Drama Geek
Chapter 17
The Monday before Prom misery walks up to our table in the form of Tiffani Sobhiani, tossing her hair over her shoulder fixing each of us with a look of utter loathing.
"Here to take me up on my offer from December, took you long enough. Find your panties?" Player taunts her with a deeply depraved grin.
"Eli," Laurel said under her breath next to him. He looks over at her giving her a weaker grin.
"In your dreams asshole, I'm here to hand out the ballots for you to vote for Prom King and Queen," she snarls and throws a pile of them into the center of the table and stalks off.
Jaxon gives me a gentle nudge, "who you voting for Katie?" he asks.
"Doesn't matter. Whoever's at the top of the list I guess?"
"Let's see. Hmmm," he said making a face.
"Who is it?" I ask barely interested.
"Zach and Stacy."
I snort, "of course it is. Good for them."
"There's another couple here. Neil Garson and Amanda Playton. Do we know them?" he asks.
"Neil's the TA for my English class, but I don’t know who Amanda is," I tell him.
"You've seen her, hot babe, really wild, a little bit punk rocker, the one who shaves off her eyebrows and draws them in with a different design every day," Player told us.
"Seriously? Neil is so quiet. The only thing wild about him is his long curly hair," I mumble to myself, "sounds like an odd couple."
"Maybe odd couples are the best kind," Laurel said giving Player a glance, "they've been together for the last three years."
"I do like my 'odd'," he said giving her a hug and a wink.
I overhear my parents in the library that night and peek in. Mom is sitting on Dad’s lap with him in the reading chair.
"I’m really worried Sarah."
"I know honey. I am too. But there’s nothing we can do," she said.
"I’m her father. I’m supposed to fix things for her. It’s killing me seeing her like this all the time."
Mom's talking so softly I have to strain to hear her from the hallway, "it’s obvious something big has happened to change her behavior. I’m assuming it has something to do with Josh because he hasn’t been over to the house for a while. But we just have to wait and let them work it out for themselves."
"I don’t know if I can," Dad said.
"Katie’s not a child anymore and we can’t fix everything all the time. Sometimes our job is to step back and let her get hurt so she can learn to pick herself up and fix things on her own."
"I don’t know how much longer I can do that Sarah. She just seems so miserable. She barely said a word in the car on the way home the few times I picked her up after her play rehearsals. Now she heads straight to her room, she’s not even eating dinner with us most nights."
I have never heard my Dad so sad.
"It will all work out honey, we just have to give her some space and be here for her when she’s ready to talk," Mom, the ever-level-headed psychiatrist told him.
They’re quiet for a minute and I start to head back upstairs to my room when Dad said, “I think you’re right about it having something do with Josh. I ran into David in line at Starbucks last week before work. We sat and talked for a little bit.”
My Dad talked to Josh’s Dad last week? I’m now frozen where I stand.
“What did he say?” Mom asks him. Yeah, what did he say Dad?
“He asked how Katie was doing. I told him a little bit, just said she wasn’t really acting like herself and all. David said he and Carol are worried about Josh. He’s not talking much, when he does he’s talked about not coming back to the track team next fall and apparently he loves to run.”
"Did he say anything else? How's Carol? I haven't talked to her in a couple weeks, I think she's been avoiding my calls," Mom said.
"I don't know. David seemed so, sad, worse even than I remember him being when he cheated on her all those years ago."
Josh's Dad had an affair? Is that why he left? Why they moved?
Oh God, and I accused Josh of two-timing me with Tiffani Sobhiani. No wonder he was so furious when I said it.
"David said he thought things were getting so much better since they moved back here.