Cindy and the Prom King (12 page)

thirty-five

Cindy didn’t call Marco that night. She didn’t trust herself to stay calm. She was afraid she might cry or scream. She felt so stupid. She’d believed whoever it was who had called her. She’d run out on Marco for no good reason. He wanted to know if she was okay. She wasn’t.

When her sisters came home, she had to listen to their voices that carried through the walls as they rehashed the dance and dissed everyone—their costumes, their dancing, their dates and their attitudes, especially their friends and fellow cheerleaders. Did they know she’d been at the dance? Did they care? Probably not, unless they were the ones … No, they were cruel, but not that cruel.

She was just reaching for her earplugs so she could block out their voices when she heard them mention her name. She knew she shouldn’t listen. She knew it would just hurt her, but she couldn’t help it. She pressed her ear against the wall.

“She looked so bizarre. Oh my God, I couldn’t believe that costume.”

“He looked relieved when she left.”

“Marco? For sure. Finally he got to have some fun once she was gone.”

Cindy had heard enough. She stuffed her earplugs in her ears and let the tears flow. Had Marco really been relieved that she had left?

On Sunday she went to take the costume back to Scott. On her way she walked up and down the winding suburban streets, past the huge mansions and the sprawling estates, and she wiped away the tears that trickled down her cheeks.

She wasn’t crying because she was in love with a guy who didn’t love her. He’d said he liked her a lot. He knew who she was and he’d flirted with her. That should be enough to make her happy.

She wasn’t crying because her sisters hated her. She’d known that for a long time. She was crying because, well, just because she felt like it. Once she got it out of her system, she’d be fine. She had to pull herself together. First she had to apologize to Marco, then find out who’d called her.

Scott told her she’d looked fabulous. She and Marco looked gorgeous together. He took some credit for it, but he was so proud of her and of himself she didn’t begrudge him one bit of the credit he deserved.

“Why did you take off so soon?” he asked.

“I… It’s a long story. There was a family emergency. At least, that’s what I thought.”

“Your mean, slutty sisters are the family emergency,” he said. “What is it with them? If I were you I’d avoid them like the plague. Yeah, maybe that’s their problem. They’ve got the plague and they oughtta be quarantined. As soon as you left they were all over Marco like glue. Dancing. Flirting.”

She shouldn’t have been surprised. They were obsessed with Marco. The surprising thing was they’d waited until she left to make their move. Why hadn’t they just cut in on them? It wasn’t because they were too shy.

“Did they have something to do with your so-called family emergency?”

“Oh I doubt it. The funny thing was that I got the message and not them, because it was about their mother.”

“What are you gonna do about them?” he asked, his gaze so sympathetic and so kind she felt like crying again.

“What I always do. Ignore them,” she said.

After she left Scott’s she stopped and leaned against a tree and played back her voice mail, including the message she got that night. Listening closely, she realized it was Brie’s voice. Brie telling her to go home. But why? Irina wasn’t sick. A wave of anger hit her fully in the chest and almost knocked her over. They’d done it to get rid of her. On purpose. How could they stoop so low? They’d gone too far this time. Somehow, some way, she would get back at them.
On Monday she was feeling much better and stronger. She looked for Marco but she didn’t see him at school. She heard someone say he’d gone back to Italy. Maybe he’d never come back. And she’d never get a chance to explain why she’d left the dance. A tear trickled down her cheek. Impatiently she brushed it away. Self-pity would get her nowhere.

Brie and Lauren came up to Cindy at lunch. Cindy almost choked on her sandwich. They must have been desperate if they’d consider talking to her at school where their friends might see them with her and wonder. They obviously had no clue she knew what they did.

“We need you to record another lecture for us at two o’clock,” Brie said.

“No.”

They didn’t seem to hear her. “This time make sure the switch is in the VOX position. That way it only records when it hears a voice, and we can get more lectures on it before it fills up. Get it right this time.”

“I’m not going to, Brie.”

“You have to see ‘VOX’ and ‘Recording’ on the screen or you won’t be recording. After the lecture, press Stop.” Brie plunked the small handheld recorder on the table in front of Cindy.

“I know how to do it. I did it before.”

“Then what are you looking at me in that brainless way for? How hard can it be?”

Cindy took a deep breath. It was time to take a stand. To be a rebel. At least, take the first step toward being one.

“It’s not hard, but I can’t do it this time,” she said.

“Of course you can. You have to because we’re busy at two. Then at three we need you to put on the music for our cheerleading practice. Here’s the CD. We’ll be in the gym and it will only take a minute. You know the sound booth on the second level? Go there, put the music in and turn up the volume, then you can go do whatever lame thing you do. After practice we’ll be voting on the new team captains. We
have
to be team captains, do you understand that?” Lauren said. “It’s our right. We earned it, we deserve it. If we don’t we won’t get a scholarship to UCLA.”

“Are you saying if you mess this up, you’ll be screwed?” Cindy asked thoughtfully.

“Well finally someone is catching on,” Brie said, rolling her eyes at Cindy’s stupidity. “This is important, Orphan Girl, so pay attention.”

Cindy nodded, but her mind was working double time. The words were running through her head.

Screw up, pay attention, we won’t get the scholarship
…

She liked working in the dean’s office after lunch when it was quiet, and it was mindless work so she could think. Today she was thinking of her sisters and how they had used her, how they’d played the meanest trick in the world on her and she’d fallen for it. They’d ruined her magic evening and now they expected her to help them get what they wanted.

She set her backpack down and the twins’ recorder fell out. When she picked it up, she noticed the Recording icon was flashing. Maybe she’d forgotten to stop the machine after that last lecture.

Uh-oh,
she thought,
since it’s voice-activated it’s been recording everything since the lecture.
Brie and Lauren weren’t going to be happy about this. She really didn’t care much about their happiness, but she’d erase it anyway and they’d never know. She pressed the Rewind button and a girl’s voice came out. It was Lauren talking to Brie.

“Wish I’d seen Cindy’s face when she got the message.”

Laughter.

“Can’t believe she fell for it.”

“Serves her right, falling all over poor Marco. He’s too hot to even be in her league.”

“Thought we didn’t know who she was. Hah!”

Cindy felt cold all over. Yes, intellectually she knew it was them. But she hadn’t known how gleeful they were, how hateful they were, until she heard their actual voices. Her stomach heaved.

There was no denying they’d used their own mother as bait to get Cindy to leave the dance.

But why? Jealousy? Jealous, of her? Because she was dancing with Marco? She shook her head in disbelief.

They
did it to her. They knew how gullible she was, how naive. And they’d loved doing it. They were proud of themselves. She could hear it in their voices. What was wrong with her for not striking back immediately? No more. That was it. She’d had it.

She should have turned the machine off before she heard any more, but she couldn’t. She felt a sick compulsion to keep listening. Soon they tired of talking about her and switched the subject to their fellow cheerleaders.

Cindy’s ears burned at their language. Everything they’d ever said about the team—and that was plenty—was tame compared to this. They really let loose this time. Names, descriptions of their butt-ugly faces, their lumpy, clunky bodies, their dumpy gymnastic mistakes, and their clumsy moves were all documented in Brie and Lauren’s most colorful language.

“You know what?” Cindy said to herself. “This is crap and I’m not taking it anymore.”

By three Cindy’s adrenaline was flowing like wine and she felt about a thousand times better. More sure of herself. More determined to get even. She walked briskly across campus to the gym. She made her way quietly up to the sound booth at the top of the bleachers. The sound system was already on, its green lights glowing. She inserted the CDs into the two players and found the volume controls on the master panel.

Why was she doing this? She didn’t have to. She could say she just forgot. But that wasn’t enough. That was a cop-out. Whatever she did to them, she wanted them to know she’d done it on purpose. They thought she was just good old Cindy. She wasn’t. She was a new Cindy, and she was mad as hell.

She looked down into the gym. A girl named Pam, who was totally dissed on the tape, waved to her and shouted to start the music. If only Pam knew what her sisters thought about her “fat ass” and her “nappy” hair. Ditto poor Lynette, who was practicing a backflip on a mat and had no idea what names Brie and Lauren had called her. Not to mention Lisa, who’d messed up their pyramid last week, which made her eligible for the twins’ wrath.

Cindy reached for the microphone and pressed a button on the base. “Which CD do you want to hear first?” she asked.

Pam cupped her ears. Cindy pressed another button and said, “Testing, one, two, three.” Her amplified voice bounced off the walls of the gym. Pam nodded enthusiastically and gave Cindy a thumbs-up.

Cindy stared down at the girls in their tiny flared skirts and bare midriffs for a long moment. Then she reached into her backpack and found the recorder. She propped it up against the sound booth microphone and pressed the Play button.

She didn’t stay around to watch the reaction of the cheerleaders. She pictured the faces of the girls as her sisters’ voices blasted out so loud no one within fifty yards could ignore them. She imagined shock and disbelief and finally fury as they realized what Brie and Lauren thought of them. She pictured Brie and Lauren running up to the sound booth, frantically trying to turn off the machine. But it would be too late. Way too late.

Cindy left the crime scene as the recorded voices echoed through the gym, the volume up as high as it would go. She knew she was guilty of ruining her sisters’ chances of being team captains, and maybe even more. And she didn’t even care. In fact, she was brimming over with a kind of satisfaction she’d never known before.

thirty-six

It was true. Marco had gone back to Italy. The next time she worked in the dean’s office Cindy heard he’d been granted an excused absence from school. For how long, no one knew. She tried to call him but there was just a recorded message on his phone. She told herself it didn’t matter that he hadn’t said good-bye. It didn’t matter that she’d never love anyone again.

It didn’t matter that her sisters were furious with her for ruining their lives. They didn’t believe she’d done it on purpose even though she didn’t deny it. They thought she’d just royally screwed up by playing the wrong recording. Either way she was to blame for what happened. Though really, was it her fault the headmaster canceled all cheerleading activities for the year because he found their outfits to be too revealing and their actions sinful? They thought so.

Brie and Lauren then demanded that Cindy help them write new college essays that didn’t have to do with cheerleading. For once in her life Cindy flat-out refused.

“I wouldn’t know what to write about for you,” she said. “It’s too bad about cheerleading. That was
such
a great subject. I can say that even though I’m the one who suggested it to you.”

“Yeah,” Brie said morosely.

“You could write about how much you miss cheerleading,” Cindy suggested. “And the friendship of your peers.”

“Who?”

“The other girls. You could say what a loss it is not only for you but for the whole school.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Lauren said. “You write it, Brie.”

“No you. I’ve already done your Spanish homework for you.”

“Hey, what’s going on?” Lauren asked as they sat in their jeep in the parking lot. “No one’s moving.”

“Oh, right,” Cindy said. “Didn’t you hear? They’re having a drug check.” Of course they didn’t hear. None of the students did. It was hush-hush. An undercover sting, as the headmaster called it. Otherwise all the kids would have hidden their drugs or left them at home. But Cindy’d seen the memo to the teachers while working in the office yesterday.

“What? Why didn’t you tell us?” Brie demanded.

“Then you would have dumped your stash. I think using drugs is wrong,” Cindy said in her best goody-goody voice, which she knew they’d hate. “Anyone who does it should be punished. Don’t you agree?”

They stared at her as if she’d turned into a zombie and was threatening to take a chunk out of their flesh.

“And anybody who lies about their mother having a heart attack deserves whatever they get, right?” Cindy continued with a cool smile.

“Wait. We can explain,” Lauren said, facing Cindy from the front seat. “That was a joke. That’s all. Tell us what you want. We’ll do anything you want. Don’t leave us here. We’ll be busted.”

“Probably. But it’s too late. Too late for you but not for me. You know what time it is? It’s payback time.” Cindy opened the car door and grabbed her backpack. “See you,” she said.

“Cindy,” Brie shrieked, leaning out the window. “Get back in here. You owe us. You’ve got to get us through this.”

“I don’t think so,” Cindy called over her shoulder. She couldn’t help smiling to herself as she wended her way through the line of cars waiting to exit the lot.

“Open your backpack,” the headmaster said. He’d decided this drug check was important enough to take charge himself, with the help of his newly deputized campus monitors who would earn beaucoup points for this operation. After the way he’d cleaned up the dance, he felt empowered.

Not as empowered as Cindy felt zipping up her pack. She glanced back at her sisters’ jeep, noted with quiet satisfaction the panicked expressions on their faces and walked out past the stone gates. They had reason to panic. The penalty for drug possession on campus was suspension or total expulsion.

Cindy didn’t know where she was going. She knew where she was supposed to be going—to Irina’s salon to work. She could walk there, but it would take an hour at least and her backpack was already weighing heavily on her shoulders.

She heard a car horn, a high-pitched multitoned sound that could only come from one car. An imported Italian sports car. It was Marco. This time she didn’t wave. But he waved at her. Her heart stopped beating. He smiled broadly, pulled over and opened the door for her. “Get in,” he said. “
Andiamo
/”

Cindy lost her voice completely. She had a million questions to ask but all she could do was stare at him. At that gorgeous profile, the shadow of a beard on his jaw, the dark hair that brushed the collar of his jacket and the strong hands on the wheel. She drank him in as if he were a glass of delicious Italian soda.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

She shrugged. She wanted to say “anywhere you want,” but she didn’t. She should have said “to work,” but she didn’t say that either. Today she was a rebel. Maybe she’d be one tomorrow too. One day at a time.

Marco nodded as if he understood and then he drove around the block twice. He explained he had a touch of jet lag. He finally parked behind the deserted soccer field. Soccer season was over. Manderley had been eliminated. Without Marco, they were lost.

Without Marco she thought she’d be lost. But she wasn’t. She’d been okay without him. With him she was soaring, weightless and giddy.

“I thought maybe you’d gone back to Italy for good,” Cindy said finally.

He turned to face her, his arm on the back of her seat.

“No, of course not. I had to take my
nonna
home, but as soon as I could get a place on the plane I hurried back and I’m coming first to see you. You didn’t think I would leave forever without saying good-bye?” He gave her an incredulous look.

“No. I mean yes. I didn’t know.” She wasn’t making sense. She was delirious. Marco was back. He’d come first to see her.

“I’m afraid I’m acting not myself. I’ve forgotten how to speak English,” he said. “And I have so much to say to you and no words to say it. And you have explanations to give me, no?”

“Yes, I guess I do. The reason I left the dance was …”

“I know that. I heard the message on your phone. Who was that? Is your mother all right?”

“She’s fine. She was never sick. It was just someone who wanted to play a joke on me.”

“Not a funny joke,” he said soberly.

“No.”

“I will never understand Americans. You, for example.”

“I’m easy to understand,” she said, turning to face him.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “You covered your beautiful red hair for the dance.” He wound a long red curl around his finger to admire it with a smile and half-closed eyes. Either he did have jet lag or it was just his usual sleepy, sexy look. “Why?”

“To look like Marie Antoinette. I thought it worked. I thought no one knew who I was.”

“I knew. I knew always it was you. No one else talks to me like you do. No one else makes me smile. No one else helps me understand this country and the language and the people who live here.”

He leaned forward and looked deep into her eyes for a long moment. A look so intense it made her toes curl. Then he drew his eyebrows together.

“What I don’t know is whether you are my best friend or my girlfriend?”

Cindy stared into his dark eyes with their flecks of green, searching for the right answer. She’d had best friends in the past. She’d have more in the future. But she’d never been anyone’s girlfriend.

“Maybe this will help to decide.” He leaned forward and kissed Cindy on the lips. His mouth was warm and he tasted dark and delicious. Her lips trembled. Her heart pounded. The least she could do was to kiss him back. Her first kiss. Her first boyfriend. Forever? Who knew? For now? For sure.

After a long, magical moment, Marco broke the kiss. He brushed a curl from Cindy’s cheek.

“I am forgetting. My
nonna
sends you a message. She wishes you to visit us in Bellagio next summer. If you are free.”

Cindy swallowed hard. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to thank him and his grandmother. But the words stuck in her throat, happy tears filled her eyes and all she could do was nod her head.

Then she realized that although she was free, the airfare wasn’t. Never mind, she’d worry about that later. She’d have a bake sale. Whatever. Think about it. All this and Bellagio too.

The End