I had a long way to go.
11
Find Your Inner Flirt
You’re finally ready to—subtly—let Lucas know you think he’s totally hot. While you’re both in the lunch line, you:
a) wink at him, smile, and walk away.
b) briefly make eye contact before grabbing a Snapple and bolting to your table.
c) get behind him in line, tell him you like his jeans, and ask him, with a hint of coy, why the two of you haven’t hooked up yet.
I stepped through the front doors of Bowie on the first day after spring break feeling nervous but excited. My hope was that the entire school had forgotten about the incident with my locker, and the flowers. Surely they’d created better memories in Cancún or wherever. So I didn’t have great travel tales to dazzle everyone with. I had done something more important over the break: I had laid out my war plan, and now I intended to execute it.
I was finally taking my goal of getting on the Class Favorite ballot seriously. It was the only way to rise above the misery that had become my life—Sara, Plain and Hysterical—and I had just over a month to do it. Also, with Arlene out of my life and Kirstie out of state, I’d been really lonely, so working on my plan at least gave me something to do. The only person to talk to was Mom, who had tried her best to make the grounding up to me after Elisabeth told her just how bad the locker incident had been (I had confessed it all to Elisabeth late one night). Mom said she had thought I was overreacting just to get her to let me go skiing. When she found out the truth, she felt terrible and even made cupcakes with pink icing like when I was five years old. They tasted unusually good, maybe because period number two of the Life of Sara Thurman was creeping up. Welcome to my spring break.
Other than indulging in the occasional sweet treat, I obsessed over my goal of becoming a Class Favorite by telling myself I was a confident, mature woman who could win any award I put my mind to. And if that didn’t work, I also came up with looks and outfits to show people like Jason how spectacularly . . . er . . . spectacular I was on the outside. Still, it wasn’t the only thing I thought about. There was the little fact that Arlene and I hadn’t spoken for weeks now.
I sort of missed her. Okay, I really missed her, even if I was furious with her. Why, why, why did she have to do this to me? Had her softball friends convinced her I was a loser hanger-on, and that was her way of getting rid of me? Couldn’t she have come up with something a little less . . . public, if that was the case?
On the first day back, I wore one of the new outfits I had begged Mom to buy me. I made my case for new clothes by (only slightly!) fibbing that I had outgrown a lot of my stuff. She finally gave me a small allowance, but insisted on giving Elisabeth the same amount of money and made her go shopping with me. Elisabeth only gave me a smirk as a sign of her appreciation.
Of course, it wasn’t much money—we’re not rich—so Elisabeth and I had decided to go to Clothestime since they’re cheap and were having a sale.
“You better swear not to tell anyone we came here,” Elisabeth had said as she cut the engine on Mom’s Civic. “This is just as bad as being caught at Kmart.”
“Please. You’re not the only one with a reputation, you know,” I had said.
I wore a red-and-black plaid skirt that came farther above my knee than the school dress code allowed and a cap-sleeve top that was tighter than my mom would allow. When I left the house that morning, I wore my new yellow button-up sweater over the tight top; once I got to school I tied it around my waist. I also had on a pair of knee-high fake leather boots, just like the ones Rosemary Vickers had (except hers were probably real leather). The only thing that wasn’t perfect was the red Rudolph Christmas socks complete with plastic eyes I had to wear since the laundry needed to be done, but they were safely tucked into my boots. The whole outfit made me look smart, but hot. I was sure of it—Haden Prescott would highly approve.
I felt great walking through the halls, full of confidence. It was like everyone was looking at me differently, I could just feel it. I walked regally, with my head high, barely noticing people as I passed. I wanted to be elusive, just like in an article titled “Six Sly Ways to Push His Hot Buttons” I read in Cosmo.
Things started off well—Coach Eckels caught up with me in the halls before I even hit first period.
“Thurman!” he hollered as I closed my locker and started toward English. “Come here a second. I want to talk to you.”
At first I thought, Great. What’d I do now? Was it my too-mini skirt?
“Yes, sir?”
“Listen, I’m in a bind and need some help. What are you doing after school today?”
“Nothing, I guess. I mean,” I quickly added, thinking of my scholarly Class Favorite qualities, “probably some homework.”
“The boys got a basketball game after school against Sam Houston. I need someone to take stats for the game. There’s only a couple more games left in the season, but we’ll need someone for those, too. I’d need you there for the warm-up before the game and to help put equipment away afterward. You’d be in charge of keeping all the stats for the boys so we know who does good and who’s not pulling his weight. You interested?”
I couldn’t believe it. Had my sister finally pulled through a favor for me? And it was all happening on the day I was wearing my best new outfit. As a stat girl in this outfit, people—especially Jason—were going to notice me.
Then someone came up behind me and knocked the backs of my knees, making me almost crumple to the ground right there in front of Coach Eckels. Before I could turn and see who it was, Coach bellowed, “Camry! What in the hell are you doing?”
When I turned around, I saw a clearly mortified Shiner frozen in his imitation-Timberland boots.
“Apologize to this lady right now,” Coach demanded, with a stiff finger pointed at me.
“Oh . . . uh, sorry, Thurman,” he said, looking down at the floor.
“Camry, I swear,” Coach muttered. “Get on to class, now, boy.” Coach Eckels sighed, shaking his head. Then he turned back to me. “So, you want the job?”
“Yeah, sure. Yes, sir,” I corrected. “What time you want me to be there?”
Normally I would have run and told Arlene first thing. Instead, I did my best not to get too down about her, because after talking to Coach Eckels, I felt great. Not only would I get closer to Jason, but it just seemed like heaven—being around all the guys, sitting on the bench, flirting with them in my knee-high boots. This was going to be a huge turning point for me. I mean, this was paradise.
When I sat down in my cold chair in English class, my skirt barely covered my butt, and my legs stuck to the seat. I kept tugging at the end of the skirt to try to pull it down, but it didn’t do much good. I kept my knees locked together and I concentrated on how hot and aloof I looked.
I must have truly looked good because as Jason settled into his seat, he stretched across the aisle to tap his pen on my desk.
“Hey,” he said. “I like those boots.”
I smiled, trying to stay calm, but I was about to burst. “Thanks. So do you.”
He laughed and sat back in his seat while I cringed.
Everyone was talking and bouncing around the room, still wound up from spring break. Ms. Galarza was shuffling papers at her desk and didn’t seem to notice or mind.
“So how was your break?” Jason asked, turning back to me.
Coincidence that Jason was talking to me on that particular day? Doubtful.
But I played it cool by rolling my eyes and shaking my head. “Horrible. I was supposed to go skiing with Kirstie in Aspen. Did you see her there?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We did a couple of runs together.”
“Oh,” I said. Aloof, aloof, I told myself as I tried not to decipher the tone of his voice. “Sounds cool.”
“It was all right,” he said.
My stomach did a quick flip-flop. All right? That did not sound like smitten mile-high love to me.
“She kicked my butt on the double diamonds. She’s a machine on that snowboard.”
“Oh,” I said, stomach sinking. Butt kicking didn’t sound like love, I thought, but it could be bonding—which might be worse.
As Ms. Galarza settled us in, I braved a glance at Arlene. Her skin was just as pale as mine; I wondered if she had stayed home too. I watched as she sat back in her chair, and when she looked around the room, our eyes locked for a moment. I was the first to look away, but moments later, I could still feel her eyes on me.
Later that day, as I spun the combination of my locker, a hip bumped into mine.
“You look cute,” Kirstie said, looking down at my outfit.
I smoothed my skirt down over my hips. “Thanks,” I said. “So, come on, tell me. How was Colorado?”
“Pretty amazing, actually. Perfect powder every day, kinda warm, sunny skies. Couldn’t have asked for better conditions. Actually”—she dug in her bag and pulled out a plastic bag—“I got this for you.” I opened the bag and found a T-shirt, a scented candle, and a key chain. “The candle supposedly smells like an aspen leaf. And the key chain is also one of those leaves. It’s pewter.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said, surprised. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I felt bad about the whole not-being-able-to-go thing. It would have been so much better with you.”
I put the loot in my locker before we headed toward science. “Jason said y’all hung out some.”
“We did a couple of runs together. That was all.”
“Oh,” I said. I wondered if she was holding something back—maybe they both were. I tried to shake my mind of these negative thoughts as we entered our science class and Ms. Cowell was already yelling at us.
“Okay, everyone,” Ms. Cowell called from the front of the room. Even her cheeks looked a little rosier than usual, and I wondered where she had gone. Being a teacher and all, she probably went someplace weird like the Houston Museum of Natural History. “We’ve got finals coming up in just a few weeks and a lot of work to do.”
“Hey, Thurman,” Shiner whispered from across the row. He had his dirty white Cowboys baseball hat on backward, and his skin looked worse than usual. He was red-burned looking. “Hey, you seen Mrs. Everly yet?”
I shook my head. “No. Why?”
“Jimmy, please take that hat off in my classroom,” Ms. Cowell told him.
He took it off and turned toward the front of the room, his thin hair mushed on his head. The room was frigid, so I took my yellow sweater from my book bag and slipped my arms through it. Even though this was not my original vision of hotness for the first day back, I was sure I still looked smokin’.
“Turn to chapter twelve, please,” Ms. Cowell said.
I pulled my book from my bag and looked back over at Shiner. He leaned down by the side of his desk to get his book and looked at my skirt as I tugged it down toward my knees. I glared at him, wondering if he was trying to get a look up the skirt. He leaned a little across the aisle toward me and whispered, “Your outfit.”
He was trying to tell me what I already knew—that the skirt was too short. But I didn’t care. It was fifth period and I hadn’t gotten in trouble for it yet—I knew I was in the clear, and soon I’d be on that basketball court, making the guys wonder what took them so long to notice my hotness.
But when I walked into algebra and took one look at Mrs. Everly, I realized that Shiner was only trying to save me from yet another humiliation.
12
What Your Spring Style Says About You
On the first warm day of spring, you’re most likely to be seen wearing:
a) the same black clothes you wore during winter, except maybe your shirt is short sleeved instead of long sleeved
b) jeans, sneakers, and a comfortable tee—something that will allow you to pop into an impromptu soccer game if need be
c) the most adorable spaghetti-strapped sundress, even though it’s still a little chilly out
Like I said before, Mrs. Everly is an old lady. I don’t say that to be mean but to hammer home a crucial point. She’s at least, I don’t know, fifty or sixty. Whatever, she has gray hair, and the skin on her neck sort of wobbles when she talks, and her entire body is what the magazines call “pear shaped,” which is just a nice way of saying all-over fat.
The funny part was, the first thing I saw when I walked into her algebra class was Shiner. He was looking right at me, like he’d been eagerly waiting for me, this concerned expression on his face that was totally unfamiliar to me. He was sitting real straight, his leg jiggling like crazy, tapping his pencil on his desk. He looked like he’d downed a whole keg of Coke for lunch.
Three seconds later, I realized what Shiner had been talking about when he whispered, “Your outfit.”
Mrs. Everly stood at the board with her back to us wearing—what else?—a red-and-black plaid skirt, a yellow sweater, and—you guessed it—black leather boots. Her skirt was longer, she wore black pantyhose, her sweater was quite baggy, and her boots were not shiny pleather, but there she stood before me and the entire class, wearing the exact same outfit as me.
I froze before I could make it to my seat. That’s when I heard the snickering. It was a couple of jerks on the other side of the room. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them.
“Wait till I tell Jessica,” Kayla said to Sean.
I clutched my books to my chest, trying to cover up as much of my outfit as possible—totally impossible. I slinked to my desk and immediately slumped down in my chair, but my thighs squeaked in protest on the way down, pinching me to a halt. I stretched the sweater as tightly across my body as I could.
Truth be told, when I nervously looked around the room, not everyone was staring at me, laughing their worry-free heads off. Rosemary was looking through her notebook, and Jason was writing something on a scrap of paper. But Kayla and Sean—who was now laughing—were enough. Then I caught Shiner’s eye.
“I tried to tell you,” he whispered from across the rows, his brows raised in concern.
Mrs. Everly went over some new systems of equations thing since the exam was coming up. To make sure we all understood how to do it, she had us go up to the board in groups of three and work out a problem. I was in the third group with Shiner and Rosemary, who gave me a pity smile as she looked down at my itchy skirt.
There I stood, exposed in front of the entire class. Then Mrs. Everly said, “You have nice taste in clothing, Sara,” like she was the most clever person on earth. “Isn’t Clothestime just wonderful?”
A few people tried to stifle their laughter while Rosemary and Shiner hurriedly worked on their problems. I glared back at her and her old wrinkly face. She pricked up her brows and said, “Though I must say that skirt looks a bit short for the school dress code.”
I tugged on the coarse, ugly thing, once again wishing it would give just a little, wishing I could drown out the laughter that Mrs. Everly was ignoring. Teachers never enforced the no-talking-in-class rule when you needed them to. She just let them run wild, at my expense.
I glanced back at Jason. He was just looking at me. Not laughing, not looking with pity . . . just looking. It made me sad for him, thinking he might be sad for me—or maybe embarrassed for me. I realized that becoming a Class Favorite nominee might not be as easy as I had hoped, so I told myself to act confident, even if I felt like a total loser. So I flashed him a smile while rolling my eyes, pretending I didn’t care even though the chalk in my hand felt cold and dry and I thought I might start bawling.
“I think it looks good on you,” Rosemary whispered as she hurried back to her seat, snapping me back to attention.
My Class Favorite heroine, Rosemary Vickers, knew just what to say, even to a lowlife like me. The gratification I felt was like being saved from hungry tigers in the Colosseum. I wrestled with my problem on the board—got it wrong, natch—went back to my desk and silently begged for a nuclear explosion while trying to keep
a nonchalant expression on my face. I had a feeling, though, that I looked more constipated than carefree.
I bolted out the door when the bell rang, wondering how many people in the entire school had Mrs. Everly for a teacher. Using my brilliant math skills (academics, No. 6 on the list), I figured there were twenty-five people per class, seven classes per day . . . 175. Nice. That was like a fourth of the school. And I still had to go do stats for the basketball game, now a blessing and a curse. I’d have to stay in the getup and hope Mrs. Everly didn’t go to the game, but at least I got to be with the basketball boys . . . and Jason. The silver lining in the thunderstorm of my life.
“Hey, Thurman!”
I turned around in the hall at the sound of a guy’s voice. Jason’s voice.
“Wait up,” he called.
Oh, my God. He was approaching me. My Class Favorite goal was actually falling into place. But what could he want? To offer me pity? To tell me it’s time to consider vocational education, where clothes aren’t as revered? My Rudolph socks were slipping toward my ankles, causing my pleather-clad calves to sweat. My armpits were sweating too. I was a mess.
“Hey,” I said coolly. “What’s up?”
“Listen,” he said as we walked down the crowded hall together. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes?” I think I actually batted my eyelashes as I anticipated answering what could potentially be the most important question of my life.
He smiled this wicked sweet smile that was all soap-opera charm. Then he asked, “How do you keep getting yourself into these situations?”
I could feel my plastered, trying-to-be-casual smile pull down my face. “Huh?”
“You’re always . . .” He paused, raising his hands in a loss for words. “I don’t know. Just . . . getting yourself into these weird situations. Like your outfit today. Or your locker. Which sucked, I know. But the way you handle everything. You seem like you stay so sane through it all. That’s pretty cool.”
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