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Our school and our town would get a national reputation as closed-minded and backward.
It would be all my fault.
And my mother would look at me and say, I told you so.
Honestly, why didn’t I leave well enough alone?
I lay on my bed, curled into a ball, staring out my window at the neighbor’s yard, late into the night. When my mind was exhausted from weighing those options and mulling over the problem, it moved on to the conundrum of Sawyer. Maybe my mother was right. I was still furious with Aidan, but did I really want to throw our whole lives together away? We could take a break for a little longer and see if time healed our wounds.
But if I went out with Sawyer, or even acted like I wanted to, I could easily ruin everything with Aidan. I didn’t buy Tia’s argument that dating Sawyer would make Aidan jealous and bring him closer. Aidan’s ego wouldn’t survive that insult.
Besides, what proof did I have that Sawyer wanted to go out with me? He’d been sweet to me last night. He said he’d gotten flustered when he saw me. He’d acted like he wanted me to visit him today. But he hadn’t asked me on a date. There were a lot of things I didn’t understand about Sawyer, but this I knew: He went after what he wanted.
I got so little sleep that, in the morning, I put on clothes and makeup and stumbled downstairs in a haze. But I’d decided two things. I would tell the student council that Aidan had been right. I’d looked for a venue where we could hold the dance, and the only alternative I’d found wouldn’t be acceptable to everyone. We should cancel after all.
And I would tell Sawyer it would be better that we didn’t get together.
If he even asked.
“I hope your paper on Crime and Punishment turned out well,” my mother said as I was walking out the door to my car.
My response was to gasp, which gave away to her that I’d completely forgotten about the paper.
“I thought that’s what you were doing up in your room last night!” she shouted, anger flashing in her eyes. “You spent this entire weekend on everything except your paper?”
Dad had left early in the morning to drive to Miami for research on his new book. There was nobody left to say in a calming voice, “Sylvia,” and stop my mother from freaking out.
“If you can’t complete your basic assignments,” she said, “we should definitely rethink this cheerleading mess.”
I cried so hard on the drive to school that I thought several times about pulling off the road. Finally I parked, killed the engine, and searched the glove compartment for a tissue to clean up my mascara before I went inside.
I was blowing my nose in a fast-food napkin when I spotted Harper and Brody sitting on a bench near the school entrance, shaded by palms from the bright morning sun. He was talking close to her ear. Her hair was long and glossy, flowing over her shoulders, her dark eyes shining into the sunlight. A smile was frozen on her face because of something he’d said, but now she’d gotten distracted by a bird, a cloud, or the way the palm fronds waved in the breeze.
Farther away, walking across the parking lot toward school, Tia laughed loudly with Will. I could hear her even with my windows rolled up. She didn’t look much different than she had in third grade: tall, disheveled, with her auburn hair pulled away from her face anyhow, laughing.
My favorite things about my friends, Tia loud and laughing and Harper daydreaming, were things my mother would have scolded me for doing. Inside voice. Pay attention. Ivy League manners.
I didn’t even have a favorite thing about myself. I loved to dance. I loved to cheer. My mother made me feel like those activities were nonsense. All that was left of me was organizational skills and the ability to follow directions. My only two talents had had a fatal shoot-out in my brain overnight. Now I was an empty shell.
The bell rang to call everyone inside. My classmates who’d been moseying across the parking lot quickened their step. Tia and Will jumped the curb and high-fived Harper and Brody, who stood and stretched. They all disappeared beneath the parallel lines of palm trees leading into the school.
I had to go inside too, to face Mr. Frank with no paper and accept my first-ever zero. I knew this. But as I took one last breath of sticky air inside my car, I entertained a fantasy of turning the engine on again and driving in the opposite direction to play hooky at the beach. How much more trouble could I possibly get into this morning? Might as well enjoy myself, for once.
Two minutes later I was inside the crowded school hallway like a good girl, of course. I pulled my books for my first two periods out of my locker. Aidan leaned casually against the locker next to mine, just as he had countless times before, like we’d never broken up. When he saw my face, though, he straightened and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I forgot to write my paper for Mr. Frank,” I said, hoarse from crying.
“Ha!” Aidan crowed. “That’s one step closer to valedictorian for me.”
I just looked at him with my mouth open. Aidan was competitive. He was callous. But until now I’d never known him to be cruel.
I slammed my locker as hard as I could and stomped down the hall.
“Hey!” I heard him calling after me. “I was kidding!”
I kept walking. The bell rang again, and the people remaining in the hallways slipped into classrooms. I was still moving. My history class was in the other direction, but I simply couldn’t see myself sitting in a desk right now, facing the front, my stomach cramping with the knowledge that I’d just blown everything I’d worked for because of one crazy weekend.
