The Switch
by
Alexandria Castillo
“The Switch”
Copyright 2011 by Alexandria Castillo
Smashwords Edition
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***
Prologue
I remember it as if it were yesterday…
Well, it actually was yesterday, but that was beside the point.
The point was that I needed to get out of there. If I didn’t, I was sure I would go mad.
“I brought breakfast!” my “mother”, Liv, called out in a singsong voice before I heard the door slowly but surely creep open.
Did you catch that? The quotation marks on the word mother? It doesn’t sound very nice, now does it? If you knew my whole story, though, you would understand why, and you wouldn’t judge me.
“Here, sunny-side-up, just how you like it,” she chirped, smiling widely at me.
“I hate sunny-side up eggs.” I crossed my arms indifferently and turned my head defiantly.
“What? But Serena, this is how you always ask for them!”
“I told you already, my name is Shay!” I snapped, extremely aggravated by this woman’s slowness. Was I speaking in a different language or something? I didn’t even know a different language. Not technically, at least, since I was failing Spanish class.
“She’s delusional… she keeps repeating that to me over and over again,” Matthew, my “brother” whispered to Liv. I refused to call her mother. I already had a mother.
It was exceedingly obvious that he was trying to make sure I didn’t hear him. He had only known me for a day or so, but already he could tell that I was a very irritable person and I would attack him if I found it was necessary.
It was also exceedingly obvious, however, to everyone in the room that he had failed miserably. I heard every word he said as clear as a window after it has been cleaned with Windex.
“I am not crazy! But I will go crazy if I have to spend another day in this place!” I groaned as I flopped backwards. I expected to fall back on the only enjoyable thing I had found in this place—the surprisingly comfortable bed—but I somehow managed to entirely miss the bed. I fell headfirst onto the cold, wooden floor.
“Ow,” I muttered as I rubbed my now-skinned elbow, “I want to go home!”
“You are home, Serena,” Liv said in exasperation. She was becoming a little impatient with me. I just refused to accept that this was my new reality. This blondeness, this popularity, this completely different stratosphere this Serena girl lived in. This wasn’t home. Well, this wasn’t my home. It was Serena’s.
“Yeah, this is home!” Matt added cheerfully, slapping my back in a manner I assumed was supposed to be affectionate. The reality, however, was that it probably just bruised my back, or at the very least left a red spot.
“No, it’s not!” I insisted, my voice raising an octave higher as I got angrier. There were so many things wrong with this picture. This wasn’t right. None of it was. This wasn’t my life.
You must be confused. Hell, even I was confused, and I was the one living this nightmare! It all started on Halloween night of this year…
Chapter 1
“Shay, are you willing to take one for the team and make a complete fool out of yourself?” Coach Briggs asked, turning her body so she was facing me.
“Okay!” I replied immediately. Embarrassing situations, awkward situations, and just plain weird situations were my forte. If you spent so much as a few minutes with me, you would understand why. I wasn’t exactly the most “normal” person, if you catch my drift. But I didn’t think I would want to be. “Normal” people were extremely boring, in my opinion. All you had to do to realize that was just take a look at my friend, Jasmine. I never said this out loud, however, or she would have my head on a stake.
My eyes widened as Coach Briggs told me the plan, and a wide grin spread across my face. This was going to be great!
I probably should have been a little nervous, because the plan she was explaining to me would most likely mean that I would never live this down. Again, the “normal” concept came up. If I were a “normal person”, I would have been worried about what people might think. But since I wasn’t even remotely close to “normal”, the idea of this was absolutely fascinating and thrilling to me. I couldn’t wait to try it out.
I had no reason to care about what people said or thought about me, anyway. Who were they to criticize me? I would never change myself or my ways just to please a person, no matter who that person was. No one was worth that. No one.
I skipped—quite literally—out onto the familiar, gold and blue basketball court, and stared at the scoreboard. It was the fourth quarter, and the score was:
Home: 45
Guest: 47
Then I looked at the time left.
0:10
Crap.
If we were going to win this, my distraction had to be perfect. It had to be absolutely perfect.
No pressure, huh?
“Okay, are you ready?” asked Amanda, a friend of mine who played the center on the basketball team.
I jumped in surprise and put a hand to my heart. I hadn’t even noticed her and she was standing right there.
“Holy crap, you scared me,” I exclaimed.
“Sorry.” Amanda grinned apologetically. “Good luck! You’ll need it.”
“Psh,” I said, waving my hand dismissively, “this’ll be a piece of cake.”
The referee blew his whistle and the five of us ran to our positions.
We were playing our enemies, the Ridgeway Falcons. Ridgeway was the rival of Northview, my school. It had been ingrained into my brain since I was little that everyone from Ridgeway was evil. I assumed the same about us had been ingrained into the Ridgeway kids’ brains when they were little, as well. It would explain why they seemed to hate us. Maybe, however, it was the fact that we were so carefree about showing our hatred of them. I probably wouldn’t like a person if they openly hated me the way we did with them. It actually made sense, in a way.
The Falcons were pressing us and I smirked to myself. This was just perfect for my distraction; they wouldn’t see it coming.
I stationed myself on the enemies’ side of the court, where the Falcon’s were shooting and where the ball was being thrown in. Coach gave me the You-Better-Not-Mess-This-Up look that I knew so well, and as a response I nodded, signaling I was ready. It was our ball, and I barely got the chance to process that into my brain because the ref was an impatient guy. He blew his whistle again and the game continued.
That was my cue.
I got on all fours and started barking as loud as my lungs would allow me to. And let me just tell you, I was a very loud person. The barking was extremely loud because of this.
“Arf, arf! Arf, arf, arf! Woof, woof, woof! Arf, arf, arf, arf, arf! Woof, woof! Arf, arf! Woof! Arf, arf! Woof!”
By then, everyone in the gym was at the very least staring at me, if not laughing, as well. But could you blame them? This wasn’t an everyday sight, and had I not been the one doing it, I would have laughed, too. But it wasn’t because I was embarrassed that I wouldn’t have laughed. I couldn’t laugh. I was too busy barking, and I was pretty sure that if I had tried to multitask it would have ended in disaster. Laughing and barking at the same time? Now there would be a scary sight.
“Arf, arf! Woof, woof! Arf, arf, arf! Woof, woof! Arf, arf, arf! Woof!”
The distraction worked perfectly. Our star shooter and point guard, Emily Cranes, dribbled up the court swiftly and shot a three-pointer. She was given a couple seconds to relax, ensuring the shot.
The buzzer sounded loudly, shaking the gym for a moment, just as the ball went swoosh.
We won! Wahoo!
I got up, dusted off my knees with one hand and ran on the other foot I wasn’t wiping. This didn’t quite work out. I ended up tripping and falling, skinning my left knee. “Mother—” But I quickly stopped myself when I got a disapproving glare from one of the grouchy, good-for-nothing moms that were there to cheer us on. Alright, so maybe they were good for one thing, and that, in this case, was cheering for us, but that was totally beside the point.
I quickly looked down, very tempted to give her the finger, but I resolved against it. Instead I walked over to the huddle and grinned as Coach exclaimed, “Shay that was perfect! I knew I could count on you for that.”
And it was true. I was probably the only person on the team that would have dared to do that without so much as a bit of persuasion.
We stood there talking and laughing for a minute before an exasperated referee blew his whistle angrily and shouted, “Come on, the game is over! You have to shake hands with the other team.”
Whoops. We had completely forgotten about the poor losers!
Hey, these people were our rivals, okay? I would think I was allowed to call them losers, number one, because they just lost, and number two, because I hated them. How many more reasons could you want?
Nevertheless, with only a small frown on my face, I went along with the rest of my teammates to shake hands with the Falcons. As soon as I shook hands with the coach, who trailed behind the players, I ran off.
I was eager to run off so I could change and show off my amazing Halloween costume. I still didn’t consider myself too old to trick or treat; I didn’t think I ever would, actually. This holiday included two of my favorite things: dressing weirdly and getting free candy. How could I pass up the opportunity?
And that was exactly what I did. I dressed in the most amazing costume I could find in the tiny town of Brookville: Bacon.
Yep, that’s right. Bacon!
Although it was no easy feat wiggling on that darned costume. I was glad no one decided they needed to go to the bathroom while I was changing. They would have walked in on me lying on the floor, having a spaz attack and twitching all over the place as I tried to get the costume over my big butt. (Big butts run in my family, alright?)
Luckily, I managed to get it on without breaking any bones, and that, my friends, was a major accomplishment for me.
After making sure I looked absolutely delectable (hello? I was dressed as a food), I strutted out of the bathroom confidently and walked back to the gym to show off my costume. As soon as my teammates saw me, they burst out laughing. Some even fell to the floor, rolling around and laughing. I couldn’t really blame them, though. I laughed at myself when I looked in the mirror.
“You… really weren’t… kidding!” Emily exclaimed between her laughter.
“Nope,” I said, heading out the door with a grin. “See you later, guys!”
Choruses of farewells were heard behind me and some sounds of laughter remained along with the farewells. I flashed a peace sign at them before turning back around. I had considered actually mooned them or something, but considering how much trouble I had putting the costume on, I didn’t think it would be the best idea to do so.
The second I walked outside, I was attacked by my friends.
“Hah!” Maddie laughed. “That was so funny! That distraction was awesome! I got it all on tape! You’ve gotta see it. I’ll show it to you when we get home.”
Maddie was dressed as a pig for Halloween. It went perfectly with my costume, huh?
“Yes!” I cheered happily. “I was hoping someone would tape it!
“Shay, that was awesome!” Jasmine giggled as she skipped towards Maddie and me. “I couldn’t believe it. When you went out there, I was, like, holy cow! It was hilarious!”
Jasmine was dressed as spider woman. Maddie and I tried to convince her to be spider pig, but she wasn’t all too thrilled with the idea. It was expected, though, so we didn’t think much of it. Jasmine was a girly-girl to the extreme. She wanted to look sexy on Halloween, not funny.
Cecilia, my younger sister by two years, was close on Jasmine’s tail, grumbling to herself. I figured I must have embarrassed her. The egg costume I convinced her to wear probably wasn’t helping.
“You are unbelievable,” she groaned when she reached us. “You started barking? Seriously?”
I just grinned and nodded my head. She said it like it was a bad thing.
She shook her head at me. “And here I was, thinking maybe playing basketball would help you be normal.”
I just shrugged my shoulders dismissively. That was probably what everyone who knew me wished—such as my mother— but the ones who really knew me—such as my dad, Maddie and Jasmine—knew that wishing for that was a total waste of time. After all, it would most likely never, ever happen.
“That was just wishful thinking, I guess. I knew there was no way even a normal sport like basketball would help you.”
“Hey!” I was offended. She made me sound like some maniac, which I was not, by the way. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that it’s time to go get some candy!” Maddie interjected before I became too tempted to grab Ceci by the arm and bite her. Sometimes I lacked self-control. I knew that biting people was wrong, but in moments like these that just wasn’t enough to stop me. Candy was the only thing that would have distracted me from my vicious rampage, and luckily—for Ceci—it worked.
“Okay!” I agreed with a happy smile on my face. I really loved candy, if that wasn’t more than obvious by then.
Maddie and Jasmine sighed in relief and shared a look. Soon after, we were on our way. We decided to stop by at Jasmine’s neighborhood first, and we got a boatload of candy. All of us lived in the nice neighborhoods where the people sometimes gave you entire candy bars; I even got a king-sized Snickers bar once. King-sized!
Sure enough, we received a few normal-sized candy bars along with many smaller Halloween-sized candy bars and some assorted candy that I was too lazy to check the names of.
We also received many compliments on our costumes. They said that Jasmine “looked beautiful”, that Ceci “looked delectable”, that Maddie “looked adorable,” and that I “looked… oh, my… you look funny”. I decided to take these as compliments.
We stopped at the last house available in Jasmine’s neighborhood. It was a very nice Victorian style house. It looked like it had come straight out of “Pride and Prejudice”, one of my favorite movies.
“Ooh, I love this house!” Jasmine said in a giddy voice, clapping her hands together with delight.
“Why?” Ceci asked, surveying the house for anything that might make it superior to the rest of the houses. “It’s pretty, I guess.”
“Not because of that, dummy!” Jasmine rolled her eyes. “These totally hot guys live here! I’m talking man-candy!”
“And how is that a good thing?” Ceci inquired incredulously, throwing Jasmine a look.
“How is it not?” I interrupted before Jasmine could speak. “I’ve got two words for you: hot; guys!”
“Yeah,” Ceci agreed sarcastically, “and here we are, dressed as food and animals.”
“I’m not!” Jasmine sang happily. “I look sexy!”
“You want to eat your words?” Maddie threatened, glaring intently at Jasmine.
Jasmine, knowing very well how vicious Maddie could be, backed off immediately. “I mean, oh, no!” she exclaimed nervously. “This is awful!”
I rolled my eyes at her pathetic performance and rang the doorbell anyway.
“Shay!” Maddie screeched, her eyes widening. “What are you doing?”
“Ringing the doorbell,” I replied calmly.
“Why would you do that?” she continued frenetically, looking from me to the front door repeatedly.
“Because we want candy?” It was supposed to be a statement but it came out sounding more like a question. I was confused. Why shouldn’t I have done it? I thought the point of trick or treating was getting treats and to do that, you had to alert the people of your presence. It was simple, really.
Maddie was about to shout something at me—a profanity, I was sure—when the door abruptly swung open. I realized the second that door opened that Jasmine was right; a hot guy did live there. I peeked inside, and to my surprise, I saw that there were more hot guys sprawled on the couch playing video games. I probably should have been nervous, or even embarrassed. I mean, there I was, standing in front of about four hot guys wearing a bacon suit as I trick or treated on Halloween at the age of fifteen. They were all also staring expectantly at me, specifically, since I was in the front.
Instead of mumbling trick or treat sheepishly, I grinned and said, “Whassup, yo?”
The guy who opened the door gave me a weird look; when he looked into my eyes and tried to check me out (I say ‘tried’ because the bacon costume wasn’t exactly form-fitting or sexy. It left everything but my head to the imagination), he smirked. I considered myself pretty, mostly because I had always had my fair share of self-confidence, which in turn leads to a bit of vanity. But this guy had my bullshit-detector shrieking wildly. That wasn’t a good thing.
“What on earth are you supposed to be?” He chuckled as he continued to look me over.
I gave him a duh look. “I’m dressed as bacon, Einstein. What else could I be?”
“I have no idea,” he said, shaking his head.
“If I knew, would I be asking you?” I retorted, rolling my eyes. “No, I wouldn’t, dip-shit.”
I didn’t know what made me act so rude to the guy, having just met him, but the fact that my bullshit-detector was still beeping gave me a pretty good clue.
The guy had short and choppy chocolate brown hair. The hairstyle suited him pretty well, I had to admit. His eyes were a dark, waterfall blue, and I kind of wanted to poke one of them, just to make sure they were real, not contacts. Luckily, I managed to contain myself.
He laughed softly and said, “Wow.”
“Hi,” Jasmine blurted out suddenly.
I just couldn’t help it. I, for some reason, found this hilarious. I didn’t know if it was Jasmine’s sudden outburst, the flirty smiles she was giving him, or the redness of her face, but I just started cracking up, loudly and uncontrollably.
“Oh, my God,” I managed to choke out between laughs. “That—” Guffaw, “Was—” Guffaw, “Hah!” Guffaw.
He gave me a questioning look and soon, all of the guys that were sprawled on the couch inside of the house started laughing as well.
I needed a drink of water or something, anything, badly and there was nothing in my bag but candy, so I did what any other person in my situation would have done: I shoved past the guy in a hurry, still laughing hysterically, and looked for the kitchen in his house. Kitchens always had something to drink.
“Where—” Guffaw, “Is—” Guffaw, “The—” Guffaw, “Kitchen?”
A good looking guy with short brown hair styled in small spikes pointed to my right, and I tripped my way into the kitchen. I glanced around and saw that it was a nice kitchen. Dark, wooden cabinets above my head, a marble countertop with stools on the sides, white, shiny floorboards, and a vanilla aroma filled my senses.
I dashed to the fridge and saw an unopened carton of milk. Without thinking about it even once, I grabbed it, opened it, and chugged half the carton.
“Ah…” I sighed in content, steadying my breathing.
The guy looked at me with an amused yet bewildered expression on his face.
“I guess since I just drank half your milk, you don’t have to give me candy. I’ll just take the rest of the milk. Do you have any Nesquik?”
He shook his head slowly, looking like he was torn between amusement, surprise and fear.
“No? Alrighty then. Well, this has been nice, but I gotta go now. Bye!”
And with that, I scurried out of his kitchen, out of his house, and I hoped out of his life.
***
“Hey!” I screamed, knocking furiously at Maddie’s rude neighbor’s door. We were just finishing up in Maddie’s neighborhood—which was right by my neighborhood—but we were having a bit of an issue with the person that lived in the last house. We saw the man peek out of his window so we knew that he had seen us, but he refused to open the door. How rude was that?
“Open this door!” Maddie joined in, screaming even louder than I had.
“You two are psychotic.” Jasmine shook her head, most likely wishing she didn’t know us at that moment. Lights were beginning to turn on around us as the man’s neighbors came outside briefly to see what was happening. They were all staring, but Maddie and I didn’t care, unlike Jasmine and Ceci. We just wanted the guy to be fair and give us what we came for: candy.
“We want candy!” Maddie and I shrieked simultaneously. I was knocking furiously at his door while Maddie was ringing his doorbell like a madwoman. I had figured out long ago that teamwork was the best method.
The door suddenly swung open, startling the both of us.
“Here!” the man yelled, shoving two entire bags of those itty-bitty chocolates into our bags.
“Thank you!” we chorused sweetly.
He muttered something incoherently that I didn’t follow. From the expression he wore, I didn’t think he was saying, “What nice kids! I should have given them some more candy.” I was sure it was something a little darker than that.
I looked down at my bag as we were walking away from the house and realized that if I put more candy in it, it was going to burst. Though that would be cool, I didn’t want nasty little buggers stealing all my hard earned candy. We had probably walked about a mile that night, and it was right after a basketball game for me, too. No wonder I felt so tired.
“I’m dead,” Maddie groaned. “We’ve probably been out here for five hours now. I don’t think anyone else is going to open up anymore. Apparently, it’s too late or something.”
“I know!” I agreed. “Stupid old people. Can’t they stay up a little later? Don’t they care about us and our need for candy?”
“Let’s just go home,” Ceci suggested. “I’m pooped.”
“Okay.” Jasmine nodded her head in concurrence. “We’re heading to your house, Shay, right?”
“Yep. Sleepover time!”
“Good,” Jasmine said as we walked to my house. It wasn’t very far away since Maddie and I lived so close by. “You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do, missy.”
“About what?”
“Oh, you know what!” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at me.
Did she mean the thing with the hot guy, the laughing, the milk and the Nesquik?
“Oh…”
“Mmm-hmm,” she murmured, giving me the evil eye.
I gave her a small smile. “Sorry?”
“Oh, we haven’t even started yet. Now walk!”
I frowned, but walked on nevertheless. I didn’t think this was the best time to patronize her. I still didn’t see the badness in what I did, though. Then again, I wouldn’t, now would I? Because apparently, I saw things differently. And now I knew that according to others, it wasn’t necessarily good most of the time.
I guess barging into a cute guy’s house and stealing his milk wasn’t classified as “casual” or “ordinary” these days.
Who knew?
Chapter 2
“I’ll trade you one Snickers for a Twix,” Maddie stated as she threw the candy into the pile in the middle of my room that was rapidly growing.
I glanced at my cards and smiled secretly. With my cards, there was no way I was going to lose! Hehe, suckers. They wouldn’t even see it coming.
“Deal,” I replied immediately. Snickers were my favorite candy because they are absolutely the best candy in the whole world. And if anyone dared say otherwise, I would…. I would have Santa Claus come rape them in their sleep! Yeah, they wouldn’t dare disagree with me after that. I could be pretty darn intimidating—if I do say so myself.
Maddie and I exchanged the candy and examined the separate piles of candy we each had laying in front of us.
“Hey, how did you two get so much candy?” Ceci whined, glancing back and forth between Maddie’s pile and my pile. “I barely filled half of my bag!”
“Um...” I paused for a moment, trying to come up with a somewhat reasonable excuse. “Persuasion…”
In reality, Maddie and I attacked two unsuspecting eight-year-olds from behind and stole all of their candy. I had to give the two idiots some props, though—they did get us a lot of candy!
Ceci raised an eyebrow at me and stared me down.
“Stop looking at me!” I cried out after a few moments had passed, covering my face.
“How in the heck are you the older one?”
I just shrugged my shoulders. I honestly had no clue. And why would I? I wasn’t some genetics expert.
“Older siblings are supposed to be mature,” she continued, and then added after a moment of thought, “or at least more mature than you are!”
As annoyed as I was at that moment, I had to admit, the kid had a point. Ceci was thirteen, so she was the little sister, yet she had and always would be ten times more mature than me. I was not sure if all the pointless crap she did made her more mature or just plain nerdy.
She made these lists for everything. And I mean everything.
Things to do today!
Chores!
Homework schedule!
The Top 10 Reasons Why I’m a total freak!
Okay, so I came up with that last one, but still.
“I am me,” I stated stubbornly.
Ceci just rolled her eyes in reply.
“I’m bored,” Jasmine suddenly complained, scaring the crap out of me. She was being so quiet; I had actually forgotten she was sitting there. I know, I know, not nice. Oh, well. It wasn’t my fault my memory and my attention span were terrible. “Watching you guys exchange candy is no fun. Let’s go to the mall!”
“Okay, then let’s get cracking!” I agreed, heading towards my door. I opened it, and out came an avalanche of clothes and other unmentionables.
Oops. I guess this is the closet door…
It was an honest mistake, alright?
“Eeep!” I shrieked, trying to take cover, but failing miserably. The clothes fell on me, knocking me to the ground. I landed with a painful crunch. “Shit!”
Jasmine, Maddie, and Ceci rushed over immediately, worried expressions on their faces.
“Oh, my God, are you okay?” Jasmine asked me, putting a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter.
“Just peachy,” I grumbled, trying to push enough clothes off of me so I would at least be able to move. Unfortunately, just like I had failed in my attempt to take cover, I also failed miserable in my attempt to salvage the situation and push the clothes off of me.
“Here, grab my hand!” Jasmine instructed, extending her hand in order to help pull me up.
I grabbed her hand, and Maddie got behind her, resting her hands on Jasmine’s waist.
“Okay, now Jasmine, pull!” Maddie ordered loudly as Ceci rolled around, laughing from how ridiculous this situation was. Of course it would happen to me. This kind of thing didn’t happen to anyone! What was wrong with me?
Jasmine and Maddie both pulled and pulled, until finally, the clothes released me from its hold. The only flaw in their plan was that I had nowhere to fall as I stumbled forward but on them. Luckily for me, their big butts cushioned my fall.
“Ouch,” they chorused with a groan. When they realized I was still sitting on them, they shoved me off.
I just started laughing alongside Ceci. Now that my clothes no longer had me in their power, I could appreciate the humorous side of this little ordeal.
Maddie and Jasmine scowled at us.
“I think you should clean your closet more often,” Ceci said between her laughter.
“I think so, too,” I replied, wiping a tear from my eye when I had finally calmed down enough to speak coherently. “I usually just stuff everything in there when Mom tells me to clean my room.”
Ceci rolled her eyes. “That’s probably why your closet nearly killed you. Wow, that would be a funny thing to put on a death certificate. Death by Closet!” She giggled at the thought of it.
See? And she had the nerve to call me weird.
“Okay, let’s go!” Jasmine quickly said, running out the door with Maddie on her heel. Ceci and I just looked at each other and shrugged, following them. It was only when we were already in Jasmine’s car that I realized something: we never finished our game of candy poker. I was going to win and they probably knew that. Grrr. They totally planned that.
***
“Hmm... How would this look?” Jasmine asked, holding up this insanely pink, puffy dress against her slender figure. Jasmine was actually very pretty. It was just her fashion style that wasn’t. That might have been the reason she was still single. She thought dressing like a princess on a daily basis was okay.
“Um, Jas, Halloween is over. Are you stocking up for next year or what?” I joked, knowing perfectly well that she wasn’t. After all she was your typical girly-girl, big time: she loved all things poofy, pink and frilly. It was actually kind of creepy, in my opinion.
Jasmine frowned and turned her head with a loud ‘humph’. “Well, how rude! This dress is adorable! I have got to have it!”
“You already have, like, a thousand dollars in credit card debt.” Maddie rolled her eyes. “Your parents will have your head on a stake if you spend any more.”
“That’s not true,” Jasmine immediately protested. “It’s only nine-hundred fifty.”Ceci rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because nine-hundred fifty is so much better.”
“It is!” she exclaimed, still holding the pink dress.
I rolled my eyes. “Sure...
“I don’t know about you guys, but I am starving!” Maddie exclaimed, rubbing her belly for effect. “I say we go to the café.”
“I’m hungry, too. I’m going with you!” Ceci raised up her hand, voting in favor of Maddie’s idea.
“I’m with you two,” Jasmine agreed, reluctantly putting the dress back. She looked at it longingly, but managed to contain herself and turned back to face us.
We just sort of stood there, for some odd reason. A few seconds passed, and Jasmine snapped, “Well, are we going or not?” while tapping her foot impatiently. Maddie, Ceci and I snapped out of whatever trance we were in and raised our hands up in defense. “We’re going, we’re going!”
“Pushy…” I muttered under my breath a couple seconds later as we walked out of the store, shaking my head.
“I heard that!” Jasmine growled, poking me in the side.
“It was Maddie,” I quickly accused, pointing to Maddie and quickening my pace.
“Hey!” Maddie protested, quickening her own pace to catch up with me.
I just shrugged my shoulders. Well, someone had to be blamed! And it wasn’t going to be me.
That was when I saw him. With his shaggy blonde hair, his cute, dimpled smile, his defined biceps, and his… gay clothes? The boy was good looking, definitely. But, he looked so…gay. My bullshit-detector was flying off the charts. That wasn’t a good sign.
“Ooh. Shay sees something she likes!” Jasmine joked, obviously thinking the opposite. She probably couldn’t see through the gay clothes, and I didn’t blame her. I was having trouble doing it, too. He just looked so… gay.
“Him?” Maddie scrunched up her nose. “He looks gay.”
“He doesn’t look that gay…” I said, trying to defend him, but my defense fell flat because honestly, I was only lying to myself. Well, no, that was a lie. I was lying to everyone by saying that, including myself. “Okay, fine. He looks like a homo.”
He glanced over at us, and made eye contact with me. He smiled widely at me; I just raised an eyebrow.
If he hadn’t appeared to be gay, I might have made an effort to flirt with him. Yes, that was how desperate I was.
He continued smiling at me, and I just stared at him with a blank expression. Was he flirting with me? Or was I just imagining things?
He smiled at me again, and this time, I was sure he was flirting with me. He began walking towards me, and I instinctively looked behind me. I had been half-hoping there would be some pretty and skinny blonde bimbo with big boobs behind me. That would have meant he wasn’t flirting with me. Sure, I would feel stupid for thinking that he had been, but it was worth it. There was no blonde behind me, however. I didn’t know why I even wanted there to be one. I should have been happy, right? He was good looking, after all, and he had singled me out.
He stopped right in front of me and looked at me expectantly.
“Sup?” Maddie greeted after a few seconds of silence, throwing him her gangster-nod. I snickered to myself and shook my head. I remembered the day Maddie and I had walked around a bad neighborhood, giving random gangster guys the gangster-nod. It was fun until one of them took this as an insult and started chasing us with a pocketknife in his hand. That part definitely wasn’t fun.
“Hi.” Jasmine looked down, trying not to laugh, I supposed. His clothes had pink in them. It wasn’t a tiny amount, either. It was a very noticeable amount. Normally, Jasmine would have loved this, if he had been a girl. But on this guy? It was just wrong.
“Foshizzle,” I said finally, also giving him the gangster-nod. He was still looking at me expectantly, so I had to say something. I didn’t want to seem rude, either. Foshizzle was the first thing that came to mind that wouldn’t make it seem as if I was trying to flirt with him. Also, it had the tendency to scare guys off. I didn’t know why. I guess they just could never handle my level of awesomeness. Or maybe they were just jealous.
He looked at me oddly and I just shrugged. It’s working! I cheered inside my head. Who cares if he thinks I’m weird? It’s working!
You can probably imagine my surprise when instead of walking away, or perhaps running away, the guy nervously said, “Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow? I-I noticed you from over there and finally got up the courage to come over here.”
When I just sort of stood there, slightly appalled, he added, “So will you?”
Me? Seriously?
Wow. Just, wow. I mean, he was cute and all, but he just looked so… gay. Why couldn’t it be some other cute guy that didn’t look like he swung the other way? This sort of opportunity probably wouldn’t arise anytime soon. And if he was asking me out, he couldn’t be gay, right?
“Sure,” I finally said, but that was only after Maddie elbowed me in the gut, not-so-discreetly. “Ouch…” I muttered five seconds after Maddie had hit me. For some reason, it took a little bit for the pain to sink in for me…
He smiled a breathtaking smile, but because of the gay clothes and the continuous beeping of my bullshit detector, I didn’t really notice.
“Great!” he handed me his phone.
I stood there, furrowing my eyebrows out of confusion.
Maddie elbowed me again and hissed, “Your phone!”
“Oh!” I handed him my phone and took his. I punched in my data and handed it back. He gave me mine back and said, “See you tomorrow, then.” He smiled again, but I was too busy looking for his contact data to really notice.
He walked off, looking slightly disappointed.
“His name is… Westley,” I said, still looking at my phone’s screen. Westley? Come on! Did everything about him have to be gay? Why couldn’t he have a manly name like Lance or something? Why?
Jasmine giggled, prodding me in the ribs. “Someone’s got herself a date for Sunday night!”
I forced a smile; I
didn’t even try to make it look convincing. “Yay.”
Ceci
frowned, looking at me curiously. “You’re not happy?”
“Well… eh.”
“How come?” Maddie inquired, also looking at me with a curious expression on her face. “You always said that you didn’t care who you dated, as long as he was cute, and, you know, a living creature you could call a boyfriend.”
“That’s true, I guess,” I agreed, pondering what she had just said.
“Then what’s wrong?” Ceci asked.
“It’s just… I would have liked if my first real date would have been a little… less… gay-looking.”
They all laughed at this.
“Oh, come on. Beggars can’t be choosers!” Ceci sang obnoxiously.
“But why can’t he be straight?”
“If he asked you out, he’s obviously straight,” Jasmine said, rolling her eyes. “He just has gay tendencies.”
“I guess I can give him a shot… just because I need a boyfriend, desperately.”
“You don’t need one,” Maddie pointed out. “We’re perfectly content without one for now.”
“Yeah, but both of you have had one, a real one, at one point or another, and Ceci is thirteen, so she doesn’t count!”
“Well then,” Ceci grumbled.
We all laughed at the expression on Ceci’s face and headed to Rick’s Café. It was out in the open, right smack in the middle of the mall, and it had these funky booths. No chairs, please. Booth me!
“Okay, let’s see who has to go order,” I announced, and then quickly added, “Not me!”
“Not me!” Ceci shouted quickly.
Maddie followed with, “No way in hell will it be me! Not me!” This caused many people to look at us for a moment.
“Ah, darn it!” Jasmine cursed, stamping her heeled foot. “Why am I so freaking slow?”
More people stared at us, some shaking their heads in disapproval and some snickering out of amusement. Did this really have to happen every single time we went out somewhere? Geez.
“People are staring…” Ceci whispered, glancing over at the people next to us.
We just shrugged our shoulders. We didn’t care about that kind of thing anymore. At first, we sort of did, but after a while, we learned to accept the fact that because we would never be normal, people would never stop staring when we did something that wasn’t considered normal in public.
While Maddie grudgingly went to go order, Ceci, Jasmine and I slid into the only pink booth. This was Jasmine’s choice, of course.
“So what are you going to wear for your date?” Jasmine asked as she stared at her newly-manicured fingers, which were clear with pink on the top.
“I don’t know. He just asked me five minutes ago.”
“So?” Jasmine inquired, looking up and shaking her head at me. “That doesn’t mean you can’t start thinking about what to wear. A first impression is very important.”
“Wasn’t the first impression when he asked me out, and first met me?”
“Shut up!” she exclaimed. “Don’t ruin this for me!”
“Quit fighting, at least until the people stop staring,” Ceci told us, rolling her eyes.
“Why are they still
staring?” I asked impatiently, wondering what would happen if I
gave all of them the finger. “We aren’t even shouting
anymore.”
“No, but you two are fighting, which gives them
something to stare at.”
“Whatever,” Jasmine and I grumbled simultaneously.
It only took Maddie half a freaking hour, but finally, she brought us our food.
“What took you so long, you slowpoke?” I demanded as I immediately dug in to what Maddie brought: Pizza and burgers. Very original.
She scowled at me. “The line was long! And I didn’t see you getting up and doing anything!”
“A flying hippie came and broke both my legs,” I lied impulsively. Wow. I really needed to work on my excuses. That one was absolutely terrible.
She looked like she was trying to remain angry, but she couldn’t help herself: she burst out laughing. Her laughter (which included the occasional snort) was extremely contagious, so, naturally, the rest of us started laughing, too.
Then, I heard my jam being played on the radio in the café, so naturally, I sung along. Jasmine, Maddie and Ceci also knew the song, so they also began singing along.
I heard some sort of muffled shouting, but ignored it and continued jamming out. “Ladies!” I heard it say. At least, I thought it did. I couldn’t really tell.
The song we were singing was a bit vulgar, and since we were belting out the lyrics as if our lives depended on it—yes, even Ceci!—we were receiving many stares. The music suddenly stopped and a security guard came up to us and said, “Young ladies, please, stop singing! You are disrupting the peace in this environment! Now I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Our mouths all dropped open in surprise.
“We weren’t even singing that loud,” I protested angrily, “and this is a free country, mister!”
“Miss—”
“Miss Barron,” I corrected, narrowing my eyes at him.
He sighed in exasperation. “Okay, Miss Barron, you and your little friends must leave. I am in charge of keeping order here, and you are disrupting it.” He gave me the evil eye. “Now please, don’t make this harder than it has to be. Don’t make more of a scene out of this, and please exit the Café.”
“Geez, I knew senior citizens were crabby, but I didn’t realize they were this crabby!” I grunted as I started shoving my food into my bag.
“Leave now,” he ordered, and man, did he look pissed.
“Fine, fine, fine, be that way, geezer!” Maddie huffed indignantly. “We were leaving anyways.”
We gathered all of our things—food included, of course—and left the Café, grumbling profanities to ourselves. People still stared at us, however, even after we left.
“What an ass,” Jasmine said as soon as we were out of earshot. We sat down on a bench near the Café that was far enough to satisfy the security guard. That way, all he could do was give us the evil eye.
I guess Jasmine didn’t want anyone to hear her insult the guy, because she cared more about her image than Maddie and I did. Well, someone had to if we were going to keep at least a little bit of our reputation.
“I know right?” Maddie agreed, making a face at the security guard when he looked over at us.
“You guys are so embarrassing!” Ceci whined, hiding her face with her hands. “I can’t believe you guys did that!”
“I didn’t,” Jasmine pointed out. “They did,”
Maddie and I glared at her and muttered, “Gee, thanks, Jas.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ceci interrupted before any of us could say anything. “The point is you guys did it!”
“He started it!” I grumbled immediately.
“Yeah, the other person is always at fault.” Ceci rolled her eyes.
“Yes, they almost always are.” I nodded my head erratically. “Wait, what am I saying? They always are!”
Ceci rolled her eyes again and sighed.
After a couple of minutes of just sitting around and grumbling to myself as Jasmine and Maddie talked, Maddie interrupted Jasmine and said, “Look at that piece of man candy!”
Jasmine looked over and gasped. “Hello, Papi…”
I rolled my eyes. “You guys are so… whoa!”
Yes, okay, I looked over. I looked over and had to close my mouth to keep from drooling.
“See?” Maddie grinned triumphantly. “You were about to insult us. Then you looked at him.”
I shook my head. “Well, that boy is fi-ine.”
“But where have I seen him before?” Jasmine asked, cocking her head to the side and studying him.
“I dunno…” I shrugged, also studying him. And then it hit me. I suddenly recognized the dark brown hair, styled in a short and choppy way. It was so obvious. How had I not realized it immediately? “Oh, my God!”
“Look away!” Ceci hissed in warning. “They saw you guys!”
“Who is that?” Maddie asked, still staring at him.
“It’s Milk Guy…” I whispered, desperately trying to figure out how to get out of this one. I couldn’t let him see me. What could I do, though? Run? Hide? Hire a gangster to take care of him? All of the above?
“Oh, my God,” Jasmine squeaked, her eyes widening until they were the size of small orbs. “It is Milk Guy!”
The four of us looked at each other with wide eyes.
“Ooh, look at his friend!” Maddie giggled, being the first to snap out of it.
The guy that was with Milk-Guy had jet-black hair that was spiked only in the front, and dazzling green eyes that you could see from a mile away. It was no wonder he caught Maddie’s eye. He was hot. But he was officially off limits. He was free for Maddie to drool over and conquer.
“He’s hot, too,” I agreed, nodding my head, “but he’s all yours, Maddie.”
She grinned, obviously liking the sound of that.
“Stop staring!” Ceci snapped irritably. “They see you!”
“I still like Shay’s brother,” Jasmine added after a second, completely ignoring Ceci.
I rolled my eyes. Jasmine was in love with my brother, Damien. It was beyond creepy. He didn’t know of her feelings for him, and she didn’t want him to know because of his girlfriend. Unfortunately for Jasmine, Bianca wasn’t ugly and didn’t have any seriously annoying habits. She was the nicest person I knew, and also she and Damien had been going out since they were in middle school. It wasn’t looking good for Jasmine. When I turned back to look at the guys again, they was closer than they were before.
“You like what you see?” Milk-Guy called out to me, smirking confidently.
Crap. Shay, think fast!
“I wouldn’t know, considering you’re standing in front of it!” I yelled back.
Luck was on my side, because when he turned around, it was a girly-looking boutique he saw.
So my excuse had miraculously worked!
He chuckled, raising both hands in surrender. “Sorry.”
I walked by him with Maddie, Jasmine, and Ceci on my tail and coolly said, “It’s okay. Just move.”
Almost there, almost there, almost there, come on, come on, come on…
He moved aside and chuckled again.
What is so funny?
I flattened out all of my curiosity and kept on walking, desperate to get away from him. That had been way too close. He could have recognized me! Then, I would have been in some deep water.
“Wait a minute,” he called out suddenly.
Darn it!
I stopped walking, refusing to look back. “Eh?”
“Where have I seen you?”
“In your dreams?” I joked, trying to veer of the subject. I really didn’t want him to recognize me. I had acted insane the day before. How was I supposed to explain my behavior?
He laughed but didn’t let it go. “No, I’m serious. Hey, look at me.”
“No!”
I could hear the roll of his eyes in his tone. “Come on, just look at me.”
I rolled my own hazel eyes. “Yeah, well, I already said no.”
He obviously didn’t know what the meaning of ‘no’ was, since he reached out and grabbed my arm. Effortlessly, he turned me so I was facing him. I was also extremely close to him, much too close for comfort.
I shrugged out of his grip and took a few steps back. “Okay, then,” I began, laughing nervously, “well—”
“Hey, guys, where have I seen her?” Milk-Guy continued, rudely interrupting me. “Doesn’t she seem familiar to you guys, too?”
“Hello?” I asked, frowning over at them. Was I suddenly invisible or something? “I’m standing right here!”
The bunch of potato heads had the nerve to ignore me.
Well then.
“She does look familiar,” Maddie’s Crush said, nodding in agreement. “I just don’t remember where from… Hmmm… Hey, guys, this is like a mystery! We’re like Blues Clues!”
Milk-Guy gave him a weird look and shook his head, muttering something unintelligible under his breath.
“Have you, like, banged her, or something, Forrest?” the other guy, the one that was with Milk-Guy and Maddie’s Crush both times I had seen them and was usually quiet, asked.
I was mortified by that comment. How dare he suggest that! Like hell I would ever sleep with Milk-Guy. That was just wrong. “Okay, bucko, I’m stopping your train of thought there!” I told him angrily. “I can assure you that that is not it.”
“Then what is it?” Milk-Guy asked, although I knew I should probably stop calling him that because I had just realized his name was Forrest.
“Oh, I know!” Maddie’s Crush exclaimed and I froze, my eyes widening. “Her and her friends were the ones who got kicked out of the Café for singing too loud! Yep, I’m a genius!”
Oh, thank God for that idiot.
“No, that isn’t it,” Forrest insisted, rolling his eyes. He was clearly thinking the same thing I was. “I don’t think so, at least.”
Darn it!
“Oh, for God’s sake, if you’re just going to stand here, spewing out ideas, I’m leaving!” I said, thankful for the fact that they were all retarded. Seriously. I may not have been Einstein, but at least my IQ could be compared to something better than a Cheez-It.
“Don’t forget your milk!” Jasmine blurted out in a sing-song voice.
My eyes widened I stepped on her foot. What was she doing? What was wrong with her?
“And your Nesquik!” she choked out, out of pure spite, I was sure. Maybe I shouldn’t have stomped on her toe… But she was wearing boots! I was sure she was covered.
Realizations spread across Forrest’s features. “Oh, my God,” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “You’re that girl who showed up at my house last night and stole all of my milk!”
I sighed in defeat. I had been discovered. “Alright, fine, that was me.”
He laughed again, and his friends joined in, convulsing with laughter.
“That was hilarious!” Maddie’s Crush said with a grin. “Hah!”
“Actually, it was so hilarious, that I’m granting you a privilege,” Forrest told me, grinning widely at me. “We’ll introduce ourselves to you.”
I rolled my eyes. “No need, butt-muncher.” I knew I was being rude, but come on. There was a reason my bullshit detector was still blaring wildly, after all.
He chuckled and shook his head. “Wow.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head again, this time giving me an innocent look.
“What?” I demanded. I didn’t like it when people said something and then wouldn’t explain what they meant by it. That was just rude, in my opinion. And it was very irritating.
“Nothing,” Forrest insisted, shrugging casually.
“Dang it, tell me!”
He laughed, and finally succumbed. “It’s just that you’re the first girl to ever react like that around us is all. They’re usually all over us or they’re really nervous.”
“I have my friends with me,” I pointed out.
“Well, yeah,” Forrest agreed, nodding his head, “but they’re not saying anything. You’re the one… charming us.”
I rolled my eyes. “The problem is that you guys are flattering yourselves too much. There are girls out there that aren’t going to fall all over you. Like me, for instance. I would sooner eat nails or cut off my own foot before I acted like those kind of girls.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So you’re telling me you feel nothing right now? Nothing at all?”
I pondered this for a moment. “Hmm. Well, I think you’re kinda hot, but other than that, no.”
Forrest smirked widely. I shouldn’t have said that. I had just fed his already enormous ego. “Oh, really? You think I’m hot?”
I shrugged dismissively. “Well, yeah, but from this conversation, I gotta say, your personality isn’t so hot. You might want to work on that.”
“If I do, will you feel something for me then?”
I snickered, rolling my eyes. He was actually kind of funny at times. The idea that I, Shay Barron, would go for a guy like Forrest was preposterous. Actually, the idea that a guy like Forrest would go for a girl like me was also preposterous. He looked like the kind of guy that went out with perfect, skinny blonde girls with big boobs, like Serena Magnus. “Pfft, fat chance. I don’t go for butt-munchers.”
Jasmine, Ceci and Maddie finally exploded in laughter. They must have been holding it in because they couldn’t stop laughing.
Forrest and his friends also started laughing.
“Okay, well, as fun as this has been, I gotta go now.”
“What, you’re not going to steal something from me?” Forrest asked me with a chuckle.
I scanned him for a moment, before reaching out behind him. I fished his wallet out from the back pocket of his low-rise Levi’s. (I may or may not have touched his butt in the process. I may or may not have liked it.) I looked inside and saw that there was a couple of credit cards, gift cards, a band-aid (what the heck?), a condom, (typical) and some loose dollar bills. I grabbed a twenty and a loose dollar bill, in case I wanted to buy some candy or something.
He just stared at me with a bewildered expression on his face, yet he somehow looked as if this whole thing amused him greatly. Then, remembering my skinned knee from last night, I decided to grab the band-aid, as well. I handed the wallet back to him wordlessly and stuffed the money in the back of my jeans. Kneeling down, I rolled my jeans up slightly, ditching the wrapper from the band-aid and finally sticking the band-aid onto my skinned knee.
“Wow, she’s on her knees already,” Forrest said to his friends, laughing obnoxiously.
I scrunched up my nose in disgust. “Um, ew. As if. Besides, my mom told me never to put small things in my mouth, so in your dreams, butt-muncher.”
I got up and rolled my jeans back down and saw that Forrest’s cheeks had gone a dark shade of pink. His friends cracked up at my comment, obviously liking it a whole lot more than Forrest had.
I snickered to myself and then asked, “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have any Neosporin, would you?”
Forrest slowly shook his head.
“No? Alrighty, then, see ya.”
And with that, I was on my way.
God, what was wrong with me? I had managed to scare Forrest both times I had talked to him.
Now that, my friends, was a true accomplishment.
Chapter 3
After we walked away from Forrest and his friends, Jasmine suddenly remembered that I still owed her an explanation.
“An explanation?” I echoed, struggling to remember what I could have done that had made her mad.
“Yeah, an explanation,” Jasmine repeated, giving me a hard look. “You know, over the whole trespassing and milk stealing thing from last night.”
Because of this explanation that I apparently owed Jasmine, our trip to the mall had been cut short. I soon found myself sulking as I sat on my neon green comforter as Jasmine started interrogating me, with backup from Ceci, the traitor. “What on earth were you thinking?”
I shrugged. “Which time are we talking about, again?”
Honestly, there were so many different occasions that she could have been interrogating me for that I felt the need to ask. I didn’t want to accidentally confess to something I was already in the clear for, after all.
“Oh, gee, I dunno,” she said sarcastically. “Maybe it was the time where you rang my hot neighbors’ doorbell while we were all dressed in our Halloween costumes, trick or treating like a bunch of five-year-olds. And that was after we told you not to! You greeted the hottest one of all with, ‘Whassup, yo?’ and laughed at me when I flirted, making it totally obvious that I was into him. You started laughing so insanely that you couldn’t talk, and when you did talk, it sounded retarded, so you stormed into his house, stole his milk, chugged half of it, and when he wanted an explanation for your crazy behavior, you asked him if he had any Nesquik, then left, leaving the three of us to cover for your crazy-ass!”