing off with Kaylee. “She did it to help people.”

  “So … wait,” Gillianni said. “Nobody sent me a rose?”

  “Mia sent you a rose,” Kaylee said. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  She rolled her eyes. We were too dense to keep up with her brain, I was sure she was thinking.

  “I don’t have a secret admirer,” Gillianni said. This time it was more of a statement than a question.

  “But look how much confidence you have,” I said. “I’m sure you do have a secret admirer by now. That’s why I did it.”

  “See?” Kaylee said. Hadn’t she gone away already? “Without Mia’s generous help, you’d all still be big losers. Aren’t you so lucky she took pity on you?”

  Her point was clear. They should be mad at me because I thought they needed my help in the first place. It was an insult to all of them.

  “That’s not how I felt at all,” I s
aid. I looked around, desperate for my friends to believe me. None of them were looking at me. “I just wanted to make everyone a little happier. We’re all tired of Kaylee getting all the roses every year.”

  After a long silence, Alex finally spoke up. “So the rose you gave me. That was really from you?”

  “Not because she liked you, though,” Ashleigh said. There was no missing the little edge to her voice. It said she was mad with a capital M. “Because she felt sorry for you.”

  “That’s not it at all,” I said. I glanced at Sun. She was the only one who might stand up for me. But even she seemed to be avoiding looking at me. “I liked the fact that you guys were so happy to get roses. It made me feel good.”

  “You should have just left it like it was,” Ashleigh said. She held up the list. “It’s better to get no rose than to get a rose from someone who feels sorry for you. I’m going skating. Anyone else?”

  Gillianni stood up and trailed after her. Sun stared at Kaylee for a second, then glanced at me, before finally rushing off after them.

  I turned to look at Alex. He was staring up at Kaylee, who still hadn’t moved. I just wanted her to go away.

  “Could you excuse us for a minute?” I asked Kaylee.

  She gave me that same self-satisfied smirk before turning and marching off. The message was clear. She’d done her damage. Now it was time to enjoy her pizza.

  With her finally gone, I turned around to face Alex. He couldn’t be mad at me. We’d just decided we liked each other.

  “I was just trying to help,” I said. “I wanted you guys to be happy.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. If he’d stared at me for that long a few minutes ago, I probably would have been all jittery, but now I didn’t feel jittery at all. All I knew was I wanted him to say he wasn’t mad at me. He understood. He thought it was great what I’d done.

  Instead, when he finally spoke, he asked, “Why didn’t you send me a rose from you?”

  “Because …”

  I stalled. What answer did I have for that? I hadn’t thought of Alex that way until recently. Or maybe I had thought of him that way and didn’t realize it. But either way, I couldn’t explain it to him.

  Instead I said, “I thought we were friends.” Then, after thinking about it a second, I added, “You didn’t send me a rose either. As friends, we should have been sending each other roses anyway.”

  That was a very good point, if I had to say so myself. But he just looked confused.

  “The rose you wrote for me read that I didn’t know how great I was,” Alex said. “Did you mean that?”

  I didn’t have to think about that one long. “I did,” I said. “And I think after you got the rose, you had a little more self-confidence too.”

  His face had brightened a little, but now that brightness dimmed. He frowned at me, his eyes narrowed.

  “What did the rest of the cards say?” he asked.

  He picked the list up. I wanted to reach out and grab it, but I knew that would never go over.

  He scanned the list, his frown deepening. I knew what he was reading. It wasn’t good.

  “I’m not a very good writer,” I said. “I had to reuse a few of them. But I meant the words when I wrote them for you.”

  I knew before he looked up from the list that he wouldn’t be happy about it. I’d written that part about not knowing how great you are for at least eight or nine cards that I could think of. It was a great line—short, sweet, and to the point. But if you were one of the ones who received that card and it was written by the girl you liked, that wouldn’t matter.

  “This one went to Kurt,” he said, frowning as he held up a card that had the same message as his had. Then he added, as if I didn’t know, “Kurt Barnes.”

  “I didn’t know him then,” I said. “And you and I were just friends … I thought.”

  He lowered the card and looked at me. I could tell he was hurt.

  “I liked you,” he said. “For a long time, I liked you.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. Really, I’d had no idea. How could I have known if he’d never told me?

  But as he stepped away to start toward the ice rink, I knew what the answer to that would be. I should have known. He’d given me every chance to know. I just hadn’t paid attention.

  And now it was too late.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  To: Stanton Middle School

  From: Mia

  Sometimes just saying you’re sorry isn’t enough.

  I was skating alone.

  I know, it was silly. I could have sat in the bleachers all alone and watched, but that would just show Kaylee she’d won. So I laced up my ice skates and joined everyone out on the ice.

  Every time Kaylee skated by, she giggled and whispered to her friends, so I quickly learned to stop looking her way. I just stared down at my feet to make sure I didn’t trip and pretended I was the only one out there.

  I was really wishing I’d just let this Valentine’s Day be boring and lame after all. All I’d ever wanted was to be popular, yet here I was, the number-one enemy at the lock-in. At least before I’d had friends.

  One thing that did happen on my seventh time around the ice was that I accidentally saw Alex and Ashleigh. They were skating side by side, both looking very serious as they talked about something. They looked like they were arguing. About me?

  Probably not. I skated past them and kept looking down. I guess I felt like if I looked down, they couldn’t see me. At the very least, I wouldn’t have to think about them watching me, so that worked. For now, anyway.

  “Lump on the ice. Watch out!”

  Those words, followed by a round of laughs, brought my attention back to the rink in front of me. The first thing I noticed were people swerving around something on the ice. The second thing I noticed was the lump on the ice.

  It was a well-dressed lump with long, beautiful hair. I knew that lump. That lump was Gillianni.

  Nobody was around her, not even Sun or Ashleigh. I slowed to a stop near her and looked around. Where were all her friends when she needed them?

  It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. Ashleigh and Alex were coming toward us, a look of surprise on their faces. They’d stop when they got closer, I just knew it. But in the meantime, I had to do something. Kaylee and her friends were still laughing, even though they’d passed her a full minute ago.

  “Take my hand,” I said, reaching it out to her.

  She looked up to me, and I had one of those weird moments. My mind flashed back to five years ago at a completely different skating rink—a regular roller rink. Gillianni had done far more than help me up. She’d stood up for me. So when she reached up and took my hand, flashing me a grateful smile, I knew I had to do more.

  I turned around and looked past Ashleigh and Alex, who slid to a stop in front of Gillianni. Sun and Kurt, skating next to each other, were next. I glanced at them briefly, trying to figure out what was going on there, before the sight of Kaylee in my peripheral vision caused me to look past them to her.

  Kaylee was no longer smiling. She was staring at Sun and Kurt, who weren’t holding hands or anything but were skating alone … together. His friends weren’t even skating with them. Definitely a reason for Kaylee to be mad, but I’d think about that later.

  “Are you okay?” I heard Sun ask as she skated to a stop. Kurt kept going, which wasn’t very nice of him, but I didn’t have time to worry about that now. I was busy watching Kaylee approach.

  “What are you looking at?” Kaylee snapped when she turned her attention from Sun to me. She leveled those beady eyes at me and turned her right foot in front of her to stop.

  Apparently, her friends didn’t get the message she was about to do that. Christina started it. She slid past Kaylee and, realizing too late what was going on, began waving her hands in the air to try to stop herself. It was no use.

  Faith was even less prepared. She slammed right into Kaylee,
who fell forward, plunging straight toward the ice. Faith fell soon after, which knocked Ella to the ground, who bumped into Shonda, knocking her down as well.

  It would have been funny, if not for the fact that someone really could have gotten hurt. Everyone who had been gathered around Gillianni only seconds ago now rushed forward to help Kaylee and her friends.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Kaylee snapped as I reached my hand out for her to grasp. She pushed herself up on her knees, then tried to stand, but her skate slipped on the ice and she fell down again. Still, she wouldn’t let me help, so I moved over to help Faith, who was a lot nicer about it.

  I could tell Kaylee was embarrassed, and despite everything, I kind of felt bad for her. I’d been embarrassed like that myself. Back in second grade, Kaylee had been the cause of my fall, plus she had laughed at me after I fell. This was my chance to get even and laugh at her or skate off and leave her there, but I didn’t.

  I guess that was the big difference between us.

  “Move!” someone shouted, calling my attention to the fact that we were all standing there in a big clump. All of us but Kaylee, who couldn’t seem to find her way to her feet. She was even snapping at her friends who were trying to help her.

  As I stood back and watched, I realized she was making a fool of herself. Everyone in the rink was staring at her by now and she looked ridiculous, sliding around on the ice, yelling at everyone. The yelling made her look worse than being on the ground. If she’d fallen and looked sad, you’d feel sorry for her, but the yelling just made you wonder what was wrong with her.

  “Let’s go,” Ashleigh said, waving for everyone to follow. Everyone did. None of them looked back at me either.

  I trailed along after them as they ignored me. Everyone was still mad at me, I could tell, even though I’d helped Gillianni. I frowned as I skated alone. Apparently it wasn’t enough to be nice to people. I had to find a way to make all this up to them.