Chapter Nine

It was one of those mornings where forcing yourself up really wasn’t that hard as usual. I was actually looking forward to hanging out with both Damien and Charlie at school, considering the fact that I never actually saw Charlie in school.
So we were in the library. Damien had some random book with him, and as he silently read, Charlie and I actually reached the level of our relationship where we began to hold hands. They were slightly sweaty, but it was the type of sweaty that you enjoyed, not the one where you want to just take yourself out of his grasp and take a nice hot shower.
As I talked with Charlie, I saw Chrissy with Alexander. I knew she was only here to terrorize me some more, because like Wal-mart, the library wasn’t just some place she would simply go. Unless of course it had something to do with Alexander.
She was relatively far away from us, but the way she acted it was like she wanted everyone to stare at her awkwardly.
The Great said something. She laughed a little too loudly. “Oh my gosh, Alexander, you’re too hilarious!” People looked at her, as did I, and I saw her take a quick glance at me. It was extremely brief, but because of it, she wanted me to hear her.
I ignored it. Or I ignored it as well as I could. I continued to talk to Charlie, but every now and then I could feel those extremely quick glances looking at me, watching to make sure I was paying attention to the right thing.
It was starting to feel a little awkward, so for one brief moment I turned my head for the briefest moment at Chrissy. Unfortunately, this was probably the worst moment to pay any attention to her.
She grabbed Alexander’s shirt, pulled him towards her, and locked her lips onto his. My jaw dropped.
Damien swore. I looked at him. He was out from under his book, watching Chrissy still kissing Alexander.
She finally let go after what seemed like six minutes, and then smirked at him.
“Wow,” I heard Damien whisper. “What the hell was that for? Just to create drama?”
“Probably,” Charlie said.
“She is trying to get me jealous or something,” I said. “She thinks I still like Alexander.”
“What?” Charlie said.
“Yeah. But I don’t like him anymore, I keep trying to tell her I’m seeing you, Charlie, but her bitchiness is getting in the way of hearing me. I absolutely hate her!” And as I said that, I noticed that even though I have not only never loved anyone before, but I’ve never really hated anyone, either.
“What a bitch,” Damien said, and he went back into the book.
Charlie smiled at me. It was an odd smile, and at an odd time as well. It made me a bit nervous. “Paige,” he said, “if Chrissy won’t listen to you, we’re going to just have to show her.”
“What is that supposed to—” But I didn’t get a chance to ask my question, because the next thing I knew, Charlie’s face was right up against mine and we were kissing. I felt his hands, still sweaty, hold on to mine, and his breath smelled like the vanilla chap stick he always used. To my surprise, I was kissing back, and he was the one who had to pull away.
“I’d appreciate if you didn’t do that in front of me,” Damien said.
I looked at him to see if he was angry, but he was smiling, so I didn’t take too much concern.
Charlie smiled at me, and I smiled back. I looked over at Chrissy, who was looking at me, mouth agape.
Finally, the bell rang, but this was a time that I didn’t want to end. Charlie walked me to my history class, kissed me on the cheek, and left for his own class. I saw Chrissy standing by my seat, smiling at me.
“Hey, Paige, long time no see!” she said.
“What the hell do you want, Chrissy?”
“Oh, I don’t want anything. So I hear you’re dating Charlie Breton.”
“What if I am?”
She giggled, but it wasn’t the type of giggle that made you want to start laughing. “I think that’s adorable. Losers in love.”
“Shut up. Charlie is not a loser.”
“Maybe, but you still are.”
I narrowed my eyebrows.
“Paige, dear, I’m so happy for you. I’m glad to see you’ve given up on Alexander, because he is much too out of your league.”
“Charlie is just as good, if not better, than Alexander,” I snapped at her.
“Yes, of course dear. If you call being lame, not so funny, and working at Wal-mart good.”
I opened my mouth to argue with her, but I got stuck because I couldn’t think of anything.
“It’s all right, darling. At least it is someone who is not that much better than you, therefore you cannot have him. I’m proud. Oh, hey, Great!”
I turned around, and sure enough, Alexander was walking towards us.
“Hey, Chrissy. And Paige.”
“Hi,” I said, even though I didn’t particularly want to talk to him.
“Hey, Great,” Chrissy said, pushing me out of the way to get to him. “Did you hear?”
“Hear? Hear what?”
“That Paige here is going out with Charlie Breton!”
He looked at me, but I didn’t look back. “Charlie Breton? Wow, that’s great, Paige.”
“Isn’t it?” Chrissy said, right when I was about to talk.
“Yeah,” Alexander said. “And apparently I’m going out with Chrissy. I didn’t even know before today.”
She winked at him. “You got that right, Great.”
I sat down in my seat, and tried to ignore them as they continued flirting.
I was so glad to get out of there by the end of the period and leave for Chemistry to meet up with Damien. Damien was like my salvation from being with the Great and Chrissy.
“Dude, there have been so many rumors, it’s crazy,” Damien told me. “And it’s only been one period!”
“Seriously?” I asked, even though I honestly wasn’t too surprised. “Like what?”
“They’re not even rumors as much as they’re fictional stories,” Damien explained. “Like, people are saying that you still liked the Great, and when you saw Chrissy kissing him you kissed the nearest guy, who so happened to be Charlie, just for spite.”
My jaw dropped. “What the hell?”
Damien shook his head. “People in this school are idiots.”
“I am going to have to agree for now,” I said.
“Yeah. It’s stupid what people talk about around here. I think the only reason they talk about other people is because they’re so flawed themselves that they don’t want to people to talk about their own problems.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s so dumb. What ever happened to ‘do to others as you’d want done to yourself’? I would hate it if people found out or talked about any of my huge problems, so that’s why I don’t talk about other people’s lives.”
“People are dumbasses.”
“Very true, Paige. And it’s bad enough being talked about, but having lies and false rumors spread about someone…. Ugh, it’s so stupid.”
“It’s all Chrissy’s fault, you know?” I said. “I mean, I feel stupid for noticing it so late, but if Chrissy wasn’t such a bitch, everything would be so much better.”
“I agree. But what can we do about it?”
I thought about it. There was nothing we could do about it. She was a bitch, she is a bitch, and she would always be a bitch. If only we could teach her a lesson.
“She needs a dose of her own medicine,” I told Damien. “’Do onto others as you’d want to be done to yourself’, is that right? We need to teach that bitch a lesson. We need to show her not to mess with us, because we can mess with her just as easily.”
“Hm,” Damien said. “That appeals to me very greatly. But how?”
This hadn’t occurred to me. “I’ll think of something.”
Damien smiled. “That sounds so awesome. Whatever you’re dong, I want so in on it. All right?”
“Definitely.” I smiled back.
At lunch Charlie was telling me all the rumors that he had heard in the past couple of periods. After hearing these stupid fantasies, I began to start losing faith in what everyone called people.
“Just once,” Charlie started, “Chrissy needs to stop all this retartedness.”
Damien and I both looked at each other. I could tell he was thinking the same thing that I was: we shouldn’t tell Charlie about our plan. I didn’t know why, but I felt like we shouldn’t tell too many people.
“Chrissy is a bitch,” I said. “End of story.”
It was amusing how we could spend a whole lunch hour eating and bashing on how stupid and bitchy Chrissy was. For once, I was actually disappointed to leave for drama.
We finally finished watching that stupid movie. I was glad, because watching movies was the least favorite part of drama class.
After school, Damien drove himself to work, and instead I got a ride with Charlie. His car wasn’t as old as Damien’s, but it was a minivan that looked like it might have been his mother’s before he started driving it. It smelled a tiny bit like cheese, but it was still comfortable.
“Chrissy angers me,” Charlie said.
“I know. I’ve never really hated anyone as much as her.”
“I mean, to be honest, I think she’s the one spreading all the shit rumors around the school.”
“But some of them are about her, too.”
“Yeah, all the good ones are about her. But they’re all against you. Haven’t you noticed that?”
“I’m kind of trying to ignore them all.”
“Oh. Well, that’s one way to deal with it.”
“Don’t worry,” I told him, smiling to myself. “We’re going to deal with it.”
We pulled up in the Wal-mart parking lot, and went inside the store.
“Paige, you coming in with Charlie today?” David asked as we walked in.
“Hey, David. Yeah.”
“Hm. Damien with you?”
“No,” Charlie answered. “He came here by himself. He’s not here yet? He was ahead of us most of the way.”
“He was ahead of you the whole way?” David asked.
“For a little bit,” I told him. “And then we kind of lost him. We thought he might’ve taken an alternate route or something.”
David frowned at us. “There’s been something wrong with that boy for a while. Well, you two better get to work until he comes.”
Charlie and I nodded, and went to our respective departments.
Working like this was extremely quiet when Damien wasn’t there. But it gave me a lot of time to brainstorm. What could we do to get back at Chrissy?
Spread rumors about her? I thought.
No, you idiot, the other side of my brain argued. She would just spread more about you. And obviously, rumors are going to have no affect on her. She’s used to being talked about.
Oh, right. What about trying to break her and Alexander up?
I don’t think so. Everyone would think you were trying to get Alexander.
Fine, reject all of my ideas. What if we do something horrible to her?
Like what?
A prank.
A prank. It seemed perfect. A perfect way to give her a dose of her own medicine. A perfect way to show her that I am not to be messed with. A perfect way to tell her off.
But what? What could one possibly do for a revenge prank? This would take some serious planning.
Finally, Damien arrived.
“Hey, where were you?”
“Oh, I just needed to get something from home before I could come over here.”
“What did you need to get?” I asked.
“Um… It doesn’t matter anyway, I didn’t find it.”
I raised my eyebrow. “Okay, then…. Oh, hey! I found out what we could do to get back at Chrissy.”
“What?”
“Yeah. We could pull some horrible torturing prank on her. I mean, I haven’t thought of anything yet, but doesn’t it seem like a good idea?”
“A prank? Yeah. We’re going to have to come up with something, though.”
I smiled. “Sweet. We can start coming up with ideas.”
“All right. We’ll do that. But right now, we’ve got to get to work.”
I wanted to keep talking about the prank with Damien, but whenever I brought it up, he would always stray off the topic.
“I think it should have something to do with coffee,” I told Damien, “because of what she did to me that day.”
“Good idea. Hey, can you go check that isle?”
I frowned, but went. I was trying to think of what to do with the coffee. Dump it on her like she did to me? Drown her in it?
I wanted coffee to play a part, just for irony’s sake, but I couldn’t think of how to play it into the whole scheme.
“Hey, Paige,” a voice said. I turned around, and it was Charlie. “Still working?”
“Yeah, Damien is drowning me in it.”
“Haha. Well, maybe we could use a break.”
So Charlie held my hand with his sweaty one again, and we walked together to the break room, where I was not surprised to see Katie sitting there, taking a sip from a mug of coffee.
“Oh my goodness, Katie,” Charlie said, “you’re drinking coffee?”
“Yes, Charlie boy,” she said. “I promise, Katie girl will not go crazy.”
I laughed.
Charlie smiled at her. “You swear?”
Katie nodded. “I will go crazy after I eat that last packet of M&Ms,” she told him.
He rolled his eyes, but kept smiling. “Just don’t hurt anyone.”
“I will not hurt anyone, Charlie boy!”
“Good job, Katie girl. How long have you been in here?”
“I have not been here long,” she said, voice still childish. “But Katie girl will go if Charlie boy wants to be alone with Paige kid.”
I looked at Charlie, and then back at Katie.
“It’s all right, Katie,” he told her. “You can stay.”
“Yay for Katie girl!” She smiled at him. I always wondered why she always acted like a little child.
Charlie sat down, and I followed and sat down next to him.
“Where’s Angela?” Charlie asked Katie.
“Katie girl does not know where Angela girl is,” she said. “Working?”
“If I were Angela, I would’ve come in here with you,” Charlie said, laughing slightly.
“How come?” I asked.
“Katie is drinking coffee… wouldn’t you be concerned?”
I laughed.
“That’s not very nice, Charlie boy.”
Charlie smiled.
As I watched Katie sip her coffee, I couldn’t help but think about what role coffee would play in the prank. I mean, if the prank didn’t have coffee in it, I would be very disappointed.
“Oh, Paige,” Charlie said, pulling me out of my trance, “you know, there’s a dance coming up at school. Just wondering if you were going?”
“A dance?” I had never been to one before. The idea of a dance didn’t particularly appeal to me. I went to one dance before, and I literally just stood at the wall for the whole thing.
“Yeah. I think it’s semi-formal,” Charlie explained. “You up for it?”
“Yes!” Katie exclaimed. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Paige kid should go to semi-formal dance with Charlie boy!”
“Gee, I don’t know…” I said, right before I got a brilliant idea. “Actually, I think I might go.”
Charlie smiled. “Sweet.”
“YAY!” Katie screamed. “I want to see Charlie boy dance with Paige girl.”
“I’m not sure if that’ll happen, Katie,” Charlie said, looking at me, “unless Paige is okay with it.”
“Of course I’m okay with it,” I told him. “Do you know when Damien will come back here?”
“Damien?” Charlie repeated. “No, I don’t know when he’s coming back. He’s like, working a lot right now. I have no idea why.”
I frowned. “I think I’ll go out and find him.”
“Oh,” Charlie said, his voice sounding a little disappointed. “Okay, then. I’ll see you in a bit, then.”
“Yeah. Don’t worry, I’ll be back.” And I left the break room.
Damien wasn’t where he usually was, so I had to search the entire store until I finally found him at the register.
“Dude, we need to talk,” I told him, anticipation in my voice.
“What’s up?”
“You know that prank we’re supposed to be planning?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“I know when and were.”
“When? Where?”
“At the school dance!”
He was silent for a moment, thinking about it. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“Yes. And I’ve been thinking about it for a while. This prank is going to last three days. She won’t expect that because once part one is over, she’ll think that’s the end when it hasn’t even been the beginning.”
He smirked at me. “I like the way you think, Paige Aarroh.”
I smiled back. “Yes. This will be epic.”