Thwonk (18 page)

I was moving him around the table so we wouldn’t get stuck in any one place and have to have a meaningful conversation. He was still limping a bit from my kick in the shin, but nobody said love was easy. Everyone wanted to chat with us. I worked the crowd like a politician, saying nothing of substance, tossing pithy comments to my admirers while dragging Peter behind me. I tried to make eye contact with Trish, but she was huddled in the corner with Tucker, lost in love. She didn’t care about me. I focused my thoughts on the waiting gold King of Hearts crown, which sat on a red velvet pillow at the base of Big Ben’s sainted foot. I tried to picture it on Peter’s head and what an honor it would be to be his date. I practiced smiling benevolently like females do from floats and things when they are in the public eye and are expected to be everyone’s ideal.

I smiled until my smile muscles hurt.

A lone kazoo blurted through the tumult. I turned with everyone else to see the King of Hearts Dance Committee parade down the dance floor in full regalia, holding a red velvet pillow upon which sat a large, leering papier-mâché cupid.

I froze in time.

It had dark mocking eyes, its head was bigger than its body. Its wings were made of pink crepe paper, its
bow and arrow formed with Reynolds Wrap. My larynx closed, my heart gave up. Gary Quark put the cupid on a waiting string and hoisted it over the dance floor, where it twirled like an ominous storm cloud. Becca Loadstrom said, “Oh, it’s cute.”

“
Are you mad?
” I shrieked. “
That is a cupid!
”

Everyone took a step back and said yep, it sure was.

The cupid twirled above my head. Peter reached out to me. Deep inside, the truth hit my soul like a Scud missile.

I was a fake!

It rang in my ears, it sizzled in my brain.

Fake! Fake!

I looked at all the glittering girls who hadn’t gotten here by cheating. I tried to remember that all’s fair in love and war. But the cupid just hung there, leering at me, reminding me of what I’d done.

Gary Quark said we’d start lining up for the King of Hearts announcement in a few minutes. Peter started toward the empty mike on the stage like he had something wildly important to say that needed amplification. I blocked his path.

“I have to say it, A.J.,” he protested, “I—”

I shoved my hand over his mouth like the little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the leaking dike to save his town from the rising flood waters. It was going to be a really long evening, as they say in Holland.

Leaks were bursting out everywhere. I was hurling sand-bags along the riverbank to push back the rampaging tides. Peter tried to read me the poem he’d written, the poem that began:

I emitted a scream and ripped the poem into minuscule threads that could never be reconnected. I stormed to the buffet table, where I ate myself into oblivion in a last-minute attempt to hit all major cholesterol groups before I had my nervous breakdown. I stared at the papier-mâché cupid.

I had to contact him.

I wrote pithy emergency phrases on pink napkins (
GO GET JONATHAN
and
HELP ME, I’M LOSING IT
) and held them up subtly to the papier-mâché cupid, but he hung there, unfeeling, unmoved.

I shut my eyes and heard the somber bleat of the kazoo signaling to the world that It Was Time.

I was slumped on the spiral staircase with Peter and the rest of the court awaiting the drum roll and Gary Quark’s ultimate announcement of the Winner. The
staircase seemed shaky, particularly the center section, where Peter and I had been placed. Popular people know how to stand on a questionable staircase unafraid. When you’re a fake, you feel every wobble. I listed to the left and gripped the rail, figuring I could crash down the steps between Al Costanzo and Mike Griswald in case tragedy struck. Nowhere is it written that you have to go down with the ship if you are only dating the captain.

Everyone below was looking at all of us above. Most of the Court took this in stride, because they were used to fawning adoration, except for Barry Lund, who everybody liked but who wouldn’t win because he was not hunk material—he was token nice-guy material. I wanted to take my vote back and give it to Barry, but when you are a public persona, you have to ride your stupid, life-destroying mistakes full-speed across the finish line with everybody watching. I said we were all going to die, as the staircase wobbled and everyone else kept smiling except me.

Finally, the moment was upon us. Gary Quark sidled up to the microphone really slow to draw out the anticipation.

Silence enveloped the Student Center.

Gary blew a final, soulful squawk on his kazoo and motioned for a drum roll. He held up the hermetically sealed envelope that had been kept under lock and key in his father’s disaster-proof safe since Thursday. Deenie
Valassis inched toward the staircase holding the Crown and yanking up her dress strap.

“The winner…” Gary announced loudly, ripping the envelope open.

“…and this year’s King of Hearts…”

Deenie waited…

“
Peter Terris!
”

Shouts and applause rose from the dance floor as Deenie crowned Peter, who lowered his head like he’d expected it all along. I tried to shake his hand in congratulations, but he scooped me up and hugged me with undying affection. The other members of the Court and their dates turned to shake his hand, smiles frozen in place, although in reality they all wanted to trip him. I grinned extra hard at Lisa Shooty, whose fake smile was melting. Peter was beaming and waving and leading me down the staircase carefully to avoid early death. We promenaded before the whole glittering school, the Correct Couple of the Century, as the papier-mâché cupid twirled above in mythological harassment. Red, white, and pink helium balloons were released to the ceiling, several of them getting stuck in the rafters to test Ned the janitor’s patience Monday morning.

Peter kept saying he couldn’t believe it as people tore toward us. Everyone said they had voted for him; everyone shouted congratulations to me.

I haven’t done anything
, I wanted to cry.
I’m just dating royalty!

Gary motioned Peter and me onto the dance floor. I tried to feel the magic, tried to rekindle a paltry flame, I tried to get into it for the glory of the Crown, but my sin was ever before me.

Gary said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you
your
King of Hearts!”

“
And this
,” Peter shouted to his subjects near and far, “
is my queen!
”

It was simply too bleak. I lowered my head and considered abdication, but when you’re stuck with a half-crazed monarch, the only thing you can hope for is peasant revolt, and these peasants were ecstatic.

The applause rose greater. Peter looked at me with blind love. Penitence thundered through my soul—I’d destroyed a life! I wanted to tell him how very, very sorry I was, but Heather and the Heartbeats started singing and Peter and I had to dance. I fought back tears; the weightiness of forever crashed over me. I looked up at the papier-mâché cupid who leered down from the ceiling.

“I love you!” Peter cried.

“No, you don’t!” I shouted. “You’re confused!”

“I’m not confused,” he said, twirling me.

“Yes, you are! You just think you love me, Peter!
You don’t!
You don’t care anything about my photography, you don’t care about my hopes and dreams!”

“
I love you!
” he shouted blindly.

“
I don’t want this!
” I wailed.

“And what, my friend,” said a familiar voice, “do you want?”

I jolted erect. It couldn’t be…

The flutter of dinky wings filled my ears.

But it was!

I gazed in consummate wonder as Jonathan flitted down from the rotating Valentine heart and swept past the papier-mâché cupid, casually eating a grape like it was no big deal. He fixed me with a steely glare.

“
Jonathan!
” I cried.

Peter looked at me strangely. “I’m Peter,” he said.

I said of course he was.

“Who’s Jonathan?” he demanded.

Jonathan was flitting like a butterfly, his puny wings beating in irritation. I couldn’t think.

“
Who’s Jonathan?
” Peter demanded, grabbing my shoulder.

I pushed him away.

Jonathan buzzed in my face and waved me toward the bathroom. “Step into my office, my friend.”

“
Yes!
” I shouted, and flung myself toward the ladies’ room.

I was sitting in a locked toilet stall, which nicely defined the moment. Jonathan was perched on a toilet-paper roll, looking smug. I grabbed my head that was pounding, I grabbed my throat that was closing.

“Oh, Jonathan, I thought I’d never see you again!”

He watched me somberly.

“
I’ll do anything you say! Just please zap me out of this nightmare!
”

He crossed his teeny legs. “I did warn you of the consequences, my friend.”

“Oh, you did, Jonathan, and I was so
pathetically stupid
!”

“You deceived yourself,” he said firmly.

I nodded wildly in agreement.

“But your journey, my friend, has brought you this far.”

“Frozen in time in a locked toilet stall…”

“You must not,” he said, “confuse where you are with what you are to become.”

“I’ve made the Ultimate Mistake in the Universe, Jonathan! I hate what I’ve done! I’ve ruined my life and forced Peter Terris into an awful, controlling mold and we will always be miserable unless you do something because I can never love him!”

Jonathan adjusted his bow and arrow slowly.

I flailed my arms: “
Save me!
”

He fluttered and stood on the toilet-paper dispenser, looking downright majestic, which is a pretty good trick when you’re six inches tall.

“This is the moment, Allison Jean McCreary, where, if you let it, the truth will come.”

Warmth shot through me. I didn’t try to shake it off. “
All right!
” I shrieked. “
Let it come!
”

I expected something of a meteor shower. What I got was a cupid edict. “Remove Peter Terris from the dance floor and meet me at the Benjamin Franklin statue in five minutes.”

“Why?”

Jonathan glared at me. Steam rose from his hot pink ears. “Do it!” he ordered, and zoomed off.

Heather and the Heartbeats were singing their extravaganza slow dance medley, “Great Makeout Songs of Yesteryear,” turning the entire dance into a pulsating Hormone-O-Rama. Peter was draped around me; I was trying to pull him toward Big Ben. Jonathan was fixing his arrow in place, impervious to my plight.

His
arrow
!

He was going to shoot Peter again!

Explosive energy thundered through me. I yanked Peter across the dance floor to Big Ben’s saintly foot.

“Stay there!” I ordered him, and turned to Jonathan sweetly.

“You’re late,” he said.

He zipped over and handed me my F2 like it was a lethal weapon.