carefully everywhere descending (2 page)

I'm preoccupied trying to map out a floorplan in my mind as I crunch my way over the parking lot to the savory smells coming from the Italian restaurant, and that's why I don't notice them until I'm nearly upon them. A small group of kids from school.

My stomach drops. I don't hate the people at my school, by and large, but I prefer to only see them in that setting. Having them intrude on my Sunday evening is like a splash of cold water in my face. But they're blocking the front door, laughing and loud and not noticing me, and I'm not sure how to get past without speaking.

Before I can reach a decision, the brown-haired girl nearest to me moves back to make room for someone exiting the restaurant and steps on me, her sharp heel scraping the skin of my shin exposed by the gap between my old khakis and the top of my shoe. I jump back, leg stinging, and she starts and jerks around, apologizing. That's when I realize who it is, and my heart drops for the second time in less than a minute.

“Oh, geez, I'm sorry….” She halts when she sees who she accidentally mauled. Her eyebrows raise, and she glances back at the now-attentive crowd around her. “Hey, am I going crazy or was Audrey not here before?”

I don't see why this is funny, in fact find it a little hurtful in a way I can't explain, but everyone else laughs.

“I think she teleported here, man,” says Serhan, who's been her best friend for as long as I've been aware of them both.

“May I get through?” I ask Scarlett West, trying to keep my shivers under control. I warmed up some walking over, but it's still cold, and standing still just made that more apparent.

“Yes, you surely
may
,” she says with a stupid grin, bowing and gesturing grandly. It doesn't do any good—everyone else is still in the way—but I'm spared the humiliation of having to walk through the overweening group like they're an honor guard by a waitress opening the door.

“Your table is ready,” she announces, unintentionally including me as part of their night out.

They all move for the entrance at once, bottlenecking it, and I'm forced to wait next to Scarlett while everyone slowly files in.

“You're eating out on a Sunday night?” I ask, trying to remember if I've ever done such a thing. Not even in the summer.

“Well, Audrey, it's like I thought earlier: ‘Why be bound by society's expectations of us?'” Scarlett says. Things have thinned out enough for her to reach around the remaining kids and grab the edge of the door, holding it open and letting everyone go ahead. “We had nothing at home, so I wanted to eat out. When I brought up the idea with Serhan, he shot me down with that same line of thinking: ‘We don't go out on a
Sunday
. It's more than a school night. It's the First School Night.' Serhan's not the visionary I am. Luckily, the others didn't need much persuading to agree we've been denying ourselves a viable option, and a few texts later, here we are. Flash mob diners.”

We're finally through the doors into the warm interior. A bunch of tables have been shoved together in the center of the mostly empty restaurant for the huge group of teenagers. They're gibbering and excited as they pick out their seats and settle. Scarlett lets the door shut with a little burst of wind and stands next to me. Carelessly lovely, she puts her hands in her back pockets and surveys the group and then me.

“You're welcome to stay, if you want,” she says.

“Thanks, but I can't.”

“Don't think like that! The whole point of the experiment is to prove that you
can
,” she says earnestly.

“No,” I say with an amused snort. “I mean, I'm picking up something for my family. Have fun bucking society's expectations, though.”

“Oh, I always do,” she replies, a sly smirk on her lips. “Later, Audrey.”

She saunters over to claim a seat at the bustling table, and I go to the pickup counter. I can't help but feel like people are watching me. Like Scarlett is watching me.

“Hi. I'm picking up an order for Anderson,” I tell the same waitress who admitted our group. It looks like she is working alone tonight. Scarlett's impromptu decision means a windfall for her in terms of tips. The thought makes me smile at her as she takes Jimmy's cash and works the register with a concentrated brow.

Jimmy must have gotten a buy-one-get-one-free deal, because she gives me two large pizzas for only fifteen bucks and change. I head for the door, still feeling self-conscious. I look back as I shoulder it open, just in time to see Scarlett, still smirking, saying something to the girl next to her as they both look straight at me and laugh.

 

 

T
HE
COLD
air now feels good on my burning cheeks as I hustle home. I move quickly to get there before the pizzas cool, but also to put distance between me and Scarlett freaking West.

I shouldn't be surprised that she hasn't changed. Still the smug, conceited jerk she always was. I have to admit, when she held the door, I was tempted to think she'd grown up. And her invitation to join them, while a little condescending, still seemed to have been delivered with good intentions. But no. She still loves being the center of attention, loves getting in her cheap shots.

Two years ago, near the end of freshman year, I had no one I was close to at school. This was before I became good friends with Amber, who moved to town the start of sophomore year. It took us a while to find each other after her arrival, though. No one else really wanted to hang out with me, and frankly, I didn't want it either. Despite the care I always took with my appearance and hygiene, there was just no getting around the fact I was the poor kid. My clothes, my family, my cost-saving attitude, ingrained in me since childhood, marked me as such. Social situations with other kids tended to end when I couldn't go to the movies with them, or out for any activities, and this was the start of the period where such things mattered more than genuinely liking someone. Besides, I had realized the only way I was going to college was through scholarships. And since I was behind my classmates in terms of possessions and options, I vowed not to be behind in ability. I devoted myself to excelling in schoolwork: getting straight As and privately asking for more extra credit and more opportunities to appear desirable to an Ivy League school.

So, friendless and outcast, I had been working on my biology homework outside alone after a chess match. (I stopped competing when it became too much for my family to manage.) I was waiting for my dad to pick me up when Scarlett approached me.

“You still here?” she had asked. She was wearing her soccer uniform, and the rest of her team were straggling from the field to the locker room behind her.

“Obviously,” I said. I tore myself away from my homework to squint up at her. “Did you have a good practice?”

Her cheeks were blotchy from the activity, but despite that, she was still unfairly attractive. She has blue-gray eyes. The color isn't as remarkable as the fact that they are so
bright
, and lined by naturally dark lashes that seem at odds with her lighter hair. I had noticed her around school before, had been in a couple of classes and group projects with her, but I think this was our first really significant exchange.

“Yes, actually. It was really good,” she replied, sounding a little surprised. “Usually at this point in the season we all still hate each other. We're starting to work as a team early.”

“How long have you played soccer?”

“Since I was a kid,” she said with the kind of arrogance that comes from doing something for a long time, and talking to someone who knows nothing about it.

“Well, congratulations,” I said, for lack of anything better. There was an awkward moment where neither of us spoke or moved, both waiting for the other to take action. Finally, I broke the tension by picking up my biology textbook and leafing through it for the quiz in the next day's chapter on the human genome project.

“Are you a nerd?” Scarlett asked.

I stared up at her, a little astonished at the brazenness of the question.

“I don't know,” I replied when I got my wits back. “Maybe? I suppose so. Why? What do you mean by
nerd
, anyway?”

“Well, the only reason I stopped by was to see if you could do my science homework. See, I'm falling behind in class, and I just don't have time to catch up. You always seem to know the answers in class, and you're always reading, so I figured you know the stuff and don't sweat it like I do. I'm okay for most things, but when I don't get something, I just don't get it, you know? I'd make it worth your time,” she added hurriedly, perhaps in response to my darkening expression. “I'd pay you for the assignments you do for me. But, like I said, I'm in the red zone here. I mean, I'm in
trouble
. I need help.”

“It wouldn't hurt you to figure it out for yourself,” I said sharply. My head was ringing with
the only reason
, and I found the rest of her speech increasingly disgusting as well. “You can't go through life expecting people to just give you what you want.”

Scarlett bristled. “I know that.”

“Clearly you don't, or you wouldn't be begging for help from someone you don't know. And offering to
buy
it! This is unethical.”

Her face was even redder than it had been when she had come up to the bench. “I didn't think you would respond like this. So you won't help me?”

“No,” I said, dismissing her by pulling my book up to my face. “And clearly you don't know me if you thought I wouldn't be offended by your offer to
buy
my help to
do your homework for you
.”

“
Clearly
you're right,” she said mockingly, voice heavy with disdain. “Forget it, Audrey. In fact, do me a favor and forget I ever stopped to talk to you, okay?”

“Believe me, I'm trying to wipe it from my mind already.”

She gave a derisive snort and stomped away.

We haven't really spoken since. The heated exchange left a frostiness between us that persisted through our freshman and sophomore years. Occasionally in class she would make a cutting remark about me if the opportunity arose, and the class would laugh, but this year she seems to have finally gotten over the fight. She no longer glowers at me or goes out of her way to avoid me in the halls or takes the farthest seat from mine in the cafeteria and classrooms. While not overtly friendly, there's a sense of tentative acceptance between us now.

The cease-fire must have lulled me into a false sense of security. That's the only way I can explain why I opened up to her as much as I did and didn't immediately move away. And what did I get for letting my guard down? Mocked.

I try to shake it off and tell myself not to care. In less than two years I will be out of this town, in college and with people I like. Who cares what a couple of vapid school kids think of me?

But as soon as I deposit the pizza boxes on the kitchen table, I head for the bathroom and examine myself in the mirror, trying to picture how I must have looked to them.

It's simply me in the mirror, though my cheeks are a little red from the cold, and my hair is a little windblown. A horrifying thought strikes me: I ate a Milky Way earlier that my English teacher had given me for finishing a massive paper. (He loves to reward hard work with candy.) I accidentally sat on the empty wrapper before I threw it away. What if some of it melted on my pants? I turn around and look over my shoulder, already anticipating humiliation. There's nothing there. I heave a sigh of relief, thanking God for that favor.

My steps are heavy as I go to grab a couple of slices of pizza with my brothers. If there is nothing unusual about my appearance, it just means that simply being me is worthy of ridicule. Not a comforting thought.

I'm mostly successful at putting the encounter out of my mind for the rest of the night. I forgo returning to my books to watch TV and eat pizza on the overstuffed, coffee-colored sofa with Jimmy while Sam sits at my feet, guarding the remote control. There's a crime show on, one that I don't mind watching. Police procedurals bore me, but this follows the FBI as they chase down all sorts of criminals, and it isn't very long before I'm as absorbed in
Special Agents
as Sam.

Jimmy leaves during a commercial and returns with a plate and two lukewarm slices on it. He goes to Mom's bedroom and raps gently at the door before letting himself in. He's only inside for a minute, his and Mom's voices emanating in a low murmur. When he reappears I give him an inquisitive look, but he just shakes his head and closes the door so softly behind him it doesn't make a sound.

He sits back down next to me. Sam seems to have missed the whole exchange, and I'm never sure if he's playacting not noticing our parents and their situation, or if he really doesn't pick up on what is happening most of the time. At any rate, he's more content with his life than Jimmy was at his age. Or that I am with mine right now, come to think of it.

I prod him in the small of his back with my toes to get a reaction. Just because. He doesn't acknowledge me until the third poke, when he whips around and glares.

“Stop it!”

“Stop what?” I ask innocently, legs crossed demurely at my ankles. As soon as he rights himself I jab him again.

“
Aaaaaudreyyy
!” he whines, slapping backward to ward me off.

“What?” I'm grinning as I poke him again. It's stupid, I know, but there's such perverse fun in tormenting a younger sibling.

“Come on, you two,” Jimmy says, bored and not looking away from the TV. Sam hits back again, and this time makes contact with the sore spot left by Scarlett's shoe. I gasp and grab my leg—in pain, yes, but mostly in surprise. It hadn't been hurting, and I'd forgotten about the injury.