Scarlett White (25 page)

He had been texting these exact text messages to Tom while he had been talking to Scarlett. Scarlett put her head in her hands in dismay. Only one day of happiness; that was all she got. Why did this keep happening to her? First with Francis, and now with Tristan. Even after he had promised her that he would stay true. There was a dick for you. Why had she ever trusted the popular jock?

She didn't realize until now that she was silently crying. A teardrop landed on the piece of paper, soaking through it. She swallowed, trying to suck the tears back up. She wiped her rivulets away just as the bell rang. The next class felt like it couldn't have gone by any faster. At one minute she was sitting down in her seat, and then the next thing she knew the bell for the commencement of lunch rang. She was still in shock and overwhelmed by the paper she had received during Spanish. But she knew she needed to talk to Tristan. Maybe there was a logical explanation for all of this. Or maybe not.

She walked down the halls. All the laughter and gossiping seemed to fade into the background. She walked past people who waved at her with smiling faces as if she didn't see them. She clutched her books to her chest as she walked to the locker of her destination.

"Thank you," she said to the owner of the locker where she had ended up.

Alice turned around to face Scarlett. Her eyes lit up with glee and joy as she recognized who it was. "Why, whatever are you talking about?"

"You did put that paper in my Spanish book, correct?"

Alice stared her as if she were looking at the kinetic energy formula for an AP chemistry test.

"Don't play stupid, Alice. I know you did it. And I came here to thank you. I'm glad you showed me the true Tristan before my feelings could get…hurt," Scarlett's voice cracked on the last word.

"It was my pleasure." Alice smiled, and then uncharacteristically, she placed a hand on Scarlett's shoulder. "And if you need a shoulder to cry on," she smiled brightly, "don't come to me." And with that said, Alice turned on her heel and started walking off in the opposite direction.

Yeah, that sounded like Alice. Scarlett nodded to herself as she came to terms with the situation and then she walked off in the direction of the cafeteria. As she entered, she saw the cliques. She noticed jocks, the preps, the hostile hotties, the wanna-bees, the sluts and players, the geeks, and the nerds. Libby, Katherine, and Jill all waved her over to the popular table. And then she saw Tristan. He was smiling at her and waiting for her to join him at his side. She took a deep breath as she prepared to degrade her social status on her own accord this time. She gave a half smile to Libby—and completely avoided Tristan's brown, searching eyes—right before she started walking over to her old loser table with Ginny, Kate, and Meghan.

"Hey guys," Scarlett said with a fake smile on her lips as she sat next to Ginny.

"Um…what are you doing?" Kate asked, eyeing the table where Libby and Tristan sat.

"What do you mean?" Scarlett asked, subconsciously flipping her hair over her shoulder.

"Why aren't you with your man?" Ginny asked, wiggling her eyebrows up and down suggestively.

"What man?" Scarlett pretended to take a page out of Alice's book and play stupid.

"The latest gossip is Tristan and you are dating," Meghan answered.

"Nope."

"What?"

"You heard wrong," Scarlett replied to Kate.

"No, we didn't," Ginny insisted. "I saw you two earlier. You were kissing like the lovebirds that you are."

"Must have been my twin sister."

"Hey girl, what are you doing?" Libby asked as she slid in next to Scarlett.

"Um…I should ask you the same thing," she said as she looked up to see all the girls—minus Alice, of course—and most of the guys from the popular table squeezing in at the loser table. Kate, Ginny, and Meghan were squeezed between some of the jocks. Scarlett saw Tristan coming over to sit by her, but she quickly grabbed Jill's hand and pulled her to the only empty space by her, forcing Tristan to take a seat across from her instead. She so could not deal with him right now, not in front of everyone.

"Well, if you didn't want to sit with us, then we are going to sit with you."

"You didn't have to do this," Scarlett replied.

"We know," Katherine chirped. "We wanted to."

"Why did you sit here today?" Jill asked.

Scarlett grew quiet as everyone's eyes turned towards her.

"I…" Her eyes landed on Tristan who had squeezed in opposite her. "What I mean is…" She looked down at the table in front of her. "You guys should go back to the other table. It looks so lonely." The entire table burst with laughter at her not-really-a-joke joke. It wasn't even all that funny. Why were they laughing at it? But she did notice one person who wasn't laughing. Instead he was searching her; her facial expressions, her body language, her fidgeting. He was scrutinizing her. And she didn't like it.

She didn't crack until halfway through lunch. "What!" she finally blurted when Tristan's searching eyes finally got under her skin.

The table grew quiet again, and there was a stare down between Scarlett and Tristan.

"What's wrong?" Tristan asked.

"Nothing's wrong. What would make you think something's wrong?" Scarlett asked, avoiding Tristan's eyes.

"You haven't said a word to me. You won't look at me. You wouldn't sit by me. You wouldn't let me sit by you."

"I think you're just being paranoid." Scarlett stabbed at her food.

"Stop that!" Tristan raised his voice.

Scarlett's eyes snapped up to meet Tristan's.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know damn well what I'm talking about. What did I do wrong?"

Scarlett looked around the table; she couldn't do this in front of everyone. She pushed up off the table, marched over to Tristan's side, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him out into the empty hallway.

Chapter Thirteen

When Scarlett turned
to face Tristan in the secluded hallway, her heart beat furiously as his hand moved toward her own hand. She had never realized how his eyes sparkled in the lighting of the ordinary hallway or how his blonde hair fell clumsily on his forehead. It was actually really sexy. But as she blinked away the thought, she made herself concentrate on the thought that she wasn't here to check him out; she was here to talk to him. And she wasn't going to yell at him or scream at him. She was going to listen to what he had to say and she wasn't going to overreact. If this was the end of their one day relationship, then so be it. She wasn't going to fret over it any more than she needed to.

"What's wrong?" Tristan asked, leaning down closer to her.

Scarlett instinctively flinched away. She didn't need his mesmerizing propinquity to distract her.

Scarlett took a deep breath and closed her eyes as her hands reached into her backpack and pulled out the folded piece of paper that she had found during Spanish class. She wordlessly unfolded it and handed it to Tristan as she opened her eyes to scrutinize his face while his eyes scanned the scandalous words on the paper. At first, his face was of complete confusion. And then horror. He started shaking his head when he finished reading it.

"I never wrote this. I would never do that with Alice. I would never say that to Tom. I would never ever do that to you," Tristan said sincerely, his eyes digging into Scarlett's; trying to plead with her wordlessly to trust him.

"It fits though. I remember you texting during history," Scarlett whispered. "And you said something about Tom."

"Yeah, he was trying to cheat for his algebra test. He was asking me what the square root of pie was." When he noticed that Scarlett didn't believe what he was saying, he said, "Here. Look." He rummaged through his book bag and pulled out his cell phone. He slid it open and practically shoved it in her face.

She took hold of it and went through his text messages. There weren't any messages from or to Alice. And the only text from Tom was:

Tom: Dude, wats the sq rt of pie?

Tristan: Shoulda studied wen i told u 2… :P

Scarlett took a few deep, relieving breaths as her heartbeat began to slow down. She finally looked up at Tristan with the first smile he had seen from her since history class.

Before she could apologize for not trusting him, he pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head.

"You know, I think it scared me a lot more than it should when you wouldn't meet my eyes or sit with me," Tristan whispered.

"It scared me to think that you could promise something and the next day you broke it without even thinking that much about it."

"So are we cool?"

Scarlett pulled back to look into Tristan's eyes, "We're cool."

"C'mon, let's go back in." Tristan grabbed Scarlett's hands, and they both walked back into the cafeteria hand in hand.

"Did you hear about Kirsten's breakdown?"

It had been the talk of the entire morning, and Alice was glad. It was what she wanted. People kept coming up to
her
to find out if the rumors were true about Kirsten getting kicked off the cheerleading team. And why she had done it. She was glad because there was not a single mention of Scarlett White. Not yet at least. As soon as she broke up with Tristan, Alice would know. It would be the newest gossip, and she would soon grow tired of it, but it meant that she could be the one to mend Tristan's heart.

"Yeah, that's old news." Alice waved off the comment that Quinn had made.

"Why did you kick her off the team?" Willow asked.

"Her kicks weren't as high as Jessie's, and her voice isn't as booming as it once was. So I decided I needed a new, fresh start for my team, and to begin I had to kick Kirsten off the—"

"Oh my God, they are so adorable," Willow gushed.

"What?" Sadie asked.

"Scarlett and Tristan," Willow replied.

"What are you talking about?" Alice asked.

"Look at them. Aren't they the cutest couple ever?" Willow asked as all of the girls' attention was transferred to the couple who were walking into the room holding hands.

"What. The. Fuck?" Alice growled.

"Well, your plan didn't work," Sadie said. She had been in on the entire plan that Kirsten and Alice had come up with last night at Kirsten's house.

Alice's face was growing red. This could not be happening. They were supposed to break up. Didn't Scarlett read the fake oral sexting between Tristan and Alice right after Tristan had left Scarlett's house last night? Didn't Scarlett see the fake text messages between Tom and Tristan where Tristan talked about her like dirt? Why were they still together?

Alice had imagined this whole fantasy scene where Scarlett had yelled at a bewildered Tristan, then slapped him across the face, and then stormed off, not listening to a thing that Tristan had to say to her. And Bam! Their short relationship was over. Why were they still holding hands and looking at each other with big googly eyes?

This wasn't supposed to happen.

"Will she ever just leave?" Alice hissed. "Why does she have to keep coming back and ruining everything for me?"