Authors: Heidi Acosta
After a few days of creepy stalker-like behavior on my part, fate stepped in, and the opportunity to speak to him arrived in the form of indecisiveness. I was innocently looking for a pen in the bottom of my locker when I happened to glance over. There he was, biting the side of his bottom lip and tugging one of those silver studs into his mouth as he contemplated what book to grab. As his hand lingered on the history text, one finger lightly tapping the spine, I gazed at him through the gap in the locker door.
“You don’t need that,” I said shutting the locker door and leaning against it with my best flirty smile. A move I have seen Liv do a thousand times. I was also trying to save him from carrying the five pound book up the flight of stairs, just to learn that Mr. Bryan likes to ramble on and never once has asked anyone to crack the brick he calls a book.
His head snapped in my direction, taking me in with his cold eyes. I was frozen. Another cliché I’ve always hated, but there I was,
frozen
in his stare, unable to move or breathe. I don’t know how long it lasted, but long enough to get the attention of Juliet, the school gossip who was passing by.
He turned back to his locker, and a cold shiver ran up and down my spine. The air around me held a chill to it that wasn’t there before. I pulled my sweater tighter around my body. “Mr. Bryan never uses the textbook,” I stumbled, trying again.
He grabbed the book anyway and slammed his locker door shut before storming down the hall. That was the first and last time Jaxson and I ran into each other at the lockers, which is strange, because I tend to linger at my locker much longer than necessary.
Despite him lashing out at me, I still find him appealing. Maybe he was just having a really bad day? Isn’t everyone entitled to one of those? I know there has to be more to him than the
mad-at-the-world
guy he tries to present to everyone. If only he would just let someone in. Someone like me.
Almost every girl in school tried to get close to him, but he would never let anyone in, ignoring any advance that came his way. Between Jaxson and Cardelian, there was a frenzy. The girls hovered around them as if they were the first guys to ever walk the halls of C.F.H.
While Cardelian basked in the hordes of boy-starved girls, Jaxson ignored every advance made at him. Soon people moved on and forgot his name. He was just too elusive to hold their interest. Well, all but one. Jaxson soon melted in with the hordes of the high school students and was just another foster—no matter how gorgeous he was.
That is the soul-sucking truth about high school. If a person doesn’t do anything to be noticed, they don’t exist. Unlike me, who exists all too well, there is no six-month expiration date on my time in Copake Falls. I was born and raised here, and so were my parents, and their parents, and so on. Copake Falls might be a small town with more silos than people, but they have a pecking order that is followed with a fierceness, and I am on the bottom. I ‘m a freak. A social pariah. Nobody wants to be friends with the town weirdo, which is fine by me. I have all I need with Aunt Essie and Liv.
Cardelian clears his throat. “If this isn’t yours, then this is awkward.” He runs a hand through his full, golden locks.
I realize I’m still on all fours, staring up at him with a blank look on my face. Mentally I’m writing him into my male lead character. How do I describe his beauty with my pen?
“Umm … yes, it’s mine.” I snatch the offending object and shove it deep into the crevices of my bag. “Thanks,” I murmur.
He smiles, and I feel weak. There is no one—besides his brother—more beautiful than Cardelian Valentine, and he knows it. He has only been here a few weeks, and yet he struts around as if he can walk on water, not speaking to anyone unless he chooses to. So not fair.
Even the teachers sense that he is different, they give him the royal treatment by politely asking him if he would like to answer their questions. Not like the average Joe Blow like me, I purposely am called on when I don’t know the answer and humiliated in front of an entire classroom of judging peers. Just because he is gorgeous, does not make it okay, and I can’t help but pout, thinking about the unjustness of high school.
He seems to take my pouting as a sign. “Well, okay.” He walks away from me, probably to go wash the freak germs off his precious hands.
I watch him walk out, thinking it should be a sin to look so good in a pair of ripped up jeans and a faded T-shirt. I gather the rest of my things and sneak out before Mr. Wissian can murmur the words ‘makeup assignment,’ to me. Stealth is my middle name.
###
After surviving another day of school, I make my way to Newspaper club, my only after—school activity. Our chief editor, Ralph, has a habit of making the meetings so painfully boring, I sometimes contemplate gouging my eyes and eardrums out with the tip of my dull pencil. It would probably be less painful than listening to him ramble on about how much we suck.
Regardless, I want to hone my writing skills because, as soon as I ditch this crappy little town, I will publish my first novel and make it big. I do not plan to go to college. In fact, as soon as the last bell rings senior year, I am getting on that big, silver bus and heading out of town. Until then, I have another three dull years stuck here.
“What the holy crap?” Liv cuts through my thoughts. She’s my best and only friend in this hellhole they are trying to pass off as a place for a higher education when really it is a mildewed building with tired teachers and pissed off adolescents, “Can you believe this?” she asks as shoves a lavender-colored piece of paper under my nose.
“No, because I haven’t taught my nose to read yet.” I try to take the paper from her, but she snatches it away and waves it frantically above her head.
“Juliet! That … that … that …”
“Hussy?” I offer while she paces back and forth in front of me.
“That hussy! She is running against me.” She spins on her heels to face me. “Eden! You have to do something about it! Dig up whatever dirt on her you can. Use your power of bad ass journalism skills to destroy her!” Liv lets out a high-pitched scream and storms off down the hall, it’s all my short legs can do to keep up with her.
“Thanks, but I don’t know if my bad ass writing skills are up to a task as big as who is running for homecoming queen.”
Liv stops dead in her tracks, turning on her feet, her face so close to mine our noses almost touch. “Winning homecoming queen is everything to me. It’s one of those important milestones in a young woman’s life. It’s right up there with first kisses, periods, and marriage. It’s everything! Everything!”
I roll my eyes at her melodramatics. “I don’t think periods—”
She cuts me off before I can finish. “If I don’t win, I am destined to marry young, become overweight, have a dozen kids, and drive a minivan! Eden, a minivan!” She shakes me by the shoulders, trying to drive home the point.
“Hey, my aunt drives a minivan,” I quip.
Liv lets out another impressive scream as if the thought of a minivan is too painful to bare. “I cannot drive a minivan,” she yells, being over dramatic and earning us a few looks from the people passing by.
“Wow, I didn’t know so much rode on the fragile shoulders of becoming homecoming queen! And here I thought homecoming was nothing more than a football game, crappy music, spiked punch, bad decorations, and a date that sits in a corner while you and your girlfriends gyrate on the makeshift dance floor of our high school gym. I feel like an idiot! How could I have been so wrong for all these years? If I only knew, I would have run myself.”
Liv ignores my sarcasm. That’s how we work. I say something sarcastic, and she takes no notice.
“It’s mine, Eden. Mine. If Juliet thinks she can run against me and win … Ha. She has another thing coming. Bring it on, Juliet.” She is no longer talking to me, but to herself. Liv has gone to a dark, dangerous place in the mind of a teenage girl.
And people think I am the freak.
“Come back to the light, Liv! Follow the sound of my voice,” I joke.
She ignores me. “If you were a true friend, you would do some major digging.” She pokes one of her pointy, french-manicured fingers deep into my shoulder.
“Ouch. Hey, I thought I was a pretty good friend.” I rub at the spot, realizing I am destined to have a bruise today. “I listen to your crap that I don’t care about. A.K.A. boys, clothes, crap, boys, makeup, crap, boys, cheerleading, crap, boys, school, oh, and boys,” I say to deaf ears as I follow behind her.
“Just remember, Eden, who put her own health at risk to play board games with you for a week when you got mono from kissing Buck in the seventh grade.” Her lip curls back in a snarl, showing off her perfectly straight teeth.
I roll my eyes at her. “Fine. Geez. And I didn’t get mono from kissing Buck. It was from drinking out of the school water fountain,” I state in a matter-of-fact tone. Okay, so I totally did get mono from kissing Buck and everyone knows it. I don’t know what is more embarrassing, showing up to school after I tried to cut my bangs and getting a little snippy-snip happy, or walking into school and having everyone know about my seven minutes in heaven that ended with a pretty sucky first kiss and me catching a super bug.
“What about the time Juliet made out with Coach Bowlin? We could expose her.” Liv’s eyes are filling with desperation.
“I think Juliet will manage to flip it to benefit herself. Think of the publicity. Coach Bowlin, the pervert, taking advantage of poor Juliet,” I reply.
“You are right! We cannot give her anything that might boost her popularity. There is no bad publicity, right?” She punches her open palm.
“I think you should just forget about Juliet. I don’t even know what you’re freaking out for. You know you’ll win.”
Everything Liv tries out for, or runs for, she gets. Cheer captain, class president, and homecoming queen. She is the complete opposite of me. Liv and I have nothing in common— from our social status to our school involvement. Not even our looks are close to being similar.
She has straight A’s, and I am barely passing. She is tall and thin, but I am not. She has small, delicate facial features, and I have a crooked nose, round cheeks, and a pointy chin. She has long, lush, curly red hair and huge brown eyes, and I have limp, mousy brown hair and dull blue-green eyes. Despite coming from a large family on a single income, she always manages to dress in the latest fashion. It is as if she just stepped out of the most current issue of
Vogue
.
Me, not so much. I look more like I stepped out of the circular for a discount store. People flock to Liv while they avoid me like I have the Bubonic Plague. I’m not feeling sorry for myself, that’s just how it is, and I am fine with it.
The only reason Liv and I are friends is because our mothers were best friends who did everything together, including having me and Liv a month apart. Little did they know, I would end up an outcast. I don’t think they would have pushed the friendship between us as hard as they did if they had known. Liv takes a lot of slack for being my friend, but she is loyal and true, and for that I love her.
“I will see what I can do,” I say, realizing there’s going to be no fighting her on the matter. Not only does she have it in her head that Juliet is after her, she sticks her bottom lip out, pouting like a 2 year old.
“I knew you would come through.” She pulls me into a hug with a force that sends me back a step to keep my balance. “You’re the best! I will see you after practice.” She lets go of me and flitters down the hall.
Shrugging my bag back on, I make my way to the news room.
The Newspaper is a dying club, but we are still hanging on. Luckily, creating the e-edition of the C.F. Gazette saved our shabby little newspaper. Of course, I’m late, so when I enter, everyone looks at me from the round table.
“Late!” Ralph snaps and points a pen at me.
No! Really, Sherlock?
“Sorry.” I drop my bag on the floor and glance at Max, who drags his pointer finger across his neck and hangs his tongue out of his mouth. Stifling a laugh, I take my seat at the round table.
“I take it you have a good reason for being fifteen minutes late.” Ralph glares at me through his square-framed glasses. Unfortunately, he’s had it out for me ever since I refused his enticing invitation to dinner and a make-out session behind the Dairy Queen.
Dude, get over it and move on.
“Girl issues,” I sing and take out my notebook.
“Eden, please. T.M.I.,” Ralph says with a hint of annoyance before he continues with his rant though no one ever listens to him rattle on.
Lindsay is making tiny hearts around her and her boyfriend’s initials on her paper, and Tim is checking out Lindsay’s shirt, which is exposing way too much to the group. I glance over at Max’s lap and watch him play Angry Birds on his phone.
“So does anyone have any thoughts on the matter?” Ralph finishes, wheezing. He pulls his inhaler out of his pocket and takes a deep breath, inhaling the mist.
I perk up. I have no thought on the matter because I don’t have a clue what Ralph was saying, but now is the perfect time to carry out Liv’s plan. “I have an idea.”
“Oh great,” he says, rolling his eyes and running a hand through his greasy black hair, smoothing it back into its ponytail. “Please share with us,” he says sarcastically.