Confession Number One
I pushed my glasses up my nose and stood watching as the love of my life danced with Misti Fitzgerald, the prettiest, most popular girl in class, and couldn’t help the tumble that my heart took at seeing him smile down at her.
“He’s such a jerk!” Marcy Belton, my best friend, hissed as she came and stood beside me at the edge of the gymnasium floor, hands on her hips.
I couldn’t have agreed more but I just shrugged. I mean, what could I do other than stare as Lochlan Powers rocked back and forth to the slow song that was playing with another girl in his arms. A girl who wasn’t me. Me, who happened to be his date for the evening.
When the song finished, I then observed with horror him bending and kissing her… on the mouth! Then he held her hand as he led her off the floor.
“Oh, my God,” Marcy bit out. “I’m gonna let him have it!”
She grabbed me by the hand and tugged me with her as she crossed the gym floor, cutting through couples and not even excusing herself, to the opposite corner where all the cool sixth graders were hanging out.
“Marcy! No!” I pleaded, trying to get my hand free from hers, but it was of no use since we’d already arrived at her destination.
“Loch!” she yelled.
When he turned to see who was shouting at him, I watched as he regarded us both with annoyed consideration, me especially.
Marcy marched right up and got in his face. “Simone is your date! You shouldn’t be hanging out with someone else!” She shot Misti a dirty look who gave her one right back.
Loch looked past Marcy’s shoulder at me with cold, disapproving brown eyes which made my face instantly hot. Then I watched in morbid fascination as he brought the side of his mouth up in a smirk and looked back at Marcy.
“I don’t date geeks.”
The kids standing around him laughed to my complete and utter embarrassment and I looked down in humiliation at my first pair of real high heels that I’d ever owned, so cute with the rounded toe and teardrop cutouts. They were black and looked cute with my black and white polka-dotted dress with the flouncy skirt. Compared to the tight, sexy red dress Misti was wearing, I guess mine was kind of babyish but I loved it.
“Let’s go, Marcy,” I begged, then bit my lip as I avoided the eyes of my cruel classmates.
“No, Sim! He shouldn’t be doing this!”
And that was when Loch had gotten mad (probably pretty embarrassed himself at being called out in front of all his friends) and gone for the throat. “Really wanna know why I’m here with her?” The sneer on his face as he tossed a hand toward me let me know that I completely disgusted him. “My mom made me. She felt sorry for her, so she paid me fifty bucks to bring her.”
This got an even bigger laugh from his peers and I wanted to crawl under a rock and die.
“Ah!” I cried out as I sat up in bed, breathing hard.
“Nightmare again?” I heard Marcy holler from the bathroom which was across and down the hall from my bedroom in the cute little house we rented.
I flopped back down on my pillow, scrubbing my eyes with my palms. “Yes,” I mumbled wishing she hadn’t heard me and pissed off that the stupid dreams were happening again.
“Anxiety from all your repressed emotions!” she responded making me groan. Marcy was now a psychology major and I’d been diagnosed by her at least once a week since my return. Yippee.
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled as I stared up at my bedroom ceiling.
I was back in Seattle where I’d been born and mostly raised. Marcy and I had been best friends since kindergarten and there was no telling how many hours we’d spent as little girls plotting and planning how when we got older we’d share a fancy apartment, we’d both date the most handsome boys on Hallervan University’s campus (we’d chosen Hallervan since our parents had gone there and it was smaller than UDub) and we’d both major in veterinary science so we could play with puppies and kittens all day long. But right before my seventh grade year, we’d been devastated when my dad had been transferred to Silicon Valley. And there went our dream.
My older brother Tristan and I had finished school in Palo Alto. Tristan hadn’t been happy about the move since it had been his senior year, which I couldn’t say I blamed him, and he remained angry the entire year at the fact that he’d had to leave his girlfriend and all his friends behind in Seattle. A week after he graduated, he’d packed up all his things and moved back. Our parents hadn’t been thrilled that he’d left so brashly, but they’d understood to a certain extent. When he’d enrolled at UDub that fall, though, all seemed to be forgiven.