Gettin' Lucky (15 page)

“Um, no, thanks,” I said, shuddering.

“Exactly,” Kelly said. “When someone has seen you wet yourself by the finger-painting
corner, it sort of takes the mystery out of it all.”

“I hear you,” I said. “Thankfully, I don’t have any personal experience with the subject.”

“Moving on,” Kelly said. “So, you’re not into him, then?”

“It’s not that I’m not into him,” I said slowly. “More like, I’d never thought about it before.”

“And now that you’re thinking about it?”

“Well, for starters, I’m obviously still on the rebound, big-time, from Jesse.”

“Obviously.”

“And then there’s the fact that we’re
so
not a match.”

Kelly rolled her eyes with exasperation. “I can’t believe you’re going to blow off a great guy over something as silly as his astrological sign.”

“I know you can’t,” I said, patting her arm fondly.

Kelly assured me that in a few weeks, things would go back to normal between Elliot and me. I knew that his grades mattered too much for him to let this little situation ruin our class project. We had some great footage that was going to make for a
kick-ass film subject. We were going to take down one of Midvale High’s überheroes—and we were going to do it for credit.

Awesome.

I wasn’t going to let something like a wayward kiss between cosmically mismatched friends get in the way of that kind of karmic payback. Nuh-uh. And I knew that ultimately, Elliot wouldn’t either.

I guess I felt like I hadn’t fulfilled my quota of awkward moments for the week, because on Wednesday, I waited for Alana outside of her English class. She looked surprised to see me. Or rather, she looked surprised to see me
at first.
Her expression quickly morphed from bemused curiosity to mild annoyance.

She ran her fingers through her hair, perhaps forgetting my status as ex-best friend and, therefore, impervious to the magical powers of enchantment possessed by her follicles. I noticed that she was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt from Fred Segal that we’d bought during a long weekend in Los Angeles with her parents a few years back. That had been a really fun trip. Alana and I
thought we saw Drew Barrymore in the parking lot of Barneys, but on closer inspection we realized the girl in question was actually about a foot taller than Drew. But it had been the closest we’d come to a celebsighting, so we’d made a pact to tell people that it had totally been Drew, and we’d talked to her for seventeen whole minutes.

Alana really needed to get some new clothes. Her wardrobe was inducing post-traumatic stress flashbacks for me.

“Hi,” I began tentatively. “I, uh, need to talk to you.”

She narrowed her green eyes suspiciously. Now she looked like a creepy refugee from a horror movie. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed and decided to go for broke. “It’s about Jesse. He’s, um, been cheating—”

“Not on me,” she said, cutting me off. “Trust me.”

Okay, ouch. But now that’d I” d started down this road, I wasn’t sure if or how I should back off. “I wouldn’t know about that. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Oh?” she smirked.
Flip
went the hair again.

“It’s the poker game.”

“The one you lost? Badly?”

I nodded. “Alana, I know we’re not friends these days“—
and frankly, that’s totally your fault, you big ho—
“and maybe you have no reason to believe me, but you’re gonna have to just trust me: Jesse’s been cheating. He’s been spotting cards. With a mirror. I mean, a lighter. Dennis is in on it. That’s why the two of them keep raking it in.”

I could tell from the glimmer in her eyes that there was at least a small part of her that saw how this could be true. But she was incredibly, understandably reluctant to let me know that.

“Why would I make something like this up?” I pressed.

“Because Jesse dumped you for me and then kicked your ass at poker and took all of your money?” she suggested.

Oh, right. That.

“Yeah, okay, but if you want to look at it that way—you dumped me for Jesse too. So I don’t really have any motivation for helping you out.”

“No, you really don’t,” Alana agreed. “So why are you?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, realizing how totally deranged I sounded. “I mean, I’m still furious about you and Jesse hooking up.”

For a moment, she softened. “I am sorry.”

I waved my hand dismissively. That was just too much for me to deal with right now. “Whatever. I can’t even get into that. I mean, I totally can’t even go there.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding contritely. “I get that.”

“But we were friends for a long time, and that doesn’t just go away,” I said. “And I guess it was one thing when Jesse was fooling around behind my back—I mean, that was awful enough. But now, I realize he’s just, like, all in all, a scummy guy. And I felt like maybe you should know that.” I took a deep breath and stepped backward a bit, giving her some space to process the information. I had no idea how she was going to take it. Her head could start spinning around any minute.

She tilted her head to one side, as though she was weighing the possibility that I could be telling the truth. Suddenly
the head-spinning scenario seemed that much more likely. “I’m just supposed to take your word for it?” she asked finally.

“Nuh-uh,” I said, shaking my head no. “I actually have proof.”

Twelve

“That bastard!” Alana pushed away from the computer and stared at me, mouth agape.

I nodded tersely. “That was pretty much our feeling,” I said matter-of-factly, jerking my head in Kelly’s direction to indicate our solidarity on the matter.

“He’s—I mean, that’s just—and all this time—,” she sputtered, her hair swinging wildly as she grew more and more frantic.

“All this time,” Kelly repeated.

“What a total jerk!” Alana said finally, crossing her arms over her chest to signify that she had reached her ultimate breaking point.

“I know,” I agreed. “I sort of couldn’t believe it.”

After I’d blown the whistle on Jesse to Alana, she’d wanted to see the proof with her own eyes. Not that I blamed her. If I hadn’t seen Alana and Jesse getting down with my own two eyes, I don’t think I ever would have bought it. I mean, some thoughts are just too, too outrageous. So, anyway, we met up with Kelly after school and went back to her place to watch the video. After that, Alana had no choice but to believe us.

“Um, okay,” Kelly said, breaking into my little reverie, “here’s a question that might be sort of touchy: Remind me again
why,
exactly, you’re having such a hard time believing this about Jesse? I mean, this is a guy who cheated on his girlfriend of two years with her best friend.𔄤

At that, Alana and I both flushed guiltily and looked down at the floor.

I decided to tackle this one first. “I know he’s slime,” I began tentatively, “but you know, I wouldn’t have been with him for so long if I’d thought he didn’t have any redeeming qualities at all. I can despise him forever, but a small part of me needs for the relationship to be, you know, validated on some level, at least. Like, there has to be
something about him that was worth my time.”

“Yeah, and”—Alana paused to clear her throat self-consciously and I leaned in closer, incredibly interested in whatever she was going to say—“I mean, I thought he really cared about me. I would never have gone behind Cass’s back, you know, like, if I thought it was just some random hookup.” She looked at me intently. “We were going to tell you—at least, I was. Jesse and I talked about it. I promise, hurting you was the last thing that I wanted.”

Yay?

No, to be honest, I did see her point. Not that it made me feel any better about what they’d done, but at least it made a tiny, minuscule, microscopic iota of sense.

“Um, I’m glad to hear that,” I said gruffly.

She offered me a small, searching smile.

As reunions went, this one was hardly heartfelt. I mean, no one was leaping up to, like, “hug it out” or anything. But it was a step.

“Ahem,” Kelly said, sitting up very straight in her special, spine-aligning chair. Kelly was extremely dedicated to things
like posture, which I assumed had to do with how many hours a day she spent hunched over her computer. Alana and I both looked up at her questioningly.

“This is all very sweet and beautiful,” she said, “and I’m glad you two are finally airing out, you know, your issues. But there’s a larger problem here, which is that
your
ex-boyfriend”—she shot me a look—“and
your
current boyfriend”—she glanced accusingly at Alana—“is a total ass.”

“And?” I said. After all, I had done my job—despite all of my little misgivings, I’d ultimately sucked it up and decided to be the mature one, and to talk to Alana about Jesse’s poker scam.

Kelly shook her head in disbelief. “
And …
I think something needs to be done.”

“Huh.” I bit my lip. “I suppose you’re right. But what?”

Alana, who’d been sitting pensively at my side at Kelly’s desk, looked up. Her eyes sparkled with a devilish glint that I knew all too well. This was a glint that had gotten me into much, much, trouble. And I suspected it was about to get me into trouble yet again.

She raised her index finger as though she were raising her hand in class.

“I know we’re not BFF again, Cass,” she began. “We’re probably not even ‘F.’ But I have an idea.”

From: [email protected]

To: [Midvale HS, ALL]

CC:[email protected], [email protected]

Subject: WATCH YOUR BACK

Hey all you party people-check it out:
www.kconn/YOUAREHERE/cheater.avi
.

*Pay extra-special attention to the dealer, his lighter, and his buddy sitting right at his eleven o’clock.

You can thank me later.

XX,

Your friends over HERE

“Awesome undercover skills, Kelly!”

“Yeah, really nice one!”

“What an ass.”

“That jerk owes me fifty bucks from our last game …”

The e-mail blast to, um, our entire high
school was actually Alana’s idea, as was the choice to post the incriminating video on Kelly’s website. But I had to say, it was an amazing idea—devious in the extreme. People knew Alana and I were in on it somehow—clearly we were involved, what with being individually cc’d on the e-mail blast—but it was Kelly who was getting all the credit. Not that she minded in the least. She was proud of knocking Jesse down a few pegs.

For my part, I was sort of stunned at how quickly our classmates pounced on the trickle of blood in the water. I guess kids did set aside a sort of special reserve of disdain for the so-called “in crowd” and weren’t all that disappointed to see a sports god felled. I personally couldn’t blame them. Anyway, Jesse was a total persona non grata around the campus in the wake of this massive reveal. And I was kind of into it.

So we were suddenly the B-list celebrities of Midvale, what with people calling out to us and cheering when we passed them in the hall. It was almost like the end of just about any John Hughes film, for real. And I had a feeling our film class project had just taken a turn for the more complex. Which wasn’t a bad thing.

Of course, that all depended on Elliot and me actually saying three words to each other. Ever since our smoochage, we’d mostly avoided each other around school. It wasn’t all that difficult, though it did make me pretty self-conscious. I would come to film class early and bury myself somewhere toward the back—or else Elliot would. And now that I was one-third of Midvale’s answer to Bunim-Murray, I was usually engaged in whatever conversation at the beginning or the end of class. The project wasn’t due until mid-March. I had a few more weeks to decide how to deal with the sitch. Mostly I just kept asking myself,
What would Rory Gilmore do?
(And yes, I recognize that Rory Gilmore doesn’t actually exist. But anyway, moving on …)

Today, for instance, I had somehow ended up sitting directly behind Elliot. Which was cool, because it meant I got to avoid that awkward-eye-contact and stuff. But it was also rather distracting, as I learned as the minutes of class ticked by.

Albon was giving a lecture on “ethics in television.” Like, whether or not it’s cool that we get to watch college kids having sex on camera on shows like
The Real World.
Yawn. I wished he would come right out and say it: He’d seen Kelly’s video, and he thought we were gross for taping Jesse and Dennis—even if they were the ones who were cheating in the first place. But instead, he was talking in circles and fostering “a healthy debate.” Which was, it must be said, extremely boring.

I’d taken to tracing small circles on the page of my notebook. When I ran out of space for the circles, I began to loop long, winding lines around the dots.

It was abstract. I was into it.

I was also, truth be told, rather into the scruff of hair that crept down Elliot’s neck and curled over the edge of his collar. He was wearing a striped rugby shirt that on anyone else might have looked inexcusably preppy but on Elliot was adorable in the most Seth Cohen sense of the term.

I shook my head. The boredom had gotten to me. No way was I fixating on Elliot’s neck.

But, still … we hadn’t really spoken—no more than an awkward “hi” in the halls, that is—in more than a week. Which, once upon a time, would have been normal for us. But these days, I had to
admit, I really missed him. I missed him and his utter and complete disdain for my flaky, New Age “let’s leave it in the hands of fate” attitude.

I had to deal with this. I needed to be friends with adorable Elliot and his adorable Seth Cohen neck-scruff.

The bell rang, and for a moment it seemed like I’d have my chance. Elliot stood and began stuffing his notebook into his messenger bag. He must have sensed me staring at him because he finally happened to glance up. His eyes widened questioningly.

I opened my mouth, having no idea what I was going to say.