I shrug one shoulder, focusing really hard on pointing my glue gun to the tip of a strand of ribbon.
“Zara… you can talk to me, honey.”
Mom’s soothing voice is all I need to spill my guts. While we work, I tell her about how Zane seemed like he liked me. How we had a cute date. How everything was going fine until I saw his girlfriend’s Instagram post. To my credit, I hold it together really well, and I don’t cry. I tell myself a stupid boy is not worth crying over. But what’s making me so sad isn’t really Zane… it’s the fact that I let myself get so caught up in lie. I can’t believe I let him fool me like that.
When I finish talking, I look up at her. She’s a great listener. She’s an even better mom.
Her lips press into a thin line. Her nostrils flare and she walks across the room to where Zane’s homecoming mum is waiting on a shelf. She went all out on it, making it extra festive and filled with trinkets. She grabs it and then walks it to the trash.
Then, just to make a statement I guess, she pulls off the lid from her coffee tumbler and upends hot pumpkin spice coffee all over it. I gasp.
Mom grins at me. “He can find a mum all on his own.”
I smile back, half-heartedly. Destroying his mum doesn’t really solve anything.
“What happens if I win homecoming queen and I have to stand next to him on stage at the dance and then I also have be there during the halftime show?” I swallow, feeling warm tears threaten to fall from my eyes. “I don’t want to see him.”
“It’s unfortunately not a “what if” situation,” Mom says, walking over and hugging me. “Youaregoing to win homecoming queen. Everyone knows it. And it’s pretty obvious that he’ll win king.” Mom squeezes my shoulders and then steps back and gives me a motherly look. “You will accept your role with grace. And you will stand tall and strong. And you won’t let him know he’s hurt you.”
I nod slowly. She’s right. She’s always right. “Thanks, Mom.”
Fifteen
Zane
It seemsimpossible to live next door to someone and not see them for four straight days. Yet despite the impossibility, that’s what happens this week. Zara has dumped me from her life in every possible way. I don’t see her on the drive to school. I don’t see her walking the dogs she normally walks every day. I don’t even see her at school, where I spend eight hours a day, scoping out the hallways for her in between classes and during lunch.
If not for the “Vote for Zara” posters on the walls at school, I might think she was only a figment of my imagination. That she never existed in the first place.
I know it would border on stalking to keep texting or calling her when she doesn’t want me to, so I avoid reaching out to her again. I just really hate not knowing why she got so mad at me.
When the bell rings after my math class, I cringe, wishing I could sit here in this desk forever and not have to move on to my next class. This is the worst part of my day because my math class is right across the hallway from Andrea’s math class. She’s been latching herself onto me he second I step out of the classroom all week. Then she walks with me to my next class which is actually football in the athletic hallway, which is across the entire school from her next class. I’m pretty sure she’s getting hit with a tardy slip every single day she does this. I’ve told her politely to stop. I’ve tried ignoring her.
I can’t make her go away.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath as the other students file out of the math classroom. I can’t sit here forever. When I finally stand up and grab my backpack, I see Andrea standing in the doorway waiting on me. I really don’t want to be some epic A-hole and curse her out in front of the entire student body, but sometimes I fantasize about doing just that.
I’ve tried the polite way of getting her to leave me alone, and that didn’t work.
I set my jaw and stare straight ahead, not looking at her as I walk out of the classroom, picking up my pace. She doesn’t miss a beat though, jogging to catch up with me.
“Hey, babe,” she says. Her heelsclack, clack, clackacross the tile floor. She clutches her phone in one hand and tries to hook her other arm around mine. I jerk away.
“Babe!” she says. “You’re walking so fast! It’s hard to keep up in my heels. Slow down.”
I ignore her.
This is my new plan. The silent treatment. Just pretending she doesn’t exist. It may be something a five-year-old does, but I am out of ideas.
“Zane, seriously.” Andrea huffs, scurrying to keep up with me. I walk faster.
“I won’t walk with you if you’re going to go faster than I can keep up!” she says, like it’s some kind of threat.
Great, I think. But as much as I want to say it, I refuse to talk. This is the silent treatment, after all. It’s the only idea I’ve got left.
Andrea groans and makes little comments about how I’m walking too fast, but she doesn’t leave. She follows me all the way to the athletic hallway, right in front of the football locker room. The last four days she did this, I told her politely but firmly to leave me alone. Today I burst into the locker room without even looking at her. I worry she’ll follow me inside, but when I turn around to look, the door is closed, and she didn’t attempt it. I wonder if she’s still standing there on the other side, angry that I ignored her.
Good.
