The Fear

I was starting to get nervous. My name was about to get called to ask myself a question, then answer it in French. It wasn’t the French speaking part I was nervous about—it was my answer. The question was if I’d ever gone out (as in physically been out with) a celebrity. The truth was—I had. But I was embarrassed to say whom.

“Spencer,” my teacher said, placing his card at the bottom of her pile. I was after Spencer. All too soon, he was asking himself a question then answering it accordingly.

“Erica,” she suddenly called. I read the question out loud, staring at my book as I did so, “As-tu sorti avec une célébrité?” Pausing, I prepared myself for the looks and questions I hated so much, “Oui,” I said, “Je suis sorti avec une célébrité.” I wasn’t going to lie.

Ali, who was one of my best friends, met my eyes and smirked. She was one of the people who had introduced me to Nick, but they no longer kept in touch—at least, not as often as he and I did.

“Ah bon?” my teacher asked in disbelief—I didn’t blame her, “Avec qui?”

“Nick Jonas,” I replied.

She raised her eyebrows, “Sortir,” she stressed, “To go out with. Not voir, to see.”

I shook my head, “No, I—”

“En français, s’il vous plaît,” she interrupted, smiling.

“Je suis sorti avec Nick Jonas,” I said quickly, “Il est mon meilleur ami.” It was true—Nick Jonas was my best friend. But nobody needed to know that because, to me, he was just Nick.

“Erica, are you really?” a girl asked me. She seemed amused. She had been asked the question of meeting a celebrity—she said the Jonas Brothers. However, I’d sat next to her before and her taste in music had significantly matured.

All eyes were on me and I nodded, “Yeah.”

There was chatter around the room before the teacher barked, “Silence, s’il vous plait.” When the room quieted, she said, “You can talk about it after the bell.” It was five minutes to the bell.

She moved on to the next person, who was asked if they’d ever been to Egypt, and I let out a sigh of relief. That went better than expected.

☊☋☊☋

It was cold and windy when I got outside—the fall break had officially started, and we had the next week off for Thanksgiving. I checked my phone as I walked quickly across campus. My only message was a Twitter update—Nick letting everyone know how much he enjoyed the holiday drinks at Starbucks. My lips folded inward, annoyed. When Nick came back from London, he and I picked everything up again, despite the fact that he was on tour. But now that Nick had finished tour and returned home, I hadn’t heard from him in a week. He claimed to be busy, and gave me too many excuses to keep track of. It felt like I would never be able to talk with him.

“Hey, Ali,” I said, catching her attention. She turned around, stopping so I could walk with her, “Wanna come over Friday?”

Her pleated varsity cheerleading skirt blew awkwardly around. She gave me an odd expression, “Today?”

“No, next Friday,” I clarified, “The day after Thanksgiving. We’re having a party.” We had an annual day-after-Thanksgiving party every year—where all of our family friends had dinner and drinks together and all of my childhood friends were under the same roof again.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. She laughed awkwardly, “Will said he wanted to show up drunk and meet your dad.”

I smiled, raising my eyebrows. Will was Ali’s boyfriend—I actually couldn’t stand them together, but she didn’t know that. Will and my dad were a lot alike and wanted to meet each other, but the drunken state thing was pushing it. “Cute,” I remarked dryly.

The thing with Will was that he had like me, Ali, and Ellen at the same time. He had originally told just me and our mutual male friends, then went out and started dating Ali, who has no idea that he’d felt that way. I wasn’t jealous of them—I couldn’t ever date Will—but he had given me the “I want to be friends, and I don’t want to make it awkward if we break up” speech which really did wonders for my self-image. He and Ellen wouldn’t have worked out, because—well, because Ellen had come out of the closet to me a few months prior. But she was an entirely different story. And then Nick and Ali had liked each other before, and the whole thing was just a mess.

“I invited Nick,” I said, “I haven’t heard back… he probably won’t show though.”

“Probably not,” she said. She knew Nick was kind of ignoring me, and it bothered her quite a bit—when he had made his move to Texas, he basically cut all ties except me in a matter of months. “Do you need a ride?” Ali asked when she realized we were close to a split in direction.

I shook my head, crossing my arms and retaining what little heat my hoodie held. “No, my mom should be here.”

“Alright,” she said, starting to walk towards her own car, “Bye.”

“Bye,” I called, “I’ll text you.”

☊☋☊☋

When I got home, I shut myself in my room. The house was cold, seeing as my dad didn’t feel the need to turn on the furnace yet, my room being no exception. I towered over a paint-splattered mat, hair up, tattered clothes, paint and brush in hand. I’d been especially inspired lately, but had a mental block when it actually came out. This time, I was going to paint no matter how terribly it came out.

I gazed out my window, able to see the image of Nick standing before me like he had months earlier. He spoke, his lips moving awkwardly as he gave me a hard smile, “I’m going to miss you, Erica,” he’d said.

My eyes flickered to the blank canvas, “I miss you too, Nicky,” I whispered. “Don’t forget about me.”