Starkissed (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Through the next morning Ava remains the only person in my life who knows what happened between Colin, Grant, and me. She’s the only one who knows how badly I screwed everything up. And it stays that way. She doesn’t tell a soul. She keeps the secret without me having to ask or threaten her. As I’m leaving for school, I have an unprecedented urge to hug her. So I do. Which astounds those who are watching – Angelina, Mom, and Alyssa.

I don’t want to be at school. Not after everything that happened yesterday. I don’t want to think about Grant, I certainly don’t want to talk about him. But no one knows why and no one pays attention when I ignore them or walk in the other direction when they start talking about him.

By the time lunch rolls around I’m exhausted and angry and I can’t stand listening any longer to these idiots and hangers-on who just want to use me to get to Grant. I want to scream that I can’t help them, that Grant and I are done. But I keep my lips firmly shut.

I take my seat at the table and poke at my lunch, a squishy Sloppy Joe. I don’t have the stomach to actually eat it.

Michelle and the rest of her crowd show up at the table and surround me. The only friendly face to be seen is Caroline, who’s once again glued to Liam’s side. He’s talking animatedly to some guy across from him and barely blinks in her direction. I scan the rest of the room, searching for my other friends, and see them far off at another table. I hate that. They should be here, or I should be there.

“So,” Michelle begins to yap in my ear. “Remember how I had that party a couple of weeks ago and you couldn’t make it?”

More like I blew it off in favor of sitting at home with Caroline and watching movies.

“Well I’ve decided to have another one this weekend and you have to come. I won’t take no for an answer.” She flicks her blonde hair over her shoulder and grins.

“Michelle...” I start to say that I won’t be there, but she doesn’t let me get a word in edgewise.

“My parents are going to Vegas, so we’ll have the entire place to ourselves. It’s going to be legendary.”

“Michelle...” I try again.

“And my older brother has a fake ID so he’s totally going to get a keg.”

“Michelle...”

“You should bring Grant.”

I can’t take it anymore, I just can’t. I’m so sick of pretending and acting all nice when I know these people don’t care about me. I just want to scream. So I do. “Michelle, stop it!” I slam my fist against the table. Everyone within a fifteen-foot radius looks up.

“What?”

I rotate my body to the right so that I can look her in the eye. I lower my voice to a hushed hiss in hopes that not everyone in the vicinity will hear me. “Michelle what is your plan here? To have me bring Grant to your party so that you can wow him with your small-minded, bitchy cheerleader persona? Then he’ll what? Fall madly in love with you and dump me?”

“Sydney,” she laughs with false gusto. “Of course not.”

“Then what? Why are you here? Why are you trying to be my friend?”

“Sydney. I’m hurt. We are friends. We have been for years. I mean I come to your house practically every week.”

“To see my sister. Not me. You don’t like me. Remember?”

“Stop it Sydney.”

“No you stop Michelle! Come on. I don’t want to be friends with someone who is just trying to use me to get close to the guy who may or may not be my boyfriend. Before Grant ever looked my way, you didn’t give a crap who I was. So what else has changed? What other motivation could you possibly have to give a rat’s ass about me, other than Grant?”

She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again, but nothing comes out.

“I thought so.”

Despite my hushed voice attempting to keep the conversation relatively private, everyone in listening range is hanging on to every word that I say.

I stand up and grab my tray. “I’m leaving. Caroline?”

She looks up, her pretty eyes pleading. She wants to stay by Liam’s side. I frown at her.

“Sydney, wait,” Michelle grabs my arm. “Okay, I admit I’ve not been the greatest person to you, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends now.”

“No.” I shake my head. “No. No. No.”

Now not just everyone at the table is listening, but everyone in this half of the room. “That goes for the rest of you too,” I raise my voice so they can all hear. Something inside of me...a slow burn of irritation...is starting to erupt. It’s like a volcano, the words churning like lava in my gut, waiting for release.

“In fact,” I raise my voice so it carries to every corner of the room. “That goes for this entire school.”

The entire cafeteria looks up at me. Feeling more confident and more, well I guess the only word for it is, crazy, than I have in my entire life, I step up onto the bench in front of me so that I can be seen by everyone.

“All of you,” my voice booms across the large space, “hate me. Or maybe you don’t hate me, but you certainly don’t know me and you don’t care about me. I’ve been going to this school for three years and barely a single one of you glanced in my direction once before I met Grant West. I mean come on people! Last year I fell down in the upper hall and dozens of you just walked by as if I didn’t exist! So here’s what you need to know. Listen carefully. Grant West is never coming to this school. I’m not bringing him to Prom, the school play, or any games. I’m not taking him to any of your parties. I’m never going to personally introduce him to any of you. Therefore, he isn’t going to, I don’t know, discover you and make you famous, or ditch me and fall in love with you instead. So unless you really care about me as a person, stop bothering me. I’m done pretending, you should be too.”

I climb down from my bench and take a deep breath. What the hell did I just do? My legs start shaking and I feel like I’m going to fall over. Of all people, Angelina rushes forward and grabs my hand. “Come on.”

She leads me out into the hall and we stop against a bank of lockers.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” she says, but she’s smiling. And it’s not the tight, forced smile she reserves for family. It’s wide and toothy and, dare I say, proud?

“Yes.”

“But that was pretty awesome. I’ve never seen Michelle looked so shocked. And that speech you gave to everyone else? It was incredibly stupid, but actually kind of inspiring too.”

“You heard what I said to Michelle?” I look at her. I hadn’t even realized she was sitting at the table. “What are you even doing here? I thought you were busy at lunch?”

She looks down. “I was, but I passed my math test on Friday, so I don’t have to go to tutoring this week.”

“Oh,” I swallow. I had no idea Angelina was getting help for her school work. That she needed help. “Good for you.”

“Yeah, well,” she shrugs. “If I want to get into USC then I have bring my GPA up right? I figured I’d better start early. The last thing I want is to end up at community college or sitting at home like Ava.”

I cough. It’s funny, Angelina never tells me anything about her life. We barely talk. But in those few sentences I feel like I know her better than I have in years. Just like Ava, she’s gone and surprised the hell out of me. And it’s not just the school thing, but her pulling me out of the cafeteria, standing by my side when I needed someone. I’m about to do the previously unthinkable and hug her, but before I can even open my arms, Caroline is bursting out of the cafeteria and rushing toward us.

“What the hell did you just do?”

Angelina steps aside and shrugs. As Caroline storms toward me, she swoops to the side and ducks back into the cafeteria mouthing, “good luck,” on her way.

I stand up straight and look Caroline in the eye. “I did what I had to do.”

“We were popular,” she cries. “And now you’ve ruined it!”

“Caroline, stop.”

“Why? I just needed a little more time with Liam...”

“No. You didn’t. Liam doesn’t like you. None of those people like you
or
me. They were using me to get to Grant, you to get to me.”

“Is so hard for you to believe that they might like me for me?”

“Yes. Because you are awesome and cool and fun and they are a bunch of assholes Why do you feel like you need them so much? You already have great friends. Isn’t that enough? What makes them so much better? So much more important?”

“You don’t understand. You have Grant. I have no one.”

“First of all, I don’t have Grant, not anymore. And secondly, why Liam? Look at him. You’ve spent the past year building him up into some perfect guy but he’s not! He’s a stranger, he’s someone you’ve pictured from afar time and time again, but have never really gotten to know up close. He’s never going to come around! And even if he does, even if by some small miracle of chance he decided you’re the one, it won’t be like you’ve always imagined. He won’t be Prince Charming and you won’t be Cinderella. But there’s someone else out there who actually cares about you. Someone else who knows you still wants to be with you.”

“Who?”

“Paul!”

“Not that again. He’s just a friend.”

“You’re never going to happy if you just keep deluding yourself…”

She folds her arms across her tiny chest and glares at me. “You know, that whole speech of yours, maybe you ought to give it to yourself. The most fantastic guy, possibly in the universe, wants to be with you, but you just keep messing it up for some stupid ass who went out with your sister instead of you!”

I breathe in sharply. She doesn’t’ even know about the kiss between me and Colin. She knows nothing. But that doesn’t make her words less true.

“You think I’m deluded about Liam. Take a good look in the mirror. Of the two of us, I think I’m the least screwed up.”

She turns around and stomps down the hall. I don’t storm after her to tell her she’s wrong, because I know she isn’t. She and Ava, they know the truth. Me, I’m just making mistakes everywhere I go.

***

I’ve never in my life felt so nervous or strong or happy or sad or confused or insane. I’ve never felt so…alive. For the first time in what seems like a millennium I know what I want. I know where I’m going.

The rest of the afternoon passes in silence, no one talks to me. It seems I’ve scared just about everyone off. But I don’t care. I can’t stop the twitching in my leg, and I can’t stop my mind from racing.

On my way home, I muster just about every ounce of courage I posses and drive to Colin’s garage. When I walk in, he’s in the office with a customer. But he sees me almost immediately and smiles. My throat burns with fear.

I can’t believe I’m doing this. Never in my lifetime did I think I’d reject Colin Wicks.

He finishes with his costumer and waves for me to come in. I walk in slowly and when moves in for a kiss, I step back and shake my head.

“I’m sorry Colin. I can’t.”

His gaze drops to the ground. “Because of Grant?”

“Yes and no.”

“He left you,” he looks up into my eyes. I try not to waiver under his gaze. “He broke up with you. I saw it.”

“I know,” I nod. “And I may never get him back. He may never speak to me again, and I’ll have to deal with that. But either way, I can’t be with you. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us. You only wanted me once I was taken...and even if I could live with that. I can’t live with how I hurt Grant. ”

He massages his hands together and tenses his jaw. “I should have said something to you earlier.”

“Let me ask you something though. If Grant hadn’t shown up, if things had just stayed the same, would you have ever said anything?”

He hunches his shoulders and smiles sadly. “I don’t know.”

I step back and shove my hands into my pockets. This is harder than I could ever have imagined. “You’re the best Colin. But I’ve been in love with a fantasy for three years. And you’ve been kind and sweet and nice, but you never stepped up. Not in the right way.”

“Is it because I went out with you sister?”

“No. I’m really sorry. I should go. Goodbye Colin.”

I walk over to him and lightly brush my lips over his cheek. Walking away feels impossible. Even though I’m telling myself I’m doing the right thing, I can’t push aside three years of feelings in one afternoon. A tear escapes my right eye and I wonder if I’m making the right decision. I force myself to keep facing forward, to not let myself look back. Because if I do, I don’t know if any of what I just said will matter.

***

They’re all here. All five of my sisters. Lined up on the couch in order by age with Arianna on the far right, and America on the far left. I stand in front of them, my hands clasped together and a sheen of sweat on my brow. This is impossible. How do I tell them the truth when I’ve spent years guarding myself against them? How do I ask them for help when I’ve never willingly given it myself?

“I need your help,” I tell them. “I need advice. You see the thing is... Grant broke up with me. Although I don’t even know if you can call it that...three dates doesn’t really equal a relationship right?” I laugh self-consciously. “I screwed things up bad and I need to fix them. I just don’t know how.”

Then I tell them everything. I confess every feeling, every word, and every mistake – from the moment I first saw Colin, to watching Grant walk away from me yesterday. They watch me with astounded eyes and their mouths turned into little ‘o’ shapes. By the time I’ve laid it all out for them, I can see their minds whirring. Except for Ava. She knew all along. She looks, I don’t know, proud maybe.

“I don’t know if I can ever get Grant back,” I confess. “But I have to talk to him. I have to tell him the truth. I just don’t know how to do it. I keep trying to call, but he doesn’t pick up.”

“Well first of all you’re doing this all wrong. You can’t call him,” Alyssa shakes her head. “That’s not big enough. If you want him back, you need to do this face to face.”

“Definitely,” Arianna nods. “There’s no other way. Have you still got that ticket for the premiere? And what about that flight Melody booked?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you have to go to New York.”

“No,” I shake my head. “There has to be something else.”

“What then?” Arianna asks.

I breathe, I swallow, I breathe. “I can’t just go to the premiere. There are going to be thousands of people there. Fans. Every member of the press! Johnny Depp!”

“So what?”

“I can’t talk to Grant in front of all those people.”

“Then maybe you don’t deserve him.”

“I’m not brave enough,” I sigh.

Alyssa shakes her head. “Brave enough? Seriously Sydney you’re one of the bravest people I know.”

“Me?” I laugh. “Hardly. You’re the brave one!”

She shakes her head and rubs her hands up and down her thighs. “I’m afraid of everything. Telling Steve’s parents how I feel, telling Mom and Dad the truth, and at work I’m a mess. Why do you think I was working so much when you came to see me? I let my boss walk all over me. When he asks me to do something, I can’t say no. You told off your entire school today. That’s guts.”