The Wrong Girl

Two

Fifteen Months Later

I place the flowers I’d bought this morning into my locker and close the door. I really hope they don’t wilt and die. The clerk at the store said they should be fine if I just wrap the stems in wet paper towels. I don’t know how much truth is in that statement, but I also don’t know enough to tell if she was lying so I decide to trust her. They cost me too much money and they play such a major role in my plan that I really can’t afford for them not to stay alive for the next three hours.

Coby slaps me on the back and wraps his arm around my shoulder as he comes up beside me. “Ready for your big day?” he teases, grin wide.

“Shut up,” I shrug him off and he goes down a few lockers to open his own. “It’s not a big deal. I’m just asking Charlie to the dance.”

He snorts. “Right. That’s why it’s taken you over a year to finally dredge up the courage to ask her out.”

The bell rings before I can respond with anything more than an annoyed eye roll and he claps me on the back before heading to his first class of the day, Econ. I close my locker and head in the opposite direction for AP English.

When I get to class, there are only two seats left. One is in the very front beside Melvin Hopkins who I swear never takes a shower. He always smells like a sweaty gym sock, plus he always picks his nose and wipes his buggers under his desk. It’s disgusting.

The other seat is in the very back beside Cynthia Aaron. We used to be best friends, years ago, but then her father got sick and her family moved away. When she moved back last year, I thought that maybe we could be friends again, maybe even more, but it hasn’t really gone too well. She barely acknowledges my existences and treats nearly everyone like they’re a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe. The only person she really seems to tolerate is Charlie, and that’s only done grudgingly.

As the name of my crush crosses my mind, my eyes are drawn to where she sits in the middle of the room. There’s a basketball game today, so her hair is in a high ponytail tied with a dark red ribbon to match the red and black cheerleader uniform she’s wearing. She throws her head back as she laughs at something one of her friends said, the sound reverberating around the room.

I sigh and look down as I make my way to the back of the class to sit by Cyn. I’d really wanted to get to class early so I could sit by Charlie. If I hadn’t been distracted by Coby, I would have. As I sit my bag on the floor beside the desk and take a seat, I make a mental note to fuss at him about that later. He’s always ruining my plans.

Once I’m seated, I look at Cyn and smile. I might as well be nice if I’m going to be stuck back here in the cut with her for 90 minutes. “Hey, Cyn. Did you have a good weekend?”

She has her nose buried in Pride and Prejudice, the book we’ve been reading for the last three weeks. The pages have colored tabs sticking from them and I can even see a few sticky notes covered with her neat script. She doesn’t look up or give any indication that she’s heard me, just flips the page.

I roll my eyes and pull out my own copy of the book and my notes for the class. If she doesn’t want to talk, then fine. I have better things to do anyway.

Charlie lets out another laugh and my eyes are automatically drawn to her. She’s turned around in her seat talking animatedly with one of her friends, and I’m caught by surprise when her large, hazel eyes snap up and meet mine. I catch the grin she sends me before dropping my eyes to my desk as my face flushes with heat. When did I get so bad at hiding the fact that I like to watch her?

She lets out another tinkling laugh. I feel more heat rush to my face, sure that she’s laughing at me.

“Hey, Cyn,” she calls, “bring me a piece of gum. I know you have some.”

Cyn releases an annoyed sigh, the only sound I’ve heard from her except for the flipping of pages since I sat down beside her, and I hear her book close. I’m still staring at the cover of my copy of Pride & Prejudice like it’s the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen, but I can hear Cyn ruffling through her bag to get what Charlie asked for. I hear her chair scrape back as she stands to pass the gum to the boy in front of her so he can pass it forward.

“No, I want you to bring it to me,” Charlie says slowly, and not a little forcefully.

I look up at that and see that many of the other students have stopped their own side conversations to see how this plays out. Charlie is looking at Cyn with her brows lifted in expectation.

I glance at Cyn as she flops back into her seat and crosses her arms across her chest and arches a brow.

Charlie’s grin only seems to widen at that. “C’mon, Cyn. Please.”

There’s a beat of silence where the two seem to be having a silent conversation with their eyes, that ends with Cyn scraping her seat chair back so that she can stomp down to Charlie’s seat, kicking people’s book bags out of the way as she goes and fixing anyone who complains with a withering glare.

I take the time to examine her as she walks down the aisle.

She’s in her cheer uniform too, the skirt falling a few inches above her knees and hugging her hips in just the right way and showing off her toned, shapely legs. Her hair, in a high ponytail similar to Charlie’s, brushes the center of her back as it bounces with every step she takes. Her hair is long, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it down so I’m not sure how long it really is. She’s short and skinny, but she has curves in all the right places, giving her a perfect hourglass figure.

I close my eyes and picture her face for a moment. She’s beautiful, really, with her large blue eyes, long eyelashes, full lips, and pert little nose. She could easily be a model if she weren’t so short. And if she would smile once in a while. I can’t stop the smile that flits across my face at the thought.
When she reaches Charlie’s desk, she places the stick of gum on the table, ignoring her friend’s outstretched hand, and arches an eyebrow. It’s only then that I realize she still hasn’t said a word.
Charlie only laughs, then places a hand on Cyn’s arm and pulls the other girl down so that she can whisper something in her ear. After releasing her, Charlie wiggles her eyebrows suggestively at Cyn with a little smile and even though her back is to me, I’m almost positive that Cyn is rolling her eyes.

I’m surprised, though, when she turns to head back to her seat and I notice that her cheeks are dusted with a little pink, and her lips are turned up ever so slightly at the corners in what could almost be considered a smile. Her eyes almost appear to be sparkling, and for a second my breath catches in my throat and I swear my heart skips a beat.

But then her eyes catch mine and we lock gazes for a few intense moments. I blink and her eyes are hard again and her mouth is once again drawn into a frown. Even the light flush of color is gone from her cheeks.

With a sigh, I look past her to Charlie again. I don’t understand how the two of them can be such close friends; they’re as different as night and day. Where Charlie is warm and friendly, Cyn is cold and impassive. Charlie is like the sun – bright, warm, and inviting. It’s hard not to like her and get caught in the pull of her gravity.

Cyn is…well, I haven’t quite decided what Cyn is just yet. But I’m sure I don’t like it.

I ignore the traitorous voice in the back of my mind telling me that’s a lie and just last year I was thinking about asking her out. But then I kissed Charlie at the party and I knew there was no reason to pursue anyone else. That kiss was like fire, and it lit me up in ways I never knew were possible.

Just as Cyn has reclaims her seat, the final bell rings and our teacher, Mrs. Williams, walks into the room and sets her large bag on her desk.

She doesn’t waste any time in giving us our assignment, telling us to split into groups of two even as she continues to rifle through her bag.

“Since everyone should have finished reading Pride and Prejudice over the weekend, each group will be responsible for choosing what they believe to be the two most important quotes and passages from the book. At the end of class I expect you to turn in a one page paper, front and back, supporting your choices.” She still hasn’t looked up from her bag, pulling books, pens, and random pieces of paper from it as she continues to search for something. “I’ll go through everyone’s submissions and randomly assign each group a topic for a 10-page paper on the novel next Monday.”
She finally pulls a granola bar from the bottom of her bag and raises her eyes to survey the room. “Any questions?”

Sophie Miller, sitting directly in front of Mrs. Williams’s desk, raises her hand, but our teacher pretends not to see her. “No? Then I guess you can all get started.”

Charlie turns in her seat and looks at Cyn to ask if they’re working together, even though everyone already knows that they are. Cyn and Charlie always work together, and they always get the highest grade on assignments. I’m halfway out of my seat so I can make my way over to Fletcher Green, my usual groupmate, when she speaks.

“I’m going to work with Mandy on this assignment, Cyn. Is that okay?” She’s grinning from ear to ear, and it’s obvious that she doesn’t care what Cyn thinks. Her eyes flick to me for a moment and she winks before turning back to Cyn.

I sit back down and look at Cyn to see what her reaction will be.

She scowls and rolls her eyes, but doesn’t acknowledge Charlie’s statement. She doesn’t even look surprised, just mildly irritated; but that’s how she usually looks.

I blink in confusion when she fixes her wide blue eyes on me expectantly.

“What?” I ask.

She gives a long-suffering sigh, shoots an annoyed glare Charlie’s way, and then turns to me again. “Do you want to be partners or not?” The words come out as if they’re being forced from her lips, and my first instinct is to say no.

There are still a few other people she could choose from, and Fletcher is looking at me expectantly. And even though I mean to tell her that I already have a partner, I find myself nodding when I see the resigned look in her eyes. She expects me to turn her down, so of course I can’t. It’s like when we were kids and she asked me if she could do my makeup with the kit she’d gotten for her sixth birthday. I hadn’t been able to tell her now then, and I can’t do it now.

“Um, sure. We can work together if you want.” I assure myself that it won’t be too bad as she blinks up at me in surprise. Cyn has the highest grade in class; working on an assignment with her can only boost my grade.

I send Fletcher an apologetic smile and shrug, and he flicks me off as he slumps over to Melvin and I flinch in sympathy.

Cyn clears her throat and I turn to see her looking at me with her eyebrows raised. “Do you want to get started now or what?”

“Right,” I say with a small frown. If she’s going to be this bossy maybe I should have stuck with working with Fletcher.

We push our desks together so that Cyn’s notebook can sit between us.

“I think we should each choose two passages and then choose the ones that are most important,” she says, getting straight to work and already flipping through her many tabbed book.

I open my own book and begin to look through my notes. “Sounds good to me.”
I watch her from the corner of my eye as she flips through her copy. The pages are well worn and some of them have tape from when they were ripped. There’s faded writing in the margins similar to Cyn’s, but not quite right. In a few places, it looks as though the letters have been retraced. Occasionally, when she turns a page, she runs her fingers over the neat script.

I’m so caught up in watching Cyn flip through her book that it catches me by surprise when she speaks: “Are you ready? I didn’t notice you look at your book at all.”

I open my notebook to the last page. “Yeah. Yeah. I took notes on interesting quotes while I was reading it.”

She frowns. “The assignment is for important quotes and passages, not interesting.”

I roll my eyes. “Why don’t we just talk about what we have and go from there?”

“Okay,” she says, and flips to the front of the book. “I think we should talk about the opening line: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. It sets the backdrop for the entirety of the story.”

“Doesn’t that seem kind of easy though?” I ask. “I mean, I get that it lets us know that the book is focusing on marriage, but what else does it do?”

Cyn releases a heavy sigh and gives me a look that clearly indicates that she thinks I’m an idiot. “It’s not just letting us know the book will focus on marriage; this line tells us that the book will focus on class as well, particularly how it pertains to money.” She looks away and runs her fingers across some of the script written in the margins of the page. “It also lets us know the book is about courtship in general, and the reasons behind it. These men are looking for wives, not because they’re lonely, but because they have a lot of money and they need sons to pass their immense wealth to. Someone could write an essay on the themes of marriage, courtship, and class throughout the novel just from this one line.”

Her face has flushed as she talks, and she’s lifted her hands from the margin of her book to wave them around expressively as she speaks. She used to get like this during arguments with Daryl and Coby about the epic-ness of Sailor Moon and the Spice Girls when we were younger. I don’t think I’ve seen her this worked up about anything since she moved back to town.

“Are you listening to me?” she asks.

I blink and her mouth is pulled down into an annoyed frown.

I feel my face heat up. “Yeah, uh...Yeah. You’re right. About the passage, I mean. We should definitely use it.”

Nodding, she writes something down in her notebook.

We spend the next twenty minutes debating which passages are best used. Unsurprisingly, we decide to use the first passage of the book, as Cyn suggested. However, I am surprised when she agrees to use one of my suggestions without any fuss.

“It’s a good choice,” she says easily as she writes in her notebook. “It’s one of the climatic points of the story, when Elizabeth realizes she harbors many of the traits she criticized Darcy for having; and those traits prejudiced her against Darcy and made her turn a blind eye to Wickham’s faults.” She rips the page she’s been writing on from the notebook and hands it to me. “Read this.”

“What is it?”

“Just read it,” she snaps.

I roll my eyes and scan the paper. I’m more surprised than I should be to find myself hold a rough draft of the paper we have to turn in at the end of class. Her smooth script covers the page in a shorthand of all we discussed. She’s scratched out lines and written others in the margins, drawing arrows to show connected ideas. There’s not a space on the papers not covered by her penmanship, yet somehow, I can decipher what she’s written turning the page at different angles so I can read the words.

“It’s good,” I tell her once I’m done.

“Okay. Good.” She holds her hand out for the paper again. “I’ll just rewrite it and we can turn it in.”

I pull the paper from her reach. “That’s okay. I can rewrite it. Don’t want you saying I’m not carrying my weight.”

It takes her moment, but she agrees. She’s glaring daggers at her desk and clenching and unclenching her fingers around her purple pen.

I frown at her reaction. Does she really not trust me to rewrite the paper? Before I can really get irritated, I’m reminded of something my mother said about Cyn last year in response to a complaint Coby made about her behavior.

“She hasn’t had a lot of control in life lately,” Mom had said gently. “Her parents died in close secession and she had to move halfway across the country to stay with family she hadn’t seen in nearly eight years. And it probably doesn’t help that this family happens to consist of her mother’s identical twin. The poor girl’s probably trying to hold onto any semblance of control she can.”

“You can look it over when I’m done,” I tell her softly. “If you don’t like something I’ve written you can change whatever you want.”

I guess that’s the right thing to say because her grip on the pen loosens enough to fall from her grasp and when she looks at me with those big blue eyes I don’t feel like she’s trying to send me to the depths of Hell. “Okay.”

It takes about ten minutes for me to finish rewriting the paper and another two for Cyn to skim over it. She winds up only making one adjustment, correcting a word I misspelled. When I hand the paper to Mrs. Williams, I realize Cyn and I are the first group to finish. Mrs. Williams tells me that Cyn and I are free to do what we want for the remainder of class.

I thank her and head back to my seat. When I get there, Cyn has her nose buried in Wuthering Heights, the next book on our reading list.

“Don’t you think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself?” I ask as I sit back down. “We haven’t even started the paper for this book yet. Aren’t you afraid of getting any of the information mixed up?”

She doesn’t say anything for so long, just continues reading, that I think she’s gone back to ignoring me. But then, she picks up a bookmark, places it on a page and closes the book. “I’ve read Pride & Prejudice so many times that I essentially know it by heart. You don’t need to worry about me forgetting anything.”

Her lips quirk a little and she glances at my closed copy of Pride and Prejudice then back to me and raises her eyebrows.

I pick up the book and ask a few questions that she, of course, gets correct.

Laughing, I shake my head. “Sometimes, I forget just how smart you are.” When she only blinks at me, brows drawn together in a slight frown, I try to rephrase the statement. “I mean, I know you’re smart. It’s just that sometimes you—I mean, you’re just so quiet. I just forget sometimes,” I finish lamely, my face getting hot.

She arches her brow at that and turns to start packing up her things. She stands when the bell rings.

“Sometimes I forget how smart you are, too,” she says with a small smirk. “But that’s mostly because you act like an idiot most the time.”

All I can do is laugh as she goes to meet Charlie at the door and the two leave together for their next class. I’m pretty sure that’s as close to a compliment as I’m going to get from her.