Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend (10 page)

There’s a crush of people around it, and it takes me a while
to work my way to the front of the pack. When I do, I see that
Holly, Stephanie and Robert are the leads, and Mitchell has a
small but funny part playing a gangster. Then, as my eyes travel
down the list, I get a little jolt. My name
is
there.
Rose Zarelli,
it says.
Passenger #3.
At first, I don’t feel anything. Then I think, well, okay, at least
I’m in the thing, right? That thought is quickly followed by a wave
of disgust. I look at the list again—does it really say
Passenger #3?
Yes. Yes, it does.
I look to see who Passengers #1 and #2 are. I don’t recognize
the names, which probably means that I’m playing third fiddle
to two freshmen. My face turns bright red just as I hear, “Rose,
would you come with me, please? I’ll give you a late pass.”
I turn around to see the crowd scattering to get away from
Principal Chen as she motions with one finger for me to follow
her.

PRINCIPAL CHEN’S OFFICE IS DECKED OUT IN A FALL
theme that goes with her painfully bright, industrial-orange
carpeting. There are strands of fake, multicolored leaves hanging from the ceiling and pumpkins and gourds on every flat
surface. The principal herself has a plastic witch pin blinking
on and off on what Tracy would say is a fall-appropriate, rustcolored blazer. Even though Halloween is still more than two
weeks away, there’s a black plastic cauldron full of candy corn on
her desk, with foil-wrapped Frankensteins and Draculas wedged
in it like tiny tombstones. When the principal picks up a little
metal scoop attached to the cauldron to help herself, a spooky
Halloween theme plays.

“Candy corn, Rose?” she offers.
“No, thanks. I don’t touch the stuff before 9:00 a.m.,” I say in a
weird character voice. I’m trying to make a joke but I’m nervous
and I end up sounding rude, like I’m saying she shouldn’t be eating candy, even though she weighs about a hundred pounds and
could probably use the calories because she burns more energy
in one day than everyone at Union combined.
“Breakfast of champions,” she says with a grin, dumping the
contents of the scoop into her hand. “So, Rose, how is sophomore year treating you so far?”
“Fine,” I say.
“You just got cast in the musical?”
“Not really.”
The principal tilts her head, confused. “‘Not really’?”
“I’m Passenger #3. It’s not a big deal.”
She nods thoughtfully. “There are plenty of people who didn’t
make the cut, you know.”
I shrug.
“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘There are no small parts,
only small actors’?”
I do my best to avoid rolling my eyes as I nod.
“Well, I don’t believe that. But I do believe in paying your
dues. This year it’s Passenger #3. Next year maybe it’s Maria in
West Side Story.
The word around school is that you have quite
a powerful voice.”
Wait—what? Did Mr. Donnelly tell her that? Is it true?
I think another person just called me a singer.
“All right, enough chitchat,” she says, ignoring the scoop and
grabbing a handful of candy corn directly out of the cauldron.
“You know why I want to talk to you?”
The last time I got called to the principal’s office was after I
called 911 at homecoming and the YouTube stalker posted the
video of Tracy and Kristin’s cheerleading initiation. Apparently,
I am now going to be called to the office once a year because of
someone’s initiation gone wrong.
The intercom on the principal’s phone buzzes before I can
answer the question. “Principal Chen, I have Conrad Deladdo
out here for you.”
The principal puts her candy down on her giant desktop calendar and presses a button on the phone. “Thank you. Tell him
it’ll be just a few minutes.”
She leans back and waits for my answer.
“I’m guessing you want to talk to me because of the party.”
She nods. “You’re the only one who tried to help.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“That’s news to me. Who else stepped in?”
“Jamie Forta.”
“Jamie Forta,” she repeats. “Well, that’s encouraging.” She
makes a note on the corner of her giant calendar, and I realize
that I just won Jamie a trip to the principal’s office.
“So are you willing to tell me what happened, and who the
instigator was?”
“I won’t tell you who did it,” I say.
“Rose, listen—”
“It’s not me I’m worried about.”
The principal starts shoving the candy around on her calendar, putting a piece on every other day of the month. Then she
says, “For now, why don’t you just tell me what happened.”
I spend the next few minutes explaining what I saw when I
first showed up at the party, and how I ended up in the pool.
But I’m pretty sure I’m not telling Chen anything new. When
I’m done, she takes a second to slide the last piece of candy into
place on her calendar and then presses the intercom button.
“Would you send Conrad in, please?”
Of course. Of course it would come to this. I hope she’s not
too disappointed when she finds out that Conrad does not see
me as an ally, no matter what I did for him at that party.
The door opens and Conrad comes in, hesitating when he
sees me. His glare could stop a freight train.
“Conrad, thanks for joining us. Have a seat. I was just asking
Rose here how she ended up in the pool at the swim-team party.”
Conrad doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even nod to acknowledge that the principal is speaking. Slowly, he sits down.
“Would you tell me how
you
ended up in the pool?”
Conrad crosses his arms over his chest. “If
she
told you how
she got there,” he says, making a point of not saying my name,
“you already know how
I
did.”
“I’d like to hear it from you,” she replies. “And I’d also like to
know what made you quit the swim team.”
Conrad stares hard at the orange carpeting. For some reason,
the spooky Halloween theme plays even though no one touched
the scoop. Principal Chen picks up the plastic cauldron and
switches it off.
“It’s not an easy team to make, Conrad, and the coach says
you’re one of his best already. Why would you give up a spot you
worked so hard to win?”
After a painful moment of silence, the principal leans forward
in her chair, folds her hands on her calendar without messing
up her candy-corn art installation, and looks from Conrad to
me and back again.
“This event—what happened at the party—is bigger than both
of you. It’s about more than your concerns about what people will
think of you if you talk to me. Now, that’s a lot to put on you, I
know. But I want all students to feel safe here at Union High, and
I can’t make that happen without you two stepping up.”
Conrad lifts his gaze to her, his voice cold as ice. “Sure you can.”
The principal raises an eyebrow, fixing Conrad with her best
authoritarian stare. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t need me to tell you who was calling me a faggot because it doesn’t matter
who
was doing it, just that someone
was
doing it. Oh, and also? While we’re looking at the big
picture, wanting the students at Union High to feel safe, what
about
my
safety?”
Principal Chen looks taken aback by the fact that Conrad
didn’t fall in line after her standing-up-for-what’s-right speech,
and I can see her shifting tactics. Slowly, she gets up, walks
around to the front of her desk and leans on it, so that she is
less than a foot away from us both. She’s barely five feet tall but
somehow she manages to tower above both of us anyway. Despite the flashing witch pin, she’s intimidating.
“Conrad, in situations like this, it helps to talk to the perpetrators, whether punishment is involved or not.”
“Helps who?” he snarls, standing up out of his chair so suddenly that he startles both Principal Chen and me. She stays very
still, probably trying to gauge whether she has a truly violent student on her hands or just one who’s temporarily super pissed off.
“Everyone,” she says calmly. “Including you. Now I’d appreciate it if you’d spend some time thinking about that and come
back to see me tomorrow. You’re excused for the rest of the day.”
Conrad is confused—he seems to be waiting for the other shoe
to drop. When nothing else happens, he grabs his black messenger bag, slings it across his chest, and is out the door in a flash.
The principal turns her attention to me. My heart is already
pounding in my chest—being around Conrad is like waiting to
see if a bomb was defused properly or not. And Principal Chen’s
laser-beam stare isn’t helping my nerves.
“It would be great if you would tell me who the ringleader
was,” she says, all business now. “I have my suspicions, but confirmation from someone who was actually there would make my
life a lot easier.”
“It won’t do any good,” I mumble.
“I know things were tough for you last year. Not to diminish
your experience, but what’s happening with Conrad is harassment on a whole other scale. It is evidence of a major problem.
You would be helping to solve that problem.”
My resolve is deteriorating. I try to defend myself. “It’s just
going to backfire on me. And him.”
“Making things better requires risk,” she says. “Sometimes the
moral imperative to speak up outweighs personal need. I know
you have it in you. Whether you like it or not, you do what’s
right, even when it’s hard, Rose.”
The intercom buzzes again. “Ms. Maso has arrived.”
The principal closes her eyes and takes a deep breath as if
today is one of the longest days of her life. She walks around
her desk, sits back down in her chair, presses the button and
says, “Tell her I’ll deal with— I’ll be with her in just a moment.”
Then she fixes that stare on me once again. My face starts to
get hot. “I need you to trust me here, Rose.” I don’t answer, but I
can’t look away from her. “So. Matt Hallis?” she asks quietly, as
if the walls have ears.
I look up at the ceiling, thinking about the assembly this
morning, and the spectrum of hate. The photo of that fence.
Conrad, who’s important to Jamie.
I nod once, quickly, without making eye contact, as if that
somehow makes me less responsible.
Without acknowledging what I’ve done, Principal Chen says,
“Thanks for coming in, Rose.”
As if I had a choice.
She stands and opens the door for me. Ms. Maso is right there,
arms folded across her chest. Principal Chen waves her in like
she’s a student who has gotten herself in trouble for shooting off
her mouth yet again.
As Ms. Maso passes me, she pats me on the shoulder, somehow knowing I caved without anyone having to tell her.

“Rose, blend, okay? Take that big voice of yours and
blend!
I’m begging you.”
It’s the third time Mr. Donnelly has stopped rehearsal because
I am unable to
blend.
Whatever that is.
We’re sitting in chairs on the auditorium stage learning a really
complicated song with lots of harmonies and people singing different things at the same time. I have no problem coming in at
the right time or hearing my part, and for a while, before the
blending issue, I was actually having fun. There’s something cool
about being on a stage looking out into an auditorium—even an
empty auditorium—singing in, like, four-or-five-part harmony
while the pianist plays her heart out. Being inside music like that
can make you feel like nothing else in the entire world matters
except what’s going on right then.
Unless you can’t blend.
Which, apparently, I can’t.
“From the chorus, one more time!” Mr. Donnelly shouts. Then
he turns and stage-whispers to me, “Ears, Zarelli. Use your ears!”
Mr. Donnelly cues the pianist, and I decide to mouth the
words this time just to see if he is really hearing what he thinks
he’s hearing. Because how could he possibly hear that I’m doing
something wrong over everybody else?
He stops us again and points at me.
“Now you’re not singing at all,” he says.
Everyone is frustrated by having spent the past twenty minutes on this one part—passengers #1 and #2 look like they want
to punch me.
“Do you know what I mean by blend?” Mr. Donnelly asks.
When I finally shake my head, he clasps the sides of his music
stand like he’s going to fall down, and gives me a look of extreme exasperation.
“People, if you do not know what I am talking about, ask me!
There’s no shame in asking questions—that’s what rehearsal is
for. Who wants to tell Rose what blending is?”
Mitchell Klein is the only one who raises his hand, which
makes me suspect that there are other people in the dark here.
“Blending is making sure your voice fits in with other people’s,
so you don’t stand out.”
“Thank god for Mitchell Klein!” Mr. Donnelly cheers. “That’s
right, Mitchell. Rose, you have a unique voice, and that’s great.
But in a song like this, every voice has to work together to create one sound. If one person stands out, the balance of the song
gets thrown off and the audience ends up listening to an individual voice rather than the whole piece of music. Any questions?”
I don’t want to look dumb again, but at this point, I just need
information. And based on the way a few people are looking
at me, it seems like everybody else needs me to have information, too.
“So how do you do it?” I ask.
“Ah, an excellent question.” Donnelly grabs his ear and tugs
at it ferociously. “You listen. Listen to what’s happening around
you, and try to match the quality. Try to fit in. Okay?”
I nod as if what he said made sense.
“Again!” Mr. Donnelly says happily, as if the problem is finally
solved. He cues the pianist and we all start singing. I listen as
hard as I can, and I try to imitate the alto next to me—her voice
is thinner than mine, and calmer.
Mr. Donnelly doesn’t stop us again.
So I guess the way to blend is to make yourself sound like
someone else?
If so, that’s fitting, because lately I’ve been thinking maybe I
should just
be
someone else. If I were, then maybe I could, oh,
I don’t know, have the guy I like and not cave when the principal grills me and get cast in a good role and sing the right way.
When we finish the song, Mr. Donnelly says, “All right, people,
go home and learn your parts
and
your words! It’s not enough
to just know the notes. You must also know the lyrics! Get off
book by next week or I will hurt you,” he jokes. “Rose, come see
me, please.”
Great. I grab my bag and walk over to Mr. Donnelly.
“Listen, I know you feel like I’m singling you out,” he says,
“and you’re right. I am. You have a nice voice—it’s just a little
contemporary for what we’re doing. Do you know what I mean?”
“You mean it’s wrong for the show.”
“No, no, nothing like that. I wouldn’t have cast you if it were
wrong for the show,” he says, sounding like he’s chastising me
for even thinking such a thing. “You just need to rein it in. Let it
rip on your solo lines in other songs, but in this one, it’s all about
the balance. You’ll get it,” he says, patting me on the shoulder,
trying to be reassuring but basically just making me feel like I’ll
never
get it, and I’m going to ruin the show.
Singing by myself is
way
more fun than this. Although it’s
hard to harmonize with yourself.
I pull on my sweater as I walk to my locker. Less than a minute later, Holly shows up with Robert.
I really don’t feel like talking to her right now. I know she just
wants to make me feel better but I don’t want to hear her being
all positive about my singing when I just got my ass kicked for
about half an hour in front of the entire cast.
And I definitely don’t feel like being around Robert. He’s been
staring at me at rehearsals since Morton’s. Now, standing next
to Holly, he wears this sort of pleading, imploring look on his
face, like he thinks I’m going to tell Holly the truth about him
at any second.
I guess I did sort of give him the impression that I might.
“A bunch of us are going out for a slice. Do you want to come?”
Holly asks.
“Thanks, but I have to go home and study. The PSAT is tomorrow.”
Holly looks confused. “You’re taking the PSAT already? Are
we all supposed to be doing that?”
“No, I’m just doing it for practice. I want to qualify for a National Merit Scholarship next year.”
“God, Rose, you’re so smart,” she says. “But are you sure you
can’t come? Even just for one slice?”
“I’ll come next time. But I think the cast of
Anything Goes
could
use a break from my
unique voice
for a while.”
“Rose, don’t worry about the blending thing—Mr. Donnelly
was after me for the same thing all summer during
Damn Yankees.
” I can tell by the way Robert suddenly looks at Holly like
she’s crazy that she’s making this up for my benefit. “Your voice
is just too interesting for the chorus. Which is why, next time,
you’ll get a lead! So this is a
good
thing!”
I’m getting tired of words like
interesting
and
unique
and
unusual
being used to describe my voice. At first I thought they
were compliments, but now I think they’re just synonyms for
weird
and
irritating
and
too much.
I can feel myself getting angry
about being embarrassed at rehearsal, and that’s a bad place for
me to be. When I’m mad because I’m embarrassed, all sorts of
mean things come out of my mouth that shouldn’t.
Like this.
“There isn’t going to be a next time. Musical theater sucks.”
Holly and Robert both jump like I’ve just used an electric
cattle prod on them.
“What—what do you mean?” Holly asks. The pain on her
face makes me feel like I just said the most hurtful thing I ever
could have said to her.
But does that shut me up? Nope.
“I think the choreography and the style of singing are totally
forced, and the music itself bugs me. It’s cheesy.”
This is only marginally true. I do sort of think those things,
but I also really like the dancing, even if practicing choreography
is so repetitive I could cry. And I love singing harmony. Even if
the music is cheesy, I enjoy it. I just don’t feel like admitting any
of that to these two right now.
Holly’s big brown eyes are full of apology. “Oh, my god, Rose,
I’m sorry. I really thought you’d like working on the show. That’s
why I wanted you to do it.”
“It’s not all bad. I love watching you and Stephanie—you’re
both amazing.”
Holly sneaks a quick glance at Robert. It’s not lost on her that
I left him off my short list of people who are
amazing
in the show.
I doubt it’s lost on him, either.
And then, because I’m already in bad-behavior mode, I add
one more thing for good measure: “I just think the show is lame.”
And there it is. I have successfully offended them as much as
humanly possible.
After another stunned silence from two of the three people
who have to carry the show that I just called lame, Robert says
in an ice-cold voice, “First of all, it’s Cole Porter—it’s literally
impossible for it to be
lame.
Second of all, if you had a lead role,
you might see things differently. But not everyone is lead-role
material.”
“Robert!” Holly gasps. She’s probably never seen Robert be
mean before.
Come to think of it, I haven’t, either.
The tears in my eyes surprise me. I know I totally deserve what
he just said, but that doesn’t make it easier to hear.
“You might want to rethink being a jerk to me.” I sound calm
as I raise my eyebrows to remind him that at any moment, I
could just open my mouth and tell Holly that he lied. He turns
bright red.
“I’ll meet you at Cavallo’s, Hol.” Robert leaves without looking at me. Holly watches her boyfriend go, and when she turns
back to me, I see bewilderment in her eyes, mixed with something that I’ve never seen in her before: suspicion.
Holly is very still as she watches me, and then she says, with
some steel in her voice, “I don’t understand what just happened.
Are you and Robert in a fight?”
I try to figure out what I’m doing and why before I say anything. I don’t want to blow up Robert and Holly’s relationship—
they have something real, and nice.
They’re lucky.
So basically, I’m just being a bitch.
“I’m in a bad mood, Holly. That’s all.”
She takes a second to look down at her fuzzy vintage sweater
and button one of the shiny heart-shaped buttons before she asks,
“Rose, are you sure you’re okay with me going out with Robert?”
“Yes!” I grab her arm for emphasis. “I am. Totally. You two
are good together. I’m sorry about what I said. Will you tell him
I’m sorry?”
“Come with me and tell him yourself,” she says. “And he could
apologize, too. He shouldn’t have said what he said to you.”
“It’s okay. I— He was just mad. But I’ll come next time. I
promise.”
Holly leans in and gives me a quick hug, her bracelets jangling. When she pulls back, I still see suspicion in her eyes, which
makes me feel guilty for not telling her the truth.
“Good luck tomorrow. Tell me how it goes, okay? I want to
know what those tests are like.”
She gives me a little wave and then heads off down the hall.
I get my stuff from my locker and check my phone, looking for
a text from Tracy offering me a ride but feeling relieved when I
don’t have one. I need the walk home—there’s a lot of crazy in
my head right now.
When I leave the building, it’s starting to get dark. I can smell
fall. The leaves of the maple trees glow bright orange and red
against the purple sky. They make me wish I could paint. I wonder if painting is easier than singing.
My dad always said that nothing easy is worth having. I think
probably every dad in the history of humankind has said that
to his kid at one point or another. I never really knew what it
meant before, but I think I do now.
When I decided I was going to be a singer last year, I didn’t
think it was going to be so complicated. Or uncomfortable. I always figured that finding your thing was the hard part. But once
you found it, everything else would fall into place, because if you
were destined to do something, then it wouldn’t be hard, right?
Maybe I don’t understand the whole concept of destiny.
Because I’m thinking such deep philosophical thoughts as I
walk home, and because it’s nearly dark, I almost miss Regina
and Anthony entirely. They’re under the overpass a few blocks
from school, kissing. Regina is up against the concrete wall,
and Anthony has his arms braced on either side of her, like he
doesn’t want her going anywhere. She turns her head to the side
and he moves with her, making her kiss him again. Her arms are
behind her, and she’s leaning back on them—she and Anthony
aren’t touching at all except for their lips. He’s so big he looks
like The Hulk next to her.
It’s the first time I’ve seen Regina since Jamie told me about
her father, and she looks different to me now. Or I guess maybe
it’s that I see her differently.
It used to be when I looked at her, I was afraid. I couldn’t help
but think of all the awful things she said and did to me, and
the way she loved trying to scare me. Now when I look at her, I
imagine her dad hurting her.
What exactly did Jamie mean when he said that Mr. Deladdo
hit
Regina? Did he…smack her? Punch her? Throw things at her?
What is it like to have a father like that?
And what is it like to see your ex-boyfriend—who you’re still
in love with—pointing a gun at him, threatening him, making
him leave? What did she feel when Jamie did that? Did she want
her father to go because she was sick of being hurt, or did she
want him to stay because he’s her dad?
I get a weird little shock up my spine every time I think about
Jamie with that gun. It still seems impossible to me that he could
hold it and point it at a grown-up, and tell him what to do.
I wonder if he was scared when he did it.
And what kind of father—what kind of
cop
—just hands his
gun to his son and tells him to go do something like that?
I watch Anthony and Regina for another second, and then I
start to feel creepy. I pick up the pace so I can be long gone by
the time they come up for air.
When I get home, I close the door and head straight up to
my room as quietly as I can. My mother’s light is on in her office—either she’s still with a patient or she’s doing paperwork.
My phone chimes while I’m on the stairs and I clutch my bag to
my side to try to muffle the sound. I don’t want to have to talk
to my mother right now.
When I’m safely in my room, I root around in my bag for my
phone and see a text from Tracy, telling me that she’s emailing
me the next Sharp List. As “editorial director,” I look over her
posts before they go live. But she hardly ever gives me time to
do it—she just sends endless texts and emails marked “urgent,”
and I’m supposed to drop everything I’m doing and give all my
attention to her blog.