by Lin Oliver
“There they are!” Lauren said, pointing to a few rows of girls wearing The Waves signature turquoise-blue shirts with pink lettering. “I see Bethany.”
“Wow,” Brooke said. “Check out their seats.”
The Waves were sitting right at the fifty-yard line, about ten rows back. The best seats in the stadium. The best place not only to watch the game, but to also see and be seen. There was a half-empty row behind them.
“Omigosh,” Brooke said. “Are those for us? They saved us incredible seats.”
“Of course they did,” Lauren said. “Bethany’s taken care of everything.” Then under her breath, she whispered to me, “What’d I tell you?”
We climbed up the bleachers and took our seats behind The Waves. Their club had about twenty girls, each one prettier than the next. Everyone except for Lizzy was nice, too.
“Hey, Juniors,” some of the girls called to us. “Over here. Have a seat. Join the party!”
They were all snapping pictures of each other with their phones. When we reached our row, Bethany got out her phone and took a picture of all five of us with our arms around each other. She showed it to us, and we looked great, if I do say so myself.
“I’m going to post this on Instagram,” she said. “What should I say?”
“Junior Waves rock,” Lauren said.
“You got it,” Bethany answered with a nod, and posted the picture without a moment’s hesitation.
“Now we’re famous,” Jillian said. “Like TV stars.”
“Pretty close,” Bethany told her. “I’ve got a ton of followers. Everyone’s going to see your picture, that’s for sure.”
Just then, Spencer Ballard, Ben Feldman, and the General, entered the stadium. My heart skipped a beat.
“We’re over here,” Brooke shouted at the top of her lungs. The boys looked up and waved, then headed up the steps to our row.
“Brooks, you can’t shout like that,” Lauren said. “We have to act like high-schoolers.”
“Don’t they shout, Lauren?”
“During the game, yes. They cheer. But not before the game.”
What did Lauren do, read a book on high school etiquette? But as I looked around the stadium, I saw that she was right. Everyone was talking to their friends, sipping drinks, or checking their phones. I wondered if a lot of them were looking at the picture of us on Instagram that very moment. The thought made me giggle.
The guys filed into our row and took their seats. Spencer had to talk Ben Feldman into trading seats with him so he could sit next to me, but he did it.
“How’s my favorite Junior Wave?” he said as he wedged in next to me.
If I had one word to describe how I was feeling at that very moment, it would have been “sweeettt!” Everything felt good, nothing annoyed me, not even Bethany who was busy being the queen bee, waving at all the guys who walked past and standing up a lot to make sure everyone could see how beautiful she was.
Her friend Lizzy seemed to be doing the same thing—standing, pointing, waving, hollering, doing everything she could to attract attention. She was right in front of me, so I could hardly miss it when suddenly she screamed, “Who or what is that?” She burst out laughing. “I think it’s Captain Hook, I’m not kidding. She looks like a pirate.”
I looked down to see Sammie and her friends making their way up to the bleachers. Of course, the person Lizzy was referring to was Sara.
“Why do you think she’s got that thing on her head?” Lizzy went on.
“Who can say why middle-schoolers do the things they do,” the girl next to her said. “Maybe someone dared her to do it.”
“It’d have to be a double dare for me to go out of the house looking like that,” Lizzy said. “Or double double dare times a hundred. It’s totally ridiculous.”
I felt the blood rush to my face. I was furious. Why couldn’t she just leave Sara alone? What should it matter to her if Sara looked like Captain Hook or Captain Crunch? It was none of her business.
“I think that girl looks very unique,” I said to Lizzy. All she did was laugh and sing, “Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate’s life for me.”
“Cut it out!” I snapped. “She happens to be an extremely nice and interesting person.”
Lauren put her arm on mine. “Calm down,” she whispered. “What are you so worked up about? You’ll ruin the whole night. They’re just goofing around. Let it be.”
Spencer could see how agitated I was.
“I like Sara, too,” he said. “They shouldn’t talk about her like that.”
“Don’t worry about it, you two,” Lauren said. “It’s almost kickoff.”
I was worried. Worried of course for Sara and that people were going to say mean things to her face. That would hurt her so much. The thing about words is that once they’re out there, you can’t take them back. Mean words stay with you forever.
“Hey, Charlie,” I heard Alicia call. I looked over and Sammie and her friends were standing in the aisle right near us. “Nice seats.”
“Hi, Charlie,” Sara said. She was smiling, and seemed really happy with herself. It killed me to know what Lizzy was saying behind her back. I shot her a thumbs-up and she gave me one back.
“Oh, I am so taking a picture of this,” Lizzy said, snapping a picture of Sara with her cell phone.
“Why do you need a picture of her?” I asked.
“Just for fun,” she said. “You have to admit, that’s not an outfit you see every day.”
“Well I think you should delete it,” I said.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “It’s a stupid picture, anyway.”
She did something with her phone, and then turned off the screen and put it away.
“Nice work,” Spencer said to me. Then he smiled and took my hand.
Sammie and her friends found seats way up at the top of the bleachers just as the band came out and played the National Anthem. After that, the band launched right into the Pacific High fight song. Lauren was the only one of us who knew the words, but I managed to fake it pretty well. When the game started, The Waves taught us their two special cheers. The first time they stood up and did them on their own, but the second time, Bethany said we could do the cheers with them. I could feel everyone looking at us. Even the cheerleaders stopped their own cheers and tossed their pom-poms in the air when we were done.
When we sat down after the cheer, someone in back of me tapped me on the shoulder. It was the blond surfer guy.
“You guys really do rock,” he said, holding up his phone to show me our picture on Instagram.
Underneath our caption, a bunch of people had written comments.
“Could I borrow your phone for a sec?” I asked.
He handed it to me, and I showed Lauren the comments. One said, “Cute mini waves,” and another said, “Love that tween spirit.” The one from a boy named Kahuna said, “Stoked to see these babes #juniorwaves” and the last one said, “My cousin’s group, how cool are they?” That one was from Bethany, but the others were from random people who didn’t even know us. We passed his phone quickly to the other girls, and each one in turn laughed out loud.
“Thanks,” I said when I handed the phone back to the guy.
During the first half of the game, I found out that I was really interested in football. We’re a tennis family, and Ryan watches a lot of basketball, so football was a whole new world to me. Spencer explained all the rules and strategies that I didn’t know.
“You’re a jock at heart, Diamond,” he said. “Not many girls would be this curious.”
At halftime, the score was tied at fourteen. Spencer left to go get some nachos, and Bethany told us to get up and come with her.
“Bathroom break,” she said.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I don’t have to go.”
“Honestly, Charlie,�
�� she sighed. “This isn’t about peeing. This is about refreshing our hair and makeup. And trust me, little one, you could use it.”
We all followed her and the other Waves to the girl’s bathroom. Inside, it was jam-packed and the noise level was out of control. You had to shove your way in to get to the stalls, and getting to the mirror was almost impossible with girls lined up shoulder to shoulder applying lip gloss and touching up their mascara and stuff. I got separated from the other Junior Waves right away. For the first time that night, I felt like a middle-school kid shoved in between all these chattering high-school girls. I just kind of hunkered down in the crowd and tried to be inconspicuous.
“Well, of course I posted it,” I heard Lizzy’s voice in the crowd. “It was just too funny to resist.”
“You’re not going to believe the one I have,” Bethany said back. “It’s even funnier.”
“Did you post it already?” Lizzy asked.
“Did I ever! There’s going to be a million comments. I can’t wait to see them.”
Two girls in Pacific High letterman jackets shoved themselves away from the mirror, creating a space for other girls. I jammed myself in there, trying to get close enough to hear the rest of the conversation, but I was elbowed out by another two girls in Taft jackets.
“Excuse me,” I said to them. “It’s really important that I get in here.”
“Tough luck,” one of them said. “We’ve been waiting for five minutes.”
“Oh and by the way,” the other one said, “your team is going down tonight!”
I struggled to get close, but by the time I got to the mirror, Bethany and Lizzy were halfway across the bathroom, on their way out. I elbowed my way through the crowded bathroom and finally reached the outside. They were surrounded by a bunch of cute high-school guys. They might have even been seniors—two of them had beards!
“Bethany, can I talk to you a minute?” I asked, tapping her on the shoulder.
“Use your head, little one,” she said, laughing with the others. “Does it look like it’s a good time for me to talk?”
Everyone laughed.
“This is really important,” I said, yanking on her arm.
“No, Charlie,” she said. She wasn’t laughing now, she seemed mad. “What’s going on here is important, not you. Come on, guys. The game’s starting.”
She hooked her arm through the arm of one of the bearded guys and walked away.
I didn’t even wait for the other Junior Waves. I raced back to my seat. Spencer must have still been in the nachos line, and none of the other girls were back yet. But the person I wanted was there—the surfer dude sitting in back of me.
“Could I borrow your phone again?” I asked.
“No problem,” he said, “Got to call your mom and dad to pick you up? Yeah, I remember those days. It gets better.”
“No, I need to see your Instagram again,” I said. “Can you show me how to go there?”
He punched in a few commands, and handed me his phone. The picture of us came up on the screen. There were a lot more comments, but I wasn’t interested in that.
“Do you follow Lizzy whatshername?” I asked him.
He took the phone from me and went to Lizzy’s account. There it was, front and center, the picture she had snapped of Sara in her scarf and earrings. Under it was the caption, “Can u believe it? Captain Hook showed up at our game tonight!!!”
I felt sick to my stomach. No one had posted any comments yet, but I knew they probably would.
“How about Bethany Wadsworth?” I asked him. “Do you follow her?”
“Who doesn’t?”
He took the phone from me and went to her page. When I looked at the picture that came up on the screen, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I was actually going to throw up.
It was a shot of Sara, but not from the game. It was one of the “before” shots that Sammie and Alicia had taken of her. Her hair was pulled up on top of her head. She wasn’t smiling. And of course, her ears were in plain view, sticking out almost to the edge of the picture. It was the most unflattering image of her you could ever imagine. And humiliating. Underneath was the caption Bethany had written. It said: “One word, folks. Dumbo.”
I dropped the guy’s phone and held my hands to my face.
“Hey, are you okay?” he said. He sounded a million miles away.
My mind was racing with a thousand ideas at once. Where could Bethany have gotten that picture? It was only on Sammie’s phone. And no one had access to Sammie’s phone, not even me. She kept it tucked away in the right zipper pocket of her purse.
Then it hit me. When we were at Etta’s concert that afternoon, Sammie had specifically noticed that her phone was in the left pocket, out of its usual place. She chalked it up to just being forgetful, but there was another explanation, one that flooded into my head like a terrible, crashing wave.
I closed my eyes and remembered Lauren telling me how Bethany had given her one last initiation assignment to complete. Then I remembered her standing in the hall that afternoon, holding both our bags. She had been out there the whole time Sammie and I were helping Ms. Carew straighten up the room. Long enough to find Sammie’s phone, go to her photo roll and send the picture of Sara to herself. Or to Bethany. Just as she had been asked to do. And then put the phone back in the wrong pocket!
But how did she know where to find Sammie’s phone?
Then another image came to my mind, almost jolting me out of my seat. We were in my room, just before the ceremony, looking for my phone so we could play “We Are the Champions.” I told Lauren to get it from my purse, and she knew just where to go. I heard her words in my head . . . “I know everything about you. You and Sammie both keep your phones in the left zipper pocket so Ryan can’t get to them.” And I remembered thinking . . . No, Sammie keeps hers in the right pocket.
How would Lauren and Bethany have known that the “before” pictures of Sara were there on Sammie’s phone? How could they know that those pictures, showing in extreme close-up the very thing Sara was most ashamed of in the world, were so easy to get to?
And of course, there was only one answer to that.
It was me. Me, who told the group about the pictures. Me, who betrayed the trust of not only Sara, but of Alicia and my sister. Me, and my big mouth. Me, and my need to belong.
It was me at the bottom of this whole nightmare.
I grabbed my jacket and made my way blindly to the aisle. As I was running down the steps, I ran smack into Spencer.
“Charlie, where are you going?”
“I’m sick,” I lied. “I think I’m going to throw up. I have to go home.”
I pushed him aside and tore out of the stadium, pushing my way through the throng of kids like I was fighting for my life. When I got outside the gate, I stood there in the parking lot and burst into tears, crying harder and longer than I ever had in my life.
“Maybe she won’t find out,” I said to GoGo, tears still streaming down my face. “Not many kids our age have Instagram, so maybe she’ll never see it.”
I had called GoGo to come get me from the game. She was the only person I could turn to in a time like this. In the car on the way home, I told her the whole story—how we formed the Junior Waves and had an initiation ceremony and how I had told Sara’s secret even though I knew it was wrong.
We finally made it home and were alone in the clubhouse. Everyone was still at the football game except my dad, who had decided last minute to have coffee with a bunch of his old tennis pals until it was time to pick us up from the game.
“You have to confess everything,” GoGo said, putting a cup of hot chocolate down in front of me on the kitchen counter. “People make mistakes, Charlie. This was a big one. But you have to be brave and own up to your mistakes.”
“So what do I tell Sara?” I asked. “
That I’m sorry I ruined her life?”
“Speak from the heart, Noodle. That’s all you can do.”
“And what about Sammie? How do I explain this to her?”
“Same thing. Don’t shift the blame to anyone else. Be brave and acknowledge what you did.”
GoGo handed me a box of Kleenex. I sipped the hot chocolate and blew my nose constantly, staring at the clock and dreading the moment when they all walked in.
I heard a car pull up in the driveway, and my heart almost fell out of my chest.
“I can’t do this, GoGo,” I wailed.
“You can do anything you set your mind to,” she said, giving me a tight hug.
I blew my nose one last time, and then stood up when I heard the door to the clubhouse slam shut. To my relief, it wasn’t Sammie and the girls. It was Ryan.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought you were sleeping over at Winston’s.”
“I told his dad to just drop me off here,” he said. “I thought Sammie and her friends could use a little support.”
“Why?” I asked, so afraid to hear the answer.
“You didn’t see the photos on Instagram? I thought by now everyone had seen them.”
“You’re on that Instagram thing, too?” GoGo asked.
“GoGo, I’m not a little kid anymore,” he said. “I’m fourteen.”
Ryan took out his phone and handed it to me. I looked at the Instagram picture of Sara, the one that Bethany had posted with the “Dumbo” caption underneath. Below it were a string of comments. A few of them were making fun of Sara. One said, “All the better to hear you with!” and another said, “She looks like a car with the doors open.” But there were a lot of them that were kind of supportive. One of those said, “My brother has the same type of ears and he’s cute.” Another one said, “So what, we all have something we’re embarrassed of.” To my total shock, there were even a few that were critical of Bethany. One said, “Leave the girl alone, Beth” and another said, “Not ur business.”
I handed the phone back to Ryan. “Not as bad as I thought it would be,” I said.
“Most people are kind underneath,” GoGo said. “They’re not actively looking for opportunities to hurt people. But of course, that’s not the point, is it, Noodle?”
