Kasey Screws Up the World (15 page)

Despite the way my knees rattled, I lifted my chin and crossed to the opposite end of the room. The least I could do was give her what she wanted. After all, that was my entire plan to get her to forgive me. Give her back the one thing she always wanted. It wasn’t sitting away from her, but it was a step in the right direction.

Now, a week later, she ducked into the room with her head down, hand covering her view. She faced forward in her seat, her long black hair dangling down her back. She didn’t dare turn her head even a centimeter toward the window. If she did, she might inadvertently catch a glimpse of me.

A bald man I didn’t recognize sauntered into the room, wiping his brow with his sleeve. He crossed to the teacher’s desk and proceeded to lift papers up, searching beneath them. The bell rang and he startled. A few sheets flew from his hands and fluttered down to the ground. “Mr. Winslow is out sick today,” he said as he bent down. Before he could even finish his sentence, chatter erupted through the class, notebooks slammed shut, and legs kicked up on the edge of desks. Denise sat straight, the only person besides me who hadn’t taken the announcement as the cue to goof off.

“Settle down,” the sub yelled. When that didn’t work, he spun around to the board and scrawled in magic erase marker:
Independent Reading: Unit 1 in your textbook
. He may as well have written:
Slack off for the rest of class, then cram read Chapter 1 during homeroom tomorrow.

I sighed as I flipped my textbook open to Unit 1. I had nothing else to do. Translation: I had no one else to talk to.

“Psst,” the girl next to me, Amanda Reynolds, whispered. “Kasey.”

I shifted in my seat, glancing first at the sub, then at her. The sub sank into the desk chair and flipped open a paperback novel. “What?” I asked her.

“What did you do to your sister?” She scooted her chair closer to me, her curly locks bouncing as she did so. “Come on, you can tell me. I’ll keep it a secret, I swear.”

I’d never spoken to this girl in my life except last week when I tilted my notebook toward her so she could copy the homework assignment down since she’d been too busy sneaking text messages to pay attention to Mr. Winslow. I knew nothing about her. My neck felt cold as I realized just how much she knew about me. I opened my mouth to speak, but then clamped it shut. This wasn’t about me. This was about Lara. And the whole point of the blog was to make her a star again. “You have to keep reading for that.” I pasted an encouraging smile on my face.

The boy in front of me, Carson Anderson with his dimples and too-blue eyes, turned around. “My guess?” he said, like I cared what he thought. “You pushed her down the stairs.”

Amanda shook her head. “No, Kasey would have been arrested for like, attempted murder or something if she did that.”

Carson raised a brow at her, making Amanda flush and giggle. “How do you know she wasn’t arrested?” They both turned to me in unison. “Were you arrested?”

A boy two seats away from Carson whipped his head to us. “Wait, Kasey was arrested?”

I held up my hands to them, shaking my head. “No one was arrested.” Though the police did interview me. And my name went all over the their report.

Crista Finnochio from the dance team joined in from across the room. One seat over from Denise. My pulse spiked. “Guys. It’s obvious. The whole story is set up so she steals Lara’s spotlight, wins the competition, etcetera. We’re supposed to feel bad for you.” She met my eyes. “But I don’t. I feel bad for Lara.”

“I feel bad for her too,” I whispered under my breath. The sound of chairs swiveling in my direction drowned it out.

Several people cheered in agreement with her comment. Shouts of, “I do too,” and, “Poor Lara,” flew across the room. Nausea roiled in my stomach. Wasn’t the sub going to stop this behavior from the class? We should be reading our assignment, not ganging up on me.

My eyes flicked to Denise. Did she feel bad for me? For Lara? She lifted her ankles, balancing on her toes under her chair, but made no movement otherwise.

“Yeah, that’s why I think Kasey pushed her down the stairs after the show.” Carson snapped his fingers. “Or,” he snapped his fingers, “she pushed her off the stage.”

Amanda pointed a finger gun at Carson. “I like the way you think.”

“No wonder Finn stopped talking to her.” Crista leaned toward the room, captivating their attention. “She’s clearly psycho if she’s capable of that.”

I slunk into my seat, but I didn’t even need to. I was invisible already.

Crista twisted in her seat and tapped her nails onto Denise’s desk. “ What do you think?”

“Better question is what do you know?” Amanda added to Denise, earning more cheers of agreement.

The room fell silent as everyone waited for Denise’s response. My lungs burned from withheld breath.

Slowly, she pivoted to face the class. The smile she always wore had fallen off her face. “I think you should leave Kasey alone. That’s my strategy.”

Crista flicked her wrist at Denise. My mouth parted. Denise had stuck up for me. I didn’t deserve it, not at all, yet she’d done it anyway.

I spent the rest of class fielding similar questions and insults and guesses as to what I did to Lara. No one guessed right, probably because what I did was too horrible for them to even imagine. A minute before the bell rang, I shoved my books in my bag and stood up. Several students were already waiting by the door, smiling and gabbing and doing all the things I used to do before I became a total outcast.

I leaned into my knee like a sprinter about to leap, and as soon as the bell rang, I weaved through the desks until I cut off Denise by the door. “Thanks,” I said before she could even think about maneuvering around me to leave. If that was all I got to say, it would be worth it.

Crista stopped reapplying her lipstick and lingered close to us.

Denise stuffed her English textbook into her bag and shrugged. I took it as an invitation to ask more. I had planned to just let the Clark comment go, assume it was Ali and move on. After all, the comments on yesterday’s blog had all come from New York City. But here was an opportunity to get Denise’s help. And if I got Denise’s help, maybe it would open the doors for me to return the favor.

“Did Ali write that comment? The first one? From Clark?”

She slung her tote bag over her shoulder and marched to the door. “I doubt it.”

I rushed to catch up to her. We spilled into the crowded hallway. “Really? I was sure it was her. What makes you think it’s not?”

Denise faced forward, so even though we walked side by side, it was like she wasn’t acknowledging me. “Because she’s more confrontational than that.”

I nodded even though she could only see me in her peripheral vision. “Can you find out? Please?” I had no doubt the last batch of Clark/Finn comments had come from students messing with me, but it was the first one I got stuck on. The one that held real possibility it could actually be him.

Denise pulled her lower lip into her teeth. After several moments, her shoulders relaxed. “Fine. But only because I want to know the answer too.”

If she wanted to know the answer, that meant there was hope of me giving her back the very thing that had ended our friendship. And since we’d just exchanged our first conversation that didn’t involve accusations—well, the one about Ali didn’t count—I considered this the first step in mending things between us. They weren’t friendship words, but they weren’t hateful words either. They were progress.

PER-DANCE TO DREAM

Posted by Kasey at 11:11 A.M.

Monday, September 8

Past Mood:
Guilty

SAT Word Of The Day:
Praxis. Definition: the process in which all the desires I’ve coveted are practiced.

You fake commentors do realize I can see your IP addresses, right?

The next morning, I woke up to an empty room. I knocked on my parents’ door but there was no answer. Maybe they let Lara join them on their six A.M. excursion in Belize. I pulled on my workout clothes with a little too much force, snapping the waistband of my yoga pants painfully against my skin, and slammed the door on my way out to meet Finn outside the gym to practice. I managed to suppress my anger over my family ditching me and instead took the opportunity as a way to feel like Lara for once. Step into her shoes.

We bypassed treadmills and complicated weight machines until we found the lone dance studio. And the lone dancer inside, working her butt off.

Lara stopped in place as the music blasted around us. She waved at the mirror, then spun around to greet us, wiping sweat off her brow. Obviously, she would be practicing, not gallivanting on the beach despite what she had promised yesterday. I envied her determination and sacrifice.

“What are you two doing here?” Lara said, her chest puffing in and out, accentuating her abs. I swallowed hard and glanced at the floor, too afraid to see if Finn was checking her out or not.

“Came to watch you,” he yelled over the music, nudging me with his elbow. When I glanced at him, he winked, the secret signal for
don’t tell her about our plan
.

More and more it felt like we were going behind her back, purposefully deceiving her, instead of doing this for the right reasons.

“Oh, don’t watch me.” She walked over to her iPod and turned off the Rihanna song pumping through the room. The shock of silence amplified my rapid breathing. “I don’t need any more pressure.”

“We should probably go then,” I said, turning toward the door. Once we exited the gym, I let the air out of my chest and betrayed my emotions with my words. “Well, guess we don’t have any place to practice.”

Finn gave me a sidelong look. “You don’t think I’m that easily deterred, do you?”

“First time for everything?”

“Come on, a good spy always has a Plan B.”

After leading me clear across the ship, he pushed open the door to the empty Karaoke room. A grand stage jutted out to an audience of empty couches and miniature drink-sized tables. Finn headed over to the Karaoke device and turned it on. “Lady’s choice.” He waved his hand in front of the machine.

If my sister was doing Rihanna as her practice seemed to indicate, that was the only artist I needed to avoid. I racked my brain for the latest pop music we’d danced to on the team before the school year ended and snapped my fingers. “What about that new Katy Perry song?”

Finn’s head started bopping to an invisible beat. “Yeah, I think that can work. It’s fast, so we can cha cha or rumba or…” His lips curled into the cutest of smiles. It was also a smile that scared the crap out of me. “We can swing.”

My eyelashes fluttered closed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.” Due to our strictly female dance team, we never got to do any cool swing dance routines, but it was always my favorite to watch on
Next American Dance Star
. We did, however, get to have a taste of swing dancing one semester in gym. I had gotten stuck with a partner who reapplied antibacterial lotion every time he touched me, so we mostly just practiced the footwork. Lara, however, came home every day with her friend Jules Barlow and they threw each other around like they were weightless.

I wanted to suggest to Denise that we do that, but I never got up the nerve. To me, swing dancing seemed to require the most creativity, the most agility, the most talent. None of which I had. I backed up a step toward the edge of the stage. “No, Finn. I don’t know how to swing dance.”

“That’s what YouTube is for.”

“Fine, I’ll be back.” I started down the steps, already calculating the best hiding place on the ship.

“Oh no. You’re not getting away that easily.” He followed me all the way to the Internet lounge where I used my remaining allotment of minutes to freshen up on the steps. My stomach churned at the thought that I wouldn’t be able to email Denise the rest of my letter, not unless Lara chose to donate some of her minutes to me, which seemed unlikely.

When we got back to the karaoke room, sweat formed along the back of my neck as Finn waited for my instructions. Lara always said she could see the dance in full view in her mind, every twirl and footwork coming to her as if already in a blueprint. I wasn’t a leader. I followed the steps given to me. “We should choreograph it together,” I suggested. I didn’t want to take the full credit for this.