Flawless (21 page)

I'm quick to bolt from the classroom when journalism ends and escape to the restroom, where I can avoid Rock. Two weeks ago, I'd have given anything for extra time with him, but I can't make myself face him. Not when there's a lie between us, especially one as big as this.

Of course, I can't ditch class (being such a good student is seriously beginning to affect my social life), so I slink down the hallway and into Jacobi's class. I'm relieved when I find Rock isn't there, but I know I can't evade him forever. I'll be doing good to escape a scathing interrogation (which I completely deserve) in the next fifty minutes.

Rock jogs into class seconds before the bell rings, a seriousness on his face that instantly sets my nerves on edge. More alarming is the way he eyes me as he walks to his seat behind mine. He sits without smiling, the first time he's ever done that.

And I can feel it in my bones.

He knows.

As Jacobi begins class, I wish for the first time that he'd just shut up and let me think. Not that I'll be able to justify what I did to Rock, but if I could just have ten minutes to formulate some sort of half-assed excuse, I could at least face him.

“Don't run out after class,” Rock whispers into my hair, sending a chill of dread down my back. “We need to talk.”

Wholly incapable of replying, I give one sharp nod to indicate I heard him and then spend the next fifteen minutes racking my brain. What am I going to tell Rock? I'm so lost in my own thoughts I'm surprised when everyone in class begins shifting their desks to set up for partner work. Great. Just my luck.

I know it's childish, but I squeeze my eyes shut and pray for some way out of this. Of course there isn't, which is obvious when Rock spins my desk around to face him with me still in it. Normally, I'd be turned on by such an awesome display of strength but, right now, I'm closer to puking than swooning.

“I can't believe it was
you
,” Rock whispers furiously, leaning across his desk so that we're mere inches apart.

“What was me?” I ask, attempting to play dumb. Normally, I detest it when girls do that, but I'm totally backed into a corner.

Rock's eyes narrow and dread races through me. This is bad. Really bad. “Give me a damn break. You think I didn't figure it out after Kristen's little slip? I know you wrote those e-mails and Facebook messages for her, and you know what's really pathetic? That I didn't figure it out before. How could I have missed it? It's so freaking obvious. Especially after the comment about people noticing your nose before your eyes.” He shakes his head in disgust, as much as with himself as at me. “But I believed her. I believed
you
.”

“I'm sorry, Rock. It was just one of those crazy ideas that kind of got away from us. But I promise you, I stopped when I knew the two of you were getting serious. Once I got to know you, I just couldn't keep it up.”

Rock leans back in his seat, tense arms folded across his chest. Jacobi drops a sheet of paper with our assignment between us, unaware that my life is completely falling apart right here, right now. I look down at the paper, but I can't make out the words through the tears threatening to spill over. I squeeze my eyes tight to fight them back.

“I'm sorry, Rock. I don't know what else to say.”

“I thought you were my friend, that I could trust you,” he says quietly, looking at me with such disapproval that it takes my breath away.

“I
am
your friend.”

He shakes his head, then gives a sarcastic laugh. “Could've fooled me.”

Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow or a communicated sense of fineness. What ails us is that our sense of beauty is so bruised and blunted, we miss all the best.

—D. H. LAWRENCE

Chapter Twenty

If I thought watching Kristen and Rock together was the worst possible misery, I was dead wrong. Because the last two weeks without Rock talking, joking, and encouraging me has shown me just how utterly wretched life can really be. Not once has he even made eye contact with me, each day growing more distant, literally and figuratively.

He no longer sits next to me and Kristen at lunch or in journalism. And he quickly found a new seat in Jacobi's class, leaving me to partner with Alyssa Dunwoody.

And no matter how many times I replay the events that led to losing Rock, I can't figure out a way to fix it. The one thing I understand is exactly where I went wrong and why. It's not something I can really talk about with Kristen, either.

There has been one shining light in the shambles of the past two weeks: my essay on loyalty made it to the top five (which seems totally preposterous given the way I've treated Rock). The best part is that being a finalist guarantees me a five-hundred-dollar scholarship.

At the very least, I'm enjoying the extra attention from Mrs. Freel, who makes a point to visit with me each day and has offered to write a letter of recommendation for my college and scholarship applications.

“Sarah,” Mrs. Freel calls to me as class ends, exactly sixteen days since I last spoke to Rock.

“Yes?” I answer, making my way to her desk and waving good-bye to Kristen as she leaves the room.

“I received an e-mail today regarding your entry in the scholarship contest,” she says, face and eyes neutral.

My heart drums in my chest. “I thought the results weren't due back for another two weeks.”

“They aren't. But they are allowing every finalist to revisit their essay and make changes. The revision window is small; you only have forty-eight hours. If you'd like to do that, make sure you have it to me no later than the end of the day tomorrow.”

I chew on my bottom lip, considering the opportunity to edit my essay. “Do you think I should?”

Mrs. Freel smiles at me. “Only you can decide that. Trust your gut, Sarah. You've got top-notch instincts.”

I nod, wishing she'd decide for me. I mean, I'm dealing with enough right now. What if I change it and it totally sucks?

“Okay, thanks,” I say, then leave the room with my head more crowded than ever.

At nine fifteen that night, I'm sitting at my computer, hands resting on the keyboard, mindlessly tapping the keys as I think. I stare at the existing essay on the screen, the one I was writing the night Kristen told me she was breaking up with Rock.

The one that's earned me a spot in the top five.

Loyalty.

The very word evokes strong emotion. By definition, it means a feeling of devotion, duty, or attachment to someone or something. It's considered the core foundation of all successful relationships, both personal and professional.

There are few things in life that better define a person than this honorable virtue. It isn't an easy one to possess. It takes practice and dedication. Sometimes, we even have to fall off the wagon, so to speak, before we realize its importance in our life.

There are varying types of loyalty that we all possess to some degree: loyalty to our family, our friends, our school, and our country. It means standing up for the people and things you believe in when others fight to bring them down. Sometimes, it means putting yourself in an unpopular position to defend the honor of those closest to you.

But if we fail to practice it, fail to value its place in our life, where would we be?

We'd be a world full of unhappy families, defined by strife and distrust.

We'd have no friends to rely on, forced to live out each day on our own.

We'd be a defenseless country, with no one to fight in the name of freedom.

And what kind of life would that be?

Without much thinking, I start typing, letting the words flow from my heart (instead of my head) in a rush, without editing, without revision. Everything that's happened to me over the past three months spills onto the screen, the good, the bad, and the really shameful.

Forty-five minutes later, I print the regurgitation of my rambling thoughts and read the revised essay.

The satisfaction that comes from spilling your guts, even if it's on the computer screen, is beyond description. It's all right there: the brutal facts. There's nowhere to hide, no one to blame but yourself.

I'm not at all convinced this paper is as good as my last one, but it's honest. It's real. And it's something I'm proud of. Before I can change my mind, I e-mail it to Mrs. Freel and ask her to submit my revision.

I shut down my computer, turn out the lights, and crawl into bed with Ringo curled up next to me.

For the first time in weeks, I slip off to sleep in mere seconds.

When I wake up the following morning, there's a purpose in my steps, a fire in my eyes, and I feel more alive than I have in a long time. I don't even stare at the mirror and fixate on my nose.

It's part of who I am; take it or leave it.

Even when Kristen arrives five minutes late, I greet her with a smile, happy to have her in my life. On my terms from now on. I consider telling her about my revised paper, but I dismiss the thought when she starts gossiping about Jay and how he asked another girl to homecoming.

Kristen rolls her eyes. “For someone who was so love struck, he sure got over you fast.”

I know she doesn't say it to hurt me, and I'm not upset. If anything, she's furious with Jay for not fighting harder for me.

“If it's what makes him happy, then I'm cool.” I smile in her direction as she shoots me a look of total disbelief.

“Oh my God,” she groans, “what am I going to do with you?”

I laugh, happy to have our easy banter back, knowing my happiness doesn't rest on Kristen's and wondering why it took me so long to figure that out.

Friday afternoon, I arrive at Jacobi's class early, skipping the trip to my locker. When I walk inside, there's only one other person there.

Rock.

Sitting in his new seat on the other side of the room, he looks so different from the vision that runs through my head every night. There's no smile, no spark in his eyes.

I take a deep breath and walk closer, sitting in the seat in front of him and turning around to face him.

He looks up, an unreadable expression on his face.

I clear my throat before speaking. “Can we talk for a minute?”

He shrugs. “It's a free country,” he says.

“Yeah,” I mumble. Geez, he's not exactly making this easy on me, is he? But I guess I don't deserve a break.

“So,” I say, “I've done a lot of thinking about what happened. You have every right to be angry with me. I'm angry with myself for doing it.”

Rock looks up at me, eyes still hard, no trace of the warmth I was hoping to find. He stares at me, silent.

“I guess I thought I was being a good friend to Kristen. She was desperate to get your attention, you know? To prove to you that she was smart. And she knew you were into things she wasn't. The ironic thing about all of this is that every word I wrote was written from the heart.”

“Whose heart?” Rock asks in a low growl. “Were they even your words or did you copy them out of some lame romance novel? What am I supposed to believe?”

“Give me some credit. Of course they were my words. It started with a letter Kristen had written and I just … spiced it up a little.”

“So they were Kristen's words,” he says, disbelieving.

I shake my head, ignoring the kids filtering into the classroom, knowing I'm nearly out of time. “Not exactly.”

Rock shakes his head. “Yeah, that really clears it up.”

Someone taps me on the shoulder and I look around to see Rock's new lit partner standing impatiently behind me. I stand up and move next to Rock's desk.

“Can we finish this at lunch?” I ask, stopping myself short of begging him.

Rock looks up at me, then nods. “Meet me on the front steps.”

“I'll be there,” I whisper, fighting the smile that threatens to spread across my face. It's not like I expect Rock to fall in love with me; too much has happened for that to be a possibility. But if I can just convince him how sorry I am and why I was so misguided, maybe we can at least be friends.

I grab a salad from the cafeteria and give Kristen my usual excuse for missing lunch.

“Scholarship application,” I say as I walk past our table. “See you after school.”

She rolls her eyes and waves, watching me race out of the cafeteria. What's most surprising is that I don't even consider how she'd feel about me talking to Rock. It's time to be true to myself.

When I shove through the double doors to the front steps, I run into a wall of black leather and silver studs. The bikers. Or wannabe bikers, anyway. Most of them aren't even old enough to have a license, but the way they dress and behave, you'd think they were the newest Hells Angels inductees.

I stand frozen in place, wishing I had Kristen here to back me up. But this is the new me, I remind myself. The confident, self-reliant me.

Some creep snickers from the corner. “Holy shit. Did your parents lose a bet with God?”

The familiar tension crawls up my neck. I glare through the crowd of losers, daring them to say another word to my face, but they avoid making eye contact. Cowards.

A hand grabs mine and pulls me through the crowd and down the stairs.

“Punks,” Rock grumbles. He drops my hand the second we're on the stairs.

I follow Rock to a small patch of grass and sit next to him. Now that I'm here and finally have his attention, I'm speechless. I mean, how far do I really want to take this?

“Are you going to say something?” he asks, opening my salad and picking at the carrots. It's an innocent act, but it resembles the easy way we used to be with each other and gives me the courage to open up.