It's a Mall World After All (13 page)

"You finally came back to relieve us," Harris said, and then before I could reply, he added, "All the cider on the table is cool enough to serve. It stays at optimum temperature for roughly five minutes. The Bunsen burners are on their lowest setting, but the cider in the pitchers is still pretty hot, so let it cool down a bit before giving it to anyone." He stepped around the table. "Got that?"

"Sure," I said.

Preeth followed Harris around the table, which I hadn't expected. "You're leaving too?" I asked. "I thought you didn't like to dance."

"Harris is going to teach me how to do the country swing," she said, and then the two of them walked off without another glance in my direction.

Colton turned from his group to me. "I can help you for a few minutes." Without waiting for an answer, he put one hand on Olivia's arm. "You don't mind if I help Charlotte with the refreshments, do you?"

Olivia tossed me a look over her shoulder and feigned a smile. "Well, someone had better help her if food is involved." Then she turned her attention back to the other guys and giggled about something. Probably me.

Colton came around to my side of table, and Olivia and company threw away their empty cups. The group then strolled off in the direction of the dance floor without saying good-bye. Not that I cared.

Colton tilted his head and looked behind me. "What are the pitchers doing on the floor?"

"They're keeping warm."

"Bad idea. You'll knock into one and tip it over."

"No, I won't. I know they're there." I took a step away from the pitchers just so he'd feel better.

He let out a sigh that indicated he shared Olivia's view of my inability to handle the complicated nature of refreshments. "Wouldn't it be easier to put the pitchers on the table?"

"Well, Ms. Ellis might not appreciate us using her Bunsen burners to warm cider. Preeth thought we should keep them hidden."

Colton's eyes narrowed as he took a closer look at the pitchers. "You're using Bunsen burners as a kitchen appliance?" He let out a slow sigh, then surveyed me. "You know, you could have just told me you didn't want to be in charge of refreshments."

"Preeth was supposed to warm it at home and bring it in insulated containers. When she didn't, we had to improvise."

He looked out into the darkness of the dance floor and shook his head. "You know, Charlotte, when I said we could cut costs on the dance, this wasn't what I had in mind. Thank goodness I didn't put you in charge of music, or right now you'd be in front of a microphone with a harmonica, wouldn't you?"

"You don't have to help me if you don't want to," I said. "I can pass out cookies and man the cider all by myself, you know. I'm both capable and competent, so if you'd rather go hang out with Miss Look-at-MeI'm-Wearing-a-Designer-Shirt, go right ahead." He cracked a smile, and his gaze slid back to me. "You don't like Olivia, do you?" I straightened a row of cups, rolling my eyes as I did. "And to think you questioned my taste in guys." "Olivia isn't that bad. Well, she's not as bad as Greg anyway." "Which is why I dumped Greg. Well, okay, technically he dumped me, but I wasn't sad about it, which counts as the same thing."

Still smiling, he leaned toward me. "You're jealous, aren't you?"

"Why would I be jealous of her?"

"Because she has what you don't."

"Which would be what? A bad hairdresser, poor rhythm, or a striking lack of financial sense when it comes to buying clothes?"

His smile grew. "Admit it, you're jealous."

"I'm not jealous." I straightened the napkins into a tall stack. "Rich people are so arrogant. You all think everyone just sits around coveting your wealth. Well, my happiness isn't dependent on my bank account numbers."

He gave a mock grunt. "I wasn't talking about Olivia's money. I was talking about me."

"Oh." It was suddenly hard to breathe.

Colton picked up a glass of cider and took a sip. "We're not a couple—Olivia and me. So if you want to flirt with me, it's all right." He was teasing, but there was also truth mixed into this game. Perhaps more truth than he knew, and I felt as though everything inside of me was stretched tight.

I didn't want to face him, so I kept my gaze centered out on the dance floor. "I see. Should I bat my eyelashes, or were you thinking along the lines of pointless small talk?"

"Actually, I like the way you keep looking at me."

"I don't keep looking at you."

"Yes, you do."

I didn't look at him, just to prove the point. If he had admitted he liked me too, this discussion would be much easier. But he hadn't said anything along those lines, so I didn't know if this was playful banter or some horrible expose on my pitiful crush.

"If you're not a couple with Olivia, then why did you bring her to the dance?"

He shrugged and took another sip of his drink. "She asked if Bryant and I wanted to take a tour of Stanford and then go to a play on campus. I told her I couldn't, because I had to go to an NHS dance. Then she said she liked dancing, and the rest just sort of happened."

"Oh." I tried not to smile too much about this news, because I figured Colton didn't need more evidence of my crush.

He scanned the dance floor as though noticing for the first time his friend's absence. "Where are Bryant and Brianna?"

"They decided to go to a movie instead."

His eyebrow raised. "Really? I thought Brianna wanted to come."

"She did."

Colton took another sip of his drink as though it didn't matter, but with that one phrase my suspicions not only popped up again but settled comfortably into the corners of my mind. I was not trying to feed them, but suspicions have a way of making themselves at home and rummaging through your fridge without permission. "So it's strange that they went to the movies instead of the dance," I said, even though Colton was no longer considering this fact.

I handed out a couple of cookies and some drinks to passing students; then when we were alone again, I turned to Colton. "Did Bryant's aunt come to town last Saturday?"

"Not likely. His aunt teaches at Oregon State. They're probably having finals."

This was the equivalent of standing in front of my hungry suspicions and yelling, "The pizza's here!"

I ran my fingers over the tablecloth. I'd been so careful to get the right color of red, but in the dim light it looked dark brown. Which was one more way, I suppose, that I'd done a lousy job decorating the gym. "Bryant told Brianna that his aunt came to dinner last Saturday," I said. "He broke a date because of it."

Colton drank the last of his cider and tossed his cup in the garbage. "Is this more Bryant-bashing? Don't you remember how he apologized and you said you were going to get along with him?"

"I am trying to get along with him. I'm just wondering why he told Brianna he couldn't go out with her because his aunt was coming to dinner, when Kelly saw him leaving his house dressed nicely while his dad worked on painting the trim of their house." Colton folded his arms. His jaw twitched. "Did you send your friends to spy on Bryant?" He made it sound like such a bad thing. I didn't answer him.

"Charlotte," he said.

"Okay, yes, I did, but that was before he apologized to me, and I hadn't started trying to get along with him yet."

"And now you are?"

"Colton, you don't understand." I took a step toward him, making a sweeping motion with one arm as though I could explain it to him with hand gestures. I wasn't trying to accuse Bryant—I just wanted an explanation. I wanted Colton to suddenly remember that Bryant had several aunts, one of which liked to drop in and help people paint their houses.

All my gesture did was manage to do was knock over my napkin tower and send several fluttering to the floor.

Colton took a step away from me. "I understand perfectly, Charlotte. If I hang out with you and I'm still friends with Bryant, then sooner or later I'm going to end up drenched again because you can't let go of the past. You're so sure that—" He stopped suddenly and straightened up. "What's that smell?"

"Smell?" I repeated, and immediately smelled the acrid scent of burning plastic. Turning, I noticed a cloud of smoke billowing up from the end of the table. I gasped, then yelped, "Colton, the tablecloth is on fire!"

I knew exactly what had happened. The napkins I knocked off the table had landed on the Bunsen burner, started a flame, and now that flame was looking around to see what else it could consume. I had thoughtfully provided it with not only a tablecloth but dozens of paper snowflakes and a napkin tower.

Colton scanned the room, searching the gymnasium walls. "Where's a fire extinguisher?"

"I don't know." But I did know where liquid was. As the fire climbed to the top of the table, I picked up two cups of cider and threw them in that direction. The flames flickered for a moment, then continued their march toward the cookies. I grabbed two more cups and repeated the process.

Colton picked up cups to help me. He mumbled several things under his breath, and I'm pretty sure he fired me from the refreshment committee, but I was too busy pouring cider on the table to answer him.

The thing about being in a darkened room is that people tend to notice when there is suddenly a lot of light, like say, a table lit up like a bonfire, and they begin to swarm around you gasping and yelling, but not really doing anything to help. I mean, someone actually called out, "Stop, drop, and roll!" Which is handy information if you yourself are on fire, but not such good advice if you're trying to extinguish blazing cookies.

I started to panic—not because the fire was so big, but because I suddenly realized I'd spent all afternoon taping kindling to the walls and ceiling. I'd also dangled streamers over the table, which is just the sort of thing you want hanging over flames. Then Ms. Ellis pushed her way through the crowd with the fire extinguisher and sprayed down the table.

I don't think I breathed at all throughout the duration of the fire, so it's probably a good thing that it only lasted for about a minute—just long enough to draw everyone's attention to me pitching cider at the refreshments, to create a nasty cloud of smoke, and oh yeah, for me to slosh cider onto Colton's shirt.

This was an especially bad omen, since the last words he'd said to me before the fire were, "If I hang out with you and I'm still friends with Bryant, then sooner or later I'm going to end up drenched again."

I stared at Colton's shirt. "You're not that wet," I told him.

Breathing hard, he looked from the smoldering refreshments to me. "What?"

"You didn't get drenched," I said. "Just a little splattered." His eyes narrowed momentarily like he didn't know what I was talking about, and then a flicker of understanding passed over his features.

He didn't have time to reply, however, because just then the smoke alarm and sprinkler system kicked on.

Usually I hate the shrill ring of the fire alarm, but tonight it was sort of nice, since it masked the shrieks of the student body as they went running from the gym. I mean, okay, so the sprinkler system is misnamed. It wasn't a light sprinkle, but more like a torrential downpour, but still, it was just water. Water is not going to hurt you, well, at least not unless you were stupid enough to pay a lot of money for a designer silk shirt. Then you may have a reason to pick up a folding chair and hold it over your head like an umbrella while you scramble across the room screaming. And I did feel bad for Olivia as I watched her do this.

But still, there was no need for everyone else to get hysterical. Especially not Ms. Ellis. Oh, she wasn't hysterical at the sprinkler part. She became hysterical later as Harris explained about the Bunsen burners and I explained how I'd accidentally knocked a couple of napkins off the table. She called us many names, none of which are usually associated with National Honor Society members. Then she made us clean up every single soggy snowflake in the room while she went outside to tell three fire trucks that we weren't in need of their services.

Colton and I were never alone together as we cleaned up, which was probably a good thing, since really, I didn't want to hear his assessment of the matter.

twelve

B
rianna has a warped sense of humor. I know this because she wouldn't stop laughing when I called her Saturday morning and told her what happened. I mean, all night I worried about how I was going to face everyone at school when they knew I'd accidentally set the refreshments on fire. I also worried about the trouble I was going to get into with the administration for unauthorized Bunsen burner use, and whether or not the deejay throwing himself over his speakers in order to protect them had actually worked.

After the sprinklers shut off, the deejay carried the sound system back to his truck, cradling it in his arms like it was an injured child, and Colton shook his head and said, "I'm
so
glad I didn't let you talk me into using my stereo equipment." Then he didn't say anything else, and he left to take Olivia home.

He was mad at me, and I didn't know how to fix it.

Also, Olivia would undoubtedly tell everyone she knew what I'd done, and then I'd be forever banned from social gatherings and have to go to college in some distant state where they didn't know about my troubled refreshment history.

And was nearly setting the gym on fire something that showed up on your high school transcript?

See, a good friend would be concerned for you instead of laughing so hard that she had to keep gasping for air.

"Colton will eventually get over it," Brianna told me when she could finally talk. "He's only mad now because he's the president of NHS, so he'll get blamed for the fire too."

"Maybe," I said. I hadn't told her about our disagreement over Bryant right beforehand. "I'll be sure to let the principal and everybody else at school know he didn't have anything to do with it."

"And apologize to Colton again when you see him," Brianna said. "Be extra nice, and he'll forget all about Olivia."

Well, I didn't know if he'd actually forget Olivia. Probably the image of her hefting a chair over her head and swearing in three different languages was burned into his memory like it was into mine, but still Brianna had a point.

On Monday I got all sorts of abuse about the dance. People sang, "Raindrops keep falling on my head because I set off the smoke detector," and various versions of "Singing in the Rain." I also heard, "Hey, you sure made a splash at the dance!" "Next time the theme can be Noah's Ark!" and "What does NHS stand for? Nice Hot Shower? Not Highly Sensible? Never Heard of Safety?" And about three hundred other variations.

Since Harris, Preeth, and I had set up the Bunsen burners, we were given in-school suspension for the rest of the week, and then another week of suspension when school started up after winter break. Colton just had suspension for the rest of the week because he'd known about the Bunsen burners and hadn't alerted the teachers.

This, the principal assured us, was letting us off easy. He could have given us straight suspension and not allowed us in school at all. Admittedly, this would have killed my grades, but on the other hand, it would have been a simple way to avoid everyone until they stopped thinking of new meanings for NHS. As it was, I still had to see them at lunch. Plus, I'd have to sit in the study hall room for a week with Colton. I knew he'd do nothing but glare at me because I'd turned yet another NHS project into a disaster and gotten him suspended in the process.

Throughout the week when they let all of the in-school suspension delinquents out to walk to lunch, I went out of my way to talk to Colton. I apologized again. I tried to make small talk. It didn't get me anywhere. Any time I spoke, his expression took on a hunted look, and he kept looking over his shoulder as though something bad was about to swoop down and grab him.

Brianna found another use for the iron-on letters she'd bought. On Thursday, Preeth, Kelly, and Brianna all came to school wearing the matching shirts with the words, FREE CHARLOTTE on the front and COOKIES ARE BETTER FLAMBE on the back.

"I thought you were giving the shirts to Amanda," I said when I saw them.

"I decided to give her a book on finding the right career. Besides, she was the one who came up with the 'Free Charlotte' phrase."

Well, it was nice to know they found a cause they could agree on.

Which meant something.

Of
course it might mean he was keeping an eye out to make sure I didn't do anything stupid, dangerous, or that would leave him drenched; but still, it meant something.

I wished we could drive to the mall together, but I had to transport the presents, and Colton took a load of NHS members in his convertible. Harris and Preeth came with me, probably because they knew I was the one person who wouldn't offer them an opinion—pro or con—about the merits of burning down the school.

Once we all got to the mall, the other NHS members unloaded the presents from the back of my van while Colton disappeared into the men's room to change into the Santa costume. I went into the women's room, clutching the plastic bag that contained an elf suit.

Surprisingly, it was a real elf suit, at least in that it only used enough material to cover an elf. The skirt was way too short for a human being, and I kept tugging at it, trying to pull it down farther. Normally, nothing would have made me put on the bright green tights that were included with the outfit, but the skirt was so short, I had to. I mean, one wrong move and thirty elementary children would be telling their friends that they knew what color underwear Santa's elves wore.

Faux fur lined both the skirt and the red velveteen jacket. I'm using the term
fur
loosely, since it more closely resembled a strip of building insulation than any living animal. I put black, pointy elf slippers on, and then a red stocking cap with attached jingle bells. After this was done, I surveyed myself in the bathroom mirror.

I decided the only positive thing about wearing an oversized furry hat with jingle bells is that it might draw people's attention away from my bright green legs and nearly nonexistent hemline.

It took courage to walk out of the restroom. I mean, at least Colton would be disguised in his Santa beard and costume. Anyone who saw me—and I knew high school kids were walking around the mall—would recognize me.

When you've nearly burned down the school gym and you need a boost of credibility with your peers, it's probably not a good idea to show up in the mall in an elf suit; but still, I was stuck with the job. I stood at the restroom door repeating to myself, "It's for the kids," several times. When my feet still didn't move, I added, "It's Christmastime, and no one will think anything of it." They wouldn't make endless jokes about my fashion choices, career ambitions, or how my taste in men had improved now that I was hanging out with an older, overweight, jolly guy.

I knew as I stood there in the doorway that I had done this to myself. I'd sent out the message I didn't need any of them. Now that people had a chance to make me eat humble pie, they were taking full advantage of the situation.

Which goes to show that even though you chose justice over friendship, it doesn't mean you'll get it—justice, I mean. It's more likely you'll spend your one break from suspension dressed like a Keebler Elf-hooker.

I could probably write a really in-depth chapter for my dissertation about this day. You know, sometime in the future—after therapy had recovered all the memories I was about to repress.

I mean, seriously, I was so starting to hate the mall and everything that had ever happened in it.

I took a deep breath and walked out of the restroom. Once I made it to the courtyard where the Santa chair was, things wouldn't be so bad. I would blend in with the rest of the Christmas decor. Probably no one would even give me a second look.

Three steps out of the restroom, I saw Bryant getting a drink at the water fountain. I resisted the urge to turn around and flee back into the bathroom. I wouldn't have made it back gracefully, considering I jingled every time I moved. I took a long breath, forced a smile, and kept walking forward.

Bryant looked up, saw me, and his head jerked back in surprise. He nearly spit out the water he'd been drinking. "Charlotte!"

"Hi, Bryant." I motioned toward my outfit, pretending I didn't feel stupid. "It's what all the well-dressed elves will be wearing this Christmas season." His gaze traveled from my pointy elf shoes to my furry hat and back again. "Let me guess, Bloomingdale's is making you spray mistletoe-scented perfume today?"

I laughed, jingling as I did. "No, I'm helping Santa pass out presents." I nodded toward the men's bathroom. "He's getting changed in there right now." Bryant looked blankly at the bathroom as though Colton had never mentioned anything to him about it.

"The Santa service project for the needy kids at St. Matthew's," I prompted.

"Oh." He nodded without a hint of recognition. "That's really cool of Bloomingdale's to do. Where are you going to be? Inside the store?" I vaguely wondered why he asked. Was he actually volunteering to walk with me there? That was so sweet. So unexpected. "We're using the Santa chair out in the courtyard."

"How long will you be there?"

I shrugged. More jingling. "We're singing some Christmas carols, then handing out presents to thirty kids. I'm guessing about an hour."

"Maybe I'll stop by and see you." He took a step down the hallway. "Right now I've got errands in the opposite direction."

"I'll give you a candy cane when you come," I called after him. "It's one of the professional perks of being an elf."

He shot me a smile, then walked away.

I stood by the drinking fountain and let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

That hadn't been so bad.

I'd been nice to Bryant, and he'd been nice back. It seemed like a small thing and yet a big thing at the same time—a sign that the past was over.

As I stood by the water fountain, Colton came out of the men's room. He carried the Santa bag in his hand and wore his normal clothes. He saw me and did a double take. "Wow. You look really . . . um, elfish."

"I look like a trampy gnome with gangrene. You gave me this outfit as payback for getting you suspended, didn't you?" He shook his head and laughed. "Actually, no. The elf outfit came with the Santa suit, but now that you mention it, it does seem a fitting revenge."

I pulled the skirt down again. "There's nothing fitting about this outfit. That's part of the problem." After adjusting my skirt, I gestured toward his bag. "So why aren't you decked out as Saint Nick yet?"