Lessons in Love (13 page)

“You carry so much weight on your shoulders that I wonder how you manage to walk around,” Mark told her.

“I want to be fun, to get wasted and be like my friends.”

“But you could do that. You pretend to be like them when you cheer, when you deliberately flunk your classes. Does being that way make you happy?”

Alex shook her head. It all just made her feel like she was living a lie.

“Do you think if you were yourself, you’d be happier?” Mark asked.

Alex looked down at herself. At her jeans and sweater. She was still inside those clothes, the girl who loved old music, math and played the violin. She was still there. Alex had just neglected her in a bid to fit in at high school.

“When my dad was around, and I was just me, I was the happiest I’ve ever been,” she admitted. She realized that while she had blamed the trailer, the lack of money and her father’s death for all her recent sorrows, she herself had a big part to play in her current unhappiness.

“I want to be me again,” she told Mark, her eyes watering.

“And I’ll help you get that back,” he whispered to her, using his free hand to softly stroke her cheek.

****

“So did Mr. Simmons totally catch you out for cheating?” Claire asked as she wrapped a ribbon around her high ponytail.

The girls’ changing room at Woodsdale High was a heady mix of perfume and hair spray as the cheerleading squad prepared for their Tuesday night practice. At practice you could always tell the juniors and sophomores from the seniors, who were more meticulous about how much effort they had put into their appearance.

The younger members of the squad would wear the standard uniform, often creased, and rarely tied their hair up for practice. They wore the obligatory white Converse sneakers, but on weekdays they would be scuffed. It was only the seniors who really took pride in their uniform for practices, as they knew they were drawing closer to the inevitable day when they’d cheer for the last time. The seniors were trying to savor the experience while their younger teammates were still just taking it for granted, as they themselves had done when it had been them.

“Yeah, totally.” Alex sighed, forcing herself to sound despondent.

“He’s like a hot evil genius,” Claire declared, checking her reflection in her handheld mirror as she slicked on some red lipstick.

Alex was in the middle of lacing up her shoes when her cell phone vibrated loudly on the bench beside her. Surprised, she checked it. The only person to usually text her during school hours was Claire and she was standing right beside her. Alex felt her heart flutter when she realized that she’d received a message from Mark.

Without realizing, she turned crimson and tried to discreetly read the contents of the message.

Can you come to my office after practice? I have a surprise for you :) x

Alex had no idea what the surprise could be, but she was giddy with excitement at the thought of finding out.

“You texting a guy?” Claire asked with sudden interest when she spied the coy smile that had spread across Alex’s face.

“What?” Alex looked up in shamed surprise.

“Or are you sexting them?” Claire continued to pry, her eyes wide with intrigue. “Come on, spill, who is it?”

Alex could feel a number of eyes upon her as she sat nervously on the bench, her cell phone gripped tightly in her hand. She knew that she had to say something or else she risked them snatching her phone and ruining everything. If there was one thing she had learned, it was that girls could be vicious in their pursuit of gossip.

“It’s just some guy I met.” Alex shrugged nonchalantly.

“Tell me more!” Claire demanded eagerly.

“There isn’t much to tell. He’s a bit older, and I’m just getting to know him.”

“Ooh—an older man, I love it!” Claire beamed.

“See, Claire, you’re totally off the hook for getting with Jeff since Alex has already found herself a mystery man,” Sophie said spitefully from across the room, where she was covering herself in a mist of cheap perfume.

Claire looked pained by the comment and averted her eyes to the floor.

“Hey, how are things with Jeff?” Alex asked brightly, wanting to reassure her teammate that she was pleased about their blossoming romance.

“They’re good.” Claire nodded overenthusiastically. “He can just be a bit, you know, distant. But then, he’s a guy, and guys are like that.”

Before Alex could offer any words of comfort, the team began filing out of the changing room, ready for practice.

****

After an hour of jumps, shouts and splits, Alex’s hair was still immaculate; this was more a reflection of how much hair spray she used than anything else. The girls all filtered back into the changing room, but Alex hung back. A part of her wanted Mark to see her in her uniform. After all, most men fantasized about being with a cheerleader. As dangerous as their flirtation was, she wanted him to see her as alluring, not just a friend. She still wasn’t sure exactly where they stood with one another.

“I’ll be right back,” Alex called to her teammates as she began to backtrack towards the school.

“I forgot my math book!” She turned and ran before anyone could reply, into the school and the ghostly empty hallways. It always unnerved her how her footsteps echoed when the halls were empty. It reminded her of the generic scenes in horror films, where the victim is helplessly running around, waiting to hear the ominous, methodical footsteps of the killer just inches behind her.

Alex burst into her math classroom, causing Mark to look up from his desk in surprise. She loitered momentarily by the door, wanting him to take in the full view of her in her uniform, but disappointingly he seemed disinterested. He looked up briefly from his laptop and smiled at her.

“Thanks for coming over. Is practice finished already?”

“It’s only an hour,” Alex answered, struggling to catch her breath after her run over.

“Okay, well, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Okay…” Alex eyed him uneasily.

“Take a seat,” Mark instructed, and Alex pulled herself behind a nearby desk as elegantly as she could.

“I wanted to discuss something.” Mark was in teacher mode. His tone was formal and lacked warmth, which made Alex feel panicked and on edge.

“Oh?” Alex braced herself.

“Don’t be mad at me or say I’m out of line. I’m doing this because it’s in your best interest,” Mark explained.

Alex tried to hide her despair. He was blatantly going to tell her that they couldn’t hang out together anymore. That there was too much risk involved. All his talk of helping her find her old self had been merely a lie. Alex had lost the only man she’d ever trusted; she’d been foolish to believe she could trust another man again.

“Just have a look, and let me know what you think.” Mark pulled a stack of papers from behind him and placed them on Alex’s desk. “And think before you say anything, I mean really think.”

Glancing down, Alex was shocked to see an application pack for Princeton. Her breath caught in her chest as she remembered how her father had dreamt of sending her there.

“One day I’ll get to see my little girl go to Princeton,” he had told her, smiling broadly. “And that will be the proudest day of my life.”

Tears fell down Alex’s cheeks as the memory played out in her mind. She pushed the papers away without even looking through them.

“Alexandra, please, at least think about it,” Mark pleaded. “You’re such a talented student. I truly believe that you could get on the scholarship program. Going somewhere like Princeton would change your whole life.”

Alex was silent. The pain of losing her father was burning afresh within her, blurring her thoughts and making her lip tremble. It had always been his dream for her to attend Princeton, and so by default she had adopted the dream as her own. But like so many things, after his death it lost all meaning. She’d only ever wanted to attend Princeton to make him happy. Now, without him here to see the achievement, what did it matter? What did anything matter? Alex held her head in her hands.

“I know it’s scary to go after something like this,” Mark told her softly, perching beside her desk so they were at eye level.

“For so long you have denied yourself… you’ve denied your dreams and goals. And if you keep doing it, you’re close to reaching the point where you won’t be able to undo it all, and you’ll be left with an uncertain future based on an adolescence of bad decisions. And you deserve better than that.”

Mark gently nudged the application package back towards Alex, and she lifted her eyes to glance at it.

Even the cover was impressive, bearing the Princeton logo and displaying the historic buildings on campus. It excited her to be so close to something related to the college. She hated to admit it, but she’d never stopped dreaming of going there, she had just resigned herself to the fact that it wouldn’t happen. She didn’t want to raise her hopes about attending only to have them dashed by failure.

Alex feared rejection. She feared all negative experiences and had vowed to avoid them for the rest of her life, even if that meant living a life of mediocrity. It would be better than having to hurt again.

“I’d never get in,” Alex objected to the proposition with a lump in her throat.

“I think you could,” Mark told her confidently, resting his hand upon her own. This time she didn’t shudder with desire at the connection; instead, she felt comforted.

“I’ve been too poor a student for too long,” Alex said dismally. “I’ve had terrible grades for the past four years, my GPA sucks. No decent college would ever take me.”

“I admit that you wouldn’t be their usual candidate.” Mark nodded. “But you’ve got four months to work hard, raise up all your grades, take the SATs, and prove your worth. With the right admission letter, you’ve got a great case on your hands.”

“A pity case,” Alex snapped tersely.

“So what it if it’s a pity case?” Mark countered. “Losing your father, especially like you did, was unbelievably dramatic and painful, and no one would begrudge you taking four years to find yourself and get over it all. And perhaps they would take you partly as a pity case, but so what? If it got you into Princeton, then that’s all that matters. Life is so often learning to play with the cards you’ve been dealt. You were given a bad hand, but in some situations you can use that to your advantage.”

“You’re suggesting I exploit my father’s death for my own gain?” Alex sounded repulsed by the suggestion.

“No, not at all,” Mark instantly corrected her. “I’m suggesting you stop denying that it happened and start embracing your true self and your true reality. It’s not too late to find the old Alexandra Heron and try to reach your true potential.”

Alex was silent for a moment before she opened the application package and scanned the opening page. There were an awful lot of requirements, and she felt momentarily daunted by the mountain that suddenly stood before her. She wondered if she even had the strength to climb it.

“You really think I’ve got a chance?” she asked Mark dubiously.

“Absolutely!” he told her confidently, and his belief in her started to rub off slightly as Alex allowed herself to believe that she could actually achieve this.

“It will be a lot of work,” Mark warned. “A lot of extracurricular work for all of your classes. You’d also need to see the school counselor and let other faculty members know your situation.”

Alex nodded along to all of this, feeling they were reasonable requirements.

“And you’d need to quit cheerleading.” Mark dealt her the final blow.