Cheerio

“Here,” I announced, throwing the folder down on Mr. Schuester’s desk. Everything on the top rattled, and he reached as a reflex to the picture frame. “Finished.”

Mr. Schuester picked up the first worksheet and stared at it for a second. Then, he squinted, as if he was trying to read it better. “…Evelyn, what is this?”

“They’re the worksheets you told me to do.” Damn, someone had a short-term memory problem.

“I know that much.” In a second, he was pissed. He threw the paper back into the folder and slapped his hand over the top to close it. “Is this a joke to you?”

“What are you talking about?” I crossed my arms in front of my chest, officially going into defensive mode.

“Hm? What am I talking about?” he yelled. He pulled out the piece of paper that he had just been skimming. “‘What is the capital of Spain?’ And you put shoes! And then, ‘Where is one place where Spanish people like to spend their time?’ You put in the jungle with the cockatoos.”

“What? They don’t have, like, rainforests in Spain?”

“No!” Mr. Schuester calmed himself down, rubbing his temples for a second. “Did you even put a shred of effort into this? You didn’t bother to look through your book for these answers?”

“Hey, you didn’t say the answers had to be right. You just said I had to get them done. And they’re done.”

“This is not done, Evelyn. This is bull-” He stopped himself just in time before opening the folder again, flipping through the papers. His face grew even stormier as he realized that not a single answer was right on any of the papers.

Granted, not all of those wrong answers were my problem. I asked Brittany for a couple of them, and she was pretty helpful. Or, at least, I thought she had been.

“Evelyn, this doesn’t count. I’m giving you a failing grade.”

My mind shot to Santana, Quinn, and Brittany, how they managed to juggle their social status and Glee Club. And somehow manage to earn a grade in Spanish the old-fashioned way.

“FINE!” I shouted, throwing my hands up in surrender. “I’ll join the dumb Glee Club if it’ll give me a C.”

“Practices are on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school, but we’re rehearsing every day next week to get ready for Sectionals,” Mr. Schuester responded gruffly.

I took that as a dismissal and stormed out of the room dramatically. As I said before: Total. Asshole.

* * *

I looked at my knee-length, light blue dress in the mirror one more time, just to make sure that it really did fit as well as I thought it did. When I told Perry Mitchell that he was bringing me, he seemed pretty happy about it. Not that I blamed him, obviously. His status would get a major boost by it. Hopefully, if I pretended like I actually really liked the guy and kept my persona radiating confidence, people wouldn’t knock me down on the social ladder.

Mom walked into my room without knocking. Her dark brown hair was pin-straight down her back, her light green eyes twinkling with excitement. “Oh, Evie…you look beautiful, honey.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I smiled before picking up my curling iron to fix one stray hair that was going the wrong way.

“When is Peter coming to pick you up?”

“Perry,” I reminded her. “Don’t mess that up when he gets here. That’ll be super embarrassing.”

“Sorry. Perry,” she repeated. I gave her an eye-roll, which she seemed to take for a thumbs-up. “What does he look like? Is he cute?”

“Yeah,” I responded before giving her a rough description. “But don’t be all humiliating and take a million pictures. You can take five, okay?”

“That sounds fair.” Mom sighed dramatically and threw herself down on my couch, crossing her left leg over her right. “What time do you think you’ll be home?”

“Eleven at the latest,” I recited, remembering my strict curfew. It was kind of comforting that I had one, though, since Santana’s parents didn’t set limits with her at all. They didn’t even care if she stumbled in at four in the morning, totally trashed, with a guy. At least, that was what she said.

“Good girl.” Mom came over and hugged me. “By the way, you should wear your silver necklace with the jewel key pendant with that dress. The diamonds will go well with that color.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I smiled and watched her leave the room, shutting the door behind her.

I did as she said, fastening the clasp behind my neck and smoothing it against the neckline of my dress. It really was pretty. Mom had gotten it two Christmases ago, after I got pissed that some girl had a key necklace that I really liked. And although Mom had called me a spoiled brat at the time, I was thrilled to find the necklace in a box the following Christmas.

Though it wasn’t like I hadn’t expected it.

“Evie!” Mom called up the stairs, ripping me from my thoughts. “Perry is here!” I could almost hear her giving herself a thumbs-up in her head.

Chuckling under my breath, I ran a hand across the back of my hair to make sure that it felt curly enough before walking down the stairs.

Perry looked really good in his suit, I had to admit. I barely knew who the kid was a couple of days ago, but I had to say that I didn’t regret allowing him to bring me to the banquet.

Mom took the allotted five pictures before standing back and doing her little ‘Oh, my…they’re so precious’ noise, a tiny amount of happy tears gathering at the corners of her eyes.

“I’ll be back by eleven, Mom,” I told her, looping my arm through Perry’s and leading him toward the door.

Mom didn’t have time to respond before I closed the door behind the two of us. “Sorry,” I apologized with a laugh, “my mom’s a little emotional sometimes.”

“It’s fine. My mom was the same way before I left the house.” He shrugged before putting his hands in his pockets to protect them from the icy air. “You’re lucky your mom only took a few pictures. I’m pretty sure my mom has enough of me from tonight to fill a whole photo album.”

“Ouch.” I laughed again as we reached the car. Perry opened the door for me, which scored him a point with me, before going around to the other side.

Once we arrived, we walked into the school cafeteria, where the tables had been replaced with long, rectangular ones that were covered in fancy white cloths. There were little blue cards with dark purple script in front of each seat, advertising who was fit to sit there.

However, no one was sitting yet; they were all standing around, talking and mingling among each other. The Cheerios looked like they were having a grand old time, while the football players looked slightly out of place. After all, a football player would stand by while a Cheerio had a long conversation with one of her friends, but there was no way a Cheerio would do the same for a football player.

“Hi, Evie!” Quinn greeted from behind me.

I turned to find her dressed in a pale green dress, perfectly matching her eyes. So she had gone the same route as me. Good thing we didn’t have the same color eyes or else the whole ordeal could have been more of a problem.

She did look pretty though, and decidedly regal next to Finn, who was standing a little awkwardly, one of his hands resting on Quinn’s waist. His shirt matched her dress, so that was a little too prom-like for my taste, but whatever.

“Hey. You look great.” I was suddenly aware of the fact that Perry and I were almost half a foot apart from one another and tried to scoot closer as subtly as possible.

“Thanks. You, too.” She glanced across the room for a second before bringing her attention back to me. “Who invited Puck?”

“What?” I spun around on my toes to see what she was talking about. Surely enough, Puck was standing next to some sophomore girl who was blabbing up a storm, gesturing wildly to her friend. He, on the other hand, looked totally bored.

“New girl.” I faced Quinn and Finn again, sighing. “She probably wasn’t warned about Puck, and he figures he’s going to get lucky.”

“He needs to get a new game,” Quinn mused. Instinctively, Finn’s arm tightened around her, as if he was trying to protect her from the thought that had entered her mind, but it had already left. “Anyway, Santana’s calling me over, so I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

The rest of the banquet was alright. Perry was kind of quiet, and I kind of ran out of things to talk to him about halfway through dinner, so I just pushed my food around my plate in silence, occasionally interrupted when Santana, Brittany, or one of the other Cheerios would ask me a question.

When I got home, though, I told my mother that everything was fabulous, that everyone complimented my dress, that I really was a social butterfly.

But once I got into my room and looked at myself in the mirror again, I knew the truth.