Haunted Read online

  Cheryl was beginning to work herself up, and I noticed that she had no concern for the possibility that Chad had been in accident, only that he might be with a girl.

  “Well,” I said to reassure her, “I’m sure it’s not that. I mean, the only girls he has the opportunity of meeting are here at school. And if he was with a girl from school his car wouldn’t have gone anywhere. If he was in town, you would have seen his car…maybe he went to the city for the weekend?”

  “What for, though? He didn’t need to get his friend an abortion!” she said flippantly.

  I made a half-smile and, lost for words, dug into my plate full of buttery carbohydrates while Cheryl watched, partly in disgust, partly with envy.

  The rest of the week leading up to the dance was relatively uneventful. I nearly had a panic attack in English class on the day our short-answer questions were due. Cheryl had promised to print them up and bring them to class for me, but when the bell rang at the beginning of class, her seat was empty. I was seething inside. I had done all the hard work for both of us; all Cheryl had to do was hit the print button and show up. Now I would look like I hadn’t completed the assignment when in actual fact I had done it twice! She finally came strolling in twenty minutes late with a smirk on her face. She rifled through her bag and shoved a crumpled sheet of paper at me as she took the desk beside me. I was flooded with relief, but like a parent whose missing child has been returned safely, I also wanted to scream at her and demand to know where she had been.

  I smoothed out the paper with my work printed on it and looked up to see her applying lip gloss.

  “Thank you for joining us, Miss Larson. Any particular reason you’re late?” the teacher asked.

  “Mm hmm!” Cheryl winked as she looked at me. “I was just about here when I realized I had forgotten my homework back in the dorm. I had to run back and get it.”

  “Very well then. Perhaps spending some time in the detention hall this afternoon will help to you to remember the next time.” Ms Tyrol pursed her lips.

  Cheryl’s smug face fell and she took a sharp breath. She turned at glared at me and I knew she was thinking that it was my fault she was late.

  As Ms. Tyrol continued on with her lecture, I scribbled a note to Cheryl: Sorry! But thanks so much for doing that!

  She looked at the note, turned to me and rolled her eyes in disgust and shook her head as if to say whatever.

  I tried to steal a look at Cheryl without her noticing. Had Lisa told me the truth? Has this girl sitting next to me really slept with her cousin? And willingly? As I stared at her through my curtain of hair, I saw beyond the make up and the hair and the fancy car and the designer bag and all the bravado and the cool, and I saw a girl. A young girl just like me, except she was really horribly lost and confused but putting on a really great show of being in the lead. I saw someone terribly lonely who was struggling desperately to find love and validation. She was like a beautiful swan who seemed to glide effortlessly along the surface of the water, but was furiously kicking her feet underneath where no one could see.

  When the bell rang to signal that class had finished she grabbed my arm as everyone siphoned out of the room.

  “Hey – next time you do my work for me, could you print it off, too?” she said as if jokingly, but really not.

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry you got detention!” I said. I was sorry that she got detention, but I still wasn’t sure why I should be made to feel responsible. I had asked her yesterday morning to print out our homework – she had had plenty of time.

  “Oh don’t worry,” she said dismissively. “It was my own fault. Listen, do you have Italian this afternoon? Because Chad isn’t answering my texts and I want to talk to him about the party in his room.”

  “Yeah, we do have Italian today,” I nodded

  “Okay, good. Could you ask him for me? If we can have the party in his room? And if he could call me about it? But after four o’clock because I’ll be in detention, as you know,” she said pointedly.

  “For sure I will.” I chose to ignore her dig and made my way down the hall to the dreaded math class.

  Later, in the afternoon I saw Chad in Italian class. He immediately came over to where I was sitting and swung himself into the desk next to me.

  “I’m nervous about these dialogues!” he confided. “I mean, I’m okay to read them out loud off the paper, but when I have to say them from memory…”

  “Aw, you’ll be fine!” I encouraged him.

  I already knew him to be very intelligent and academically inclined, so I was certain his abilities were much greater than what he was making them out to be.

  “What about you? Did you have any trouble learning them?” he asked.

  “I did at first, but then I think I got the hang of it after a while. The language has a rhythm to it and once you can get inside that it makes it easier,” I explained.

  “Oh great – I was going to ask you to be my partner when we have to present to the class, but now I think you just might show me up!” he joked.

  “Ha! I’m sure you’ll be great! And I’d be very happy to be your partner!” I said.

  The bell rang and class got under way. When we had to get up to speak our dialogues out loud in front of the class, Chad did very well. His accent wasn’t so great, but his pronunciation and emphasis was very good. As we took our seats I jabbed him with my elbow and grinned.

  “We were the best so far!” I whispered.

  “You were the best so far!” he corrected me. “I’m definitely practicing with you for next week!”

  When class was over I made my move on Cheryl’s behalf.

  “Hey Chad, sorry to bother you about this, but Cheryl asked me to ask you about this party before the dance on Friday night. She said she hasn’t been able to get a hold of you.”

  “Oh right,” he said, trying to look thoughtful.

  “She wanted me to ask if maybe you could give her a call?” My voice rose into a thin waft. I was embarrassed to ask him and I felt extremely awkward about the whole situation.

  He sighed.

  “You know, I did promise her that we’d have some sort of party and that I’d talk to her about it this week. If you talk to her before I do, tell her I’ll call her tonight.”

  “Okay. Cool,” I said.

  “And I meant what I said about wanting to practice with you, too. Your accent is really good – how do you do that?” he asked.

  “Well,” I smiled bashfully, “Everybody is good at accents when they’re goofing around and being silly because they lose their self-consciousness. If you just pretend that you’re having a laugh, it’s much easier to roll the r’s and tap the t’s.”

  “Really? I’ll have to try that. Come by the office sometime this week and you can help me,” he said as he turned to go.

  “Okay, I will. And I’ve made some good progress on my column!” I called out after him.

  I wasn’t sure if practicing my Italian with Chad was going to be as fun as practicing with Stefano, but I suppose I could always work on it with Stefano first and then teach Chad what I had learned.

  That night, I was hanging out in my room with Margie when Cheryl came banging on the door.

  “Oh Cath-er-ine!” she trilled from outside in the hall. “Cath-er-ine! I have exciting news for you! Open Sesame!”

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked as I flung the door back.

  “Yay! Chad finally called me!” she exclaimed as she bulldozed into the room.

  “Oh,” she said as she saw Margie sitting on her bed. “Sorry. I didn’t know your roommate was here.”

  “You don’t need to apologize. And you should know by now my name is Margie,” Margie said looking her dead in the eye.

  “Oh, well, I won’t disturb you long. I just wanted to tell Catherine that the party’s on!” she sang with exuberance. “It’s going to be over in Trevor and Chad’s room and Trevor thinks he can get us a bottle of vodka!”

  “Oh
, great.”

  Was it great? I’d had wine before, and I had to honestly say that I didn’t enjoy it one bit. I’d just as soon drink paint stripper. Maybe I’d like vodka better, but I doubted it.

  “So we’ll get ready here and then all go over to their dorm together.” She clapped her hands exuberantly.

  She turned to Margie and asked in her fake-as-saccharine voice, “Are you going to the dance, Margie?”

  “Hell no!” Margie chortled, “I have waaaaay better things to do on a weekend than stick around school!”

  Cheryl gave a little shrug and turned back to me. “I’m so excited! It’s going to be so much fun! We’ll talk about what we’re going to wear tomorrow at lunch!”

  She began to make her way out of the room.

  “And Catherine,” she turned and said in a low voice, “Thank you so much for getting Chad to call me.” She smiled sincerely at me and I didn’t know what to say.

  “Oh poor you,” Margie clucked as the door clicked shut behind her.

  “What poor me?” I looked at her with bemusement.

  “You’re Cheryl’s new best friend!” she said as she shook her head, half laughing, half pitying.

  On Thursday, Italian happened to fall into the last period of the day. Chad grabbed me as I was making my way out the door.

  “Uh-uh! Not so fast!” He grabbed the strap of my book bag.

  I turned and looked at him in bewilderment.

  “You agreed to help me! To reveal your secret of speaking the Italian language with flair!” he wriggled his fingers in front of my face like a magician. “Are you doing anything right now? Come to the newspaper office with me,” he suggested.

  “Oh. Alright. Sure. I mean, no I don’t have anything to do right now. I mean, yes I’ll come to the office.”

  I know he had asked me earlier in the week, but I didn’t really think he had meant it. I was caught off guard. I thought it was bad enough in Cheryl’s eyes that he had asked me to write for the paper. Working together on Italian homework was pushing it.

  “I just barely mastered the dialogues we were assigned last week, and now we have to learn two new ones!” Chad moaned as we walked together across the grounds.

  “But don’t forget the first two – we have to repeat those ones in addition to the two new ones!” I said.

  “Great! Well thank goodness I have someone to help me now!” he smiled at me.

  In that moment, there was something in his eyes as they caught mine that made me a little flustered. I flushed slightly and prayed that it wouldn’t be too noticeable. We walked the rest of the way in awkward silence.

  “Oh hey!” I said as we reached his office. “I’ve decided what I’m going to do with my first column! I’ve decided to write it as if it were an email I was writing to a friend back home. It’s going to culminate in the dance on Friday, so I’m going to wait until this weekend to really knuckle down and get to work on it.”

  “That sounds great. Maybe don’t mention our little pre-dance party, though. I think the powers that be might frown upon it! Especially because I think Trevor and some of the others are planning on drinking,” he said as he gave me a knowing look.

  “Oh no, of course I wouldn’t mention anything that would get anybody in trouble!” And then I added in deference to him, “And of course if I did, I trust you would edit it out!”

  “Right you are there!” He winked at me.

  He sat down behind his desk and I plunked myself down on the ratty old sofa again.

  “So, before we get to Italian, can I ask you something personal?” He had his eyes down on the desk. “In strictest confidence?” He looked up at me questioningly.

  “Yes, of course,” I assured him, curious about what he could possibly want to ask me.

  “I know I can trust you. You’ve already proven on more than one occasion that you’re discreet and I think you show really good judgment about the things you say and don’t say,” he said as he picked up a pen and started doodling on a pad of paper. “So I hope you’ll trust me, and talk to me honestly.”

  “You sound really serious!” I exclaimed. “Is something wrong?”

  “I just want you to be really honest with me about what Cheryl has told you about me and my previous relationship with her.”

  His eyes met mine and I didn’t know what he was hoping I would tell him.

  “Well, just that you guys were seeing each other and that you fought and argued a lot and that you broke up and got back together a fair amount…” I shrugged and looked at him hoping for a clue as to what he was getting at. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Cheryl is still pretty crazy about you and would like to get back together, but that you’re… less interested.”

  “Crazy is a good word,” he muttered under his breath. “Look, something happened between her and I that I’m not proud of…” he stopped doodling and held the pen prone over the paper while he thought of what to say next.

  “Chad, you don’t have to tell me any of this. It’s none of my business, really,” I said.

  “No, but I want to clear the air,” he insisted. “I want to clear my name.”

  I stared at him blankly.

  “When Cheryl and I first started dating, I thought she was a really fun girl. I realized pretty quickly that we didn’t have a whole lot in common, but we were having a good time together, so I didn’t think there was any harm in it. She was a bit clingy, which could be slightly annoying at times. Anything I wanted to do that didn’t involve her – like the school newspaper – made her really angry and upset and dating her stopped being so much fun and sort of became more like work. I found her to be really materialistic, too.”

  “Oh she told me about Valentine’s Day,” I interjected, but as soon as it was out of my mouth I wish I hadn’t said it.

  “Oh Valentine’s Day. Right. How could I forget about that!” he chuckled to himself. “The funny thing is, the necklace that she wanted was in a little envelope taped to the stem of one of the roses I had gotten her. If she had accepted them gracefully she would have found it when she went to put them in water.”

  My jaw dropped as my mind tried to absorb the irony of this.

  “She practically threw them back in my face, Catherine. She screamed at me. It was disgusting. I was already on the fence about her at that point, and she didn’t just provide the proverbial straw, she dumped an entire haystack on me. That incident pretty much told me everything I needed to know about her character. So I broke up with her.”

  I nodded silently, stunned by what he was revealing to me.

  “In my mind, we were completely through. That was it. I mean, this was a girl I had been dating for maybe five or six weeks at that time. I had no difficulty ending it with her at all. But then a little while later – and now we’re getting to the part that I’m not proud of – she wanted to talk to me. I thought I’d give her the chance to apologize for her horrible behavior. She showed up at my room, and I’m not trying to put the blame on her – it takes two, of course – but she came on pretty strong and I’m embarrassed to say that we…” he sighed and I knew he was struggling to find the words.

  “It’s alright,” I rescued him. “She told me. I know what happened.”

  “Okay, well, then, so after that I felt obligated to her. After that happened I couldn’t very well tell her that we were still broken up and that I wanted nothing to do with her, so we went back to dating. But she started getting really possessive and jealous and I couldn’t go to the bathroom without her asking where I’d been and who I’d been with and it started to drive me up the wall. I mean, I couldn’t have my own life…I swear she would have made me wear a tracking device if she’d have thought of it! And this was coming from someone I didn’t even really want to be with anyway but I thought I was doing the right thing by her. I stuck it out until the end of the school year and then I told her that I thought we should consider ourselves broken up for the summer and maybe reassess our relati
onship in September.”

  “And now here we are in September,” I concluded for him. “But why are you telling me all this?” I asked delicately.

  “Because I know that Trevor treated Lisa really badly. He was not a gentleman and he took advantage of her and I don’t want you to think that I’m like him,” he stated bluntly.

  Wow, and you don’t even know about the trouble he got her into, I thought to myself.

  “Trevor’s a good friend. He’s a good guy. Just not with girls,” Chad explained with a hint of sheepishness. “But since you’ve been hanging out with both of them, I figured you’d have heard all the stories and I wanted you to hear my side. I don’t like what Trevor did to Lisa and I’ve told him that a million times. But I’m not like him,” he said again emphatically.

  “I didn’t think you were,” I said quietly. “In some ways I’m grateful that Cheryl kind of took me under her wing right away and made friends with me…but I see her shortcomings. I’ve had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of some of her character flaws as you well know! But I don’t think she’s all bad – everybody is the way they are for a reason and sometimes I see the scared little girl in her…Not that that makes her easier to take sometimes…I don’t know. But I do know that you’re not like Trevor and I never for one moment thought that you were,” I finished.

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  He gazed straight into my eyes and for a second it felt like a heat ray burning right into me.

  Mercifully, Michael, the co-editor, came striding through the door at that moment and relieved me.

  “Well hello, you two!” he said jovially. “Why are you in these stuffy offices when you could be outside enjoying the last of the summer weather?”

  “Catherine is helping me with Italian,” Chad explained.

  “Oh she is, is she? Come stai, Catherine?” Michael was practically bursting with joy.

  “Bene!” I answered just as happily. “It seems you’re awfully bene as well!”

  “Why yes I am! The prettiest girl in the whole school just agreed to go to the dance with me tomorrow! Sorry – did I say prettiest? I meant second prettiest after you!” he winked at me.