Chapter Nineteen
My Friend, Myself
I felt so belittled when we got
back to school. Bad news travels fast, especially via the internet. Everyone
had seen my stupid social gaffe. Peeps stared at me. They whispered behind
their hands. Supposedly Flynn had embellished the story, adding that I was
‘keeping private notes’ about all the ‘social disasters’ of other people.
I wasn’t used to being the object of social
derision. From the looks on their faces, you could tell they weren’t saying
anything nice. I even heard a much meaner girl than me say, “just because she
has perfectly straight glossy blonde hair and blue eyes and wears too much lip
gloss, she thinks she’s better then everyone. Even Ms Dash, who’s the nicest
and best teacher in the world, won’t want anything to do with her now.”
And another girl, her friend,
agreed with her.
Loads of kids even turned their
backs on me. Ms Dash might be a frump, but she’s way popular, far more popular
than me at the moment.
I trudged to the school exit after
leaving study hall early (I felt like a pariah) and walked all the way home alone.
I was a total wreck. I flicked on the afternoon entertainment news. I threw
myself on my bed with a box of cookies and vowed to make amends in every way possible.
Starting with Ms Dash: I’d take
her a gift of her fave candy and apologize. I’d offer to do all the cleaning up
after every claymation class. Then, I’d go on to apologize to Hilary, Rafe and
maybe even Ethan.
Let’s face it, Ethan Knightly
has used all of my digressions as an excuse to set me straight. It’s pretty clear
what he thinks of me. Maybe an apology would be pointless. I should make him
wait – perhaps forever. I fluffed my pillow and bit the top off a salted
caramel; it helped me feel less miserable.
For some reason, the thought
of never talking to Ethan again bothered me immensely. I had this pretty film montage
playing in my head like the end of those fabtastic Twilight films: Ethan and me throwing food at each other as
toddlers, splashing each other in the wading pool, moving onto the ocean when
Phoebe and Mark took us swimming with Wednesday and her Daddy coming along. It
was like my whole life – days and days spent growing up with Ethan – spun a
golden filmic montage through my mind and the thought that Ethan didn’t want to
know me, well, frankly? It was more than I could bear.
