Chapter Ten

That night wasn't one of much sleep. On my return home, I offered a quick and teary goodbye to Anna. I raced up into my bedroom to avoid my parents and to avoid them asking why I was crying after a date. To prevent a kiss, I'd turned my neck so quickly it felt like I was dying. It was silly. That pain happened all the time, but it was the mixture of embarrassment and pain meshed together that made it hard to ignore. The initial pain didn't linger long, but the shock of what happened stayed with me for hours.

To make matters worse, I'd fallen asleep at around five o'clock and slept through my alarm the next morning. Meaning, when I did finally wake up, I had no time for breakfast and scurried into the back of Sabrina's car feeling like a hot mess and starving.

My stomach begged for sustenance. In my haste to get out of the house, I'd also forgotten my purse. Even if we were early enough to grab something from the canteen, it wasn't a viable option.

Then there was Sabrina who as soon as I strapped in my seatbelt, raised her hydro cup flask into the air and made a clinking sound with her mouth, mocking me from the other morning. The joke was on her. My thermos flask was way better than hers. She couldn't fit as much cereal as I had in her little cup if she tried.

The response she expected didn't happen because she rolled her eyes and turned back around to drive.

The first five minutes of the ride was quiet, with Anna requesting the occasional sip from Sabrina's tea. When they stepped out of their drowsy morning moods and started talking, the conversation didn't revolve around themselves too much.

"Why is she all weird today?" Sabrina asked Anna about me, making me stare harder out the window with a scowl.

"Because she thinks she did something embarrassing . . . which she didn't, but she thinks she did."

"Why? What did she do? Was it on her date?" When Anna only nodded in response, Sabrina stayed quiet for a second before asking, "Did she spill something on herself?"

Anna let out a snort. "No. But she did knock over a fry basket because Maisie covered them all in ketchup."

Sabrina glanced briefly at her sister. "A rational and not all that embarrassing response. Maisie destroyed their food."

"Actually, Sam, that's the most embarrassing thing you did on the date," Anna said. "And she didn't even notice you did that. Score."

"That wasn't it?" Sabrina stopped at a red light. "It must have been really embarrassing then."

"No! It wasn't," Anna defended me.

"You won't mind telling me what she did then?"

"Sam thinks it's embarrassing, though."

"Well by you keeping it a secret for her, you're silently communicating to her that it is in fact embarrassing."

Anna spun around in the chair. "It really wasn't, Sam. Can I tell her?"

I shrugged and put on earphones, so I didn't have to hear their conversation about it.

Even though Sabrina and I weren't close anymore, it didn't mean that we both didn't get inside scoop about each other's lives; even if we didn't share them with each other directly. It was a given that what we told Anna, she would discuss it with her best friend or her sister. With our permission, of course.

It had been a silent agreement over the years between Sabrina and me to pretend we didn't know each other's secrets. Obviously, we were not to speak about what we learned to other people other than Anna. It made the crack in our friendship easier for us to handle and for Anna to handle.

A quiet guilt on both our parts for putting Anna in the middle of our silence. Ever since the night of the party, it had been the most we'd spoken to each other in years. It was almost a positive direction where she had saved me from embarrassment not once but twice. But last night on my date with Maisie, Sabrina wasn't there to magically swoop in to keep me from making a total fool out of myself.

I only took out my earphones when Sabrina was pulling into the carpark. She didn't hesitate to speak directly to me. "You wanted a kiss on the cheek instead of the lips. That's your choice. It's not embarrassing. It's your right. Goodbye, ladies."

She walked across the cark park, and when Anna and I got out of the car, she raised her hand in the air and clicked the button of her keys, locking the vehicle. Power move much?

Anna hooked her arm in mine and walked me into the school, and before we departed ways for Homeroom. After telling me that she only told Sabrina about avoiding the kiss and not the fact that I thought I'd broken my neck and cried, she invited me to join her at the gay-straight alliance meeting. That way so that she could see me considering we didn't have time to meet up for prom prep that day.

Over the next few hours in and out of classrooms and not paying attention to a single word the teachers said, I had come to agree with both the Jenkin sisters' assessment of the situation. Sure, it was embarrassing for me, it always would be, but most importantly, the only people who knew that I thought I'd die from that neck pain was Anna. Maisie didn't know, and she never needed to.

End of story.

Feeling refreshed and finally ready to tackle the day—albeit starved, I headed to the gay-straight alliance meeting, and two things stood out straight away. Everyone sat in a semi-circle – everyone being ten people, and they all faced the door, so they all noticed me slipping in, and once they did see me, the room went quiet. I was a newbie. It was to be expected. Right?

The second thing that stood out was the fact that not only was Gerald sat in with the group, but Jack was there too, holding each other's hands.

They were gay.

Or at the very least, they liked guys.

Meaning . . . they probably weren't interested in what was going on with my shirt that day. Slightly embarrassing but okay. A relief. The only seat available was between Jack and Anna, but before I could slip back out of the room, she patted the chair with an encouraging smile.

"Hey, you made it." She handed me a leaflet. "We're setting up a book club."

"I don't know how you're juggling everything and not breaking down every minute of every day."

"Well . . . " she whispered, leaning in close to me. "I figured if you can find time for dating . . . I can set up a book club."

"I . . . Anna. You literally witnessed my miniature breakdown. How did you get any inspiration from that?"

"Maybe if you had access to books featuring characters such as yourself, you would have realized that what you did wasn't embarrassing at all."

"I thought I was dying. That was the embarrassing part."

"Oh good, you're open to talking about your embarrassing date." Gerald shuffled his chair closer to mine so that he cut off Jack. "Maisie's twitter rant was focused only on her side of things, but we all want to hear why you didn't want to kiss her back."

". . . Twitter rant?"

"She tweeted about it?" Anna took her phone out of her pocket and typed rapidly into the device. "Shit. Accidentally liked one. Great. I have to start a new account now with a new name, a new identity. Shame. I really liked my profile picture too."

I grabbed her phone because she deactivated her account on some perfectionist whim. "Let me see first."

"Did you really run away?" Gerald asked, reading over my shoulder. "And you didn't text her?"

"Gerald, mind your business," Jack reprimanded.

"Sam, you didn't text her?" Anna repeated the question, and I reread the tweets again.

"More importantly, why didn't you kiss her?" someone else asked.

"Yeah, Sam?" Sasha piped in.

"What the hell is happening?" I muttered.

"Woah, woah, woah." From the other side of the room, Parker stood up and pointed at every single person. "You shouldn't be asking her 'why didn't you kiss her' as if she's rude for not kissing her. You wouldn't ask Sam why she did kiss her, would you? It's no one else's business but her own. Back off."

Sasha fanned the leaflet over her face. "It's public content. So, it kind of is everyone's business now."

Parker took the leaflet and whacked Sasha over the back of the head. "Posted by Maisie. Not Sam. God that girl even posts when she's on the shitter, I swear."

I stood up, and despite Parker's valiant attempt to stop people from asking, their eyes demanded answers. I thumbed toward the door and twisted on my heels, quickly escaping the gay-straight alliance room.

Before I could escape down the hallway, Parker called out my name and inclined her finger toward herself with an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry about that, Sam, it's supposed to be such a welcoming place, but yeah, that didn't work out the best for you."

I leaned against the locker. "It's not a big deal."

"It is," she disagreed. "You probably didn't even think twice about the whole thing, and then there's Maisie posting about it instead of asking you, and now everyone's asking about it. It sucks."

"Does she do that . . . like with you guys too?"

"She subtweets everything. Sometimes I won't find out she's pissed with me until someone asks me about it."

"Right . . ."

"Don't worry about it too much. Oh, and hey, you know what? Me and Sabrina wanted to do this cute post, you know, start branding ourselves now. Maybe we can incorporate like, a cheek kiss or something so people can stop talking about you. You free tomorrow?"

This day kept getting weirder and weirder. "To record you guys?"

She nodded and typed into her phone. "I'm sending you an email with our ideas. Thanks so much for doing this for us, Sam, it'll be awesome if there are two prom queens. Sure, we have coming out parties, but like, we obviously want to get to a stage where we don't have to do that—to a stage where people don't think twice about having two prom queens or prom kings. Anyway, I have to go back inside, but if you want to join the book club, never mind those fools inside. Come if you want to."

Whipping out a badge that now had a heart with both her and Sabrina's face on it, she planted it on my coat before going back into the classroom.

Well, that settles that. I wouldn't be going on a second date with Maisie Adams.

Online drama that rapidly turned into real-life questions? No, thank you.

The art room was empty, so I plonked myself in there to have a bit of 'me' time and sketched the Fairly Odd Parents characters starting with Wanda. It wasn't too long that the door to the room opened and a person sat opposite me and slid a purple mug flask and tinfoil wrapped sandwich in my direction.

"Hello, Sabrina," I said.

"Hello, Sam." She tapped her finger against the table. "People are speculating on why you ran away after she kissed you on the cheek."

"I'm aware."

"It will blow over soon, things like that always do."

"I know. And thanks for this." I sipped on the tea and sighed. "You always did make the best tea." When she remained quiet and scanned over the start of my drawing, I laughed. "You want to know why, don't you?"

Caught out, she shrugged. "You were excited about the date. Waking up in my bed didn't faze you, but a kiss on the cheek did? I'm curious. Doesn't mean I need to know the answer."

"True."

"It was the tomato ketchup, wasn't it? It destroyed any chance of you kissing her," she teased.

"Honestly, that was super yuck."

"You destroyed the fries. You got your revenge. It's okay now, Sam."

I laughed. "Fine. I'll tell you."

She blinked innocently up at me, but I knew better. "I don't even want to know."

"I don't know why I turned my cheek," I answered honestly. "Maybe it was the ketchup," I joked. "But when I did turn, my neck broke, and I was dying, and I ran so she couldn't see that her attempt at kissing me nearly killed me."

Silence.

More silence.

Then a whispered, "No . . . Sam."

"You can't tell anyone!"

"I won't," she promised. "It's worse than I imagined."

"I know."

"At least she doesn't know that. But Samantha, don't tell her that when you talk—and you will be talking about it—because it will be posted online."

"Learned my lesson by going on a date with her."

Sabrina stood up and headed to the door, but before she left, she cocked her head to the side. "You cried, didn't you? That's why you ran."

Narrowing my eyes, I said, "You can't tell anyone!"

Raising her hands defensively, she said, "I won't! Pinkie swear."

"Okay. I believe you. Oh, and Sabrina?"

"Yes?"

"Jack and Gerald are together."

". . . What?"

"Yup."