25 Roses

by Stephanie Faris

  This again? “I talked to Kurt,” I said. “I tried to introduce you, but you didn’t come over—”

  “Not Kurt,” she interrupted. “Someone else.” She stopped, seeming to suddenly realize what I’d just said. “Wait, did you say you talked to Kurt about me?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t have a good feeling about this.

  “I wish you hadn’t done that.” She stopped, looking around nervously. “I changed my mind.”

  My eyebrows arched. “You changed your mind? About the boy you liked just a couple of days ago?”

  “There’s someone else I like now.”

  Maybe I just didn’t know how this boy thing worked. I’d never liked a boy, unless you counted guys I saw on TV or heard on the radio. I thought when someone liked someone, they at least stuck with it for a few weeks.

  But then I remembered the look on Kurt’s face when I told him Sun liked him. He even made a face. This was probably for the best. Sun would never have to know he didn’t like her.

  “Who’s the guy?” I asked.

  “Actually, it’s someone you know really well,” Sun said. Her expression had already brightened considerably, just talking about him. “I see you with him all the time.”

  Oh. There was only one guy she could possibly see me with all the time. And that guy just happened to like her back.

  “Alex,” I said. There was that sick feeling again. Only this time it wasn’t guilt that I’d tried to get in the way of Alex getting together with Sun. This time it was something else.

  “Yes,” Sun said. “Does he like anyone?”

  “Look, I’m not sure I can help you much. He’s kind of mad at me right now,” I said.

  “Why?”

  I racked my brain for an answer to that question. “It was just a disagreement,” I finally said, when I figured out I couldn’t say anything about the real reason Alex and Ashleigh were mad at me. I mean, the truth was they were mad I was helping Sun. She would think that meant they didn’t like her, which wouldn’t be all that good for her feelings.

  Except Alex liked Sun back. So maybe this was a way back to his good side.

  “Okay,” Sun said. “Well, if you guys get a chance to talk again, could you put in a good word for me?”

  “Sure,” I said. I gave her a big smile that showed far more confidence than I had. I had a feeling all I really needed to do was get Alex to listen to me for five seconds and this would turn it all around. He’d want to know more about what Sun had said about him. It would work, I just knew it.

  I was plotting it all out in third period when Kaylee walked in, Rosalia chasing after her. They both looked at me, then each other. As they turned to walk toward their seats, they had huge smirks. Weird.

  That was just the start of it. At first I thought it might be that threatening card, rubbing off on me. It seemed like everyone, everywhere I went, was staring at me. I wanted to crawl into one of these lockers and hide.

  By the time I walked into lunch, I felt like everyone knew something I didn’t. Even worse, for the first time since kindergarten, I was walking into the lunchroom with no idea who I would sit with.

  I didn’t want to sit alone. Everyone would stare at me even worse then. My bright idea was to plop down with Ashleigh and Alex and spill everything I knew about Sun. Once Alex knew Sun liked him, he would be more than happy to talk to me.

  Only one problem with that. Ashleigh and Alex weren’t at our usual table. I was walking around, probably looking really confused, when someone called my name.

  I turned around and saw Trudie waving frantically in the air. I looked around one last time. Trudie wasn’t my first choice of lunch company, but I didn’t want to sit alone. I walked over and sat at the end of their group. If people saw me with this group—

  Oh, what did I care? My best friends weren’t talking to me anymore. I didn’t have anything else to lose.

  Trudie was about to prove me wrong on that one.

  “Avoiding Alex?” she asked as soon as I sat down.

  I looked around at each of Trudie’s friends. What did they know?

  “You know, that whole thing with the note,” one of Trudie’s friends said. I think her name was Karyn with a y.

  “Note?” I asked. My heart skipped a beat. What note? Maybe this was about the cards attached to the roses I’d gotten. Those would count as “notes,” wouldn’t they?

  It hit me at the same time Trudie clued me in to what was going on. The note. I’d written a note in homeroom and had given it to Alex.

  “You know, that note that said you liked him,” Trudie said. “They were passing it around.”

  “Someone in my third-period gym class had it,” one of Trudie’s other friends said.

  “Why is Alex mad at you?” Trudie asked.

  Right. That was what the note had said. It hadn’t said anything about me liking him. Where had they gotten that? That was my private note. The one only he was supposed to see. And now the whole school knew about it?

  My chest started feeling all panicky, and I reminded myself I had to calm down. I couldn’t let them see me like this. They’d tell everyone. I had to at least pretend to be calm and try to fix this.

  “He’s mad because Ashleigh’s mad,” I said. It was the truth. “But I never said I liked him.”

  Karyn with a y jumped in. “ ‘I miss hanging out with you,’ ” she recited in a melodramatic voice.

  “ ‘Just us,’ ” Trudie added. She sounded dramatic too. “Sounds like you like him to me.”

  “Well, I don’t,” I said. I knew no matter what I said, they wouldn’t believe me. I couldn’t believe that the whole school seemed to think I liked Alex.

  Including … Alex.

  I looked around. Had he shown others the note? Why? Still no sign of him. Had he and Ashleigh gone somewhere else to avoid all this? To avoid me?

  “Excuse me,” I said, jumping up.

  “Where are you going?” Trudie asked. “You haven’t eaten any of your lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said. “I have to take care of something.”

  I dumped my lunch into the trash can and rushed off in search of Ashleigh and Alex. They had to be in this school somewhere. Once I found them, I was going to clear everything up, starting with this crazy rumor that I liked him. First, though, I had to know one thing.

  Why had he let other people read my note?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  To: Mia

  From: Alex

  Best friends don’t set each other’s crushes up with someone else.

  Alex and Ashleigh were good at hiding. But not as good as I was at finding. I didn’t know where Ashleigh was, but Alex was eating lunch in the library. He didn’t look up until I said his name.

  “Hey,” he said. He chewed his sandwich while continuing to stare at me. He was waiting for me to say something else. I stomped over to the table and sat down across from him.

  “You showed people my note,” I said accusingly.

  His eyes went wide, and he stopped chewing. He was surprised. As his face scrunched up, I realized that he had no idea what I was talking about.

  “I gave you a note in homeroom,” I said. “People are talking about it.”

  “I didn’t see any note,” he replied. “What did it say?”

  At that moment, I knew he was telling the truth. I’d set the note down, but he’d never even looked at it. Was it possible it had somehow slid off his book and someone else had picked it up?

  “The note just asked you to please not be mad at me—”

  “I’m not mad at you,” he said. He shrugged. “Ashleigh is.”

  “But you didn’t talk to me in homeroom,” I said. “You wouldn’t even look at me, even when I was staring right at you.”

  Alex set his sandwich down and looked at me. “I don’t want to be in the middle of this,” he said. “Whatever you and Ashleigh have going on, that’s your business. I’m just …”

  “What?” I asked w
hen he didn’t finish his sentence. When he finally did look at me, there was something I hadn’t seen in his eyes for a long, long time. He was … hurt.

  “You could have helped me with the whole Sun thing,” he said. “I thought we were better friends than that. I mean, you were trying to match her with someone else, even though you knew I liked her.”

  Was I really that selfish? Yes, I’d known it had probably bothered him that I was playing matchmaker for Sun and Kurt, but I thought he’d get over it and go back to being normal.

  Go back to being the Alex I knew.

  “I don’t get it,” Alex said. “All you do is worry about everyone else. What happened to the fun girl who used to just hang out?”

  It took me a second to realize he was talking about me. Me, the girl who was just wondering the exact same thing about him.

  But instead of saying that, I said, “I’m still here. I just wanted to help people. Why is there something wrong with that?”

  “We miss you, that’s all,” Alex said with a shrug.

  I smiled. “Well, I’m here. And I have good news.”

  “What are you doing here?” I heard Ashleigh ask.

  I’d been fully prepared to tell Alex everything Sun had said. Minus, of course, the part about me having already talked to Kurt. But before I could get the words out, my best friend’s voice interrupted.

  I turned around. “Ashleigh,” I said. “Listen—”

  “She has the whole school thinking you guys are going out now,” Ashleigh told Alex. She was looking right past me, as if I weren’t even there. “Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “I didn’t tell people anything,” I said. “I wrote Alex a note, and someone has it.”

  “You wrote a note saying we were going out?” Alex asked.

  “No,” I said. “I said I missed us.”

  “What does that mean?” Ashleigh asked. She had that sound in her voice again. The one that said she didn’t approve. What was with her lately?

  “It means that I want things back the way they used to be,” I said. “Which was exactly what Alex was just say—”

  “You like Alex,” Ashleigh said, still looking at Alex. “She likes you. She’s liked you for a while.”

  I spun around. “No, I don’t,” I said. Then, realizing what I’d said, I turned around to look at Alex. “Not that there would be anything wrong with that or anything.”

  He just sat there, staring at me, his eyes wide. I knew what he was doing. He was rethinking everything that had happened over the past … forever, probably. Analyzing it all as, She had a crush on me the whole time, instead of, She was my BFF who cared about me and would never like me like that.

  He saw my weird behavior with Sun as jealousy now, I just knew it. And I could see how he’d think that. But it wasn’t jealousy. Really. It—wasn’t. Wasn’t …

  As I stood there, ready to argue my side, I felt all the fight drain out of me. I had no idea why, but I couldn’t say that I wasn’t jealous. And that was weird.

  “Oh, come on,” Ashleigh said. “We’ve all known it for a while. You like him, he likes you. He thought he liked Sun, but he really doesn’t. He likes you. Now the whole school knows it. There.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Now that it’s all in the open, can we stop trying to fix everyone up with everyone else? Or is that the point.”

  That last part was said as a statement, not a question. She had a look on her face like she’d just figured out everything. Maybe she had. Maybe she knew more than I did. I was so confused at this point, I didn’t know what to think.

  I started to deny it. The words were on the tip of my tongue. But then I saw the look on Ashleigh’s face. It was the first time she hadn’t been mad at me since Saturday. It seemed, for a second, like I almost had my friend back.

  I was so relieved, I couldn’t deny what she was saying. I didn’t know if it was true or not.

  Was it true?

  It was.

  I liked Alex.

  The words seemed to echo in my head. I knew I’d have to think about them a little longer. All I knew now was that I missed laughing and smiling with my best friends. Whatever it took to get back to that, I’d do.

  Ashleigh’s smile widened. She looked like she’d figured it all out, even though I’d said nothing. She wasn’t giving me a cold look anymore, but the last thing I wanted was for Alex to think I liked him. Not until I knew for sure he liked me back.

  But then Ashleigh said something that wiped the smile right off my face.

  “Well, then, I’ll just leave you two little lovebirds alone,” she said, spinning around and marching out of the library. That left me sitting across from Alex, with an awkward silence between us.

  “We aren’t lovebirds,” I said. I couldn’t even look at him while I said it.

  “I know,” he said. His voice sounded weird.

  “Ashleigh should know better,” I said. “She’s known us for, like, forever, right?”

  He nodded. Still, he wasn’t making eye contact with me.

  “We’re friends,” I continued. “We’ll always be friends. In fact, I came to tell you something… .”

  He looked up at me, finally making eye contact, and I stalled. What I was supposed to say at that point was that Sun liked him. It was just what he’d wanted to happen. But when I opened my mouth, the words wouldn’t come out. In fact, I found I didn’t like the thought of Alex liking Sun and Sun liking Alex back.

  I was actually jealous.

  This was all new to me, and it had me freaked out. I needed time to step back and think. I did that, literally, standing up and backing toward the door.

  “What?” Alex asked.

  “Nothing.” I shook my head. “I—um—have to go.”

  “But—” Alex stood and started to follow me. He wanted to say something, I could tell, but I couldn’t hear it right now. I couldn’t hear some long explanation of how he didn’t like me that way and he wanted to just be friends. I didn’t recognize any of the things I was feeling right now, but I knew they weren’t good. They meant I’d gone from just hanging out with my friends and enjoying life to being one of those girls who had one of those things they called a crush.

  Yuck.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  That was the first thing Sun asked me when I arrived at my locker after last period. I’d gotten so caught up in the drama with Ashleigh and Alex, I’d forgotten about Sun’s drama.

  “Who?” I asked. I stepped up to my locker and opened it. She couldn’t be talking about Alex after all everyone had been saying all day.

  “Alex,” Sun said, proving me wrong. “You said you were going to talk to him.”

  “You said you wanted me to try to get you together Friday,” I pointed out. “At the lock-in.”

  I gave her a look. She leaned against the locker next to me and stared straight ahead dreamily. I had a feeling she hadn’t heard a word I’d said.

  “He passed me in the hall earlier,” she said. “He didn’t even look at me. Do you think he thinks I’m cute?”

  I stopped short at that thought. Alex. Cute. Instantly an image flashed through my mind. It was an image of Alex sharing his ice cream cone with me the time I’d accidentally dropped mine. That was followed by an image of him smiling at me, that dimple on his left cheek making him look so cute.

  “You don’t think he thinks I’m cute, do you?” she said.

  Wait—what—that’s right. She hadn’t been reading my mind. She’d been asking … asking if I thought Alex thought she was cute. I wasn’t going to get away with not answering this.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You’d have to ask him.”

  I said that, but the last thing I wanted was for her to ask Alex anything. I knew she wouldn’t do that, though. She didn’t even have the courage to walk up and introduce herself to him.

  “I couldn’t do that,” she said. “But you could. I mean, you guys are good friends, right?”

  “Right.�
�� I felt a little sick.

  “You could ask him if he thinks I’m cute. You don’t have to even let him know I like him. Just feel him out and see what he thinks of me first.”

  “What if he says he doesn’t like you?” I asked.

  The words were out before I’d really thought them through. It was kind of a rude thing to say, especially since I already knew he thought she was cute. He’d said he liked her. I could just tell her that and she’d be happy. She might even give me the go-ahead to try and get them together. And that was the last thing I wanted.

  I was a horrible, horrible person.

  “You don’t have to do it right this second, either,” Sun said. She was gabbing away as we walked down the hall toward the buses. “Just as long as you know something by the time we have the lock-in, it’ll be perfect. Then I can try to skate with him or something.”

  I followed her out of the school. “You can get off at my stop,” Sun said as we walked. “I want to show you my wardrobe.”

  “Your wardrobe?” I asked. I was looking at the bus in front of ours, checking each window for signs of Ashleigh. I realized then I would much rather be hanging out with Ashleigh. I hadn’t really realized how much I missed her until then.

  “Yes,” Sun said. We were at our own bus by then. The driver had already closed the doors and Sun banged on them, while still facing me. “I figure you can help put together a look for Friday night. I want to walk in and have everyone go, ‘Wow.’ ”

  She kept talking as we walked down the aisle, making me feel a little nervous. I didn’t mind helping people, but it was causing so many problems between me and my friends. Plus, I couldn’t help Sun get together with Alex now that I knew I liked him.

  We sat behind one of Sun’s friends—some girl from math class. She was hanging on every word we said, and by the time we reached Sun’s house, she’d invited herself along. I was worried she’d ask me to help her, too, but I soon came up with an idea. What if I got Sun’s friend to learn to help her? Then they could help each other and … no need for me, right?

  It was the perfect idea. I smiled as we pulled onto Sun’s street. I might very well be onto something that could really work.