Twenty-Two

I Guess I'm a Juggler

Quinn's POV

Thursday morning I woke up still angry with myself for what I'd done to Andrew after bowling. I'd wanted to kiss him so badly--it had been one of my dreams since I'd seen him in the hallways my first day of freshman year. Why couldn't I have just done something normal for once and actually let myself kiss him back?

"How'd your date go?" asked Vanessa, plopping down next to me at the breakfast table with a bowl of Cheerios. Despite the fact that I'd been cranky all last evening, she was still attempting heroically to be friendly towards me, and I knew she wasn't asking just because she was trying to make me more angry.

I shrugged, thinking about how I hadn't even really talked to Andrew all that much. Then, because I was still a little guarded around my step sister-to-be, I said, "It went well."

And then I finished my cereal as quickly as I could so that I could bike to school. I wanted some fresh air, and more than anything I didn't want to sit in Kenzie's Audi and listen to them all try and analyze my date with what few details I'd given them.

It didn't take me that long to bike to school, and when I arrived at Providence Prep I successfully evaded Mr. Townsend and a dress code infraction, considering I was wearing shorts that were probably not exactly school approved. I didn't seem to be on the principal's good side lately, and I wasn't keen on digging myself further in my pit.

I saw that Homecoming posters had been put up overnight--the dance was in a week and a half, and I'd completely forgotten about it. I'd spent a good part of my summer shopping online for potential dresses and daydreaming about how Andrew Summers would ask me. Would he even ask me anymore? We were technically dating, but considering how things had ended yesterday I understood if he was angry with me. Our dates always seemed to end disastrously.

For the football game, Providence Prep was playing the worst team in our league, just so we had a shot at winning. Our exclusive private school was a little too preppy and didn't have a large enough student population to be good at football, but what we lacked in skill we made up for in school pride, and I knew nobody wanted to lose the game. I wondered if I'd end up going to watch, and if so who I'd go with. Maybe Andrew would want to go with his friends instead.

Exhaling loudly, I swung open my locker and began to pull out the books I would need for the day. There were no pink Post-It notes adhered to the metal of my locker, which meant that my secret helper didn't know just how torn I was feeling inside.

"Hey, Quinn."

I turned around and found Cody standing in front of me, his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his khakis and his eyes intense. Instantly, I looked around to make sure neither Julia nor Andrew was nearby.

"Shouldn't you be with Julia?" I asked as I turned back to my locker and yanked out my math textbook.

"I told you how I feel about her," he said.

Chewing down on my lip, I swung my locker shut with my foot and turned to face him. "Well keep me out of it," I said. "I don't need to lose her friendship."

Then, because I was confused and frustrated and didn't know how I should act, much less how I wanted anyone else to act, I pushed past him and headed to Chemistry class.

As I sat down in my seat and began twirling my pencil between my fingers, I realized there was no way out of this. If Cody broke up with Julia he'd admit that he liked me and come between my relationship with Andrew and with Julia. If he remained silent and kept dating Julia, I'd keep the sick feeling in my stomach that seemed to be making its appearance more and more frequently every day. On top of that, I had no idea how to deal with what had happened on my front porch yesterday, and Julia had no idea that any of this way going on--and even though she was my best friend, I couldn't tell her because it would crush her. And last but definitely not least, my bratty stepsister and her popularity princess best friends were trying to push me into their crowd, for likely devious reasons I still hadn't discovered.

Abruptly, I stopped twirling my pencil and set it down next to my notebook instead, because playing with my pencil reminded me too much of Cody. I'd definitely worked myself into an unsolvable puzzle.

My phone buzzed deep in the pocket of my jean shorts and I yanked it out to see a text from Julia: we def have to do a double date again!

She'd actually enjoyed herself? Considering she and Cody had spent most of the time angry at each other, that was actually surprising. And I definitely wasn't going to go near a double date any time soon, even with a six foot pole. So I just shoved my phone back into my pocket and pretended to ignore it as I went back to thinking about how confused I was.

"Hey, Quinn." For the second time that day, I didn't reciprocate Cody's greeting as he slid into the seat that was technically Abby's. "How was the homework last night?"

"Same as every other day," I said, passing back my notebook so he could begin our daily ritual of comparing answers.

Two minutes later, we were deep in the middle of a debate about problem seven when Mrs. Smith said in a high voice, "Cody Marlett! Stop stealing poor Abby's seat."

Cody glanced up from his notebook and stared at our teacher as if he'd just been snapped out of a daze. I saw that Abby had taken Cody's normal seat and was trying not to look overly pleased that she was now sitting next to her extremely obvious crush, Preston.

"Abby's fine," remarked Cody, ducking his head back down to erase something in his notebook. "She's just happy she gets to sit next to Preston."

The class erupted into hoots as poor Abby turned bright red and slid lower in her seat.

I sadly knew exactly what it was like to be in her position. "Shut up, Cody," I said, yanking my chemistry notebook away from him. "Go sit in your seat and stop trying to take people's seats that aren't yours just so you can sit behind me and stare at the back of my head the whole class."

Cody's eyes widened and he glared at me stonily for a few seconds before standing, grabbing his things, and dumping them on his proper desk without another word. Looking somewhat redeemed, Abby headed to the seat behind me, tucking her mousy brown hair behind her ear. "Thanks," she whispered to me as she sat down.

I shot her a thumbs up and turned back to my notebook, avoiding looking at the side of the room where Cody was being teased incessantly by his guy friends.

Chemistry class was an extremely subdued affair. Mrs. Smith spent the hour lecturing us, and we luckily didn't have to work in our lab groups because if we did I was pretty sure Cody would explode. He took out all his anger instead by sassing anyone who came within a two-foot radius of him, including me when I passed by him to get the stapler from our teacher's desk.

"You're one to talk about staring," he said under his breath as I stapled a worksheet into my notebook. "That's all you ever do with Andrew Summers."

I walked back to my seat, passing him without a word, but I was sort of crumbling inside. Maybe all of my stress and confusion would have been manageable if Cody wasn't mad at me, but I couldn't stand it when he started to act this way around me. It made everything a hundred times worse.

By the time I'd finished with theatre and English class and was heading to the cafeteria to get lunch, I felt like I'd break if anyone so much as looked my way. Vanessa had kept asking me what was wrong during English class, but I'd kept smiling at her so that she wouldn't think I was as hurt as I really was. She'd followed me out of the school building, though, and now she grabbed my sleeve as I dodged a group of seniors to reach the door.

"You should come eat with Kenzie and Sara and me!" she said, her eyes bright, as I yanked my arm out of her grasp. I stared at her and couldn't imagine sitting for an hour at the table Julia and I used to joke about, pretending to be someone I wasn't.

"Sorry," I said. "I have a meeting with a teacher." Then I turned around and hurried back to the main school building, biting back tears as I blindly pushed past people.

By the time I'd locked myself in a bathroom stall, which was the only place I could imagine getting any privacy, I let the tears fall freely. I couldn't even begin to explain how confused I was right now, and I felt pulled in so many places. I knew I could only be stretched so thin, and I'd finally snapped.

I leaned against the wall for a while crying what Julia would call the Ugly Cry: mascara tracking all the way down my cheeks, puffy red eyes, runny nose, and loud sobs. A few people entered and exited the bathroom and called into the stall asking if I was okay, but I didn't bother replying. Finally, one person wouldn't go away.

"Quinn?" asked a voice that sounded distinctly like Vanessa's, knocking on the door to my stall. "I know that's you in there. Please let me in."

I sniffed loudly, hoping that if I didn't reply she'd get the message and go away. Her footsteps receded and I thought she was leaving, but then I heard the sound of her pumping paper towels out of the machine near the sink and then coming back to my stall.

"At least wipe your nose and eyes," she said, passing the towels at me underneath the door. I grabbed them and began wiping away the tears, probably smearing away most of my makeup in the process.

"Why are you acting like you care?" I asked finally, once I'd blown my nose loudly and wiped away most of my tears.

Vanessa's voice was quiet on the other side of the door. "Because I do," she said simply. "You're almost my sister. Please come on out, Quinn. Whatever's wrong, I'm sure it will be okay."

I didn't say a word, and finally she added, "I'll be right back." Then I heard the bathroom door opening and closing, and I was alone in silence once again.

I leaned back against the wall and focused on taking deep, calming breaths while trying to work out whatever was wrong. There didn't seem to be any way out, though. No matter how I put it, someone would get hurt. And the people who were involved in this mess were my closest friends, and I didn't want any of them to have to suffer because of this.

Cody already was, though. He'd told me how I felt about him, but he was still dating Julia. Why? Why wouldn't he just break up with her?

The bathroom door opened again, and at first I thought it was just some random girl, but then Vanessa's voice said, "Quinn? Please come out? Someone is standing out in the hallway and he wants to see you."

I thought of Andrew Summers, and how sweet it would be if despite everything he was out there ready to give me a hug and help me through this problem that I could unfortunately not tell him about. So I swung open the door to my stall, splashed my face with some water, blew my nose one more time, fixed my hair, and then opened the bathroom door.

Andrew Summers was not the one standing out in the hallway, pacing back and forth with his eyebrows crinkled worriedly. Cody Marlett was.

"Hi," I said awkwardly, stopping right on top of the spot where the tile in the bathroom turned to the hallway's grey carpet. The bathroom door swung shut and hit me in the back, and I quickly stepped forward so it could close all the way.

Before I had time to say anything else, or even wonder why he was here when he was supposed to be mad at me, he enveloped me in a bone-crushing hug. I let myself inhale deeply for a few seconds, breathing in the smell of his somehow reassuring cologne, before I realized how random passersby would misinterpret this exchange and quickly pulled away.

"Are you okay?" he asked, stepping back and studying me. I knew for a fact my eyes were still puffy and my cheeks were red--tissues and water couldn't fix that.

"Oh, yeah," I said quietly, tucking my hair behind my ear. Vanessa, who had clearly thought she was doing me a favor, had slipped away. I wondered why she'd gotten Cody instead of Andrew. Maybe Andrew had been busy?

He stepped closer. "Are you sure?"

This was basically an exact repeat of The Porch Incident, except in a different location (where detention was extremely likely if Mr. Townsend saw how close we were standing) with a different boy. So I stepped backwards, nearly tripping on my shoes--I'd worn heels today at Vanessa's persuading.

"Those shoes look uncomfortable," he said, pointing down at my shoes.

I smiled a sort of fake smile and said, "They're not that bad." Then, because I was getting even more confused because of this exchange and because I thought I might start crying again, I said, "Thanks for checking on me. I'm really fine, though. I'm just going to go grab some lunch."

He let me go after making me promise that I wouldn't still be crying by French class, and then I darted off in the general direction of the cafeteria. I didn't feel like getting food, though--my stomach was in so many knots I doubted it would digest anything.

I kept walking, smiling at people who greeted me in the hallways. Half of them probably didn't even know my name--they just knew I was "Andrew's girlfriend." That sort of hurt, and it made me even more confused because last year that would have made me really proud.

By the time I'd convinced myself to at least get some yogurt and was seated at Julia's table, I had calmed down somewhat. Julia, being my best friend, immediately spotted that I had been crying, but she quickly erased the shocked expression from her face because of all the acquaintances we were sitting with and started a conversation about Homecoming.

"Do you think Cody will ask you?" asked Hazel, who was in my theatre class.

Julia's pleased blush was evident even though she had already carefully applied some on her cheeks this morning with a makeup brush. "Probably," she said, her eyes glittering. "I hope he gets me flowers."

I choked down a bite of yogurt and then stuffed another bite in my mouth just so I'd look busy, doubting that Cody would ever ask Julia to Homecoming with a bouquet of roses. How could she honestly not see that he wasn't that into her?

Then an awful thought occurred to me. What if Andrew felt the same way about me that Cody felt about Julia, and I was just as blind as she was? What if he really wasn't interested in me, but he kept acting like it because he didn't want to hurt my feelings, and I was just really naive and couldn't see past the fact that he'd even asked me out in the first place? I dug for my phone and pulled it out of my pocket: he still hadn't texted me. This meant he was either busy with homework or his running club, which were both excuses he would probably use, or that he didn't really want to talk to me.

Suddenly, my yogurt tasted awful, and I stood up to throw it away, grateful that I could get away from Julia and her friends who were all throwing out ways Cody could ask Julia to Homecoming. These days I couldn't even tell who I liked and who I hated anymore.