A Step Toward Falling Page 17

  “You mean make presents for him?” I said, because I was trying not to say his name.

  “Sure,” Mom said. “Maybe you can give him something you’ve made. We’ll just work on some projects and we won’t tell Nan who they’re for.”

  It was a nice idea because it meant Nan and I could go to Jo-Ann fabric store and Michaels arts and crafts. We love those two stores. This time, we made tissue-paper flowers and letter-bead necklaces and decorated picture frames and two mosaic coasters. They all came out great. I accidentally wrote Ron on one of the picture frames I planned to give him, and spelled R-O-N on one of my letter-bead necklaces. Both times, Nan said that counted as my one time that day.

  We spent two weeks on our projects and after we were done, I put them in a shoe box. Mom told me to be careful, that I shouldn’t give Ron too many things and I definitely shouldn’t give him everything at once. I told her I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. I was so excited I brought the box to school.

  That’s what started my worst fight with Anthony. Just having it in my cubby in the classroom made me so excited that I raised my hand at morning meeting and asked if I could do a show-and-tell with all the things I’d made. I wasn’t going to tell anyone who they were for, but I forgot that I’d written Ron on two of them.

  When Anthony saw those, he said, “That’s stupid!”

  I said, “You’re stupid, Anthony!” which got me in more trouble.

  After that Anthony and I had to work at separate tables from each other. Except he kept walking near me to use the pencil sharpener. “You think he loves you but he doesn’t,” he whispered over my shoulder. On his way back, he whispered again, “He’s a bad person. He doesn’t deserve your presents.”

  His whispering trick kept getting me in trouble. Teachers didn’t hear him. They only heard me shouting, “HE IS NOT!” or “SHUT UP, ANTHONY!”

  I didn’t listen to anything Anthony said except for one thing that scared me a little. He said, “You give him those presents, he’ll laugh at you with his friends. That’s what he does.”

  I was never sure exactly why people laughed when I talked to Ron about coming over to my house to watch Pride and Prejudice. At first I thought it was because they were all excited about the idea. I didn’t want Ron’s friends to come over, too, but I also didn’t want to be impolite. So I laughed, too, and then I kept thinking Ron would say something like, “What day should I come?” Or, “How about this Friday?”

  But he didn’t.

  I tried a few times. Once I said, “My house is free this whole weekend,” and he turned his shoulder away like he didn’t hear me. Once Anthony said this, I wasn’t so sure.

  Anthony made me think maybe Ron didn’t love me and maybe him being shy wasn’t the reason he didn’t talk to me anymore. It made my stomach hurt like I was going to throw up. I started thinking about more things Ron had been doing since we came back to school. Things like he’d see me up the hall and he’d shut his locker and walk away quickly. Or another time I walked up when he was talking to another girl and he said, “Do you mind leaving us alone, Belinda? This is private.”

  At first I was happy because it had been a long time since he’d said my name out loud, but after Anthony said all his mean things, I started to think about it more. Ron never told anyone else to leave so he could have a private conversation with me. Except for our dance, we never had private conversations. We didn’t even have private hellos, or smiles and waves. He mostly looked away when he saw me which I thought was shyness but maybe it was something else. Maybe it was more like he didn’t want to see me at all and he hated me.

  When I thought of this, I had a hard time breathing. Maybe he was like Mr. Darcy and he was only acting like he hated me or maybe he really hated me. It was terrible not knowing which way he felt.

  I kept my present box in my cubby and tried to think of people I could ask about Ron and what they thought his feelings for me might be. Finally I asked Rhonda and she said, “It’s probably neither one of those, Belinda. My guess is that he probably thinks about you a lot less than you think about him.”

  I didn’t understand. He had been the main thing I thought about since last spring. Over that whole summer I never saw him, but I imagined being married to him and living in a house that I kept very clean the way I keep Nan’s house clean. I pictured him coming home and saying, “What’s for dinner?” and I would say “Rice and beans tonight” or maybe “Roast pork.”

  I thought about those things so much that I got confused and thought some of them had already happened. Like once I imagined us going on a picnic and the next day I thought we really had.

  I didn’t understand how I could think about him if he wasn’t also thinking about me.

  “It’s a crush,” Rhonda told me. “He’s the first real person you’ve had a crush on. It’s harder than loving someone on a TV show. It’s more complicated. He’s right here, doing some things that are nice and some things that are not so nice.”

  “But does he like me or hate me?”

  “I can’t answer that, Belinda,” she said. “I don’t know how somebody else feels. If you really want to know the answer, the only person who can tell you is Ron. But you should be careful. You might hear something that hurts your feelings.”

  I still wanted to know. Not knowing made it hard for me to eat. I even woke up sometimes in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back asleep because I was thinking so much about Ron.

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “I just want to know.”

  That whole week, it was impossible to talk to Ron in school. Every time I saw him he was surrounded by other people, mostly girls, who I was starting to not like.

  Then I got an idea. I remembered Nan once saying that some people feel pressure to act cool in school and aren’t very nice, but away from school they are. This was true of my neighbor Annemarie who talks to me on the walk to the bus stop but never talks to me at school.

  Now that Ron had stopped speaking to me at school, I thought maybe he would talk to me away from school. Then we could be nice to each other again. The only problem was I didn’t know how to see Ron away from school. The only thing I knew about him was that he played football. I didn’t know if he had a job. I didn’t know where he lived. I didn’t know if he had a big house or a small house or brothers and sisters.

  So I would have to go to a football game, I decided.

  I would have to see him there and ask him my questions. I typed them out at school on my break time, so I wouldn’t forget if I got too nervous. I printed them up privately so no one would see, especially Anthony who I was still in a fight with.

  Here were my questions: Do you love me at all? If you don’t love me, why did you ask me to dance with you? Why did you stand with me for twenty minutes if you didn’t want to be my boyfriend?

  I knew if Anthony saw these questions, he would say they were stupid, for a stupid person who is a jerk and doesn’t matter. I was starting to think maybe he might be right but I still wanted to know. I wanted to give Ron his box of presents so that at least he would know that if he loved me back, I would make him nice things for the rest of his life. I knew he probably wouldn’t, but I still took the box with me.

  I asked Annemarie for a ride to the game on our walk to the bus stop, because I know she drives now, not to school but after school.

  She was surprised, I could tell. “You want to go to a football game, Belinda? Really?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “They’re super crowded and noisy. Like everyone spends most of the time screaming.”

  “I know,” I said, even though I didn’t know that and it made me nervous to hear. I don’t like crowded, noisy situations. Sometimes they gave me panic attacks and I have to cover my ears and scream to drown out the noise. It scared me but I still wanted to go.

  “I have a friend on the team,” I told her. “I want to see him.”

  “You do?” she said, surprised. “Who?”

/>   I told her and I could tell she was impressed.

  “Okay,” she said. “I can give you a ride there and home but I can’t spend the whole time with you. I’m meeting a guy.”

  “That’s okay.” I couldn’t tell if she wanted me to ask who the guy was. I’ve always thought of Annemarie as shy and not that pretty but maybe I’m wrong.

  “I’m meeting someone there, too.”

  “Oh, good! Okay!” she said. So it was fine.

  I told Nan and Mom I was going out with Annemarie but I didn’t tell them where we were going. I knew if I did, Mom would say “Maybe” and look at Nan, who would say, “No way, Jose,” or “Over my dead body.”

  Nan likes to be crystal clear. Anytime something is risky or loud or happens after dark, that’s what she says.

  I told them that Annemarie invited me to go to the movies. I didn’t know if they’d believe me. I haven’t been to the movies with anyone besides Nan since I was in third grade.

  I expected Nan to say, “Why is Annemarie being nice to you after all these years?” If she asked that, I wouldn’t know what to say. I’ve never lied to Nan before. I’ve never lied to Mom either except when I tell her everything’s fine even if it’s not, so she doesn’t get sad.

  This was a big lie and it made me so nervous I waited at the end of our driveway for Annemarie to come. I had my coat on and my hat and my shoe box full of presents. I’d added toilet paper so the presents didn’t rattle when I moved. I also taped it shut so nothing fell out.

  I didn’t know if being on the team meant you were busy the whole time during a football game. I worried about that, but earlier in the day I talked to Ron for the first time in two weeks. “I’m coming tonight,” I said and he smiled.

  My heart started to pound and he kept smiling. “I’ll see you there,” he said.

  Which meant he must have breaks where he can see people and talk to them.

  “What’s that?” Annemarie said, looking at my box when I got in the car. I could tell she was nervous about her date. She was wearing lipstick that looked shiny and not very good.

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  “You have to tell me what it is, Belinda. Is it like a gun or a bomb or something?”

  “No. It’s presents. For my friend on the team.”

  She looked at me funny. “Okay,” she said and started driving.

  Before we bought our tickets she told me to meet her next to the ticket booth at ten and not to worry if I couldn’t find her during the game. “We may leave for a while. Jacob isn’t that into football.”

  I said okay even though I didn’t have any way to tell time and wasn’t sure how I would meet her at the right time.

  In the beginning, the game was exciting and a little scary. There were a lot of people and everyone was screaming and stamping their feet, but it was happy stamping. No one was mad, they were just excited for the game to start. I had to sit with the marching band because there was no room anywhere else. I asked the boy I sat next to if I could touch one of his gold tassels. He said sure and then, after I touched it for a while, he asked me to stop.

  The bad part about sitting with the band was that every time something really good happened in the game they picked up their instruments and played. It was so loud I wanted to change my seat, but I wasn’t sure if I was allowed. At school plays you’re assigned a seat and you’re not allowed to move even if someone very tall sits in front of you. So I kept sitting there.

  I couldn’t see the game very well but that was okay because there were so many other things to watch, like the cheerleaders and their pyramids! Every time they climbed into another one, my heart started beating and I had to shut my eyes to calm it down. I couldn’t look, I was so scared one of them would fall. And then I opened my eyes and they were fine! I felt like I was watching a circus! I’ve only been to a circus once when I was little and my mom took me. I loved it at first, and then it got confusing. I couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to watch. I got so confused I started crying and shaking. “She was a little overwhelmed,” my mom told Nan when we got home. Nan had told her the circus was a bad idea for me. “She loved it right up until it was a little too much, Mom.”

  This time, though, I didn’t get overwhelmed. I loved the whole thing! Being there made me laugh and smile so hard my face started to hurt. I wished I was a cheerleader or a band member or a football player or all of them combined! Sometimes what I do when I’m excited like this is close my eyes and imagine I’m the different parts of it. I’m cheerleader and I’m also a tuba player and I’m on the field, too, getting water for the players. I’m part of it all! Everyone is smiling and happy to see me.

  That’s the part I try to remember now. I wasn’t sad or mad when I went to talk to Ron at half time. I was so happy and I wanted him to know that if he didn’t want me to, I wasn’t going to bother him anymore or be in love with him. I wanted to thank him because he was the reason I came to the game and fell in love with all of it.

  I wanted to tell Ron that.

  I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to worry about me anymore.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EMILY

  “IT LOOKS LIKE CHAD will be taking a few weeks off to concentrate on his college classes,” Mary announces at the beginning of class.

  Sheila spins around in her seat to look at me. “Did you get in a fight or something?”

  “No,” I say, wishing—again—that Chad hadn’t made that flirty I’ll call you gesture in front of everyone in class last week.

  “They can’t be in a fight,” Annabel says. “They’re supposed to get married.”

  “We’re not getting married,” I whisper. “We’re not even friends, really.”

  Mary holds her hands up. “Okay, no more conversation about Chad. I wanted you to know he’s not going to be with us in class for a while so you’d know what to expect, that’s all.”

  For a fraction of a second, Mary lets her eyes rest on mine. I never expected Chad to call this week, but it surprises me that he’s disappearing so completely on this group. Didn’t his mother say he had to do it? Though I won’t miss Chad, I have to admit I’ll miss the novelty of having a handsome boy pay attention to me. It’s vain and stupid, I know, but I’ll also miss the fact that everyone in the room assumes we were dating.

  Including Lucas, apparently.

  Across the room, I see him looking at me. He’s not smiling like he can’t wait to make a joke about Chad. He looks sympathetic. I’m sorry, he mouths. And that’s it. He turns back to Mary and the exercise she’s introducing at the front of the class.

  The truth is: I’m getting more nervous about doing this play. What I originally thought—if Lucas helps, we’ll have no problem getting a dozen other people to join us—may not be true. Monday morning he finds me at my locker and asks if it’s possible to cut a few characters out of the play.

  “We need at least twelve actors,” I say. “I’ve already pared back the story. She only has three sisters now and no aunts and uncles.”

  Lucas looks confused. I wonder how well he knows this story. He’s probably seen the Keira Knightly movie, which was great, but Belinda’s right, the Colin Firth one is the best. I’ve watched both versions with Richard. He thinks the cinematography in the Keira version is pure artistry and Mr. Bingley in that one is gay, not shy. Bookish girls and gay boys who’ve spent most of high school not dating know Pride and Prejudice way too well. Apparently so do girls with special needs and grandmothers who are Masterpiece Theatre fans. There’s a logic to the place Pride and Prejudice holds in any lonely teen’s heart, but what would Lucas know of that?

  “What about Wayne Cartwright or Ron Moody?” I say to Lucas. “Could you get either of them to do it?”

  “Why are you so interested in those guys? I told you, they’re kind of jerks.”

  Here’s the thing—I know they’re jerks and I still want them. “If we get one of them, everyone else will think it’s a cool thing to do. Plu
s tons of people will come see it. They might even do an article in the paper. It could be great for them and great for us. And maybe they’re not such jerks. Haven’t I seen Belinda talking to Ron Moody?”

  “There’s no way I’m asking that guy.”

  “Why not?”

  “Trust me.”

  I see his argument—that we need to be careful about who should hang around with Belinda—but I don’t think he sees mine: that the whole point of this is to get as many people as possible involved. I still haven’t talked to Belinda about the play yet—Lucas has done that because he was the one who first mentioned it to her—but I know she’ll want as many people as possible. We’ve scheduled auditions for this Thursday, which means this whole week I’ve been lying awake at night imagining how this might go, alternating between a fantasy where throngs of people show up, more than we can handle, and another fantasy of the opposite, where only a handful appear and we sit awkwardly for half an hour waiting for more.

  Obviously I’d rather have the former problem than the latter. To me, Ron Moody seems like the easiest of the star players to get. Wayne Cartwright isn’t just talented and athletic, he’s ridiculously good-looking as well. He walks the halls buffered by two or three pretty girls everywhere he goes. Ron Moody kind of looks like Shrek with red hair and freckles. I assume he’d be a little more available.

  “Ron Moody is a dick,” Lucas says.

  “Fine.” I hold up my hands. “Don’t ask him.”

  I don’t understand Lucas’s hesitation about asking these guys because in every other way, he’s working hard to make this happen. He talked to the president of the drama club and got her to let us use costumes from the costume shop. She also promised to get a few light and sound guys on board. The problem is that most of the theater crowd is busy working on Guys and Dolls, the spring musical going up on the big stage the weekend after we’ve booked the small stage. I’ve tried to make it clear to Lucas, we need to find people outside the theater crowd.