What If... All Your Friends Turned On You

by Liz Ruckdeschel

  At nine o’clock they trooped across campus to the frat party. They passed roving gangs of students laughing, partying, having fun. They also passed the library, where, through the windows, they could see other students hard at work.

  “Look at those grinds,” Coco said. “Don’t they know that the whole point of college is partying? They’re missing all the fun!”

  By the time they found Zeta Psi the party was in full swing, but there was no sign of Ali. “Who cares?” Coco said. “We don’t need her. Now point me to the college boys.”

  The house was old and worn—Haley could see the remnants of parties gone by on the scuffed walls and scratched furniture. Most of the partygoers were gathered around a bar in the basement that smelled of stale beer. “You can definitely tell boys live here,” Haley said.

  The crowd was fairly preppy, with boys in jeans and button-downs and sweaters and girls in jeans or leggings and sexy tops and sweaters. Very few girls wore dresses, and Haley began to understand what Ali meant when she’d said it was “just a stupid frat party.” In her silver miniskirt and heavy eyeliner, Haley suddenly felt as if she’d dressed for a costume ball.

  A guy with a long neck poking through his argyle sweater took one look at the girls and broke into a big grin. “Hey look, the jailbait’s arrived,” he announced. A few of the Yale girls glanced over at the Coco crowd and rolled their eyes. To Haley’s dismay, Coco didn’t seem to pick up on the signals: everyone at the party saw through them immediately. They were obviously still just high school girls.

  “Those old hags are just jealous of us,” Coco said. “Let’s go steal some boys from under their wrinkled noses.”

  “They’re only a couple of years older than we are,” Sasha protested as Coco sashayed into the fray. Trailed by her posse, she bypassed the boy who had called her jailbait and infiltrated a group of intellectual types by the bar.

  “As I see it, Gide is a direct descendant of Dostoyevsky,” a guy with a shaved head said. “Except instead of condemning the morality of Nietzsche’s so-called superman, he is actually making a case for moral emptiness.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” a guy who was chewing on an unlit pipe said. “Sure, Gide makes a case for gratuitous murder, but then he dismantles it.”

  Coco tried to interject. “Gide is French, right? See these shoes?” She held out her delicate foot shod in an expensive designer shoe. “They’re French too. I got them on my last trip to Paris.”

  The bald guy stared at her in disbelief. “You’re not in my Modern Literature class, are you?”

  “Modern literature?” Coco said. “No. I’m taking old-fashioned literature.”

  The guys laughed. “She’s joking, right?” the pipe-chewer said.

  Coco laughed along with them. “Will you get me a drink, please? I’d love some champagne.”

  “Sorry, we only have beer and … beer,” the bald guy said.

  “Okay, beer, then,” Coco said.

  The pipe-chewer laughed. “How old are you—twelve?”

  “All these girls look like kids to me,” a guy with short dreadlocks said.

  “We’re not twelve,” Whitney said. “We’re freshmen. We just look dewier and more bright-eyed than usual.”

  “But we’re very experienced,” Coco said suggestively.

  The guys burst out laughing again. “How many times have you heard that?” the bald guy said. “Come on, tell the truth: you go to Notre Dame High, right? Or is it St. Francis?”

  “Don’t let them have anything to drink,” the pipe-chewer said. “We could get arrested just for talking to them.”

  Three beefy lacrosse types intervened. “What have we here?” said a guy with a blond buzz cut. “Hello, girls. Why are you wasting your time talking to these eggheads when you could be making out with us?”

  “Yeah,” said a thick-necked guy with an earring. “Can we give you girls a tour of the house? Have you seen the weight room?”

  “The weight room?” Whitney said. “No, we haven’t seen anything like that yet. Come on! Let’s go on a tour!”

  “Let’s get these girls some beers,” the third lacrosse player said.

  “Finally,” Coco said. “Let’s ditch the nerds, girls.”

  They started to follow the jocks upstairs. Haley had a bad feeling about this, but Coco was obviously so humiliated by the intellectual guys that she was looking for a way to salvage the night—even if it meant hanging with these beefy boys who were not her type and clearly trouble.

  “Wait a second,” she said to Coco, trying to stall. “Shouldn’t we look around for Ali?”

  “I’m right here.” Haley turned to find Ali just walking into the party. She surveyed the situation her little sister had gotten herself into and shook her head. “Uh-uh. Tyler, just exactly what do you think you’re doing with my little sister and her moronic friends?”

  “This is your sister? I didn’t know that, Ali,” the blond buzz cut named Tyler said.

  “She’s my sister and she’s only seventeen,” Ali said. “She’s off-limits, guys. They all are.”

  “Seventeen? Gosh, I figured she had to be at least eighteen,” Tyler said insincerely.

  “We were just giving them a tour,” the thick-necked guy said.

  “Yeah—a tour of your bedrooms,” Ali said. “Come on, Coco. Let’s get you girls out of here before you do something you—and I—will regret.”

  “Ali, you’re ruining our big college night!” Coco said.

  “Aw, look, I think she’s going to cry,” Tyler said, mocking Coco.

  “Coco, you idiot, I’m saving you from the worst night of your life,” Ali snapped. “Trust me. These guys are a semester away from being arrested for date rape.”

  The girls went back to Ali’s dorm and spent the rest of the evening playing Scrabble, except for Coco, who refused to play and sulked in her room the whole time.

  “This is all your fault,” she kept saying to Haley. “That grandma-mobile gave our whole trip bad vibes.” Haley watched as the other girls nodded in agreement. It wasn’t fair. How was she entirely to blame?

  The next morning, after a cafeteria breakfast, they piled into the Gam Polly sedan and drove back home to Hillsdale. “It doesn’t matter that nothing actually happened last night,” Coco said. She sat in the front seat, next to Haley. “The important thing is that we went to Yale. We can tell the kids at school whatever we want. The key is to make Spencer squirm with jealousy, and to keep our stories straight. So, if anyone asks, we went to a little cocktail party at somebody’s fabulous off-campus apartment. Let’s say the party was thrown by a British heiress, and I totally hooked up with an earl whose name was …”

  “Earl?” Whitney suggested.

  “That’s too lame to even shoot down,” Coco said. “No, his name is Jeremy and he’s gorgeous and rich and crazy about me….”

  As Coco yammered on, spinning an elaborate fantasy weekend out of their disastrous night at Yale, Haley thought about Hillsdale and what awaited her there. She felt a sudden, nostalgic pang of desire for Reese Highland. There was nothing so special about those college boys, she realized. They were just like the boys she knew, only a few years older. The only boy who seemed special to her then, who seemed truly different from the average slobbering, hormone-crazed Y chromosome, was Reese. Why had she worked so hard to push him away? Lately, there had been talk around school that Reese hadn’t even done anything in Nevis. And yet Haley had never given him the chance to explain. Was there any way to salvage what they’d once had? Was there any way to undo the damage and bring him back?

  “No matter what happens when we get home,” Coco was saying, “we’ve got to keep freezing the boys out. After what they did to us, they deserve to suffer as much as possible. We’ve got to keep twisting the knife.”

  “Right,” Cecily, Sasha and Whitney agreed.

  “Right,” Haley echoed. But was it?

  The Yale trip was a bust. Coco’s obviously disappointed she doesn’
t have a college hookup story to go home with, but that won’t stop her from making one up—one so good the truth could never equal it. But lying about her conquests is not Haley’s style.

  She faces a choice about Reese. Should she stick with Coco and her friends and stand her ground? Should she keep freezing him out even though her feelings have thawed? If you think it’s the principle that counts here and Reese deserves more punishment, turn to, LONELY ONE.

  Or maybe you think that by now Haley is tired of listening to Coco’s crackpot theories. Maybe she’s sick of playing by Coco’s rules and wants to follow her own heart for a change. If you think she should get her PRIORITIES STRAIGHT.

  There’s a time for sisterhood and a time for romance. The hard part is getting the timing right.

  REESE ON HIS KNEES

  It’s hard to follow a leader whose motto is “Do as I say, not as I do.”

  “Hey, Sasha.” Haley was surprised to see Sasha walking arm in arm through the courtyard with her ex-boyfriend, Johnny Lane. Since they had emphatically broken up only weeks before over the Caribbean bikini-girl photos, Sasha had been one of the most hard-core supporters of Coco’s Operation Dump ’Em campaign. But there she was, glowing with happiness, Johnny nuzzling her neck just like old times.

  “Hey, Haley.” Sasha didn’t quite look her in the eye. Feeling guilty perhaps, Haley speculated. What would Coco say when she heard that Sasha and Johnny had gotten back together? She’d completely flip, that’s what Haley thought.

  Later that afternoon, Haley spotted Cecily coming out of the gym with Drew. That’s weird, Haley thought. Cecily must have decided he needs another lecture on how much she hates him.

  But it sure didn’t look as if she hated him. Drew put his arm around Cecily and gave her a kiss on the cheek. And Cecily didn’t push him away; far from it. In fact, she kissed him back.

  What’s going on? Haley wondered. Did I miss something?

  Last Haley had heard, Coco was insisting that they keep freezing out their cheating ex-boyfriends. So why did Cecily and Sasha suddenly seem back in boyfriend bliss?

  Then, passing through the parking lot on her way home, Haley saw a shiny sports car pull up, driven by Matthew Graham. He honked, and Whitney waved to him and got into the car. So Whitney was hooking up with Matthew Graham now? What next, Coco and Spencer back together?

  Well, yes. Walking past Bubbies Bistro that evening, Haley saw Coco at a table in the window—with Spencer. He was spooning chocolate mousse into her mouth. So, Haley figured, the big freeze must be over—and the big diet too. But why hadn’t she gotten the memo?

  “What exactly is going on?” Haley asked Coco at school the next day. “Everybody seems to have given up on Operation Dump ’Em except for me.”

  “We haven’t given up,” Coco said. “We just revised the doctrine.”

  “So that it allows hugging, kissing and feeding each other desserts?”

  “Basically,” Coco said. “Look, it was getting old, okay? Lighten up.”

  Haley felt betrayed. She had gone along with Coco’s doctrine wholeheartedly, following her schemes to the letter. And now it was all over, just like that? Somehow it didn’t seem right. The boys had still done them wrong. As far as Haley could tell, they’d barely paid any price for their misdeeds at all. The girls had given in too easily.

  Then, after school that day, Reese approached her and asked to talk.

  “I’m tired of the silence between us,” he said. “I miss having you to talk to. I miss having you on my side, or in the stands at a game cheering me on.”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said. “But you hurt me first. Do you know how it felt to open up those photos of you?”

  “I can only imagine,” Reese said. “But I didn’t mean to—I swear. Haley, I’d like to get back together with you. I’d like to explain what happened if I can.”

  Haley’s tongue felt paralyzed. She didn’t know what to say. She was glad to hear that Reese still liked her. But could all the pain that had passed between them be wiped away so easily? The other girls seemed to have forgotten all about their heartache. But Haley wasn’t so sure she could forget about hers.

  What should Haley do? Here is Reese on his knees before her, begging to get back together. If he had done that two months earlier, she might have given in right away.

  The other girls seem to have dropped their revenge plots without a second thought. To be honest, Haley’s a little disappointed in them. How spineless could they be? More importantly, she’s not sure that’s the right thing to do. What if she takes Reese back and he turns around and hurts her again? She doesn’t think she could survive a second betrayal.

  On the other hand … it’s Reese. What if he’s the one she was meant to be with? What if there’s a good explanation for his antics in Nevis? How can she turn him down? After all, he’s taking a big risk right now too, laying it all out there and asking Haley to take him back. He knows she could send him packing, even if all her girlfriends already gave in and are back to canoodling with their guys.

  If you think Haley is still in love with Reese but shouldn’t listen to her heart because it might be rebroken, turn to, LONELY ONE. If you think Haley should give Reese another chance, set her PRIORITIES STRAIGHT.

  PRIORITIES STRAIGHT

  A good guy usually deserves a second chance.

  Haley crossed her arms and looked Reese straight in the eye. “I’m still listening,” she said. “Tell me more. What exactly went on down there?”

  “It was awful,” Reese said. They sat leaning against the lockers in the hallway, settling in for a long talk. “Spencer promised the trip was going to be quiet and sober, just the guys swimming and playing volleyball and relaxing away from any temptations. And I believed him, because his mother set the whole thing up, and I knew how much she wanted him to stay out of trouble before her big inauguration.”

  Haley laughed. “That’s a losing proposition. Trouble just seems to follow Spencer, no matter where he goes.”

  “Yeah, her plan couldn’t have backfired more, could it?” Reese was laughing too. “Those pictures are plastered all over the Internet.”

  “Speaking of plastered,” Haley said. “What were you guys on? You looked wasted in a lot of those shots.”

  “That was the problem. We get to the resort and there are all these models there for a photo shoot, and Spencer basically says, ‘Screw quiet and sober, let’s party!’ The other guys were into it but I really wasn’t. I talked to a few of those girls and they were vaporheads. All they wanted to know was who had the blow. So I sat by myself on the beach while the other guys whooped it up. Finally one of the girls brought me some papaya juice. That’s what she told me it was, anyway. It turned out Spencer had spiked it.”

  “Figures,” Haley said.

  “Yeah, I should have known. I’m not used to drinking, so I got sloshed pretty quickly. But believe me, I’m not planning on drinking again—it turned me into such a jackass. I hated the way I was acting, but it was like I was outside my body watching someone who looked just like me be a jerk. The next morning when I woke up, I felt so disgusted and ashamed. I don’t believe in treating women like strippers. And I was terrified that you’d find out what happened and misunderstand. And then I found out the pictures were online and all over Hillsdale.”

  “Not to mention on my cell phone, before I’d even gotten a Happy New Year message from you.” Haley appreciated Reese telling her the details, and she believed him. Still, if he got drunk and acted like a fool once, he could do it again, no matter what he said.

  “I just didn’t know what to say to you, Haley.” Reese looked mortified. “You mean so much to me, and I felt like an animal for disrespecting you. I couldn’t find the right words to apologize. And then, when I saw you at school and you wouldn’t speak to me, well, I just thought I’d blown my only chance.”

  Haley thought long and hard about Reese. “I’m willing to give you another shot,” she told him finally. “
As a friend. Just for a while. If things seem to be going well, maybe we can work our way back toward what we had before. But I’m warning you, we’re a long way from that.”

  “That’s fair.” Reese laid his hand on top of hers. A gesture of friendship, she supposed, but it felt like more. “That’s all I can ask for.”

  She smiled at him and he gazed back at her. She was glad to be friends with him again. She could see in his face what a good person he was. And soon she was drowning in those warm blue eyes.

  I’m a goner, she thought. We’ll be back together in no time.

  But suddenly that didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

  THE END

  LONELY ONE

  Being rigid only makes a person easier to snap in two.

  “Haley, listen to me,” Reese pleaded as Haley eyed him skeptically. “Spencer spiked my drink on that island. I didn’t know what I was doing. It wasn’t my fault, at least not entirely.”

  But Haley couldn’t get those pictures out of her mind: the shots of Reese with his hands all over some bikini-clad model, umbrellas everywhere, even in the drinks…. Which was the real Reese? The lecherous, drunken two-timer, or the earnest boy pleading his case in front of her right now?

  Haley felt she had no way of knowing, that she’d never really know for certain what was going on in Reese’s mind—or how he really felt about her. Sure, now that he was back in Hillsdale and there were no bathing suit models around to distract him, he wanted to get back with Haley. But what about the next time temptation reared its head? Or the next time his pal Spencer spiked his drink? Would Reese be strong, or would he succumb?

  “Haley? I’ve got to know your answer,” Reese said. “I can’t stand another minute in limbo like this. Do you believe me or not?”

  “Nice try,” Haley said. “But I have no interest in wasting my time with a two-timing cheat. The pictures don’t lie, Reese. Only boys do. Sorry.”