Awkward (7 page)

“Okay, so the first thing we have to do is update your clothes,” said Corey. He pulled out his notebook. “I sketched a few things during Chemistry. Now in this one I have you wearing jeans that show off that adorable butt of yours, a scoop-necked shirt, note the detail on it, with your hair down.”

I fingered my ponytail. “What’s wrong with having my hair up?”

“Messes up the look,” Corey explained, flipping the pages to another sketch. “Now, here I picture the dress in a deep blue.”

Jane snorted. “Because Mackenzie is really going to wear a dress like that to school … or anywhere else, for that matter.” She looked at it a little more closely. “Although it would be really pretty.”

“The Old Mackenzie wouldn’t. But the New Mackenzie might get club invites or something.” Corey gestured broadly at the window. “We live fifteen minutes away from Portland—a city with culture and clubs. Already we’ve missed out on tons of concerts because we’re under twenty-one. Well, now we can get in.” Corey was so excited he was practically squeaking. “Do you think Miley Cyrus has any trouble getting into clubs? No. She can always walk in like it’s no big deal.”

“And in this equation, I’m Miley Cyrus?” I said in disbelief.

“It’s a Party in the U.S.A., Mackenzie. My point is that we should be prepared for anything.”

“Well, I’m prepared to ditch this,” I said after a bite of my burrito. “I’m getting a muffin. Anyone want one?”

“Yep,” said Jane. “Oatmeal cinnamon for me.”

“I’ll add it to your tab,” I told her with a sidelong grin. Jane and I had alternated muffin runs for the better part of two years, making it impossible to keep track of a debt.

I was grinning all the way to the food line and then smiling as I pulled out my money. The cafeteria muffins are ridiculously tasty, and it’s hard to be depressed with a bundle of deliciousness in each hand. Which is why I didn’t notice the spilled soda on the cafeteria floor. I never would have noticed it at all if I hadn’t been jostled out of line—
hard
—just as I was fumbling to pay the cashier.

It all happened in slow motion. My feet slipped, my body lurched, and I tumbled to the floor. Instinctively, my hands shot out to catch myself but only succeeded in demolishing the muffins. My wallet exploded on impact and showered the sticky floor around me with pennies, nickels, dimes, and a handful of quarters mixed in for good measure. I didn’t get up right away. My head had smacked the floor hard on my way down, and the world was spinning. For a moment all I could think about was the pain. God, it hurt. My brain felt like it had been tossed around in a washer on spin cycle. I felt arms tugging me off the ground and slowly became aware of Corey and Jane.

“What?” I began, but Jane cut me off.

“Let’s get you to the nurse.”

But Corey wasn’t going anywhere without a fight.

“You assholes!” he yelled at the small clump of snickering football players who surrounded Alex Thompson.

Which is when I realized that I hadn’t just had a random embarrassing cafeteria experience: I’d been set up. And judging by the satisfied smile on Chelsea’s face, she’d seen the whole thing coming and hadn’t said a word. Not so much as an “Oh no! Mackenzie, look out!” For all I knew Alex Thompson and the other Notables plotted it together. My eyes scanned the expressions of the Notables around her while I tried to think past the pain. Most of the table was laughing and probably thinking,
There goes that Awkward Girl again. What a loser.

I rubbed the back of my head tentatively, and for the first time my eyes met Logan’s. He was already halfway across the cafeteria and moving steadily toward me. It registered briefly as weird that Logan didn’t sit at the Notable table. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him sit there, actually. I could feel the migraine pounding with the rhythm of Logan’s feet as he stalked across the cafeteria.

I panicked … again. I’ll admit that now. I saw him and I was
positive
he was going to fire me. Let’s look at the facts, shall we?

1.
He’s a Notable

2.
I humiliated myself in public again.

3.
He had a reputation to maintain.

4.
I didn’t fit into that reputation … at all.

I couldn’t let him fire me. I had to escape before I was out of a job or a best friend who looked intent on fighting with a football player. I grabbed Corey’s shoulder.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said lamely. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What the hell do you mean it doesn’t matter?” he seethed. “They think they can body check you and get away with it?” He swore loudly and rather eloquently to my way of thinking.

Alex Thompson just grinned. “Payback. Although maybe I have to spend some time on top of her for us to be even.”

I felt sick, and not just because my head was ringing and my every movement was probably being filmed. Alex actually thought it was fine to knock me down and joke about forcing himself on top of me … and all because of a minor accident. This was his way of proving his manliness.

I stepped toward him carefully.

“Don’t you
ever
think about touching me or my friends ever again,” I told him in a voice that I managed to keep both cool and even—barely.

“Or what?” he sneered.

“Or I’ll show you just how much damage a good girl can do.” I smiled. “Believe me, I can hurt you without laying a finger on your skin.”

I turned back to Corey and Jane, who were staring at me with open-mouthed amazement. “You guys ready to go?”

They nodded and the three of us made our exit. For the first time in the past two years I’d spent in high school, I felt vaguely cool.

Too bad the feeling didn’t last.

“Y
ou handled it well.” I tried to figure out what the hell Logan was talking about as we walked from Mr. Helm’s classroom, where we had agreed to meet, to the parking lot at the end of the day.

“Handled what well?” I asked, rubbing my temple to fight back the rager of a headache that had kicked up a notch as I’d left the cafeteria.

“Alex and his friends.”

I noticed he didn’t say “my friends” and wondered what to make of it. Had my brain not felt diced, strained, and broiled, I definitely would have analyzed that for deeper social significance. Instead, I just shrugged.

“Could’ve done worse.”

He grinned, much to my surprise. “No kidding.”

I couldn’t help smiling back. “I got the last word. Did you notice that? And I actually made a pretty convincing threat.” I tried not to notice the way his dark hair flopped in his eyes as he unlocked the car and I slid in. “It sounded credible to you, right?”

He pulled out of the lot. “Sure, but I doubt you could really hurt the guy.”

I leaned back against the seat. “It was the first thing that came to mind. But I suppose I could do
something
and get away with it. It’s hard to believe the valedictorian, or future valedictorian,” I corrected myself, “was the catalyst for anything.”

He tapped the steering wheel in time to his music. “I guess.”

“The reason it worked was because I left the threat to his imagination. Will I mess with his locker, or his report card, or his college transcript? Impossible to know. What we imagine is usually far more intimidating than reality. Psychological warfare.”

“So you psyched him out. Personally I prefer just going at it.”

“What?” My head jerked up and I leaned forward. I’d been distracted by idly wondering what it might be like to have his hands on the back of my neck, or lifting my chin to angle for a kiss. Thoughts I had no business thinking about a Notable, particularly one who was going to date Chelsea (again), marry her, and show up to the ten-year reunion with their perfect six-month-old baby.

“Fighting,” he clarified. “A few good hits on the ice and I feel much better.”

I imagined launching myself at Alex in the cafeteria, fists clenched. I bet I could have done some damage … before I was dragged to the infirmary.

“I’m a pretty good fighter,” I commented. “I had to learn to throw a punch or I’d always be stuck watching Monday Night Football.”

“Older siblings?” Logan asked, and it hit me just how little we actually knew about each other.

“Younger brother. Dylan. Plays quarterback at the middle school and idolizes any guy who wears pads.”

Logan considered that for a second. “Skinny? Reddish hair?”

I stared at him. “Yeah.”

He shrugged. “Good kid. I coached him at a sports camp over the summer. Listens to instructions.”

“Your instructions, maybe,” I said. “He doesn’t exactly fall over himself to do me any favors. Although, he was pretty great last night when I got the call from …”

I let my sentence dribble out as it finally hit me what was missing: the press. I had spent the entire day fearing the questions of doggedly persistent reporters, but there wasn’t anyone around. I’d had literally fifteen minutes of fame before becoming old news.

“They’re gone!” I could have floated the rest of the way to Logan’s house.

“Who is?”

“The newspaper and television people. They all cleared out.” I leaned back in my seat with a sigh of relief. “I can go back to being a nobody. Wonderful.” I wasn’t even being sarcastic.

Logan pulled into his long, elegant driveway—his whole life was surreally perfect. “You want to be ignored?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, yeah,” I said, stating the obvious. “If the choice is between being ignored or being ridiculed and body checked in the cafeteria line, it’s not exactly a tough call.”

“What about a third option?”

I just stared at him. “We go to the same high school, right? For me, there is no third option, which is why I’m studying so hard for college.” Logan didn’t say anything as we got out of the car. “What are your plans?” I asked curiously.

“College. Somewhere. My parents want me to check out their alma mater,
USC
, but I’m not sure it’s for me.”

I nodded. “It’s weird, isn’t it? The way adults expect us to have it all figured out. Once I get into college, that’s it. I have to become a history major, then a historian. When, for all I know, I might end up loving sociology and moving to Australia to study aboriginal culture.”

“Aboriginal culture, huh?” he said. “Well, you don’t think small.”

“Nope,” I agreed as we walked into his house. I pulled out my textbook and laid it in front of us on the kitchen table. “Now, where did we leave off?”

I
woke up the next morning exhausted. Working with Logan on AP US cut into the homework time for my other classes. I had a boatload of work due for AP Gov and was operating on five hours of sleep. I’m not a morning person. I wake up early physically, but I’m always close to snapping at someone. So when I came downstairs and found that Dylan had finished off the milk, my bad mood darkened. I pulled out some Eggos and shoved them into the toaster.

Then I heard the scream.

It sounded like Dylan had broken a leg, pulled a tendon, and smashed every metatarsal in his foot—all at the same time.

“Dylan?” I hollered. All my stupid big sister instincts had jumped into overdrive. “Dylan, what’s wrong?”

When I found him sitting in the computer room, pointing to the screen, I could have killed him.

“Are you kidding? You scared the crap out of me, you jerk.”

Dylan just stared blankly oblivious to my outrage and kept pointing to the screen.

“I don’t care what it says about me, okay? It’s over. After today I’ll be old news. Got it?”

But Dylan shook his head and clicked the screen.

For a second I was confused. Dylan was watching YouTube, but instead of me, the screen showed the latest music video from the rock band ReadySet.

I’m guessing you already know about them. I mean,
come on,
it’s ReadySet we’re talking about here. Their songs have been
huge
ever since the band used inventive music videos to launch themselves into popularity. At the very least you’ve heard of their lead singer, Timothy Goff, the eighteen-year-old taking the music industry by storm.

I’m still impressed with how they handled the footage—the brilliant way they worked me into the music video for their high-energy song “Going Down.” The camera slowed with Alex midair before the drums burst into action the instant he connected with the ground. It was all so artistic: the changing background colors, the splicing, the close-ups … everything. It looked like my
CPR
Incident had been choreographed for the song. Really, the lyrics fit that well. Especially the lines:

You fell like a girl from a looking glass.
You swore that you’d always come back.
But I’ve got a scribbled-up document.
It says that you’ve gone away.

My expression, the naked panic on my face, gave the song depth as well as humor. A perfect blend and an instant hit.

I was so screwed.

“Th-That doesn’t mean anything,” I told Dylan. But I knew I was wrong. They had even incorporated my “AM I
KILLING
HIM
RIGHT
NOW?” into the song. And it sounded great.

Dylan met my eyes. Maybe it was the sisterly protective thing again, but he looked so small—just a scrawny runt with a mop of reddish hair and a sprinkling of freckles. And I was systematically screwing up his life.

“Mackenzie.” He said my name slowly, as if testing each syllable. “One YouTube clip can go away, but this … it’s a different story.”

I wanted to say that I’d already handled the press, thank-you-very-much. But as much as I hated to admit it, he was right. My life was already chaotic before America’s biggest rock sensation used me as some kind of muse. Now anyone who’d missed my moment of extreme embarrassment could catch it repeating endlessly on MTV-2.

And people would want to know about me. You don’t watch a great music video without wondering about the people in it. That’s why that wedding couple dancing down the aisle became so famous. First it went on YouTube, then
AOL
, until suddenly
The Office
was doing a spoof, and the couple was under fire for using a Chris Brown song after he famously beat his ex-girlfriend Rihanna. So then the newlyweds had to go on
Good Morning America
and donate money to the prevention of spousal abuse. All because someone filmed their nuptials and posted it online. Crazy, but true.