by Kasie West
“Do you think security saw the car?”
“No, it’s parked over by the hill. They wouldn’t have checked there. It’s not even on campus.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
Alana and Frank were already at the car when we arrived. They were laughing and retelling the story to themselves loudly.
When Alana saw us, she flung her arms around Diego’s neck. “You made it!”
“Barely,” I said when she gave me a hug as well. “That was close.”
“Close?” Frank asked. “As if you were getting hauled off to jail?”
“Obviously not jail but there would’ve been some consequence.”
He scoffed. “Were you seriously scared?”
A burst of anger flamed in my chest looking at his mocking face. “You weren’t scared because you get away with crap like that all the time. Even when everyone knows you did something, nothing happens to you. You’re Frank Young.”
“Then why wasn’t Alana scared? Or Diego?”
I looked at the other two, waited for them both to tell me they were, but they didn’t.
“Guess your theory about the spoiled rich kid didn’t work this time,” Frank said.
I swallowed back embarrassment, my pride tasting bitter in my mouth. “Let’s just go before security decides to check the city block.” I climbed into the back seat of the car, having to move the golf club to do so.
“For the record,” Alana said loudly as she and the others joined me, “I was a little scared of getting caught, too. I think Kate is right. You have never experienced real consequences, Frank.” She squeezed my hand, letting me know she’d said that just for me. I appreciated it.
“Whatever,” Frank said. “Don’t pin this on me this time.”
We drove home, more silent than we’d been on the way there. When the boys had left and Alana stood in my kitchen gathering her things, she said, “Diego didn’t ask me to the Fall Festival tonight.”
“Well, half the night you were with Frank. I think maybe you were sending him the wrong idea,” I said.
“Maybe he’s not into football … or carnival rides. Maybe he doesn’t want to go at all.”
“That could be.”
She nodded like she’d just solved a mystery and felt much better. She picked up the grocery bag she’d loaded full of leftover supplies and said, “You know I love you and always have your back.”
“I know,” I said, seeing where this was going before she even continued.
“And most of the time I agree with you about Frank.”
“I know. I was wrong this time.”
“You were.”
“Thanks for sticking up for me anyway,” I said.
“Always.” She gave me a hug and headed for the door. “But maybe you should apologize to him,” she dropped on the way out.
I didn’t want to apologize to Frank. But I knew Alana was right. He had been decent. Nice even, and I had thrown unfair accusations at him. So I’d apologize. I wasn’t going to search him out and beg his forgiveness. But when the opportunity presented itself, I’d do it.
“Humility. It goes a long way,” Samantha said. I turned the volume up on my phone one notch because my dad was dropping blow-up tubes into a box, and it was loud. I was across the store, boxing the swimsuits. Our season wasn’t quite over but it was getting close. Come October, the only people who came to the marina were fishermen. “I like a confident guy as much as the next girl,” Samantha continued, “but a guy who doesn’t relate every course at dinner back to one of his accomplishments would be better.”
“How did he relate the salad course to his accomplishments?” Tami asked.
“Apparently he grew a winter garden. He has quite the green thumb. Plants love him, as do cows.”
“Did you have steak?”
“We did.”
I smiled. The First Dates podcast was quickly becoming my favorite of all the ones I’d been listening to lately.
There was a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see my mom, her mouth moving.
“What?” I asked. I pulled out my earbuds. “Sorry. Can you start over?”
“I was just saying, you seem to live in those earbuds lately.” Mom held out the packing tape to me. “I found this in the stockroom. Thought you might need it.”
“Thanks.” I took the tape and set it down next to the box. “So …”
My dad walked over and held out his hand. “Can I borrow that tape for a second? This box is full.”
I threw the tape to him.
“So?” Dad asked, obviously realizing I had been about to say something.
“We’re recording a podcast at the Fall Festival this year.”
“Oh yeah?” Mom said.
I nodded. “There will be an audience and everything. I don’t think it’s going to be as long as our normal podcasts. Kind of a special edition. But if you guys want to come …”
“Of course we do,” Mom said.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Dad added.
“Okay. Good.”
Mom smiled. “Good.”
I held up my earbuds. “Guess I have more studying to do, then.”
“Hello, lovely listeners. It’s Victoria and Kat here, once again ready to tackle your problems. Tackle. Do you like what I did there, Kat?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Because the big Fall Festival game is this weekend.”
“I got it. Very clever.”
“I thought so. Anyway, after you hit our listeners with our disclaimer, we’ll intercept our first call.”
“Are you going to do that the entire episode?” I asked.
“Of course I am.”
I chuckled. “Okay, we may be full of bad puns today but we are still not professionals.”
“Do you mean bad punts?” Victoria joked.
“I walked right into that one.”
“You really did.”
“But, remember, if you have a real problem, please call 911 or any of the emergency numbers listed on our website. And thank you, Young Industries, for your sponsorship. They have been serving Lakesprings for decades.” I tried not to make a face when I said this.
“Okay, first caller, what can we help you with today?” Victoria asked once the call was patched through.
“Hi, this is Tamara Sorres.”
It was so rare to hear someone say their name on the show that I almost told her that we’d edit it out.
“Tamara Sorres, our student body president here at Sequoia High?” Victoria asked.
“Yes,” Tamara said.
“What can we do for you?”
“I’m inviting you and Kat to participate in one of our Fall Festival Week activities tomorrow. You have been requested by popular vote.”
“Really?” Victoria asked. “Which activity?”
“Dunk tank.”
I laughed. “People are requesting to dunk us?”
“Yes, actually. In large quantities.”
“Sounds fun,” Victoria said.
“I’ll pass,” I said.
Victoria clicked her tongue in disapproval. “No, she won’t. We will both be there. So bring on the baseballs, Sequoia. We don’t go down easily!”
“You realize by the time our listeners hear this, we will probably have been dunked many times over,” I said.
“I maintain my declaration,” Victoria said.
“Lunchtime,” Tamara said. “See you then.”
“Wait!” Victoria said, before Tamara could hang up. “You did call in to an advice show. Any advice we can give you today?”
“Uh …” Tamara was clearly caught off guard but seriously considering the question. “How do you get people you carpool with to chip in for gas?”
“I think you just did,” I said.
“I agree,” Victoria said. “Ask. And now you have. Good luck with that. And, people, come on, if someone is giving you a ride every day, don’t be a cheapskate.”
Tamara hung up and Victoria looked o
ver at me. “You ready to get wet tomorrow?”
“Not particularly.”
“It’ll be fun.” The phone board was lighting up. “Hello, caller, you’re on the air.”
“Hi. It’s me … I don’t remember what you named me,” Diego said.
I smiled.
“Looking for Love,” Victoria said. So she was able to recognize his voice now, too.
“Oh yeah. Still not a huge fan of that.”
“We can change it out for your real name, if you’d rather,” Victoria said in a voice I hadn’t heard her use before. Was that her flirting voice?
“I’ll stick with the love one.”
I laughed.
“How have you been?” Victoria asked. “The listeners missed you last week.”
“Yes, I didn’t really have an update so I didn’t call in.” Was he trying to make it clear for our audience that he hadn’t reached a busy signal?
“Our theme this week is the Fall Festival,” Victoria said, even though it really wasn’t, she had just made it into that. “Have you asked your lucky girl to be your date?”
“I don’t think my … she, I don’t think she’s into football.”
I wouldn’t say Alana was into football but she also wasn’t not into it. She’d been to her fair share of games, if not for the football, at least for the social aspect.
“Are you?” I asked, curious. Alana thought that answer was no, but maybe she was wrong.
“I don’t play, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“But are you a fan?”
“I can cheer with the best of them.”
“The festival’s not only about football, anyway,” Victoria jumped in. “Don’t forget about the carnival after. If your crush isn’t into football, maybe she’s into fun.”
“Maybe,” he said, with a smile in his voice.
“But you haven’t asked her?” I pressed. I’d told him to have patience, but this was getting ridiculous. I needed him to ask her. To squash my silly crush permanently.
“Actually, I sort of did,” he said.
“You did?”
“How can you sort of ask someone?” Victoria shook her head.
“I was trying to be clever and thoughtful, do something that meant something to her, but I think she said no in a really polite way.”
“Did you ask in code or something?” I asked. Alana would not have said no unless she didn’t realize she was being asked.
“In a way, I guess.”
“You need to just ask her straight-out at this point,” I said.
“But I think I got my answer.”
“If your girl is saying no,” Victoria said, her flirt-voice still in place, “you have a backup right here.”
I coughed.
“Who?” he asked.
“Me, of course,” Victoria said.
“Oh. Well … uh … thanks.”
“I thought Brian asked you in rose petals,” I said to Victoria.
Victoria giggled. “He did, it was cute. Good luck to you, Looking for Love. We’re all rooting for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t forget, listeners,” Victoria said after Diego had ended the call. “We have a bonus show this week. We’ll be recording live at the Fall Festival, Friday night after the football game. So even if you have to go solo to the carnival, come for us. You can ask your question live or leave an anonymous question in the box you’ll see in the cafeteria this week. We can’t wait!”
When the show ended, Victoria shook out her hands and took off the headphones. I’d never seen her do that before.
“You okay?” I asked. “You did good today.”
“We have to be in a dunk tank tomorrow.”
I sighed. “You readily agreed to that dunk tank. And said it would be fun. Twice.”
“You’re right. I’ll be great.” She stood up and moved toward the door.
“Victoria, you don’t have to be in the dunk tank tomorrow if you don’t want to be.”
“Of course I do. I’m changing the world, right?” She forced out a laugh.
Hmm. For all her bravado, Victoria wasn’t as fearless as I once thought. Did everyone put up a front at all times? Was confidence a front for fear? Did true friendship mean being able to see through that? Or being willing to drop the front?
“If anyone can, it’s you,” I said.
She flashed me her podcast smile and left.
I unplugged both of our headphones and returned them to the sound room. Then I sent a text to Alana. Unwittingly, she’d turned Diego down for the Fall Festival. We needed to analyze every conversation they’d had recently. And we needed a new plan.
“I cannot think of any way, coded or not, that Diego asked me to the Fall Festival,” Alana said at her house that afternoon.
Alana had the best house ever. It was quiet and big and always full of food. We sat at her kitchen island, stuffing our faces with cookies her dad had made. They had coconut and chocolate and some sort of delicious crunchy rice in them. I had already eaten three.
“Are you sure that’s what he said on the podcast?” she asked me.
“I’m positive,” I said through my mouthful. “Did he spell out the invite in the food the other day or something?”
She smiled. “That would’ve been funny and awesome, but I don’t think so. I guess I just assumed he wasn’t asking because he wasn’t into football.”
“I know. Okay. It’s time to pull out the big guns.”
“What guns are those?”
“You have to ask him yourself,” I said.
“Done,” she said.
I ignored the tight feeling of jealousy in my chest. I wasn’t allowed to be jealous. “That wasn’t hard to talk you into.”
“Did you think it would be?” She raised her eyebrows.
“No.” I looked at the tray of cookies on the island. “If I have another one, will I get the world’s worst stomachache or just the second worst?”
“Have another one.”
“Okay.” I plucked a cookie from the tray. “Now, how are you going to ask him?”
“I have an idea.”
It was bad enough to sit on the metal seat in the dunk tank, behind the glass, in my swimsuit, like I was on display. But it got even worse when Diego and Frank appeared at the front of the line with Alana. I had no doubt Alana had texted them about an opportunity they couldn’t pass up.
Diego picked up two baseballs. “I wonder if this will be as easy as driving a golf ball through the goalpost,” I heard him say.
“Ha ha!” I shouted.
He winked at me and my stomach flipped. My best friend’s crush or not, Diego was pretty flirty himself. He needed to stop that. He wasn’t allowed to flirt with everybody when he was asking advice about Alana on air. I saw him smile over at Alana and felt a burst of annoyance.
So far I had managed to avoid getting dunked. Victoria hadn’t been so lucky. The baseball team had shown up for her stint, and she was plunged six times. Now she sat at a nearby table, wrapped in a towel, talking to one of the team members. The water had turned her hair into tousled beach waves. And she was smiling. She’d conquered something today, and I was proud of her. I wondered if life was about facing fears. Sometimes we overcame them and sometimes they overcame us. On the days we won, we had every right to celebrate.
Victoria held up a white box and shook it. “Don’t forget to submit anonymous questions for our carnival live podcast!” she yelled to the people waiting in the line.
“Are you ready?” Diego called out, bringing my attention back to him.
“If ready involves sitting here, then yes, so ready!” I called back.
He twisted the baseball once in his hand then threw. I cringed. The ball whizzed by the glass, right above the target. Whew. The line behind him stretched twenty deep so I knew he really would get only the two chances. He tried again and the baseball bounced off the glass.
“Nice try!” I taunted. Diego frowned.
Alana stepped up. I was most worried about her. Alana was good at everything she tried. But both of her attempts missed their mark. I let out a relieved breath.
And then it was Frank’s turn. He tossed and caught the ball in one hand several times as he stood there.
“Hello, Kitty Kat,” he said with a sly smirk.
It occurred to me that I still hadn’t apologized to him. I sensed karma was about to bite me for that. Alana was saying something to him that I couldn’t hear. Then Alana shouted to me, “You’re going down!”
I almost believed that she knew something about Frank’s history with a baseball that I didn’t. But when he missed on his first try, I relaxed on my cold seat. I thought he’d toss the next ball a couple times in the air like he had the last, but the moment he had it in his right hand, he threw.
There was a second of delay between the ball hitting its target and it triggering the release mechanism on my seat. When I realized what had happened, I let out a scream and then down I went.
The water was cold. Colder than the lake. My chest tightened with the change in temperature and at first my feet couldn’t find the bottom to launch myself back up. Finally I found the floor and pushed off. And then my head whacked into the bottom of the seat so hard that I saw stars.
A collective intake of breath sounded from the line of people still waiting. Then I went back under the water. I hadn’t meant to. But I’d had plenty of hard falls in water before so I knew not to panic. I relaxed for a moment, letting my head clear. Then I stood.
I coughed several times before I realized someone was above me, leaning on the seat and reaching a hand out to help me.
“I’m sorry,” Frank said.
“For what?” I coughed out. “Playing the game, right?”
“I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”
“I know.”
I moved toward the metal stairs to let myself out. That was when I heard someone pushing the release button for the seat. And then Frank, clothes and all, fell into the tank. I tried my hardest not to laugh. I knew it was Alana’s doing even before I heard her laughing.
Frank came up sputtering. “I had my phone in my pocket, Alana!” He’d obviously heard her laughter, too.
“Oops,” she said.
