Enigma (4 page)

Could I get away with faking a sickness? Maybe I could suddenly get a migraine on Saturday and be bad enough that I couldn’t make it. It sounded lame, but it was the only backup plan I had since ditching dates wasn’t something I had to deal with very often. Lena wouldn’t be caught dead talking to someone who, on a scale of one to ten, didn’t score an eight at least, according to her rating system. Based on that, I couldn’t imagine her hooking someone up with her best friend if she didn’t think he had potential.

Since we lived in the same house, attended the same school, and hung out with each other quite a bit, if things went well, she would end up being around this guy a lot. I guess you could say Lena was a bit picky. Even when I liked someone she didn’t know, she was always trying to pick them apart in attempt to find something wrong with them. I needed to decide one way or the other what I was going to do, and I was beginning to scare myself as I realized I was starting to not be against the idea of the blind date as strongly as I was at first. It was just one date. What could one date hurt?

This guy could end up being my Prince Charming. If I didn’t go, would I be passing up the opportunity to meet Mr. Right? What if he was romantic, thoughtful, chivalrous, and had looks that would make a Greek god jealous? Brought out of my daydream by someone behind me laying on the horn, I realized I had almost sat through the entire green light while I was lingering on thoughts of my mystery man. Oh yeah, I was definitely going on this date!

Rounding the curve that led to the right, the parking lot to Oceanview High School came into sight.

I drove up and down the aisles in the parking lot that was directly in front of the school, looking for decent parking, when I glanced at the clock on my dashboard. I had five minutes before the tardy bell was going to ring. There was no way I was going to make it even if I found a great parking space and bolted across campus and up the stairs at this point, so I figured I might as well take my time. My feet were already aching from the pair of super cute new shoes I’d put on my feet this morning, even though I knew they were far from broken in. Looking through the aisles once more, I pulled into the last parking spot in row
A
, the closest row to the school but still a nice hike to the entrance. I turned the car off and took a deep breath, dreading having to go to the office to get my first official unexcused tardy slip. I didn’t mind retrieving it nearly as much as I hated the thought of giving it to my first-period teacher, Ms. Greer. Knowing it couldn’t be avoided, I grabbed my purse and book bag before locking the car and heading for the main entrance.

Walking in the door, the bell rang so loudly I could feel my brain vibrate inside my skull. It never sounded this loud when I was on time, sitting safe and sound in my chair. Walking into the double glass doors, I could see the line of students waiting in the office to collect their tardy slips through the office windows. A majority of them had the look on their faces that depicted they must get tardies quite often.

I, on the other hand, could feel the deer in headlights look on my face, thinking of the sheer terror of ruining my perfect attendance tardy free record. I was the last one in line and it was moving so slowly I thought I saw a snail pass me and make its way over to the secretary’s desk. The more seconds that ticked away, the more I fidgeted. At this rate I wasn’t going to be counted tardy, I was going to be counted absent. Every few minutes the phone would ring causing the secretary to break away from what she was doing to answer it and take down another message to be stuffed in another mailbox.

When I walked into class after receiving my tardy slip, Ms. Greer’s eyes locked onto me from where she stood at the blackboard in the front of the room. Whatever she had been teaching had come to a halt. Her icy glare would have splattered me on the wall if looks could kill. I laid the slip on her desk and tried to make my way to my desk. Unfortunately, when I started down the row where my empty desk sat waiting for me, the heel of my shoe caught on the strap of someone’s backpack.

I lunged forward with my hair flying in all directions as I gasped. My hands flailed out in front of me as I tried to find something to grab and regain my composure. My attempt failed. Instead, my right hand hit Kimberly Newton’s notepad, which caused the pen on top to go sailing through the air just in time to hit Ms. Greer in the forehead as she turned around to see what all the commotion was. Glancing quickly in Kimberly’s direction, she had covered her mouth and her eyes had grown to the size of quarters as I continued to fall in the most ungraceful pose you can imagine.

At that point, my left had hit Bradley Morton square in the face as he quickly covered his nose with both hands so that no one could see the blood! As I landed with a loud thud, I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head as it made impact with the chair attached to my desk. I felt myself blushing as everyone gathered around me. Bradley, who was already trying to head out the door for the bathroom, had taken off his jacket, holding it to his face to prevent anyone seeing his bloody nose.

If I would have had the option to crawl under a rock and die at that point, I would have. Too shocked to even laugh, I had no idea how I was going to handle this. I was hoping I would pass out from the pain I felt in the back of my head, but it was not happening. Just then, the most unpleasant face of all loomed right over mine with a big pen mark right on her forehead.

“Miss Holland, I expect that on Monday morning you will have prepared a two-page essay on the importance of being on time and not being a classroom disturbance!” Ms. Greer’s voice croaked directly at me.

I picked myself up off the floor, apologizing to Kimberly, who gathered her things and straightened her desk. Sliding into my chair, I felt a huge knot on the back of my head as I tried to straighten my hair up a little. My head was starting to ache, but I wasn’t about to try my luck for a hall pass to the nurse for some aspirin. I was afraid Ms. Greer might just grab a textbook or her copy of
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
and beat me to death with it. I was just going to have to tough it out until class was over at least.

Making the least amount of noise possible, I unzipped my book bag and took out my notebook and a pen. Things calmed down for the remainder of the class, but I knew as soon as the bell rang I would be the topic of conversation and by the end of the day, the whole school would hear about my faux pas.

I knew that as time went by the talk would fade, and this would just be a memory that I wouldn’t like reflecting on, but for right now it was a very big deal. I didn’t even want to entertain the idea of how Avan would react when he heard about this little mishap. For some reason the thought of Avan hearing about my little stunt bothered me more than anyone else in the entire school. I knew it was inevitable for him to hear about it since Bradley was one of his best friends and coworkers. I could see it now, instead of him being his adoring self at Spirits, he would be pointing, whispering, and laughing with Bradley as I tried to crawl under a table and disappear. There was no way I could face him in Spanish third period and again in history during sixth period, so that is when I decided to resort to
plan B
.

Plan B
entailed me going straight to the nurse’s office with complaints of an unbearable migraine brought on by the collision of my head and chair. At that point she would try to call Sharon to get her permission to allow me to leave school and get a recorded message from her cell phone carrier stating that her number was disconnected or no longer in service. Next, she would then move to the next adult listed as being responsible. Once speaking with Damien Montgomery, who would undoubtedly approve, I would be homeward bound.

Damien would let us skip school completely to go shopping if we wanted to. All we had to do was ask and he would call the school, letting his acting ability shine as he covered for us in addition to faxing some very realistic looking doctor’s notes. I had never taken advantage of this fact, but Lena did all the time, and I had been told repeatedly if I ever wanted to all I had to do was say the magic word. I felt better knowing I had a plan. This weekend I would take it easy and have fun, scribble out my stupid essay, and rebuild my self-esteem so that Monday morning I could walk in the door with my head held high and take the ball back into my court by laughing at myself when it was brought up.

I’ve always been told that you can’t really enjoy life if you can’t learn to laugh at yourself. By Monday this would just be easier to deal with all the way around. Today, however, it was a different story. The cut was still fresh and needed a little time to heal. I just needed to go home and sleep it off. I wanted to let my head rest on the mountain of pillows as I slid into my ecru-colored, satin sheets and slip into a state of supreme relaxation where I could pretend the world didn’t exist for at least the next twenty-four hours. Yes,
plan B
was very inviting!

The bell rang, and I was high tailing it to the nurse’s office. Upon my arrival, I saw that the door was closed most of the way with a sign that said
Please Knock
. Leaving a small crack, I could see Bradley was still inside. Just the sight of Bradley made me feel so guilty about what had happened. He was sitting on a cot and leaning back against the wall as he held a wad of gauze to his nose with his head tilted up. How could I possibly knock on the door and use my migraine story when it was obvious that I didn’t get a physical injury even close to the one I’d accidently inflicted on him! There were two chairs in the hall outside the door that I could use to wait in until Bradley left, but I didn’t want him to see me there. I knew he had much more of a need to be in the nurse’s office than I did, so I would just have to find somewhere else to hide and wait until he had left.

Across the hall from the nurse’s office was our school counselor’s office. It had been announced earlier in the week that she would be out for a week to have surgery on her wrist due to a nasty case of carpal tunnel. I decided if the door was unlocked I would just wait there until I was sure Bradley was gone. If it was locked, my only other choice was the girl’s bathroom. So many people went in and out of there so I was sure to be turned in for hiding out in a stall. Plus, who really wants to spend more time than they really have to in a public restroom?

Taking a few more steps, I placed my hand on the door that conveniently opened without a sound. I didn’t turn on the light for fear of being caught so I had to feel around in the dark for the chair that sat against the wall. Leaving the door open just enough to see out I took up post like I was on a stake out. Finally, about fifteen minutes later I saw Bradley emerge from the door, leaving it wide open behind him. I wouldn’t come out until he was completely out of view. Suddenly he stopped midstride and turned around. It was almost as if he were looking right at me, even though I knew there was no way he had any clue where I was. He started walking right toward me as he kept his eyes locked on the door that led into the dark office where I was hiding. Panic stricken, I had no idea what to do. There was no way he could have seen me sneak into the dark office. Why was he coming straight for me? Without even realizing I was holding my breath I felt my lungs begin to ache as the dizziness began setting in.

“Mr. Morton?” The voice of the secretary rang out over the hall. Suddenly I really liked the woman I had been blaming my nervous stupor on this morning.

Bradley turned his back to me looking at the secretary. I could tell he was tense.

“Did you finish up with the nurse?” she asked, looking as though she was actually pressing for more information.

“Yeah, I just forgot my pen. No worries, though, I’ll just swing by my locker and grab another one.” When he responded, he lost all the tenseness. He had a cool almost cunning tone to his voice.

“For a moment I thought maybe you were lost. There’s no need in wasting more time by going all the way to your locker for a pen, Mr. Morton. Here, just take mine and get to class.” She handed him the pen with a look on her face that said she was less than satisfied with his excuse for sneaking around the hallway.

“Well, I guess I should go. Are you sure you won’t be lonely without me?” I could tell he was wearing one of those smiles guys wear when they do or say something intentionally to get a rise out of someone.

“Mr. Morton, please go to class before I change my mind and give you a detention slip along with that pen.” The secretary was obviously not amused by Bradley’s humor.

“Only if you promise to write your number on the bottom so we can continue this steamy conversation later, sweetcheeks,” Bradley replied with a wink.

Okay, even I had to admit, that took
cajones
! I had to choke back a laugh that threatened to give away my hiding spot for good. I thought I was going to suffocate trying not to laugh as I watched the secretary’s face. It was almost like watching cartoons. She turned red starting at her neck and it rose up to her head. Her eyes got so big I thought they might just blow out of her head, and her lips tightened into such a thin line I could barely even tell they were still there.

“Ya know, on second thought, my mom probably wouldn’t be happy if I brought home somebody that was a year or two older than her, so why don’t we just go our separate ways and agree on friends. Sound good? Oh, don’t be mad, baby. If you still need me to come over and show you a good time a few nights a week, we can work something out.”

With that comment she exploded.

“Mr. Morton, you just earned yourself a suspension for the rest of the day. Come with me right now!”

The secretary stomped off with her heels clicking hard on the floor. Before following behind her, Bradley turned back to me one more time and winked with a sideways grin. Turning back the other way, he didn’t act like suspension was anything new and carried himself with a worry-free vibe. I couldn’t help but smile as I released my laughter quietly before heading across the hall to see the nurse.