Cameo (11 page)

“What did you just do?” Cindy was in utter disbelief.

“I'm ensuring that I will not be thrown back onto the popularity bandwagon for one last ride. Having a popular boyfriend suddenly makes me eligible again to be prom queen. It's absurd!”

“I can't believe you did that from my phone,” Cindy said.

“How am I supposed to know that you didn't want me to do that? You were the one dangling your cell phone with the afternoon report on it in front of me. You owe me this. I let you in on the popular secret society stuff.”

Cindy got quiet. She looked down the hallway. The multitude of kids had thinned down to a handful of individuals casually strolling along.

Cindy pulled me to the side. She looked behind her. Then she looked both ways down the hall. She waited for some underclassmen to pass us by before she uttered a word. “You didn't tell anyone about this, did you?” she whispered.

“No. Did you?” I asked.

“Of course not. Now, I may dibble and dabble in the gossip mill, but I don't want to be dragged underneath it. There are certain lines you just don't cross,” Cindy said.

Dibble and dabble. Yeah, right. Who was she kidding? She was the Gossip Mafia. The text I had sent from her phone would be in the morning text probably at the top of the page as an answer to this new after-school report.

“Forget this prom queen nonsense. Let's get a move on. Where were you at lunch today?” I led the way to the point of the mission: namely, the basement.

“With Peter.”

“Really, are you guys …?” I asked.

“Yup, pretty much like you and Jason. At least until prom anyway. I'm an independent girl. Who knows whom the summer will bring,” Cindy said.

“Yesterday I wouldn't even admit I liked Jason, and today I'm calling him babe,” I said. I was even smitten that he liked it.

“Like you never thought you two would end up together,” Cindy said.

“I just got wind of this popular society thing like yesterday. I've been thinking about it. It's like if you're not inducted into it in freshman year, you're left in social limbo for the rest of your years here! Unless you date a popular guy. That's the only loophole. It's completely ridiculous,” I said.

“Is it? I mean I don't mind going to all the hot parties and dating the guys with the best cars,” Cindy said.

I had realized that there were many issues on which Cindy and I wouldn't see eye to eye. I found myself with nothing more to say. There was no further delaying the upcoming task. I checked my cell phone for the time. It would take us nearly half an hour to navigate through the dark, dingy basement quietly in heels. You could barely see anything with the cheap fluorescent lights they put down there.

“We should've put on our gym sneakers.”

“I don't think so. What if someone saw me looking like one of those athletic girls?” Cindy said.

We went quietly down the back staircase—the staircase behind the main staircase. No one ever used it. Good thing, because if anyone spotted us in the basement they would definitely wonder what we were doing there. No one went to the basement without a reason, which led me to wonder: Whoever these secret society people were, how were they getting to the basement?

“Do you think they take the elevator down here?” I whispered to Cindy.

It was weird. The basement was like two flights down from the main floor—kind of scary, actually. Why was it so far underground, like a bomb shelter? Probably another reason why it was so undesirable to go down there.

“Why are you saying ‘they'? That note referred to one person, as I remember,” Cindy said.

“A society implies more than one member,” I said sarcastically.

I was starting to think I had brought the wrong person along for the job. “Did you ask anyone if they knew anything about this?” I asked.

“No,” Cindy sighed, disappointed. “Why?” she continued.

“Well, we need to know where to look. The note was vague. Is it on the east side of the building or the west side? We can't just go walking through the center of the basement, because if someone comes, we'll be in plain sight,” I said.

“True. But what if the person coming is one of them?” Cindy said.

“Precisely! I knew I brought you along for a reason,” I said.

“Whatever. I don't know the deal on this society, but I have heard of two girls being blacked out from the yearbook in the past three years,” Cindy said.

“Well, they sought me out. I'm not trying to blow the whistle.” I couldn't believe I had just stolen a cliché from Taekwondo Girl.

“Could you say it any louder?” Cindy said.

“It's one of the members who's following me and doing scary stuff,” I whispered.

“Like what?”

“That sticky Kool-Aid in the bathroom. ‘Cameo' in red lipstick on the wall across from my bio class. Do you need more?”

“So you think this is connected to the person you saw in your house?”

“Of course!”

We slowly crept through the stairwell. Cindy pointed to the door. We hid behind the stairwell door. Cindy pushed me in front of her. If there was a sacrifice to be made, it was clear who was going first.

“What if we stay in the stairwell and follow someone to the meeting? I mean, freshmen are so clueless, they wouldn't think to look back behind them to see if we were following them,” I said.

“You're so right,” Cindy said.

My cell phone started to ring. I quickly whipped it out of my pocket and flipped through the modes to turn it on silent. Why were there five modes to go through before you reached silent? Shouldn't they prioritize that list by most commonly used? By the time I did activate the silent mode, my phone had stopped ringing.

“Hear that?” Cindy texted.

Plunk
,
plunk
,
plunk
went the sounds of someone's big feet as they hit the steps. Someone was on their way to the basement.

“Is that one?” I texted.

“Wait and see,” she responded.

It was all so covert and operative-like, ducking down near the staircase door so no one could see us and then having to constantly check my cell phone for messages.

“Society,” she texted.

“No,” I texted. This kid was such an oddball. He had red, wiry hair, braces, chapped lips, a hunched back, and he was like seven feet tall.

“I think so. He's on a team.” Cindy was becoming insistent. Most of the popular guys in our class were cute even in freshmen year.

We followed the freshman out of the stairwell and down the hall. The basement was architecturally structured like a hospital. It was made up of four long hallways that created a rectangle with a connecting hallway in the middle. Between that and the pale green on the walls, that place had “institution” written all over it. I couldn't believe this kid didn't suspect anything. If I were a member of a secret society, I would double and triple check to make sure no one saw me doing anything—not even breathing funny, let alone walking to a meeting. This guy hadn't looked over his shoulder once. Good for us. We were able to covertly follow him down the hall. Walking quietly in heels was an art.

I once watched a movie about secret societies starring these two insanely hot actors. It's kind of like how girls buy an album just for the pictures. The content is meaningless at this age. Anyway, they killed this guy for sneaking into a meeting. I guess being blacked out of the yearbook ranked right up there with death to some. Imagine not appearing on record as having attended high school. Now add to that the fear of getting into an altercation at any time whenever you used the bathroom at school, at home, or at someone else's house. The mere thought was vexing me. What was with the bathroom? Was it because I was alone in the bathroom, like when I was alone in my room? If I could figure out a connection, maybe I could stop this.

I spotted a janitor's closet.

“Try opening the closet door. I'll keep an eye on the suspect,” I texted.

“It opened!” she texted.

I was surprised yet relieved. We finally had some cover. Cindy and I hid behind the janitor's closet door while watching the redhead continue down the hall. I mean, we couldn't very well follow him up to the meeting door. But the cover did not come without consequences. It smelled like a wet, dirty mop laced with bleach in there. It was hard to concentrate. All I could think about was that nasty mop.

“I think I got an idea,” Cindy texted.

She dug her hand into her tiny little handbag, and a giant compact emerged. She flipped open the compact.

“Get in the closet,” she whispered.

Were we talking now? “I don't want to get locked in here.”

“Just trust me.” She cracked the door and slid the mirror portion of the compact out the crack. Then Cindy flipped the mirror in the opposite direction. I tried my best not to touch anything in that
germ-infested place. Who knows what ringworm and wart germs were in there? Touch one thing in there, next thing you know some microbe will be growing on your skin. I shivered at the thought.

“Oh, snap,” Cindy said as she let the door slam.

“Why did you let the door slam?” No real spy slams doors.

“Sorry.”

I used my cell phone as a light. The fear of bumping into something dirty was haunting me.

“It's Jason.”

“Who?” I asked.

“He's coming down the hall,” she said.

“Do they have basketball down here?” I asked.

“No,” Cindy said.

“Where did the freshman go?”

“Wait, there's more. Carolina is right behind him.”

“Are they together?”

“I don't know.”

“And now that you slammed the door, a mirror hanging out of the janitor's closet will look suspicious,” I complained.

“Just give me a second.” Cindy cracked the door once more as quietly as she could. This time she peeked out to see if they had passed the closet. Then she slowly slipped the mirror out of the crack at the bottom of the door.

“Good thinking. No one will look down there,” I said.

“Okay, she's too skinny to be Carolina. She's like a stick. Oh! Guess what!”

“Just tell me.”

“They're going into the weight room.”

“The sweaty weight room?”

“It's Lucy!”

This was worse than I thought. “I know Jason is not interested in her,” I said.

“Like he would be interested in Carolina,” Cindy said.

“No, but I think she's part of the whole thing. And if they were together, that would mean he's part of it too.”

We were both silent. What was the next move?

“There's only one thing to do,” Cindy said.

“The weight room,” we both said.

Cindy cringed in disgust. I didn't mind encountering foul B.O. to get to the bottom of this. It was the airborne bacteria that had me spooked. We cracked the door open.

“Okay, no one is coming up the hallway,” Cindy said.

She stuck her compact out of the door crack with the mirror facing the opposite direction so she could see what was going on down at the other end of the hall.

“Clear,” she continued.

I stepped out into the hallway first. It was practically impossible to walk quietly in heels when your feet hurt. And there were two pairs of throbbing feet walking to the weight room. Real inconspicuous—Cindy's typical modus operandi. We got to the weight room door, and it was wide open. I didn't hear anything but the AM sports radio playing. That would surely throw any reasonable teenager off the trail. But we weren't reasonable. Rather than peeking in and pussyfooting around, I stormed right inside. I was surrounded by sweaty weight machines and dumbbells.

Cindy tapped me on the shoulder. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“… the secret passageway?”

“You know, Michelle is exactly who I want to be like,” a coy, female voice with a British accent said from the hallway.

“Is that right?' Craig said.

“It figures! Craig is a member,” I said.

Cindy rolled her eyes. “Hence your stint on the popularity scene,” she said.

“Don't remind me,” I said.

“You know she commands everything.” The girl's voice was getting closer.

“They're coming in here,” I said.

“Duh, Sherlock,” Cindy said.

It was between the closet and the coach's office. How would we explain barging into the coach's office?

“Oh, my god, I am not going into some pitch-black room. What if we get locked in?” Cindy asked.

“Now you're above hiding in a closet. You did it like three minutes ago,” I said. I went inside the
Dungeons & Dragons
–looking utility closet.

“Where the heck is the light switch?” Cindy asked.

“You cannot stand there with the door open.”

I took my cell phone out to use it as a light. There was like one of those overhead basement bulbs in the middle of the room with a pull chain.

“Did this room invent the word ‘antiquated' or what?” Cindy was growing impatient with the mission, I could see.

I stood at the door with one eye peeking into the weight room, hoping to get a glance of Craig and Michelle's adoring fan. No such luck! They were gone. How could people keep disappearing in the basement like that? After quietly closing the door, I had a chance to look at the room. It really was a supply closet. There was no secret door or anything. Like anybody popular with a shred of dignity would walk through this eyesore to get to their society cave. Even though I had discovered a few gems hiding in there.

“Check out these brand-new elliptical machines. Just as we're graduating, they decide to upgrade the gym with something electronic!” I said.

“It's about time!” Cindy said.

“Shhh! Wait. It sounds like someone is walking,” I said.