Chapter 3
A song that cautioned of a bad romance blared from the tiny speakers of Melissa’s alarm clock radio. She fumbled clumsily with her covers, exhaustion trumping coordination, and attempted to silence it. After several tries, she found the correct switch and quieted the music only to find that it was twenty minutes later than she normally woke. She muttered a swearword under her breath and sprang out of bed on shaky legs. She hurried into the bathroom prepared for a revised, and shortened, version of her morning routine.
She did not have time for a shower so she quickly brushed her teeth, washed her face and freshened up. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and looked in the mirror. A pair of puffy eyes stared back at her. The swelling was courtesy of too few hours of sleep and too much time spent crying. Her shoulders slumped dejectedly. She did not want to go to school at all, much less looking as she did. She would see Kevin shortly, and possibly be the next recipient of his brand of payback. The face looking back at her did not offer her the slightest bit of confidence. She immediately began filling the sink with cold water. While she waited, she pinned back any errant hairs that remained around her face. As soon as the sink had filled, she submerged her face in it. The cold felt like thousands of needles pricking her at once and would have taken her breath away had she not been holding it. She remained, with her head in the sink, for several seconds. When she could no longer take the cold, she lifted her face, patted it dry with a towel and drained the water. She did not bother to look at herself again before she went to her room to dress.
Jeans and a long-sleeved T shirt was her outfit of choice. After slipping into a pair of boots, she returned to the bathroom and discovered the swelling in her face had gone down considerably. She applied a touch of makeup and started downstairs. As she did so, the night before rushed at her, the realization of what was to come crashed into her like a freight train. In a short while, she would see Kevin. Whether it was in the parking lot, the hallway, or her third period English class, she could not avoid a run-in. How could I be so stupid? she thought. Kevin’s reputation was well-known. She had been aware of it well before he had shown interest in her. He loved girls, all girls, especially the good-looking ones who were open to the idea of sleeping with him. He was, and had always been, promiscuous. She was not promiscuous. She was a virgin, and not interested in offering herself up as a conquest to anyone. She had simply been flattered by the attention he’d paid her. And while she hadn’t deceived herself completely about his interest in her, she had believed it was at least partially genuine. But she had been wrong.
Each of her mistakes would culminate in a matter of moments. The smell of coffee coming from the kitchen meant that her dad had not left for work, and was likely waiting to serve her a complete course of guilt with a side of righteous lecturing. She could not argue with anything he could possibly say. She was wrong, after all. What would be the point of arguing?
As she rounded the corner into the kitchen, she saw her father hovering over the stove making pancakes. She nearly groaned aloud. He did not cook. She assumed responsibility for preparing their meals. His attempt at breakfast almost certainly meant that a lengthy conversation would accompany it. She did not want to be reprimanded before school. Her day promised to be bad enough. She decided to try to keep things light and behave as normally as possible.
“Hey Dad,” she said as cheerfully as she could. “What’re you doing?”
“Just making a little breakfast,” he replied casually.
Typically, her father would have responded sarcastically when she asked him what he was doing. He would have answered, “Knitting, what does it look like I’m doing?” then would have smiled and winked. He would have kept his usual sense of humor, if things were okay between them. Clearly, they were not.
“Sit down,” he said and placed a plate piled high with misshapen pancakes on the table. “We need to talk a bit.”
“Okay,” she said nervously and sat down. “I’m sitting.”
“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” he began. “I’m guessing you didn’t either.”
“No, not really.”
“What you did was awful. Let’s be clear about that. But I don’t think punishing you is really necessary. I think you beat yourself up about it pretty badly already. Am I right about that?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“So I feel that you know what you did, you know it was wrong, and you won’t do it again. Am I right about that, too?”
“Yes, of course!”
She couldn’t believe it. Her father was treating her like an adult, and letting her off the hook. No lecture. No punishment. Optimism filled her and she thought perhaps her day wouldn’t be as bad as she’d originally thought.
“I am not going to punish you then, per se,” he added
“Per se? What do you mean?”
“Well, there is the issue of your road test.”
“My road test?”
“Yes. Before last night, I thought you were responsible enough to take your road test and get your senior license. Now I feel like maybe you’re not ready.”
Her theory of being treated like an adult ended abruptly.
“Dad, Come on! Getting my senior license and driving a car without you has nothing to do with what happened last night,” she protested.
“Oh really? So respecting rules and behaving responsibly has nothing to do with driving a car without me?”
She could not dispute his argument. He was right. “Seriously, Dad?” was all she could manage before her throat constricted and tears filled her eyes.
“I’m not trying to be a jerk, Missy. I want to keep you safe. You’re all I’ve got.”
She did not respond verbally, but nodded in compliance.
“How about we put off the DMV, just for a few weeks, and see how things go. We can talk about things then, okay?”
She nodded again.
“All right, hurry up and finish up your pancakes. The girls should be here any minute,” he said.
The girls he referred to were Alexandra Georgopoulos and Daniella Colucci, her best friends. They were they closest thing to sisters Melissa had ever had. Together, they existed on the outskirts of the “in” crowd, happily and safely. She worried, however, that their happy safety would be threatened by Kevin. She knew that whether it was a physical altercation or in the form of vicious and unending rumors, he always retaliated. And she had rejected him. Surely, her actions would not go unpunished; she was no different from anyone else who had ever opposed him. If anything, her offense was far worse than any other she could remember. She had hurt his ego. Thinking about what he was capable of doing to her socially, how he could cast her into social purgatory, made her pancake breakfast sour in her stomach.
Her worry-filled thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a horn honking from her driveway.
“You’d better go, Missy. Daniella is waiting,” her father nodded toward the door before adding, “Don’t worry, everything will be fine. You’ll see.”
She wondered how, at times, her father seemed capable of reading her thoughts. She shook her head at him and smiled then left the kitchen. She quickly grabbed her coat from the hall closet and her backpack from the kitchen table just as Daniella honked the horn a second time.
“I’m coming!” Melissa said to no one. “Jeez!”
“Bye sweetie!” her father said.
“Bye dad.”
Daniella waved to her from the driver’s seat of her Toyota Prius. Alexandra nodded in acknowledgment before pulling down the passenger-side mirror and inspecting her lip gloss.
Melissa opened the rear door of Daniella’s car and climbed in.
“Hey!” Alexandra greeted and turned her attention from the mirror to Melissa then back again. She smoothed her long, black hair. Every time Melissa saw Alexandra, she couldn’t help but think her friend’s appearance looked more b
efitting a lingerie catalog than anywhere else.
“Hey, Alex,” Melissa began. “Hello Daniella. Boy, do I have a bone to pick with you.” She was about to begin ribbing her friend about encouraging her to go out with Kevin, and for the conversation she’d had with her father when Daniella surprised her.
“I’m so sorry about last night, Melissa. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. When your dad called, I thought it was you. I never thought he’d be up so late,” Daniella said in one breath as she backed out of the driveway. She had a tendency to speak quickly, and abundantly, when she was nervous. She was obviously feeling guilty, and Melissa decided not to give her a hard time about it.
“Don’t worry, Daniella. It’s fine.”
“Ooh! Things must have gone really well with you and Kevin then if you’re not mad at me for the thing with your dad,” Daniella said and her tone changed.
She supposed Daniella could not help herself. After all, her longtime friend was an optimist whose positivity bubbled over at times. For her, the glass was always half-full. Fittingly, her appearance echoed her upbeat personality. From her sandy-blonde hair that bounced in a riot of curls past her shoulders, to her dimpled, effortless smile, each feature echoed cheerfulness.
Unfortunately, optimism hadn’t been enough to make her date with Kevin better.
“Not exactly,” Melissa offered.
Alexandra turned in her seat to look at Melissa. “What the hell does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
Never one to beat around the bush, Alexandra got right to the point.
“Well, as it turns out, Kevin hasn’t changed at all. He took me straight to East Fallkill Rec and jumped on me,” Melissa answered.
“What!” Daniella exclaimed.
“Are you kidding me?” Alexandra asked incredulously.
“Nope. I wish I were,” Melissa began. “I suggested the diner. He said he wanted to get to know me better and wanted to go to the Rec Center. Stupid me, I agreed. As soon as we got there, he assumed we were gonna do more than talk.”
“Well, of course he did. What did you think he meant when he said he wanted to go to the Rec Center? He was telling you he wanted to fuck you,” Alexandra fumed.
She knew that Alexandra possessed an expansive vocabulary; that she was capable of speaking without swearing, but seldom did. She was unapologetically foul-mouthed, brutally honest, crude, and at times, downright disgusting. She belched often and with abandon and had, on occasion, been known to ask a friend to pull her finger. Her vulgarity was as much a staple of her personality as was her beauty. A statuesque goddess of Greek descent, Alexandra was intelligent and studious. With long raven locks and irises so dark they appeared black, she was breathtaking. From her full lips to her bronze skin and voluptuous curves, Alexandra’s stood out in every crowd she had ever been in.
Alexandra’s beauty would not serve her at the moment. And Melissa was not in the mood to endure her brutal honesty or profanity-laden tirades. She just wanted to get through the day as quickly and painlessly as possible. There would be plenty of time to inform both of her friends of all the awful details surrounding her date with Kevin. The present moment was not the right one.
“Thanks a lot Alex! Way to be my best friend,” Melissa snapped. “And to think, I thought you’d be on my side!”
Alexandra locked eyes with her. She watched her friend’s demeanor soften, how her eyes, hardened earlier, turned to liquid onyx. Alexandra knew she’d gone too far, that she should have been more supportive; her eyes said as much.
Daniella, in an attempt to diffuse the thickening tension in the car, began regaling Melissa and Alexandra with tales of her study group for the remaining moments of their drive to school. Filled with minutiae humorous exclusively to those who were actually present at the study group, Melissa listened politely and laughed when she thought it appropriate. All the while, she was comforted by the familiarity of the conversation, and the fact that it did not involve Kevin. But her comfort was short-lived.
“Melissa, I’m sorry about what I said. I’m such a dick sometimes. That fucking asshole thought you were gonna screw him in the car on the first date, and that makes him an even bigger dick,” Alexandra said.
Melissa laughed. “Yes, I guess it does,” she agreed. It wasn’t the best apology she had ever received, but it was the best one Alexandra could offer. And it made her laugh.
Her laughter ended, though, as they turned in to the driveway of the school, and was replaced with upset. A familiar car pulled up behind them then slowed and dropped back out of sight. Daniella parked her car in the front lot, and Melissa watched as the black Infinity reappeared, and as Kevin maneuver it over one of many large speed humps interspersed along the path to the rear lot. He did not act as if he’d noticed Daniella’s car, or Melissa sitting in the back seat. But she was sure he had.
Her stomach churned, threatened to expel her father’s deformed pancakes.
“Melissa, are you okay? You’re like, really pale,” Daniella observed.
“I’m okay,” Melissa said. “I’m just a little nervous about seeing Kevin today, how he’s going to react.”
Alexandra and Daniella nodded solemnly before climbing out of the car and flanking Melissa. They walked together across the parking area. As she approached Harbinger’s High School, she took a deep breath and steeled herself for what lay ahead.