Blue Eyes and Other Teenage Hazards

Blue Eyes

And Other Teenage Hazards

By Janette Rall ison

Copyright 2012 Janette Rall ison

Other titles by Janette Rall ison

Playing The Field

All ’s Fair in Love, War, and High School

Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Free Throws

Fame, Glory, and Other Things on my To Do List

It’s a Mall World After Al

Revenge of the Cheerleaders

How to Take The Ex Out of Ex-boyfriend

Just One Wish

My Fair Godmother

My Unfair Godmother

My Double Life

Slayers (under pen name CJ Hill )

License Notes

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Anjie rolled out of my life on a sharply clear September morning. I lived in Pull man, Washington, where most of the time the sky looked like it was holding a grumpy-cloud convention; but on the day Anjie moved, there was nothing but sun. I hate it when the weather lies like that.

I’d gotten up at six in the morning to see Anjie off. Neither of us was sleepy. We stood by her family’s minivan while her dad loaded suitcases into the back. The moving van would come later in the day to take everything else.

“Call me as soon as you get to Virginia,” I said.

“I will.” Anjie put a pillow and a book into the backseat of the minivan. “And you call me too. Call me tomorrow.”

“Nothing will have happened by tomorrow to talk about.”

“But I still want to hear from you.”

Anjie and I had been inseparable since second grade when she moved onto my street, five houses away. We’d shared everything: bikes, clothes, even a crush on super hot Chad Warren. And now, a week before our sophomore year got underway, she was moving. We were finally no longer on the lowest rung of social life at high school. Life was supposed to be fun now. But with Anjie leaving, I felt like I’d been set adrift. In a sea of uncaring teenagers. Many of whom would happily puncture my boat. And laugh as I sunk into the depths of unpopularity.

Anjie’s mother came outside carrying a box filled with houseplants. She put it into the backseat of their van. “Come on, Anjie,” she said. “It’s time to go.” Then, because she felt sorry for me, she added, “You’ll have to come up and visit us sometime, Cassidy.” I tried to smile. “Sure.” It would probably never happen. Fairfax, Virginia, was on the other side of the nation.

Anjie put her hand on the door but didn’t open it. “We’ll see each other again. Remember, we’ll be roommates at college. Promise?”

“Promise.”

She gave me a hug and got in the back seat next to her little sister and brother.

I watched until the minivan turned the corner and drove out of sight. With it went our late-night phone conversations, homework sessions where we didn’t do homework, and summers sitting by the public pool unsuccessfully trying to get tans. With it went a thousand other things I couldn’t name but felt anyway. As I walked home, I looked up at the sun hanging there alone and abandoned in the sky and decided the weather hadn’t lied after all.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have other friends. I did. I sat with Faith and Caitlin at lunch. We didn’t actually ever do anything together, but they were nice to me. Okay, maybe they were actually more like acquaintances, but that was only because I’d never needed anyone else before. Anjie was like me: a straight-A student, avid reader, and someone who kept the rules instead of looking for ways to bend them. I could talk to her about my goals or values without her looking at me like the Goody-Two-Shoes Fairy was about to carry me away.

The only other sophomore girl on the street was Samantha Taylor—or Queen Samantha, as Anjie and I had taken to calling her. This was because Samantha was bound to be homecoming queen someday, and she generally treated us like peasants. We had all been best friends in elementary school, but in junior high things had changed. Samantha was blond, beautiful, and had joined the cheerleading squad. Now she mostly ignored me at school, although if we were ever thrown together in class, she rolled her eyes when I answered questions. Sometimes she also shook her head.

School started and I went through the first few days mechanically. I didn’t say much at the lunch table. As I ate, I noticed how everyone talked about things without ever really saying anything important, or even interesting. It was all about who was dating who, or fighting with who, or where people were going, or what programs they’d watched. Not one single idea. Nothing about our school assignments except how hard or stupid they were.

If Anjie had been around, we would have talked about today’s lecture on whether hunter-gather societies were really better for the environment (Um, obviously not; otherwise everybody would be out hunting and gathering instead of farming and ranching.) or whether the entire English department had some sort of crush on Hamlet (Probably, even though all the characters in that play were pathetic).

I couldn’t imagine three more years of going through school every day without having anyone to talk to—well, to really talk to.

Anjie and I called each other nearly every day, and I got to hear about her new school. On her first day at school no one talked to her. No one.

She’d been so sick about it, she had skipped lunch and spent that period in the library. Things were getting better for her now though. She’d found lunch friends.

My parents knew I was feeling down about Anjie’s move, and they tried to be sympathetic. Dad told me this was an opportunity to branch out and expand myself. Meet new people. Stretch. Dad’s the optimist of the family.

Mom told me I’d better get used to it because sometimes in life you’re alone and you have to learn to cope. She’s the cynic. I could tell Mom felt sorry for me, though. She took me shopping and bought me designer clothes. The expensive kind. She’d never done that before.

As we got to the cash register, she said, “Lesson number one in solitude. If you have to be lonely, do it in high fashion.” While she was waiting for the clerk to finish with her credit card, I traced the Anne Cline label on her wall et. “Is that why you have a designer wall et? Your money is lonely?”

“I don’t have enough money to get lonely. The wall et’s for me.”

“You’re lonely?”

“Not as long as I’m with you, my little peach.” Mom had an unending list of cute names she used to embarrass me with. “I’m stocking up in preparation for the time when you go off to college. I can’t believe it’s only three years away. Three short years.” She said this last part as if college was death.

Mom had never wanted me to grow up. When I was little, after each of my birthdays she would look at me solemnly and say, “Absolutely no more aging.” I had sensed, even back then, what I had been too young to remember—the grief she felt over a pregnancy where she’d lost not only the baby, but the chance of ever getting pregnant again. I was an only child, and always would be.

When Mom and I got home from shopping, Dad was on the couch answering emails on his laptop. “Will MasterCard call tomorrow to thank me for our support?”

Mom dropped one of the shopping bags on the couch. “Consider it our way of stimulating the economy.” She turned to me. “Show your father what we bought.”

Dad put on a good show of being impressed. He said, “Ooh,” and “Ahh,” and “Very nice.” But in actuality, he had no fashion sense whatsoever.

He would have said the same thing if I had held up things from the clearance rack at Goodwill.

“I’m sure you’ll look great in them,” he said. I was his little peach too.

He winked at my mom. “But as it turns out, you didn’t need to take Cassidy shopping at all.” Mom sat down on the couch and kicked off her shoes. “Oh?”

“I have such good news for her, she’ll forget all about clothes.”

“You’re doubling my all owance?” I guessed.

“Wrong.”

“You’re buying me a jeep for my birthday?”

“Wrong, wrong. Really wrong.” Before I could guess at anything else that was expensive, he said, “While I was mowing the lawn, the Lopez’s realtor came by and took down the for sale sign in front of their house. It sold.” That didn’t feel like good news. I had faintly hoped that the house would never sell and Anjie’s family would hate Virginia so much they would decide to move back. I sat down with a thud on the couch and didn’t say anything.

“It sold to the Benson family,” Dad went on. “They’re moving here from California in about a week and they have a daughter your age.” I frowned at him. Anjie wasn’t a pair of shoes that I could just replace when I needed new ones. What were the chances that the new girl would be someone I liked, someone who liked me? It was just as likely she would become fast friends with Samantha and the two of them would spend the remaining years of high school doing eye-rolling relays at my expense. I didn’t even crack a smile. “I’d rather have a jeep.”

“The family also has a teenage son,” he said. “A senior.”

My mother made a disapproving sound as she gathered up my purchases. “Don’t give Cassidy ideas.” I didn’t comment about that. I already had ideas. I just had them about Chad Warren.

Mom handed me the shopping bags. “When they move in, you’ll have to go over and introduce yourself to the girl your age. You could volunteer to show her around.”

I told myself that I wouldn’t get excited about her. I wouldn’t expect her to be like Anjie. But once a seed of hope is planted, you don’t need to water it. It grows by itself. By the time I went to bed, I was already wondering what ‘about a week’ meant. Six days? Nine? Maybe five. Hopefully five.

* * *

A year later, I’d grown three inches, filled out, discovered Clairol highlights weren’t that difficult to apply, and finished my monthly excursion to the orthodontist. The next logical step was flirting. So this year, I would attempt it. I called my scheme “Operation Chad.” First goal: get him to notice me.

Chad was gorgeous. He had wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and a smile that could melt ice. But the thing I liked about him was that he looked clean-cut—like someone who would be polite to your grandparents. He got good grades, which meant he was smart, and a smart guy had to want an intelligent girlfriend. I was clearly qualified for the position. We would be able to talk about anything and everything. Life. The cosmos. What to name our first child.

With this in mind, I set “Operation Chad” in motion. This consisted of doodling his initials next to mine in my Spanish notebook, planning to go to all the football games—he played wide receiver—and arranging my schedule so I passed him in the hallway three times a day. It was a slow start, admittedly, but I wasn’t sure he even knew my name. I couldn’t just go up and talk to him. With all the hall time we spent together, I somehow hoped he might notice me, wonder who I was, and say something to me. Okay, it was a really, really slow start.

Upon evaluation of the first week of school, I decided I needed something to help me stand out. Maybe I was too colorless to get noticed amongst all the students milling through the hallways of Pull man High School.

On Monday I wore a form-fitting red skirt and a pair of three-inch red high heels. I’d always preferred sandals to high heels, and it took me half an hour of trundling around my bedroom before I felt like I could walk in them without wobbling.

Armed (or rather, footed) with my fashion-model heels and a skirt that looked perfect on me—even if it was so form fitting that I could only take small steps—I set out to capture Chad’s attention. Sometimes he studied in the library before first period. I strolled in, trying to ooze sophistication.

Luck was with me. Chad sat at a table doing homework with his best friend, Mike. I walked by and purposely dropped my English book on the floor next to Chad’s seat. I had visions of him reaching gall antly for it. Our eyes would meet as he handed it to me. Maybe he’d even smile and say something.

But he just sat there, his head bent over his book. He didn’t even look up from his trig problems. Awkwardly—my skirt wasn’t meant for bending

—I reached down and picked up the book myself. It was then I noticed a table full of junior girls close by. They were glaring at me. They knew what I was up to. In fact, they’d probably tried the same thing themselves. No wonder Chad didn’t move. He was probably showered with objects daily.

I had planned on sitting down at a nearby table and studying, but suddenly had second thoughts. I didn’t want to look like I had no friends to hang out with. I scanned the library for a group I could sit with.

The only person I really knew was Samantha. She sat at a table with the rest of the cheerleading squad, talking and smiling. Being anywhere in Chad’s vicinity apparently makes the neurons in my brain misfire because it suddenly seemed like a good idea to go over and tell Samantha that a new girl was moving in on our street. For those few moments, I completely forgot that I’d been put on the peasant list.

When I walked over to her, Samantha put on an expression of perturbed patience.

And then it all came back to me, but it was too late to turn around.

“Hi,” I said.

The other cheerleaders stopped talking and stared at me, waiting to find out why I’d disturbed them.

“Did you hear about the new family that’s moving in on our street? They’ve got a girl our age.” I had been watching the house for signs of the new family, checking it impatiently ever since my dad had told me the news.

“Yeah,” Samantha said without emotion. “My mom told me. Mr. Benson drove up last night and the rest of the family is coming this afternoon.

They’ve got, like, six kids. The one our age is named Elise.”

I should have known Samantha’s mother, Mrs. Taylor, would already have twice as much information about the family as my parents did. Mrs.

Taylor was what some people would have called “involved in the community” and less-kind people would have called a busybody. In elementary school she had always been room mother; in junior high she’d been on the PTO board; and last year the Taylors not only donated the materials for the freshman homecoming float, but Mrs. Taylor had basically designed the thing and helped build it.

“Elise,” I said the name out loud, trying to conjure up an image of the girl it belonged to. “What else do you know about her?” Samantha hesitated. Her lips pursed together slightly. Whatever she knew about Elise, she didn’t like. “Nothing really.” The fact that Samantha wouldn’t tell me probably meant it was something that wouldn’t have bothered most people. Elise didn’t have a fatal disease or a third leg. She just didn’t meet Samantha’s qualifications as a worthwhile person. She wasn’t homecoming court material.