Unchained Melody

by S. K Munt

  ‘Hunter…’ Meredith said his name again, and he looked back at her. She ducked her head. ‘I hate to have to actually say it, but I’m trying to get you to ask me out here...’

  ‘You are?’ Hunter was surprised, even though she’d been pretty blatant about her intentions earlier that day. ‘That’s kind of awesome.’

  She peeked up at him. ‘It is? Because every time I come to talk to you, you end up talking to, or looking at- Callie instead.’

  Hunter frowned. And then he shrugged. ‘Meredith I would love to ask you out. But Callie… she’s like a sister to me. If you’re going to have a complex about her then this-’ he gestured to the space between them, ‘-won’t happen.’

  Meredith tilted her head, as though thinking it over. ‘You’re really not into her?’

  ‘She’s my best friend.’

  ‘A beautiful best friend.’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe. But her being beautiful doesn’t make you less beautiful, does it?’

  Meredith’s smile broadened. ‘You think I’m beautiful?’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh please- you’re just fishing now. Everyone thinks you’re beautiful.’

  Meredith slung her arms around his neck. ‘So if you’ve already got a girl best friend… does that mean that the position of girlfriend is still open?’

  Hunter’s insides sizzled. Meredith was sexy under normal circumstances, but now that she was turning it up to get his interest, she was smokin hot. So hot that he couldn’t think up a clever response. Not that it mattered, because a beat later, she was kissing him. And Hunter was kissing her back.

  *

  ‘Oh my gawd!’ Marnie tugged on Callie’s arm, pointing across the room with her other hand. ‘Check that out! Hunter’s getting with Meredith!’

  Callie whirled around, touching her fingertips to her lower lip, equal measures surprised and weirded out when she saw it was true. She’d never seen Hunter kiss a girl before- and she didn’t know how he knew what he was doing. So seeing Meredith wrapped around him so eagerly made Callie feel… displaced. Not exactly jealous, but definitely possessive. The kiss looked so passionate and grown-up, and she touched her Red Sox hat on reflex, as though reminding herself that him being linked to another girl hadn’t severed their bond.

  ‘I can’t look,’ Callie confessed, and turned back to the D. J booth, her ear twitching to hear what he was going to throw down next, then grinning when Five’s When The Lights Go Out started; she was definitely in a hip-hop state of mind and it looked like Hunter was too. ‘It’s so alien; like walking in on your parents or something.’ She pressed a hand to her collarbone, aware of a sort of fuzziness lurking over her heart. She’d felt alien all evening... walking around with bare legs, letting loose on the dance floor only to find herself surrounded by spectators and then, Reece… now Hunter was going for it with the queen Bee of Horizon High! None of it computed. It would have felt strange for the simple fact that she, Ryan and Hunter had separated when they’d first arrived because usually at any sort of social function, they sat in a corner together, away from everyone. But the boys had been weird since the drive there, and when Marnie had beckoned her over to the edge of the dance floor to catch up, Callie had almost been relieved to walk away from her mates.

  ‘Which is probably how Hunter and Ryan felt, seeing you dance with Reece.’ Marnie pointed out, adjusting the hem of her short blue skirt. She was wearing it with a lime green halter- an outfit so trendy that it might have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but Marnie’s athletic frame was just tall enough to pull off the color, and her chunky black spectacles gave her the ‘Hipster’ edge to own the look.

  Marnie Winters was the same, outspoken girl Callie had met at the gorge, but now even Hunter wouldn’t dream of trying to push Marnie around! She still told every bully in Horizon to shut it, but now she had the athletic prowess to make them shut it, and the grades and shelves full of trophies to make teachers look the other way when she was forced to physically ‘shut it’ on someone’s behalf. And because of that natural strength and confidence, Marnie was the only girl in Horizon who was overtly friendly to Callie. They were both Mavericks, consumed by their extracurriculars rather than their social status, which kept them both (happily) relegated to the fringes of society; not bullied, but avoided. Callie knew they could have been great friends, if either of them had the time to actually get together more often!

  ‘Nah. They don’t see me that way.’

  ‘Yeah whatever... keep the hottest guys in school to yourself and pretend like they’re not in love with you.’ Marnie winked. ‘If that helps you sleep at night.’

  Callie rolled her eyes. ‘I sleep like a rock, actually. So it must be true.’

  Marnie waved a hand dismissively. ‘Anyway, I think there’s something in the water this week. Everyone is hooking up. Everyone but you and me. Even Mr Banks is getting more lovin’ than I am.’

  ‘Mr Banks?!’ Callie hooted, thinking of her creative writing teacher. He was middle aged, middle-height, middle-paunchy. The words: Mr Banks and Lovin were definitely a grammatical clash!

  ‘Yep. People have been whispering about this sexy little piece who moved in with him about a month ago. No one knows where she’s from, and she almost never leaves the house, unless it’s to go to dinner with him or something.’ She pointed again, only this time, towards the skate counter. ‘But she’s here tonight. And he’s not doing a very good job of chaperoning because of it; he hasn’t taken his eyes off her! Not that I can blame him I mean, I’d kill to look like that!’

  Callie looked over at the skate hire counter. She’d been there many times in the past with the guys and even once or twice with Marnie, but the gate protecting the worn brown roller skates no one would dream of pinching was down that night and the light behind it off. And in those shadows, Mr Banks was curled around a petite woman who had blonde curls which twirled like silver and gold ribbons on a wrapped gift. She was short, so short that she could have passed for a nine year old, and yet her pink mini-dress clung to the kind of curves most women had to pay for.

  ‘Wow.’ Callie eyed the girl, slightly nauseated to see someone so young and perky giggling conspiratorially with someone so old and stale. But she supposed that Mr Banks wasn’t a troll or anything. In fact, his classes were Callie’s favorite, after music of course. He didn’t go on and on about verbs and adjectives as outlined in the textbooks. Their syllabus for the year centered on ‘Banned Novels of The Twentieth century’ and some of them had been excellent and the discussions of them enlightening and excited. So it wasn’t shocking that he’d picked up. But Callie couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he was a secret millionaire or something…

  And then the D. J flicked a switch and the rapid opening beats of More Human Than Human, punctured by the grinding strikes of electric guitar began to lace through the tinny ‘bops’ of Five’s song fading out. The blend made no sense and yet all the sense in the world and the energy of the room instantly shifted and Callie knew she could think no more. She had to dance She was possessed or something, like all of the energy in the world was flowing through her to power the room. She wasn’t used to feeling so blissfully excitable, but everything felt better that night. She felt pretty. Reece’s flirtations were making her feel awkward, but there was something thrilling about it too. Would he come and dance with her again? Would he kiss her? Marnie was probably right- maybe there was something in the water!

  ‘Wow is right. If I actually had money for Uni saved I’d be tempted to hand it over for a pair of boobs like that right now,’ Marnie was fanning herself.

  Callie laughed. Neither she nor Marnie suffered from large breasts. Callie had just enough, but whatever Marnie had was more muscle than flesh. ‘You’ve got the best bod in school- you don’t need them.’ She paused, frowning. ‘What do you mean about not having money for university? You are going aren’t you?’

  Marnie’s eyes slid to hers, the sparkle temporarily dulled. She sighed and said: ‘To
be continued. I need a drink. Want a coke?’

  Concern filtered through her excitement. Marnie was the smartest girl in the entire school. She was not only sports captain of her color, blue, but school captain. The idea of her not going to university was ridiculous.

  ‘Sure here. If you get them, it’s on me,’ Callie reached into the little black canvas bag she had over one shoulder, produced a five dollar note and handed it to Marnie. The girl smiled gratefully, but said nothing that would embarrass either of them. As she walked off, Callie watched her, chewing her lip and wondering how a girl like Marnie, who was always so well put-together and so carefree, could be suffering financially and no one had even realized?

  There were a few outraged shouts and Callie looked over to see that a bunch of guys were clowning around on the dance floor, and that a girl from the private school was on her hands and knees, looking irately after them. Mr Banks whispered something to his date and went after them. Callie quickly saw what was happening; some guys from her own school were pretending to roller skate around the rink, purposefully crashing into people and breaking up cliques as though they were on wheels and out of control. Callie smirked, because it actually looked pretty funny and Rathe Klapp, one of the younger kids from her music class, was miming roller-skating so gracefully that his performance was convincing. He spun on the heel of his sneaker and arched his back, thrusting his arms back behind him as though skating backwards. But before Callie got to see Rathe get tackled by Mr Banks, a sharp tug on her arm forced her to whip back around. She yelped, and then shrank to realize that Mr Bank’s beautiful date was staring at Callie with pale blue eyes as wide as saucers.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?!’ The little blonde demanded, yanking Callie closer still, so that they were eye to eye. Her perfect little glossy lips sneered to reveal teeth as gleaming and vicious as Rob Zombie’s vocals. ‘You need to leave, Calliope. Now.’

  3.

  Callie felt literally pinned by the girl’s anger and was fighting off her own. Up close, the girl was even lovelier than Callie had deduced from across the room, and younger too. Everything about her appearance suggested that she was the kind of girl who walked around saying: ‘Whatever!’ or ‘As if!’ like Meredith Leeds, yet there was a fierceness in her eyes that communicated that though she was a bombshell, she was no bimbo. Psychotic maybe, but not a bimbo.

  ‘Hey!’ Was all that Callie could manage at first, and she attempted to tug her arm free, but the girl was strong. ‘Let go of me!’

  The girl shook Callie again. ‘Why you’re here? Are you trying to ruin me again?!’

  ‘Ruin you?’ Callie jerked back her arm and winced when the friction of breaking the girl’s grip burned her skin. She nursed her wrist protectively, for it was stinging. ‘Listen lady: I don’t know who the hell you are, but-’

  ‘You don’t know who...?’ A shimmer of sorts twinkled across the surface of the woman’s periwinkle eyes in a myriad of colors Callie knew she had to have imagined. And then the girl clapped a hand over her mouth, just for a moment, and regarded Callie with the widest eyes she’d ever seen that were simply a pretty blue again. She dropped her hand, stepped back herself and said: ‘Oh no way! You’re not awake yet are you?’

  ‘Awake?’ Callie repeated. Her voice had crossed to the operatic scale- was she seriously being accosted by a grown-up in the middle of an inter-school dance? It was crazy! ‘Miss… are you drunk?’

  The girl’s hands rose. ‘I didn’t know! I wasn’t told that you were in-!’ she bit her lip so hard that the top of her teeth sank from view. ‘Oh Calliope… shit.’ She shook her head and looked wildly over her shoulder. ‘This is bad… I have to-to-’

  ‘Callie? What’s going on?’ A cold can of coke was shoved into Callie’s hands as Marnie wedged herself between her and the frenzied woman who began to back up, her hands in a posture of surrender now. Callie couldn’t blame her, for Marnie had over a foot of height on the bottled blonde.

  ‘Calm down Amazon woman. Nothing’s going on. Just a case of… mistaken identity.’ Those blue eyes landed on Callie’s again, and narrowed for the briefest of moments. ‘I’m sorry.’ The apology was more grudging than genuine and didn’t make Callie feel the slightest bit better.

  ‘Yeah I should think so. Chaperones are supposed to watch the kids, not attack them for no good reason!’ Marnie turned to Callie with questioning brown eyes. ‘Are you okay?’

  Callie nodded, for the last thing on her mind was her welfare. Instead she was overflowing with curiosity. What was it about her that had made the girl even take notice to begin with? And why had she called her Calliope? Callie was short for nothing, and was simply printed on her birth certificate as ‘Callie.’ She’d always wondered if her birth mother had meant to call her something else, like Callista or… well there had never been many other options- but Calliope made sense.

  Callie tried not to think about her biological parents much but now she wondered if she looked like her mother. Or what if her mother’s name had been Calliope, or she had a sister or something that looked just like Callie and Mr Bank’s girlfriend knew one or the other? For the fourth time that evening, her pulse was bruising her skin from within. ‘Wait!’ She called out, and took a faltering step after the girl but before she touched ground, her attacker had turned on her heel and fled. And she moved so fast that by the time Callie opened her mouth to articulate a question, she was on the other side of the room, clutching at her stomach as though ill and whispering something to one of the college teachers who’d also been roped into chaperoning. She gestured after Mr Banks, said something else, shot Callie one final, fearful look, and then was rushing out the door, a blur of shimmering pinks and golden silvers. And then she was gone. The music shifted pace, slowing down to The Cranberries’ Zombie.

  ‘I am sad.’ The D. J announced over the microphone. ‘My girl stopped dancing. Hey girl! Gimme a request, eh? I can make you move again!’

  Callie looked over at the shadowy D. J booth. It was screened with caging and lined with mesh and so she couldn’t see the face within. She waved her hand at him, blushing slightly. The last thing she wanted in that moment was more attention and she liked the fact that he was playing something quiet enough to let her hear her thoughts.

  ‘Bloody hell Callie I can’t leave you alone for twenty seconds!’ Marnie reproached her, with a furrowed brow. ‘What was that about anyway? That floozie looked like she was flipping out!’

  ‘She was.’ Callie said, looking away from the D. J booth. ‘She called me a wrong name, asked what I was doing here- acted like I was her stalker or something.’

  ‘Well she was wrong. What a nutcase!’

  ‘Hey!’ Warm arms ensconced her from behind, and she caught a trace of Ryan’s scent; incense, Brut deodorant and timber. ‘What was that all about? Are you okay?’

  Callie turned in Ryan’s arms and shrugged her shoulders helplessly, not knowing where to even begin explaining. She reflected on the interaction with the girl, and for some strange reason, tears formed in her eyes- actual tears! The girl had looked at her like she was a bug that needed to be squashed; like she was the most worthless being on the planet! And for some reason, remembering the accusation and unveiled hurt in the girl’s blue eyes made her feel guilty- horribly guilty, but she didn’t know why!

  ‘I want to go home.’ She managed to croak, her voice betraying her imbalance, which she knew was strange, even for her. ‘Can you walk me home? I’ll tell you about it on the way.’

  ‘Sure. If you want.’ Ryan relaxed. ‘It’s a weird night isn’t it? You feel it too?’ Callie nodded. Ryan draped his arm over her shoulder and steered it towards the door.

  ‘Mind if I tag along?’ Marnie asked, falling in step beside them and cracking open her coke. ‘I’m in a book mood tonight. And these heels are uncomfortable.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ryan said, slipping his arm over Marnie’s shoulders as well. ‘Hunter’s out of commission. You’ll have to be our third unti
l Meredith gives him his face back.’

  Marnie looked up and Ryan and grinned, and Callie noticed her friend’s eyelashes fluttering in that way that girl’s did when Ryan paid them attention. It didn’t happen often; Ryan wasn’t popular, but his lack of social standing was the voluntary sort. With his looks and grades and warm personality, he was the kind of guy everyone liked to be around- but avoided because they sensed that he liked it that way.

  Callie knew that her cute friends would have been popular if not for her, as they’d been as kids. Their friendship had been too weird for most of the guys or girls in school to deal with, and so they’d become like one of the boulders separating the gorge from the rapids; a large solid unit that the water streamed around on its path elsewhere. A lot of people regarded them as an obstruction to the natural order of things, but the guys were too smart, friendly and cute to be demoted to the ranks of the terminally uncool, and their loyalty to Callie assured that where they went; she did.

  So yes, girls like Marnie adored Ryan, but only ever from a distance. Being enfolded into his arms was probably quite the thrill for Callie’s friend, who, like they, drifted around the edges of the popular cliques but had never been invited into a larger one. And as Callie’s intimate clique unfolded to invite someone else in for the second time in one day, she felt a surge of possession and then fear that maybe she was going to be the one who ended up alone.

  *

  ‘Lo?’ Callie’s sleep-laden voice answered on the second ring.