Surviving High School (16 page)

“Three?” she asked.

“Two,” he said. “One.”

He flicked on his flashlight, and the beam shot straight up, illuminating a glittering ceiling of pure amethyst. The purple crystals shot refracted light around the chamber, revealing still more of their glittering cousins.

“It’s—amazing,” said Emily.

Ben held her hands in his. Then he leaned in and kissed her softly on the cheek.

“I’ve never brought a girl here.”

“Ben—I don’t know what to say.”

“You like it?”

She leaned in, kissed him back on the cheek, and smiled.

“I love it.”

She had no idea how long they stood there, under the purple light of the amethysts. She knew only that after a while her knees felt stiff and her face grew cold. By the time they got back out, and Emily thought to check the time on her phone, she realized it was 3
AM
.

“I’m never going to catch up on sleep,” she said.

“Oh,” said Ben. “I’m sorry. I really am. I forget about your schedule sometimes. Well, maybe I forget on purpose.”

“Don’t apologize,” said Emily. “This was amazing. You’re amazing. I wouldn’t have traded this for a week’s worth of sleep.”

As it turned out, the amethyst cave wasn’t Ben’s final surprise of the night. When they reached Emily’s block and Ben put the car in park, he told Emily he had a present for her.

“Open the glove compartment,” he said.

When she did, Emily found a long box wrapped in silver paper, the kind that might house a necklace or a watch. As she carefully unstuck the tape at one end and slipped a wooden box out of the wrapping paper, she wondered what it could be. It felt too light to be jewelry.

“I just want you to know,” said Ben, “that I wouldn’t have gotten this for anyone but you.”

She opened the box to find…

“A piece of paper!” she said. “Just what I’ve always wanted.”

“Unfold it.”

The paper was a progress report from that day at 3
PM
. It listed each of Ben’s classes, along with his current grades.

“Wait a second,” she said. “Did you hack the school computer system or something?”

He smiled.

“Not this time. I actually studied. These grades are for real.”

Now it was Emily’s turn to smile.

“You’re only getting a B-plus in gym?” she asked.

“I know, I know. I promised I’d get my grades up. But I don’t do laps, Em. I just don’t.”

“So this means—” she started.

“That I’m allowed to participate in school activities again,” he said. “You’ve got yourself a homecoming date.”

As Ben pulled away and Emily walked home, she danced a few steps, pirouetted, and bowed to the street. She was officially going to homecoming with Ben Kale. No matter how
tired she was, no matter what happened now, nothing could take that away.

The huge smile on her face quickly fell, though, as she approached her house to find the lights on, including the one in her bedroom. A sick feeling entered her stomach.
No
, she thought.
No. No. No.

She opened her window from the outside, like usual, then climbed up onto the sill and hefted her body over the ledge. Inside, though, she didn’t find her bedroom’s usual welcoming darkness. Instead, she found her parents. She fell in a heap inside at the foot of the window and looked up at her father. He shook with anger.

“Welcome back,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“What are you doing in here?” asked Emily as she got to her feet. She rubbed her tailbone, hoping she hadn’t bruised it.

“What were
you
doing
not
in here is the better question,” her dad shouted. “Not that you have to answer. I received an anonymous e-mail earlier today informing me that you’ve been sneaking out at night to see a boy. I didn’t want to believe it. Now I have no choice.”

Emily didn’t have to think too hard to guess the e-mail’s writer.
Dominique.

“I was just, uh, training.”

“Training?” her father asked. “Training?! Do you have any idea how much you’ve probably damaged your swimming career? Who even
knows
how many hours of sleep debt you’ve accumulated. It could take months to undo the
physical strain you’ve put on your body—and Quals are coming up on Thursday!”

Meanwhile, Emily’s mother said nothing and looked worriedly back and forth between Emily and her husband. In a way, Emily wished she would say something—the guilty knowledge that she’d made her mom stay up worrying was already starting to gnaw at her. She must have been waiting for hours.

“Well?!” Emily’s dad shouted. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

“Dad, don’t—”

“Call me Coach!”

“But we’re at home.” Emily was shocked. She’d rarely seen her father get this angry.

“I don’t care where we are!”

“Paul,” said Emily’s mom, “you need to calm down.”

“This is between me and my athlete,” said Emily’s dad, turning to her.

“This is between us and our daughter.”

“No,” said Emily, sniffling. “He’s right. This is between us, Mom. Give us a minute.” Her dad’s anger she could deal with, but Emily just couldn’t handle the worried look on her mom’s face right now.

“Fine,” said Emily’s mom as she turned and left. “Fine.”

As soon as she was gone, Emily’s father returned to his tirade.

“The idea that you’d throw away everything I’ve worked for, all for some idiotic, schoolgirl crush—”

Emily wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. Ben was more than just a crush, and what did her father mean by “everything
I’ve
worked for”? But what was the point in speaking up? It wasn’t like he would listen.

“Starting tomorrow,” he said, “you’re telling that boy it’s over. I’ll be up all night, figuring out a new schedule for you, and maybe, just maybe, I can get you in good enough shape to make it through Thursday’s Quals.”

“Please,” she said, and she felt hot tears beginning to swell under her eyelids. “Please—”

“Give me your phone,” he said, and Emily, scanning the room, realized he’d already taken her computer. Once the phone was gone, her last link to the outside world would be gone. “Now.”

She dug her cell out of her jeans pocket and handed it to him. After he’d scanned her last few texts, Emily’s father shook his head disgustedly and slipped the phone into his pocket. She wondered if she’d ever see it again. Then he turned, slamming the door behind him. Emily sat on her bed and brought her knees to her chest. It wasn’t until then that she remembered the blue homecoming dress. She’d left it right there on the bed. Now it was gone.

She leaped up and frantically searched the far side of the bed, hoping against hope that it had fallen into the crack between the mattress and the wall. No luck. She pulled off the sheets and quilt. Still nothing. She riffled through her closet—maybe her mother had hung it up. She flipped through the
clothes, hoping to toss aside her ugly T-shirts and come up with a handful of soft blue fabric.

No. No. No!

She reached the end of the closet, turned back, and searched the rest of the room one more time before she finally gave up and collapsed into a ball on her barren mattress. In her gut, she already knew it: Her father had taken the dress.

Ancient religions had predicted an apocalypse in 1000
AD
. Scientists had warned of massive computer malfunctions in Y2K. Others predicted that the end of the world would come in 2012. For Emily Kessler, the world ended one cold November day.

At least, that’s what it felt like.

The apocalypse began before the first bell even rang. Emily opened her locker, found a bouquet of roses, and turned around to find Ben smiling at her.

“Don’t look so surprised,” he said. “Compared to hacking the school’s computers to switch that newspaper headline, figuring out your locker combination was easy. I was worried when I didn’t hear from you Sunday, so I decided to—”

“It’s very sweet,” she said. “But—”

“But you’re allergic to roses?”

“No.”

“But the color red fills you with inexplicable, boiling rage?”

Why did he have to make this so impossible?

“But I can’t go to the dance with you.”

Now it was Ben’s turn to be surprised.

“You can’t—what?”

“Saturday night when I got home—my dad was waiting up for me.”

“He knows?”

“Everything.”

“Okay,” he said, still smiling. “This is okay. We’ll deal with this. Sneaking around is going to be a little tougher, but I’ve always managed before.”

“Ben,” she said. “No.”

“We’ll make it work. You’ll see. We’ll come up with something. I
know
we can figure out some ‘class assignment’ for you to do the night of homecoming. I can probably even get you a teacher’s note or something. And then for our weekday dates, we can just play it by ear.”

She shook her head. “You don’t get it. It’s too hard, Ben. I can’t go on like this. Look at me, I’m a wreck. I can’t be with you and still be the person I want to be.”

A small crowd of students was starting to gather as they talked. They watched Emily and Ben and whispered to one another.

“So that’s it?” asked Ben.

“I know I messed up. You worked so hard the last couple of weeks catching up on homework and studying for tests so you could take me to this stupid dance—”

“It’s not stupid,” he said. “I don’t know why I ever said that. The truth is, I really want to take you.”

“Ben, you don’t understand. I can’t.”

“You won’t even
try
to go with me?”

“I’m sorry,” said Emily, crying softly now. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“Forget it,” said Ben, looking sadder than she’d ever seen him. “I never thought you were the type of person to give up so easily. I guess I was wrong about you.”

As he turned and walked away, Emily stood there stupidly clutching the roses that only a few minutes ago he’d been so happy to give her. Now he’d never give her flowers again.

She looked around to see a dozen sets of eyes watching her.

“What?!” she shouted. “Show’s over! Go tell your friends!”

She shoved the bouquet into a nearby trash can, but it wouldn’t quite go down. She pushed harder and harder, grinding the flowers until a knot of stems and petals protruded from the lid. The roses were a mangled mess, and she looked at them, thinking,
That, right there, is my life.

Then she walked to her locker, slammed it shut, and headed off to class.

At lunch, things got worse. As Emily settled into her usual spot at the center table, Hannah Carmichael leaned over and whispered, “No offense, sweetie, but you might not want to sit here today.”

Emily was almost too dazed to respond. All she could muster was a confused “Huh?”

“Word is out,” said Hannah. “Everyone knows how you
totally broke Ben’s heart. Now, I’m not as judgmental as, you know,
certain people
at this school, but still, he’ll be showing up any second, and you might want to do him the courtesy of giving him a little space.”

“Yeah,” said Emily, picking up her cup of yogurt from the table. “Sure.”

She walked away from the table and off toward the far corner of the cafeteria, only to find Dominique sitting there, listening to her huge headphones and reciting some sort of mantra. Great. Emily couldn’t even go back to her old spot.

As Emily passed by, Dominique broke from her trance, smiled, and said, “You look a little upset, Em. I hope your dad didn’t get any incriminating e-mails or anything.”

“You could have done this anytime you wanted,” said Emily. “Why now?”

“It just seemed like the right time,” said Dominique. “But don’t worry. You’re tough. I’m sure you’ll still be ready for Quals on Thursday, no matter what else happens to be going on in your personal life. I just hope it doesn’t affect your grades. I mean, I hear McBride’s tough. Is it true he docks you a full letter if you lose your history textbook?”

A sudden sinking feeling entered Emily’s chest. She opened her backpack to look at her textbooks. There was English… Biology…

But no History. The book was gone.

“You should really be more careful about leaving your valuables in the locker room,” added Dominique. “Things get stolen all the time.”

“You’re a b—” Emily looked over her shoulder to see if any teachers were around to hear her swear. One was. “A bad person.”

Dominique shrugged.

“I do whatever it takes to win. You taught me that. See you at the races, Swimbot.”

Emily briefly contemplated starting a nail-scratching, hair-pulling, old-fashioned girl fight. It
would
feel nice to mess up Dominique’s pretty little face. But there was too much to lose. A fight might put their eligibility to swim on Thursday at risk. Better just to beat Dominique in the pool. If Emily
could
beat Dominique.

Emily turned away without another word and pushed through the door that led to the school’s exterior courtyard. Outside, the sun shone through wispy clouds. It was the kind of day that
looked
warm but actually felt so bitterly cold you needed a sweater under your jacket to keep from shivering. All Emily had on was an old hoodie of Sara’s.

She crouched down and rested against the cafeteria wall and ate her lunch with shaking hands. It was all over now—Ben, her new supposed “friends,” all of it. Dominique had the right idea: Emily would be Swimbot again.

She felt herself rocking and wondered if she might just pitch forward. Weren’t there old monks somewhere who picked a tree to sit under and waited around until they either reached enlightenment or starved to death? Maybe she could just sit here like that.

“Hey.”

Emily turned her head a little to the side and saw Kimi settling in beside her.

“Thanks for coming out,” said Emily softly. “But I’d kind of rather be alone.”