If I'm Being Honest(14)
Dear Cameron, Mr. Bright has arranged for your mother to take a waitressing job at one of his associate’s restaurants. She starts next Monday. Don’t hesitate to write me if you should have any more difficulties!
Best,
Chelsea
I have to keep myself from letting out a rueful laugh. I think about writing her back. Yes, Chelsea, I’m having more difficulties. I’m going to have to talk Mom off a ledge over the prospect of a job that’s an embarrassing handout from her ex. I might have lost the one guy who saw me as more than a pretty face. And it’d be nice if my dad could even pretend to care about his daughter so I don’t believe the ugly words said about me.
He’d never understand, of course.
Instead of writing that, I close out of my email and submit the assignment. When the bell rings, I run straight out the door to cross-country and keep on running.
Seven
I’VE FINALLY FOUND ANDREW’S LOCKER. IT ONLY took complimenting a suggestible sophomore on the soccer team who told me the right hall and then spending the whole lunch on Wednesday waiting and watching which locker Andrew went to. I duck out of Calc five minutes early, claiming a stomachache, and wait out of sight at the end of Andrew’s hall. From yesterday’s recon, I know he’ll stop by his locker before English. I pull the letter from my bag and run my finger nervously along the crease, feeling the soft fold in the paper.
Write letter. Find Andrew’s locker. Deliver letter.
I spent hours yesterday writing. I decided on Monday that email wasn’t right, and I spent Tuesday stuck. But I don’t give up easily. People who give up don’t deserve what they want. People who give up end up like my mother.
Whereas people who pursue their goals end up like my father. And while I might live with her, I’ve done everything not to repeat my mother’s choices. Even in Hollywood, a city practically built on broken dreams, and a school like Beaumont full of aspiring everythings, I’ve remained on the periphery of fame and fantasy. I’d rather struggle through the dense, sometimes impossible homework for Economics in the Entrepreneur’s Market in hopes of earning a practical internship and not ending up on the couch with nothing but dead-end dreams.
Once I’d finished reading three Economist articles for class, I wrote the letter to Andrew. I stayed up late working, explaining the night I yelled at Paige, how I was scared because I’d never had a relationship I cared about and nervous he wouldn’t want me the way I wanted him. I wrote how I screwed up the apology to Paige because I panicked, how his friendship means too much to me. I labored over it until two in the morning, rewriting it twice. When he reads it, he’ll understand how much of a bitch I’m not.
The bell rings. I hear snatches of conversation while people walk past me in the hall—winter formal, service projects, dates, and breakups. I just stand there, watching Andrew’s locker with an eager anxiety I haven’t felt on campus since I was a freshman.
I want to hand him the letter in person, ideally. And it can’t be in English. Paige would undoubtedly glare obnoxiously and spoil everything. But as the minutes pass without sign of him, I settle for sliding it into his locker. He has to read the letter today, one way or another. I walk to the locker and start to push the letter under the door when, of course, I catch his broad frame coming toward me.
Our eyes meet, and his gaze drops. With it goes my hopes for repairing things. After a moment’s pause, he approaches the locker, his eyes avoiding mine.
“You won’t even give me a chance to explain?” I ask, working to repress the indignation in my voice.
He drops in his cleats and pulls out a hefty Classical Philosophy textbook. “Cameron, I’m not really looking for an explanation right now,” he says, sounding weary.
He closes his locker with a clang and walks past me. I have no choice but to follow, my Nikes squeaking on the linoleum. “But on Friday you wanted to be with me,” I argue. “I’ll admit I acted badly, but you know me.” I struggle to keep up with his long stride. “You know who I am. I’m the girl who runs with you, who watches shitty MTV movies with you, who—”
“Cameron.” He rounds on me. “I’ve liked you pretty much since the day I met you.” I feel a smile springing to my lips. Andrew stares at me hard. “But you only wanted to be with me once I’d passed some popularity test.”
My smile fades.
“I don’t know if making the team made you see me in a new light or if you always wanted to date me and only felt you could when I made the team. I don’t know which is worse. Either way, I don’t want to be with you.”
I open my mouth to refute him, but he talks over me.
“I wish I had reason to believe that beneath everything, you’re nice or decent or something. But right now, I don’t.” Turning his back, he walks into class without giving me a chance to defend myself. As if he knows I can’t.
I could run to the bathroom right now. Could conceal myself in a stall instead of going to class. But I’d just come out of that bathroom in forty-three minutes knowing I’d have to face him eventually.
I walk into class.
When we’re in our desks, Kowalski holds up her copy of The Taming of the Shrew. “You’ve all had a chance to digest the first two acts,” she says, giving us a meaningful yet somehow threatening look. “Let’s discuss our title character, the shrew—Katherine. How does Shakespeare treat her?” Perched on an open desk, Kowalski calls on the girl in front of her.