Cindy and the Prom King

by Carol Culver

  “Good shot, Carrottop,” a guy said.

  She flushed. No one had called her Carrottop since she was five years old. It didn’t bother her. Not much.

  At that moment the door opened and a tall, ramrod-stiff man with a short buzz cut looked in.

  “What in God’s name are you doing here?” he asked Anastasia. “This is not Introduction to Psychology. This is geometry.”

  Anastasia’s eyes widened. She muttered some obscenity, grabbed her shoulder bag and almost knocked the man over on her way out the door.

  “This is inexcusable and it won’t happen again, class,” he said turning his head to watch Anastasia’s hasty departure. “You’re dismissed for today.” He seemed to click his heels together before he left the room.

  While everyone else filed out, Cindy just sat there, feeling slightly stunned. So this was Manderley. But it wasn’t geometry. Who was that woman really? And who was the man?

  Cindy finally stood up and found she wasn’t the only one left. The guy behind her was still there.

  “Just so you know, your hair is gorgeous,” he said. “Not at all the color of carrots.”

  “You don’t have to say that. It doesn’t bother me,” she said, wondering if everyone had heard the carrottop remark. “I’ve heard worse.”

  “I’m Scott,” he said, “and I don’t want to get all Queer Eye on you, but I’m wondering who does your hair.”

  “I’m Cindy and I do my hair myself.”

  “I’d love to get my hands on it,” he said, squinting at her as if she were an abstract painting he was analyzing. “I’m just an amateur but I’m pretty good. It needs to be tamed. It needs layering. And some serious shaping. What do you say?”

  “I… I don’t know what to say. I’m not really into hair or clothes.”

  He nodded soberly. “I noticed. That’s a mistake. You’re new, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Heard you might be interested in joining the Gay-Lesbian Alliance.”

  “Don’t you have to be gay?”

  “Most of us are. I thought… I mean I heard from McHenry who heard from Bo who heard from your sister …”

  Cindy’s eyes widened. “My sister said I’m a lesbian?” she asked. Her face flamed. She felt like she’d just touched a live wire. That’s how much it shocked her to think her sisters would spread a rumor about her. She’d kill Lauren or Brie or both of them. Why would they say that? What right did they have … “Not that there’s anything wrong with it,” she added, worried she might hurt his feelings. “It’s just that…”

  “My mistake,” he said. “I still want to do your hair. Think about it. You can tell me tomorrow. If Nelson decides to show up. I had her last year and she’s good—when she makes it to class, that is. Even if you’re not gay, maybe you and I can study together. I’m pretty good at hair but I’m really good at math.”

  “Okay.”

  Cindy didn’t know what else to say. Her sister had been spreading rumors that she was a lesbian, and how can a person stop a rumor like that? Someone else just offered to do a makeover for her, which she probably really needed. And maybe even offered to be her new friend, which she definitely needed. And this was just her first day.

  Only two things were for sure. She was not a lesbian and she was definitely not bored.

  nine

  If your whole day is rotten, once they start the music, it seems to melt away

  Donald O’Connor

  Cindy stood in the open doorway of the band room for a long moment before she had the nerve to go in. Inside there was chaos. Kids yelling, goofing off, playing their instruments loudly and tunelessly or just staring off into space. Who was in charge? Apparently no one. Just when she was prepared to beg and plead for a chance to play with them. She had an audition piece ready. But who wanted to hear it?

  The Italian prince was not there. If he really was a prince. That could just be a rumor along with everything else she’d heard about him. Yes, he looked like a prince, but maybe that’s how all Italian guys looked. How would she know?

  Maybe he was still looking for the band room. She hadn’t seen him since lunch when he’d walked away from her table without even a glance at her. Not that it bothered her. She barely even thought about it at all.

  She took a deep breath and walked into the music room. Nothing happened. No one noticed. Except for Scott from math class, who was standing in the comer next to a bass. He waved to her. She smiled and looked around to see if she knew anyone else.

  There were about twenty kids, most of them making up a bloated rhythm section that featured at least four guitars. There was one other girl, a very large girl in a tight sweater who looked supremely confident. She might be the singer since she didn’t appear to have an instrument. Or maybe someone’s girlfriend?

  Cindy’s shoulders slumped. She’d expected more from the Manderley jazz band. Face it, she’d expected more from Manderley. What if she was paying $28,000 a year for this? A whacked-out substitute geometry teacher, a lackluster history class, mediocre students, spoiled rotten rich kids, an overly healthy and unsatisfying lunch, and now the chaos known as jazz band.

  A short, stocky man with longish hair sauntered in. He had to be George Henderson, the bandleader. He looked overworked and haggard even though school had only just started. Maybe he’d get even more haggard as the year went on.

  “Guys,” Henderson said, taking the podium and placing his hands on his hips. “Settle down.” He took a folder out of his briefcase and read off the names. When he came to Cindy’s name he looked up.

  “Everyone, this is Cindy. New this year. Looks like she’s got a clarinet there. Maybe we can play some traditional jazz this year for a change, even some swing. Unless the new head doesn’t like jazz. Who knows?”

  A few people in the bloated string section groaned softly. Cindy didn’t look to see who they were. She didn’t know if they were objecting to trad jazz or the new headmaster or both. “Okay,” he said, and continued to take roll.

  “Harry Abrams.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dylan Byrnes.”

  “Yo.”

  “Brad O’Connell.”

  “Here.”

  “Eric Shane.” He paused. He looked at the empty piano bench next to Cindy. “Where’s Eric?”

  “I saw him talking to Michelle out there,” a chubby trumpet player in a Berklee College of Music T-shirt said, pointing toward the quad.

  “There he is,” a long-haired guitar player said as he nodded his head toward the window. Henderson went to the wall of windows and was followed by the entire band. Cindy left her clarinet on a chair and went with them.

  Scott came up behind her and whispered in her ear. “Probably asking her to the Welcome Dance. But she’s way out of his league.” He shook his head. “That’s Eric. In the face of failure he’s got this idiotic determination to persevere. If you stick around you’ll see what I mean. And you should stick around. We need a good clarinet.”

  “I’m definitely sticking around,” Cindy said. “And I’ve got determination too, idiotic or not. You didn’t tell me you play the bass.”

  “You didn’t ask,” Scott said.

  Henderson knocked on the window, his face red with anger. “Eric,” he yelled.

  Eric turned around with shock on his face to see the entire band staring at him from the window, looked at his watch, appeared to say a quick good-bye to Michelle, then ran across the grass, dropping his music on the way. Henderson covered his face with his hands. Within minutes Eric crashed through the door to the band room.

  “Sorry, Mr. Henderson,” he said.

  “Everyone, back to your places,” Henderson said. “Take out ‘Autumn Leaves.’ You do remember ‘Autumn Leaves’ from last year, don’t you?” His voice dripped with sarcasm. He obviously hated the song and thought it was beneath him. Cindy didn’t blame him. “We need to work on it if we’re playing it for Spirit Week. All right, let’s start from the coda
. Trumpets, let me hear you loudly on this one. We need to make sure the rhythm is very staccato … Eric, what are you doing?”

  “Looking for my music,” Eric said as he slid the piano bench forward.

  “Do you even know the song?” one of the trumpeters asked under his breath. The whole trumpet section, who obviously hated poor Eric, laughed hysterically.

  “Shut up, you guys, I can play it better than any of you,” Eric said.

  Once again Scott clued Cindy in. “He thinks he’s the best piano player—hell, the best musician—in the whole school, if not the county.”

  “Dude, Michelle isn’t gonna go to the dance with you, Eric,” a trumpeter said sotto voce. “Get over it and stop asking her.” “Guys! Please, pleeeeease, be quiet. I’m serious, I cannot deal with this today.” Henderson, for perhaps the hundredth or thousandth time since he’d been the bandleader, was obviously near the end of his rope. And it was just the first day of school. Cindy couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

  Again Scott leaned forward to explain the situation. “Henderson’s wife left him this summer for some Silicon Valley CEO. Everyone knows.”

  “That’s terrible,” Cindy said. No wonder the man looked so awful.

  “Can’t blame her. Ever try to live on a teacher’s salary?”

  No, but she was trying to live on the salary of a spa salon assistant. She only hoped no one would guess how poor she really was. Her stepsisters wouldn’t tell. Or would they? They seemed determined to sabotage her reputation at Manderley even before the first day had ended. It couldn’t end fast enough for her.

  Cindy might have fallen asleep during “Autumn Leaves” if it hadn’t been for the Italian prince walking into the room. Henderson looked up. Cindy’s mouth fell open. The guitars stopped playing. The trumpeters wiped the saliva from their mouthpieces. The room fell silent. It wasn’t just the clothes—it was him. He had a presence. Probably not unusual for royalty.

  “Scusi,” he said. “I am Marco from Italy. This is the band, yes?”

  “No,” mumbled the guitar player. “It’s Karate Club. How dumb can you be?”

  “What can we do for you, Marco?” Henderson asked, ignoring the guitar section. The bandleader looked like he might bow down in front of Marco and kiss his ring.

  “I play the piano. Not very well, but if you have a small part for me …?” He raised his shoulders in a kind of Gallic shrug. Or it would have been Gallic if he’d been French. But he wasn’t. He was Italian.

  “Come on in,” Henderson said, a faint smile on his tired face. “Are you familiar with ‘Autumn Leaves’?”

  ten

  In Italian, a belladonna is a beautiful lady; in English, it’s a deadly poison.

  —Ambrose Bierce

  While walking out to the parking lot with “Autumn Leaves” running through her head, Cindy got a message on her cell. It was from Brie telling her something had come up and they’d be late picking her up. She knew Irina would be mad if she was late to the salon, but Cindy hated to think of taking the bus with her clarinet and her heavy backpack. If only she were at Castle, any number of kids would have stopped and given her a ride. Here the cars whizzed by and passed her without a glance. After many long moments of sitting cross-legged on a patch of grass while she tried to read her history textbook, she looked up to see the Alfa cruising by.

  Marco slowed and waved. Her breath caught in her throat. Her heart pounded. She turned around. No one there but her. He was waving at her. He had to be. Again. It wasn’t possible, but it was happening. She stood and waved back. He kept driving. She started to walk slowly toward the car, not daring to hope he was waiting for her.

  He kept driving and she kept walking until he stopped twenty-five yards away where two blond girls shrieked and piled into his car. Cindy stopped dead in her tracks. She stared in disbelief.

  The blond girls waved to her. She could see the familiar smirks on their faces. She couldn’t hear what they were saying but she could imagine …

  “You don’t think Marco was waving at you, do you, you pathetic loser? If you only knew how stupid you look, standing out there flapping your arm. You thought an Italian prince would be waving at you? Get real and go away, back where you belong. We told you you wouldn’t make it at Manderley and you won’t. Give up.”

  eleven

  The word “good” has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I’d call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

  —G. K. Chesterton

  Marco was standing at the side of the field watching the most abysmal display of soccer playing he’d ever seen in his life when he got a call on his cell phone from his father.

  “Do you know where your nonna is?” his father asked.

  “No, why, is she lost?” Marco asked hopefully. He couldn’t imagine his tiny little grandmother clad in black from head to toe getting lost on her way to mass, which was the only place she ever went anymore. But then maybe she’d been kidnapped. He could only hope, because this was the woman who had made his life miserable since he was five years old, when his parents got divorced and he was put under her care for his religious and spiritual education.

  “She’s on her way to Rome to catch a plane to come and see you.”

  “What?” Marco almost swallowed the whistle he was using to referee the game between the two varsity squads.

  “Ever since you left she’s been worried about you. Afraid you weren’t getting enough to eat or weren’t going to mass every day. You know she never wanted you to go to America. Then she saw something on television, some American program translated into Italian. The Sopranos I think it was. She couldn’t sleep she was so worried.”

  “But that’s about Italians. She’s worried about Italians?” “Italian-Americans. They’re different. Worse. She thinks Italians turn bad when they reach the U.S. She’s afraid that will happen to you.”

  “That’s in New Jersey. I’m in California. There’s no Mafia here. It’s not like I’m alone. I have Aunt Cecilia and Uncle Leo.” “She tried calling them but they didn’t answer. She got their answering machine. That’s when she really got upset.”

  “L’Oh, il mio dio. You’ve got to stop her. She won’t be happy here. No one speaks Italian.”

  “You do. You speak Italian. So do your aunt and uncle.”

  “Yeah, but they’re never around.”

  “No importa. It’s you she wants to see. Don’t worry about her being happy. She’s not happy anywhere. And it’s too late to stop her,” his father said cheerfully. Of course he was cheerful. He’d gotten rid of his interfering mother. “She’s on her way.”

  “You could have told me before,” Marco said, his jaw clenched tightly. He could have moved. Checked into a hotel. Faked his own death. Something. Anything. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  “She wants to surprise you. Don’t tell her I called you. And act surprised.”

  “I am surprised.” Surprised and dismayed. Now what? The old lady was going to ruin his life. Pry into everything he was doing, from bagging girls to gambling. “I’m surprised you let her go. Isn’t she kind of old for a trip like this?”

  “Let her go? You try stopping her when she makes up her mind to do something.”

  Marco blew his whistle as a player on Team B fouled a player on Team A.

  “She doesn’t speak a word of English, does she?” Marco asked glumly.

  “No, but she has a way of making herself understood,” his father said.

  Nonna made herself understood by pounding her cane on the floor or taking to her bed and telling everyone she was dying. That was the kind of language everyone understood.

  Marco said good-bye, signaled, ran out onto the field and slammed the ball into the penalty area. The penalty area. Just where he’d be when his nonna got there. II dio lo aiuta! God help him!

  twelve

  Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvelous than the
land.

  —E. M. Forster

  Two days passed before Cindy could look at herself in the mirror without blushing at the color of her red hair. That’s how embarrassed she was to think she’d made a fool of herself chasing after Marco and his car. Not once but twice in the same day had she imagined he was waving at her.

  He was not just any Italian—he was a prince. On the other hand, if there was ever a guy worth chasing, it was Marco.

  It didn’t help her get over her embarrassment when her sisters started in on her.

  “If you only knew how ridiculous you looked running after Marco in the parking lot. Can’t you imagine what he thinks about American girls? How desperate they are?” Brie said.

  “We said we didn’t know you,” Lauren said. “What were you thinking?”

  There was no answer to that, so Cindy said nothing. Which only seemed to encourage them.

  “You think it’s easy having a loser of a sister show up at your school like this? You think we like being connected to you in any way?” Brie demanded. “We told you not to tell anyone we’re related, which we aren’t, but somehow the word is out. We’ve spent three years waiting for our senior year and you’re ruining it for us. Do you even know what people are saying about you? I think you like making our lives miserable.”

  Cindy pressed her lips together to keep from telling them she’d love to make their lives miserable. And if she really wanted to, she could think of a dozen ways to do it. But she was too nice. Too nice to say anything. Too nice to tell them that she knew what people were saying about her and that she knew who was saying it: It was them. She was too damn nice.

  After they finished with Cindy, they switched to their favorite subject.

  “He’s a real honest-to-God prince,” Brie informed her sister. “I know that,” Lauren said. “Everyone knows that. He’s got a castle in Tuscany.”

  “And a country house in Bellagio next door to George Clooney’s on the lake where they filmed Ocean’s Twelve.