Something Had to Give (11 page)

“New Year, same boyfriend, huh?”

He started with me as soon as I sat down. How could the only seat left in the whole classroom be behind him? I was tempted to stand up the entire time just to avoid his stupid, irrelevant comments about my boyfriend. He sat there staring at me waiting for me to respond, but I decided to ignore him, to act like I didn’t see or hear him. After a while he gave up and turned back around snickering to himself. When the bell finally rang, I was relieved that I could get away from him. My mental celebration was all too soon. When leaving the room I felt a tug at my purse and when I turned around he was there behind me.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I noticed a jagged corner of paper sticking out of my purse.

“Relax. It’s just my phone number. You know just in case things don’t work out with that other guy.”

I was furious at his disrespect. He knew I had a boyfriend. What made him think that I was even remotely interested in him? I snatched the paper out of my purse and threw it in the trash in the hall. There were so many things I wanted to say to him, but I was so angry I couldn’t find the words. Throwing his number away didn’t even seem to faze him. He still kept that sly grin on his face.

“You’re missing out on all this”, he yelled out behind me. “You hear me? You’re missing out on a real man.”

Just keep walking Cheryl. Just keep walking, I repeated to myself. Welcome to sophomore year.

Aside from my unfortunate interaction with Tre, there wasn’t much excitement that day which was just fine with me. Tre didn’t bother to come back to homeroom that week and that was also fine with me. I would see him from time to time around school and managed to ignore him and the annoying grin he would try to give me. I found it easier to make friends my sophomore year. Jackie’s death hadn’t come up in over a year, which made it easier to relax when meeting new people. I didn’t feel like I had to be on edge. I was much busier than I could have ever imagined with school, work, Derrick and having much needed girl time with friends. My parents were thrilled that I had finally come out of my shell and pretty much allowed me to go where I wanted with them unless it was a party. Parties were still out of the question. I knew better than to even ask. It bothered me that so much time had passed and they still did not trust me even though I understood why.

“Relax; you will have plenty of time to party in a few years when you leave for college. You’ll probably even get tired of it.” This was Shanna’s response to my venting. I knew she was right. I couldn’t even imagine having the freedom she had at college.

By the end of the semester, I was feeling like it was the best year ever. My grades were good, I was still making my own money, and things with Derrick were still going good. Shanna had come home for Thanksgiving and finally introduced us to her mystery boyfriend. Craig was a year ahead of Shanna in school. He was studying sociology and also played basketball. I would have never guessed that Shanna would go for an athlete, but she seemed completely smitten. For Christmas she had come home without him and was completely miserable having to be apart from him.

“What do you do when he is away at games?” I asked. I didn’t see the difference.

“It’s different. This is a holiday. We should be spending it together. Besides I’ll be home for three weeks. We’ve never had to go three weeks without seeing each other.”

I didn’t know how to argue with that or if it was even worth the effort. I wanted to tell her to suck it up and enjoy the family time, but I refrained and decided to give her the time she needed to sulk. Fortunately for her and for the rest of us who were tired of seeing her mope around the house, Craig surprised her by making the seven-hour drive from Virginia to spend New Year’s with her. I had to admit that it was a romantic gesture. Daddy seemed impressed as well. He had not verbalized any reservations about Craig, but if he did have any, I was sure that his surprise visit helped to decrease them. That New Year’s Eve we had a nice little celebration at home with Daddy, Mommy, Shanna, Craig, and Derrick. Mommy took the night off from cooking and we ordered pizza while watching movies and playing games. When the clock struck midnight we toasted with our sparkling grape juice before calling it a night. It was a perfect start to the New Year.

I was pumped for track season when springtime came around. We had come so close the previous year to winning the state championship. I was sure with a little more effort that we could win it all. The first day of practice, I waited at the gym for Derrick. After 15 minutes, I decided that he had somehow forgotten. It bothered me the whole practice since it wasn’t like him to just not show up. He loved to run and I couldn’t think of a reason for him to skip out on practice unless something was terribly wrong. It was much later that evening that I was finally able to get a hold of Derrick.

“So, did you forget about track practice today? I waited for like 15 minutes for you.” I had told myself that I was going to stay calm and at least hear him out, but as I began the conversation I immediately started to get upset.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I’ve been meaning to tell you that I don’t think I’m going to run this year.”

“Wait, What? Did you just say that you aren’t running this year?” I was sure that I hadn’t heard him correctly

“Yeah, I’m just not that into it this year. I think I’m going to concentrate more on my school work.”

He was lying. I had never known him to lie to me before. I never thought he would, but this story about wanting to concentrate on his schoolwork was bogus and a complete lie. We went back and forth about it for some time. I pleaded with him to tell me what was going on, but it was no use—he was holding on tight to his story. When we finally got off the phone I just laid there staring at the ceiling. I knew something was wrong, but the more I racked my brain to try to figure out what it was, the more confused and angry I felt. I just couldn’t understand what could be so bad in his life that he didn’t want to run and worst of all he didn’t want to tell me.

I avoided Derrick for the rest of the week and refused to take his phone calls. It was fine if he didn’t want to run track but I refused to be OK with him keeping secrets and lying to me. It wasn’t a decision that he made when he woke up the morning of first practice. He had to have known for a while that he wasn’t going to try out. He should have told me. It stressed me out trying to constantly find ways to avoid Derrick and it felt horrible. I didn’t feel like I wanted to end things with him but I hoped the silent treatment would make him tell me the truth. I managed to steer clear of him for a solid week before he caught up with me at a place I could not hide: work. I was working a slow evening shift when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Excuse me, I’ll have a waffle cone with five scoops of ice cream, chocolate syrup, and you on top.”

“How long did it take for you to come up with that awful line?” It was so corny that all I could do was laugh. I didn’t want to laugh though. I was still mad at him.

“You’ve been so mad at me, I had to think of something that would make you laugh.”

“Yeah I’m mad. You’re giving me this fake story about why you’re not running this year and I know it’s not the truth.”

“I wanted to tell you sooner, but I knew you would get all mad at me. It’s just not what I want to do this year and I really hope that you can understand that.”

That’s it? I wondered as I listened to him. He hoped I understood. I didn’t know how to respond so I didn’t. I just stood there. I had a few choices. I could continue to ignore him till he told me; I could tell him to kick rocks; or I could try to be understanding and move on. I chose the last option. I wasn’t totally OK with him not being completely honest, but it was so exhausting staying mad at him and I knew I didn’t have it in me to break up with him. Slowly we got back into our normal routine and as odd as it felt not having him at practice, I still managed to have a good track season. Derrick was at every track meet religiously and even hung around some of the practices. We made it again to the state championship meet and even though we didn’t win, I swear I could hear Derrick cheering for us over everyone else out there.

Summer came and I went back to working almost every day. Shanna had only been home for a week before deciding to attend summer school. We all knew she was only attending to be around Craig, but she would never admit it. On a rare weekend off from work, Daddy allowed me to take the train to visit Shanna at school. She had a dorm room to herself for the summer and invited me to experience campus life for a few days. On the train ride that seemed to last forever, I came up with several scenarios of what it would be like. I wondered if Shanna would take me to a party or somehow get me into a club. She hadn’t really told me what we would do. I was just hoping to have some fun. Mainly, I wanted to get off the train so I did what made sense to pass the time. I went to sleep.

Shanna and Craig picked me up from the train station. Before heading back to the dorm, we ate Dockside, a restaurant close to the beach. While enjoying the delicious seafood, I couldn’t help but notice how mushy Shanna and Craig were. It made me feel like the third wheel. I hoped it was not indicative of what the weekend would be like. Watching them made me miss Derrick. I felt lame even thinking that way, I mean it had only been a day since I had last saw him. I wanted him to come with me and had even gotten Daddy to agree to him going as long as we were always under Shanna’s supervision. I was excited to tell Derrick about the trip, but unfortunately, it was an excitement that was short lived. Derrick claimed that he would have loved to go, but couldn’t due his grandmother coming into town. I didn’t want to discount his story, but something about it seemed odd. Something had seemed off with him for a while. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out what was going on with him.

Campus was empty which made it seem a lot larger from when I had visited previously. Everyone was housed in the same dorm for the summer and Shanna was one of the few that had her own room. She had set it up as cute as possible but I had to agree with her when she said it had the feel of a jail cell. Craig had an apartment off campus with one of his teammates, where I was sure Shanna spent most of her time. From the room, we called Daddy and Mommy who made Shanna promise not to take me to any wild parties. Shanna agreed and we both giggled as she showed me that she had her fingers crossed.

“Well I promised that I wouldn’t take you to a wild party and I won’t. It’s a good thing that the party we are going to will be low key.”

“Are you serious? I don’t even have anything to wear.”

“Just wear something of mine. It’s just a small gathering at Craig’s. Besides, you’re attached to the hip with Derrick, who are you trying to impress?”

“No one” I responded as I rolled my eyes. “It’s my first grown up party though. I don’t want to show up looking like a kid.”

“Not to worry, leave it to your big sis. I will have you all dolled up.”

To think back on just a few years ago, it seemed surreal that not only was I hanging out with Shanna, but she was also taking me to a party. She kept her word and dressed me in a cute, but casual outfit and did my makeup. I barely recognized myself when I looked in the mirror. I looked so grown up. I felt grown up. It was almost a perfect night except for one thing. I had tried three times since we had gotten to Shanna’s room to call Derrick and couldn’t get through to him. I knew he was expecting his grandmother to come into town, but I felt like he knew I was going to call and could spare a few minutes to talk. I kept hoping that he would call back, but it got closer to the time for us to leave and I realized that I wasn’t going to hear from him. I was determined not to let it ruin my night though. It was time for some fun with my sister. I stuck close to Shanna for the whole party. It wasn’t until we got inside the party that I had flashbacks to the night that Jackie died. It wasn’t anywhere near as wild as the party had been that fateful night, but it still brought back bad memories. Not wanting to sound childish, I sucked it up and pretended to be OK and after a while I was OK. I still stuck close to Shanna, who didn’t seem to mind and in the end, I enjoyed my first college party.

We spent that whole Saturday at the beach. It had been forever since I had been to the beach. As much as I wanted to enjoy it, it still bothered me that I had not heard from Derrick. I had not tried to call anymore expecting him to eventually call. I wasn’t sure if I should be angry or sad, but it was definitely putting a damper on my mood. When we got back to the dorm, there was finally a message from Derrick on Shanna’s answering service. He was barely talking above a whisper and sounded so tired that I had to play the message three times to hear what he was saying. Even after turning the volume all the way up and replaying the message, it was difficult to hear what Derrick was saying. The one word I clearly made out was “hospital.” My heart sank. What was he doing in the hospital? It was clear that I wasn’t going to get the answers from that voice message, so I decided to call Derrick again in hopes of either him or his parents giving me answers. As terrible as it was, I hoped it was his grandmother or someone else that was in the hospital and not him. As the phone rang, I kept repeating, “Please God, don’t let it be him.” The phone rang forever before Derrick’s mom finally answered.

“Hi Mrs. Sims. This is Cheryl.” My voice was shaky and my stomach was in knots, but I managed to form the words to talk to her.

“Hi Cheryl. How are you?” She sounded like her normal self, which was a relief to me. That had to mean everything was OK. Maybe I heard wrong.