Fml

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “What?” I shook my head to clear it.

  Cassie squeezed my hand. “Yes, I went out with you because I felt bad for you,” she said. “But when I made that bet with you at the golf course, I really did want you to kiss me.” Cassie inched forward.

  Eli still had my blue ball. Now was the perfect time for me to show it to Cassie, to show her that I really loved her and that I’d always be there for her. I could be her anchor. I could be her true north. It was ballsy, but I put my free hand behind my back and held it palm up, hoping that Eli would accept defeat with grace.

  And he did. Eli Horowitz dropped the ball into my hand; the weight of it felt right. I drew in breath, prepared to show it to Cassie and tell her how I felt about her when a shout ripped through the night and we all turned.

  Urinal Cake stood at the summit of the waterfall, a warrior, a conqueror, a man with a mission. “Cassie!” he shouted again. “I love you! I love you so much!”

  Seriously? Was this kid fucking kidding me? But I already knew the answer to that question.

  Freddy Standish displayed his feelings for everyone to see. And everyone laughed. Not with him, at him. It started off small, but pretty soon the laughter was a symphony of cackles and giggles that rose toward a crescendo. None of which caused Urinal Cake to falter.

  “Get down from there!” Cassie yelled over the crowd. She pulled her hands from mine and pushed her way toward the edge of the pool.

  “But I love you.”

  “You don’t love me,” Cassie said. “You’re a kid with a crush. Now get down from there before you hurt yourself.”

  Urinal Cake was deflated but not deterred.

  It might have been somewhat funny if I hadn’t seen Blaise and Derrick sneaking up behind Cassie, laughing to each other. Whatever they were up to, it wasn’t good. I glanced at Eli, but he was sitting on a lounge chair, retreating back into his depression.

  Blaise and Derrick crept into position behind Cassie as she argued with Urinal Cake, oblivious to their existence. In an instant, I knew what they planned. Blaise was going to take watery revenge on Cassie for busting his nose and his pride.

  “Cassie!” I yelled to get her attention, but she didn’t hear me over the laughter. I pushed my way through the crowd of people, shoving them when necessary, not caring who got in my way. But I wasn’t going to get to her in time. Blaise and Derrick stood on either side of Cassie and prepared to grab her. I was so close; only a clutch of debate geeks and Crystal Whatshername stood in my way. I dove toward Cassie, calling her name.

  Cassie finally turned as I made a desperate grab for Blaise. He twisted and stiff-armed me, using my momentum to propel me forward.

  For a moment, I felt like I was flying, like I really was Superman.

  And then I hit the water and went under, too heavy to swim. I sucked in a mouthful of air. Except it wasn’t air at all.

  Reality Bites

  Sophomore year of high school, I’d briefly joined the debate team. Yes, the same debate team that spent most of Cassie’s party playing Contact Scrabble with the lacrosse team. My mom had convinced me that it was important to be well rounded if I wanted to get into college—and her definition didn’t include spending every night chowing Cheetos and spanking my monkey.

  I turned out to have less talent for debate than I did for singing, which anyone who’s heard me sing will gladly tell you is worse than being trapped on a plane with a screeching baby. During my first and only competition, I had decided I’d take my beating, show my mom that I wasn’t cut out for competitive bickering, and quit the team.

  As it turned out, a debater existed who was worse than me. A short, timid girl with dishwater hair down to her butt and braces colored in with green rubber bands. I never found out whether her tendency to drool was a naturally occurring phenomenon or a byproduct of her anxiety, but before she finished reading her six-minute affirmative construction, the front of her green dress was damp with shame. I wasn’t particularly harsh during cross-ex, but I didn’t even get to ask her two questions before she broke down right in front of the judges and ran out of the room.

  For the rest of the day, I was the guy who’d made a girl cry. Everywhere I went, people stared at me like I’d been branded with a scarlet D for “douchebag.” I skipped the rest of my rounds and hid in the bathroom playing Bejeweled on my phone.

  So having people gape at me like I’d dropped my drawers and flashed them my kickstand wasn’t a new thing for me. But that didn’t make it any less awkward.

  “You’re ruining my play, you mentally deficient poop noodle!” Sia Marcus muscled her way around the pool, screaming impressive new combinations of obscenities at me. Some of the others, especially Sia’s actors, booed and threw cups of beer at me—not all of them empty.

  “I’m sorry,” I said from my perch atop the waterfall, and meant it. “This looks cool and all, but in the immortal words of Shakespeare himself: Cassie, I’m crazy for you.”

  “That’s Madonna!” Ben shouted. I hadn’t seen him but I recognized his voice. I searched him out and saw him sitting alone by the windows, recording my humiliation with his cell phone.

  I’d lost track of Eli in the shadows, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to locate a rabid dude wearing boxers covered in tiny turkeys. Anyway, I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. I’d seen Eli at his lowest, his most vulnerable, and nothing would ever be the same.

  Blaise and his moron patrol were nowhere to be seen, but it was only a matter of time before they noticed the commotion and busted in to ruin the rest of my night. My stomach still hurt, but it was nothing compared to the pain I’d be in if they caught up to me.

  Half the damn party stood on the patio, staring at me as I wrecked Sia’s show, but they were minor players. I was the star now.

  The thing about being the star, about standing under the spotlight, is that you have to know your lines. Unless you’re good at improv, which I wasn’t. I’d seen shows where people froze up onstage and it never ended pretty. In truth, I probably would have imploded right then and there if it hadn’t been for Stella.

  Stella stood at the fringe of the audience with Ewan Fucking McCoy. Ewan was ruddy and smiling, and I couldn’t help wondering if he’d already kissed her. I knew that if I’d kissed that crazy chick, I’d have been smiling way bigger. Stella was grinning. Not at Ewan, at me. At what I was doing. She held her tiny fist in the air and offered me an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Even after what she’d said to me in Mr. Castillo’s office, she was still cheering me on.

  I’d been mad at Stella when she’d told me that she’d tricked me into wearing Mrs. Castillo’s clothes, but as I stood on the summit of the waterfall, everyone at the party gawking at me, Eli plotting my death, Blaise sneaking around to flank me, Ben recording every excruciating moment, I knew that I wouldn’t be here without that girl. We’d taken the roundabout way, but she’d kept her end of the bargain. I owed it to her to see it through.

  “We want Romeo and Juliet!” someone yelled from the crowd. I thought for a moment that it might have been Natalie Grayson. People took up a chant of “Romeo, Romeo!” and I knew I had to act or risk losing them.

  “Fuck all this Romeo and Juliet crap,” I said. My voice filled the night as my confidence grew. “Who kills themselves because their parents won’t let them hook up? They should have caught a train out of Verona and gone on the lam—Bonnie and Clyde–style. Robbing apothecaries and blowing shit up.” I raised my arms in the air and yelled, “I’m your Romeo now, bitches!”

  The roar of the crowd was intoxicating. The applause, heroin. Neurons fired in my brain, sending the signals to flood my body with adrenaline and dopamine and all those feel-good chemicals that turned me from bumbling Simon Cross into a goddamn superhero.

  “Get down!” Sia grabbed the cuff of my jeans and tried to pull me off the rock. When that didn’t work, she pushed. I didn’t blame her. It was like Aja had said: I was only the hero in my life. In Sia’s, I was the terrorist who’d hij
acked her show. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.

  “Five minutes,” I begged shamelessly.

  Sia was fury, she was rage. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her that, as awesome as her play had the potential to be, we were at a party. Shit happened and she needed to loosen up and roll with it. Because I knew if I said those things, she’d punch through my rib cage, tear out my liver, and eat it raw. Luckily for me, Aja did not share my fear.

  Aja slid in beside Sia and put a hand on her back. It was weird to see a girl I’d made out with so many times touching another girl, especially a girl who clearly wanted to maim me. It was also cool, and not in a porny way. “He’s an idiot,” Aja said, just loud enough for me to hear. “And he doesn’t deserve five minutes from anyone, but could you maybe do it for me anyway?”

  Sia glared up at me with more hatred than I knew a human face was capable of holding. Then she relented with a nod so sharp it nearly sliced me in two. “Asshole,” she said, and then left.

  “Don’t fuck this up, Smoochie,” Aja said. Then she ran after Sia to repair the damage standing up for me had done.

  When I took center stage again, the night air was still. The water lapped against the edge of the pool, and someone was blasting music from their car by the road, which was bound to attract the police, but other than that, it was dead silent and all eyes were on me. There was no one left to get in my way. Well, okay, Eli and Blaise were out there, but I was the only person who knew that. To the audience that had gathered, I’d destroyed my enemies and had only to claim my prize.

  Cassandra Castillo.

  I saw her standing at the shallow end of the pool with her arms crossed over her chest, her hip jutted out, looking at me with a frightening mixture of anger and curiosity. This was not the girl who’d bet me a kiss on a pirate ship three years ago. The same girl who’d met me at the door a couple of hours ago and kissed a stranger who’d picked me up on the side of the road. The Cassie who’d broken up with her boyfriend and thrown a party about which epic poems in tenth-grade creative writing classes would be composed. The Cassie who didn’t seem to care that her parents were going to imprison her for life when they returned and saw the damage that had been done to their house.

  No, the Cassie watching me, waiting for my next move, was a girl who looked as though she’d woken from a bad trip. A girl who was sobering up after a binge, seeing the swath of destruction she’d cut through her life. A girl who had opened her eyes and found herself face-to-face with the decisions she’d made, and didn’t like what she saw.

  Still Cassie, still the girl I’d been in love with since freshman anatomy, but damaged, though not beyond repair.

  “Come on then, Romeo,” Cassie said. “We’re all waiting.” She shifted to her other foot but her eyes remained locked on mine. I couldn’t tell whether Cassie was being sarcastic. There was a definite bite to her voice, but it could have been because I hadn’t simply shined the spotlight on myself, I’d dragged her into it with me.

  Now that I had Cassie’s undivided attention, I wasn’t sure what to say. Coop had advised me to be direct. Aja had told me that Cassie would hook up with me if I told her how I felt. And my mom had told me long ago to be myself. But none of those things seemed to apply here. I’d spent years dreaming of this moment, but it wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. My best friend had dumped me, my sort-of-ex-girlfriend had turned gay, a girl I’d known only a couple of hours thought I was perfect, the girl I loved was hiding a life changing secret from everyone, and, for the first time since I’d met Cassie, I had doubts.

  Not about whether I loved her, but about whether I should.

  “I know about your parents,” I said. “About college and all the other stuff.”

  Revealing the possible reason for Cassie’s sudden personality change in front of everyone wasn’t the smartest tactic, but when I opened my mouth to tell Cassie that I loved her, that I’d been in love with her for ages, those were the words that came out instead. The funny thing was, as soon as I said them, I knew I’d done the right thing.

  Cassie, clearly, didn’t share my convictions. “Shut your mouth, Simon.” Cassie was looking from side to side like a trapped animal. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  Which was true. I was making it up as I went along. Still, I felt like Fate was guiding me, showing me the correct path. “I know you’re scared,” I said. “But you can’t let fear dictate your whole life.”

  People were starting to whisper. I’d been vague enough that no one really knew why her life was falling apart, but speculation ran rampant anyway. And Cassie’s face grew frantic.

  “Forget them,” I said. “It’s just you and me talking.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “If you’re lucky,” I said. Cassie frowned. “Wrong time for jokes. Got it.” I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans. “Remember that night at Pirate Chang’s?” Cassie nodded. My memories of that night were high fidelity; Cassie’s might have degraded, so I reminded her. “You bet me I couldn’t sink the shot at the eighteenth hole, but I did. You bet me a kiss.”

  “I remember, Simon.” Cassie looked exhausted, and not just from the party. “So what?”

  “I didn’t kiss you at mini-golf because I was scared. Scared of you, scared of the future, scared that I’d accidentally suck your face off.” People laughed but I ignored them. “You have no idea how much I regret screwing that up.”

  Cassie’s bottom lip quivered like she was going to fire off another retort, but she didn’t. “That was a good night,” she said.

  “The best.” Cassie’s anger began to disintegrate so I pushed onward. My five minutes were up, but Sia didn’t rush to stop me. “I know that you did all this—the party and everything—because you’re scared. But you can’t be afraid, Cassie. Otherwise, you’ll spend the next three years wishing you could go back in time and do it all over again. You can’t change who you are. Putting on a sexy dress and trashing your parents’ house isn’t going to make facing the future any easier. No matter what, Cassie, you’re perfect.”

  “Is that how you really feel?” she asked. God, it was like I’d been waiting for her to ask me that my whole life. I’d been so lost, waiting for Cassie to find me, and now she finally had.

  I nodded, unable to form words.

  “Stay there.” Cassie kicked off her shoes and descended the steps into the pool.

  My moment of glory was sweeter than I’d ever imagined. Kids I’d known for years, some of whom I’d known my whole life, hooted and hollered at my triumph. I watched Cassie swim toward me, smiling up at me. And then hands grabbed my ankles and yanked my feet out from under me. I didn’t have time to fight back as my knees ground into the porous faux rock, tearing through my jeans and into my skin.

  “You’re dead now, asshole.” Blaise and Fat Duke pinned me to the back of the rock.

  An hour earlier I would have pissed myself, but finally telling Cassie how I felt had given me confidence I’d never known. Instead of flinching in anticipation of the punch I knew was coming, I said, “Do your worst, Blaise. But remember this day. It’s the day you became what everyone always figured you’d become: a mouth-breathing Neanderthal with nothing to look forward to but drinking lukewarm cases of Keystone Light at the beach and beating up people smaller than you.”

  I’m not sure if what I said to Blaise made any impact, because I hadn’t finished speaking when Coop yanked Blaise off balance and shoved him into the hedges. Coop brushed himself off and stood prepared to fight.

  “You can take me, Duke,” Coop said. “But I know about locker 237.” He touched his finger to the side of his nose and smiled.

  Fat Duke turned pasty white and ran.

  Blaise tried to get back to his feet, but he was so drunk that he tripped over low branches and fell back into the bushes, cursing and yelling. No one bothered to help him. In a way, I felt bad for Blaise. Unless he became a better man, high school really was going to be the best years of his li
fe.

  “I thought you were done with me,” I said to Coop.

  Coop shrugged. “You looked better in the skirt.” He slapped my arm and said, “Juliet’s waiting.”

  Shit! I’d forgotten about Cassie. I scrambled back up the waterfall, my knees burning like crazy, bloody and torn. When I got to the top, Cassie was treading water below me. I descended the side and pulled her up. Cassie’s black dress stuck to all her curves, making it difficult to concentrate on anything but how amazingly perfect she was.

  “Isn’t Romeo supposed to be the one who climbs the tower?” Cassie asked.

  I shrugged. “We’re updating the story.”

  “What happened to you?” Cassie pointed at my skinned and bloody knees. They burned but I was too busy for pain.

  “I was jumped by some Capulets behind the waterfall.” I hiked my thumb over my shoulder to where Blaise was still trying to extricate himself from the dense hedges.

  Cassie laughed. “I never liked him. I heard he made some kid drink a cup filled with all these different liquors.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Then it was just Cassie and me. Sure, there were all those other people—watching, waiting for me to make a fool of myself—but fuck ’em. I didn’t know what to say, what Cassie expected me to say.

  “I wished you’d kissed me that night,” she said.

  I was blown away. For years, I’d figured that the kiss had been little more than a bet to Cassie, that she’d probably been relieved when I’d chickened out. But I’d figured wrong.

  “You can kiss me now,” she said.

  “Yeah?” I’d been reduced to one-word answers. When I’d asked Natalie to come to the party with me, I’d decided that it was time to let go of the past and move on with my life. Obviously, that hadn’t worked out, and here I was, about to kiss Cassie. Again.

  Then I did.

  I kissed Cassandra Castillo. No more waiting, no more talking, no more fear. I closed my eyes, put my lips to her lips, and kissed her.