Save Steve

by Jenni Hendriks

  But through the front bay window, I saw that the lights were still on. And then I saw Steve. He was up and looked a little better. I could knock and bring it to him. We could relive the night one more time.

  But then he grabbed a Nerf gun and did a barrel roll over the coach, disappearing for a moment before jumping back up victoriously. In his underwear, he hopped onto the couch and bounced and bounced with the gun raised in the air. He looked more than better.

  He looked . . . fine.

  My stomach clenched.

  Then I heard something through the window. Music. Steve seemed to be singing along to it. “Nooo time for looosers/’Cause weeeee are the champions, of the wooooorld!”

  My legs braced.

  I squeezed the steering wheel tight as pressure began to build in my head. Like the house lights coming on after a movie, the whole artifice of the night disappeared. Reality blinded me. And a new movie began to replay itself in my mind. One that a not-sick-at-all Steve had directed.

  Steve asking, “Does this mean we’re f . . . f . . . friends . . . ?”

  Me saying to him, “I’ll let go of the whole Kaia thing.”

  Steve saying, “Thanks for everything tonight, Cam. What you said. You have no idea.”

  He had been manipulating me. Pretending to be my friend, opening up, sharing stuff about his family, so I would start to like him. So I would feel guilty. So that I would give up Kaia.

  My chest seized.

  Watching Steve do a victory dance through his window, I burned with embarrassment. My vision went bright white with rage and I felt the terrifying void open up below me, threatening to swallow me whole. He knew my weakness and he had exploited it. So easily. Because I was desperate. Because I’d really wanted it.

  “You idiot! You’re such an idiot!” I screamed at myself as I drove home. I held back tears because Steve didn’t deserve my tears. He didn’t deserve anything I had done for him. “Fuck!” I wailed again. “Soooo stupid!” And tried to rip the steering wheel off the car. “How come you’re so stupid?”

  As I let an old lady in a Nissan Maxima pass me, the answer became clear. “Because I’m a good person. I’m compassionate. And he took advantage of that. He’s literally the worst person I’ve ever met!” I grabbed the kitty ears and hurled them out the window. In my rearview mirror, I saw them bounce a few times before coming to rest in the gutter. Goddammit. Steve had even made me litter.

  Once home, I crept upstairs into my bedroom, not wanting my mom to see the pain that I was certain was still on my face. Luckily, it was my mom’s romance novel book club night and the delighted cackling of middle-aged ladies echoed through the house, masking my entrance. Safely inside, the wall of Save Steve mocked me. His stupid face glowered as if to tease, “Can’t we be friends? Hahahahah . . .” I thought about tearing it down, but instead I took a Sharpie and drew devil horns on it. I needed to leave it up to remind me that he could never, ever be trusted again.

  I then fell face-first onto my bed and screamed into my pillow. “FUUUUUUUUUUCK!”

  Knock, knock.

  I sat up and tried to look semi-normal before my mom barged in. “Were we being too loud?” she asked, her face flushed, a glass of rosé in her hand.

  “No, I just stubbed my toe.”

  “Oh. You okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She took a sip of wine. “We’re loving this month’s book. You should read it; it’s a fabulous example of how consent can be sexy. When Prince Thabiso checks in and asks Naledi, ‘Do you like that?’ . . .” My mom swooned, overwhelmed, then caught herself. “Ignore me. Sorry to scar you.” And closed the door behind her. I could hear her giggling as she went downstairs.

  I fell back on my bed and the whole Steve nightmare came rushing back. I couldn’t believe I’d admitted that I liked Kaia. That I’d done the whole Save Steve thing just for her. He’d manipulated me into admitting everything. I needed to get back at him.

  The pictures.

  I flicked on my phone and opened my photos. The very last shot I took was of Steve nuzzling up to Maybe-Haedyn. I zoomed in to crop out the other girls and make it look more like a selfie. A suggestive caption would help. I could make it work. But I had to do it now. “I can’t let the bad guy win.” I refused to think about how I had set up the whole honeypotting thing. He’d basically forced me to do that because he’d tricked Kaia into falling in love with him. I was the good guy here. I was.

  I vaulted from my bed to my desk, tapped my laptop on, and brought up the Save Steve site. I scrolled to the comment section. I knew Kaia had been looking at them. She would find this. Hopefully soon.

  I felt something next to me. Someone.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Michelle,” I said without looking at her. I took her photo and placed it facedown. I just needed to beat Steve. For once. For good. “Even if she’s not with me, she shouldn’t be with him.”

  Click.

  I uploaded the photo.

  Click.

  In the message window below, I typed: Had so much fun last night. Hee hee. Xoxo.

  I stared at the post button and laughed. It should say toast, I thought to myself. Because that’s what Steve was gonna be when Kaia saw this.

  Toast.

  Click.

  I half-heartedly spread almond butter onto a slice of bread. A Steve-induced hangover had slowed my school-lunch-making to a crawl. I didn’t want to think about last night, but flashes of it kept interrupting me. The drunk girls. Del Taco. The pool. The kitty ears. Steve. No time for losers. Laughing. Mocking. The comment section. The photo. I folded the bread in half and shoved it into a reusable container. Then I slammed a whole bag of sriracha chickpeas into a brown paper sack.

  “You okay, honey?” my mom asked as she pulled on her Realtor’s jacket.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “Just still mad about the shark situation.”

  “I know it was disappointing. Did I tell you I got one hundred likes on my Facebook post about it?” Her pride in even my defeat rankled me for some reason. “Hey, just remember what your other mother says. You got to go high, right?”

  I looked away and mumbled, “I know.” She would definitely think I was an asshole after what I did last night. The drunk girls. The photo. The comment section. The revenge. Especially the anger that was boiling up inside me. But she definitely didn’t need to know about any of it.

  As I walked into school, I tried to deep breathe out of my anxiety, but my emotions were like a Whac-A-Mole of sadness, righteousness, and the tantalizing hope that Steve would soon be taken down. That hope tasted so good. Better than any stupid honey. On my way to my locker, I passed under a million banners with brightly colored mermaids extolling us to go to the Junior/Senior Under the Sea Prom. “Now with Cardi B!” someone had added after Steve’s big announcement. And there were cartoon drawings of Steve and Kaia, too. People had been swept up in his dramatic fucking promposal. It might as well be called “Under the Steve!” I quickly wiped that image out of my mind.

  I hadn’t bought a ticket to prom. I wasn’t going to pay money to spend a night getting humiliated. And buying a single ticket would mean it was over. But maybe I wouldn’t have to now. Maybe I would be buying two tickets.

  Because Kaia was gonna dump Steve right before prom. And he would be the one with the single ticket. And Steve would finally see the power of my spaghetti-strand arms.

  I spent much of the day looking for Kaia. I thought about texting her a “how r things?” but stopped myself. The last time we’d talked face-to-face, we’d fought, and even if she said she was over it, the fact that she hadn’t bothered to text me since the shark night said otherwise. But I needed to know if she’d seen the photo.

  At the end of the day, I ran into her. Not literally this time. We were both at the Wall of Service again. We said “hey” but she had to rush off, as she always did. In that “hey” I tried to decipher everything. Had
she seen the post? Had she confronted Steve? Ripped him a new asshole the way only she could? I replayed the moment in my mind for the next day, trying to see if there was any hint that she’d seen the photo.

  Almost a whole week passed and nothing happened. Kaia seemed busy, but not angry or sad. And now it was the day before prom and my post was buried deep in the comment section. Once again, Steve had won.

  “Cam!” It was Kaia’s voice. She was calling to me even though I was halfway down the hall. It sounded urgent. Had she finally seen it? Was it starting? The Steve undoing?

  She was sitting behind the prom ticket booth, waving at me. I headed toward her, all the while flipping through scenarios. Breakup. Nothing. Breakup. Nothing.

  “Hey,” I said, sounding as uncertain as I was.

  “How are you?” She looked exhausted. Weary. Heartbroken?

  “Oh, I’m . . . the usual.”

  “Cool. Cool.” She fiddled with some papers. This small talk couldn’t be why she had called me over.

  “Is everything okay?” I ventured.

  “Oh yeah. I . . . uh . . . just noticed you haven’t bought your ticket yet.” My pulse quickened. She wanted to know if I was going to prom?

  “Oh, uh . . .” I stammered. “I haven’t?”

  “Not according to our records.”

  “Oh, shoot—”

  Just then, a guy in a student council T-shirt pushed past me. “Kaia, sorry, can you check over this flyer for Senior Spirit Week?”

  Kaia snatched the neon flyer from his hand. She looked pissed. Had she seen the photo? It was Kaia—she wouldn’t just be weeping at the prom ticket table. She was too proud. She wouldn’t want everyone to know. But there was definitely an agitation to her. Something was up.

  Kaia handed the guy back his flyer. “Looks fine.” He mumbled thanks and dashed away. Kaia smiled up at me. “Sorry. So look, I wanted to talk to you about something?” The photo, please be the photo. “This whole Cardi thing wouldn’t have happened without you.” Okay, not the photo.

  “We all kind of owe you. So, I talked to the prom committee, and they want to give you a free ticket. If you want to go.”

  “Wow, that’s . . .” Was she making sure I went to prom because she’d broken up with Steve and didn’t want to be alone? No, she was too nonchalant. But she had to be the one who had asked the committee. She wanted me to be at prom. She was thinking of me. “That’s so nice. Sure.”

  “Oh, thank god. I was worried you didn’t want to go,” she said, and held out an envelope with my ticket. I took it in my hand and a small amount of confidence came back to me.

  “No, no. I just hope it’s cheesy enough,” I joked. She laughed. And it was a sweet, knowing laugh. Like she’d had on the beach. She brushed hair out of her face, and even from here I could smell the coconut.

  “I’ll just be happy when it’s over,” she said.

  Had she seen the photo?

  “Did they get the right balloons?” I asked.

  “Who knows? I’ll probably have to blow them up myself anyway.”

  A girl squeezed by me to reach Kaia. “Disaster, Kai! Academic Decathlon booked the study room the same time we did.”

  “Are you kidding me? Whatever. I’ll text Khaled. He owes me.”

  “Thanks!” she said, and hurried off.

  With a growl, Kaia tapped away on her phone. “Sorry, Cam. As usual, no one knows what the hell they’re doing.”

  “No worries.”

  She sighed. “I miss working with you.”

  She did? I had to ask. “So . . . how’s Steve?”

  “Good.” And the way she said it, I could tell she hadn’t recently dismembered Steve and hidden his body parts in black garbage bags. “He had a bunch of doctor’s appointments this week to wrap up treatment, so I haven’t seen him much. But he’s doing good, I think.”

  “Good. That’s good.” I was sure my disappointment was melting down my face.

  “He’s excited about doing the TV interview tomorrow.” Crap. The interview. I’d forgotten. We were all supposed to be there—Steve, his girlfriend, and his best friend talking about their favorite artist, Cardi B. Double crap. “And did you see that they want us there in full prom attire?”

  “Oh, uh . . . no . . .”

  “Ugh. I’m going to have to get up so early to be ready. Though I’ll probably be up all night decorating the ballroom by myself anyway,” she said, exasperated.

  “Hey, Kaia. Just need a second . . .” Another girl pushed her way to the table with another urgent thing for Kaia to do.

  This time I was grateful. I mumbled, “Well, see you in the morning,” and shoved my single ticket into my pocket for a prom I was going to go to all by myself because my plan had failed.

  18

  I crossed the parking lot to the squat gray building of the local ABC affiliate, already a bit sweaty in my rented tux. It was way too early to be in formal wear. I was late because there were more parts to putting on a suit than I had anticipated. Cuff links should not be a thing.

  I opened the door to the lobby and was met with a blast of cold air and a very perky woman with a headset.

  “Cam Webber?”

  “Yeah.”

  She broke into a huge grin. “Everyone is so impressed with what you did! And Cardi B! Oh my gosh! The others are in the greenroom! Follow me!” She was like a human exclamation point. I hurried along after her as she rattled off the schedule, occasionally pausing to answer a question on her headset. We turned down corridor after corridor, my eyes swinging wildly as I got glimpses of coiled cables, oversized props, tables of food being fussed over to look perfect on camera, and racks of clothes.

  We squeezed by an arch of brightly colored flowers. “For our summer wedding segment!” Exclamation Lady explained, and she led me down a hallway until she was suddenly stopped by someone in her headset. “Shoot. Be right there.” Flustered, she gestured to an open door a few feet down the hall. “Greenroom’s over there! There’s water and snacks inside! Should be about fifteen minutes!” And she was gone.

  I took a few steps toward the room when a loud clatter startled me.

  “Why did you lie to me? You told me you stayed home Saturday!”

  I knew that voice: Kaia. Or more specifically—Angry Kaia. Furious Kaia. Apoplectic Kaia.

  She had seen the photo. She’d actually seen it. This was it. The Steve evisceration! It was happening!

  I edged closer to the door and saw a toppled-over folding chair. Another few steps revealed Kaia in a sparkly yellow dress and Steve in his tux and Air Jordans facing off in the tiny greenroom. The rhinestones on Kaia’s dress shimmered, because she was literally shaking with anger. Steve stood with his arms crossed, looking mulish.

  “Aren’t you going to say something?” she growled. But Steve just shrugged. “Say something, Steve!” She grabbed her phone out of a tiny beaded purse resting on the bagel table. “What’s up with this girl? What were you doing with her? Did you . . . Did something happen that night?” Kaia’s shoulders were hunched inward, the phone clutched in her hand.

  Kaia’s fury always melted him. I waited for the stammered, cotton-mouthed jumble of denial. Something like, “It’s not what it looks like. . . . It was Cam . . . and cancer groupies . . . and mini golf . . .” Steve Stevenson was finished.

  But instead Steve gave another little shrug. “I was hoping you wouldn’t find out until after prom, but fuck it. Yeah. We hooked up.”

  “WHAT?” Kaia yelled.

  WHAT??? Where was the stammering and the cotton-mouthing and the denials?

  Steve uncrossed his arms and stuck his hands into his pockets like he didn’t have a care in the world. “But come on, we’ve been going out awhile.” He grabbed a bagel off the platter and munched on it like he wasn’t lying. I was reeling. And confused. And panicked. However, Kaia’s feelings on the situation were much clearer. She plucked the bagel out of Steve’s hand and tossed it aside.

  “And what? You go
t bored?”

  Steve swallowed his bite, not seeming to mind that he’d lost his breakfast or that he was about to be murdered. “I mean, a little. You’re busy all the time. And, you know, she was a little more adventurous than you.” Kaia bristled. Steve added, “Which isn’t saying much.”

  “ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?”

  Steve’s smile was unrepentant. “I’m saying she rubbed my bald head. Both of them.”

  Kaia grabbed a fresh bagel and threw it at him as hard as she could. “You fucking asshole!” she yelled. Those were the words I had always dreamed she’d say. And just like that. With fire in her eyes. And rage in her heart. But instead of elated, I felt confused. Because Steve was going along with it. He wasn’t fighting back. Why?

  “You said you loved me!” I couldn’t see Kaia’s face, but I saw her shoulders trembling. She was crying. And I was responsible. Why hadn’t I realized until this moment that she’d be hurt, too?

  Steve merely looked down at her with an expression of utter boredom. “Did I?”

  Kaia made a sound halfway between a scream and a sob. “I can’t believe I fell for your bullshit! I don’t know why I let myself believe—Why I thought—” She ripped the corsage from her wrist and threw it in the trash. It bounced off the rim and onto the floor. “Cancer hasn’t changed you a fucking bit.”

  I stumbled a few steps back, not sure where to go. Before I could formulate a plan of escape, Kaia burst from the greenroom, clutching her beaded purse. And then she saw me.

  “Cam . . .”

  I couldn’t look away.

  “Kaia . . .”

  She paused for half a second and then rushed toward me, grabbed me on the shoulders, and pushed me back. I trip-walked a step back until I was up against the arch of wedding flowers. My vision suddenly narrowed to a blur of color, except for Kaia’s shining brown eyes right in front of me. I inhaled a sharp, surprised breath, tasting flowers on my tongue. Her eyes darted down to my lips for a second, then back up to mine, and I saw the moment she decided.

  Her warm lips pressed to mine, softer than the petals surrounding us. A river of coconut swirled in my head.