Epic Fail

  “We’re not allowed to,” she said sadly.

  As the bus rattled down a steep canyon road in the Palisades toward the ocean, I thought, Hey, maybe the brakes won’t work and the bus will crash and we’ll all die.

  It was a nice thought, but we arrived safely at the beach a minute later.

  We filed off the bus, and I said good-bye to my seatmate, who stopped to ask Cantori an unnecessary question. I trudged over to where the two girls on my team were already bookending Derek, and greeted them all. Sylvie said hi, but Chelsea gave Derek a raised-eyebrow look, and they pointedly ignored me. I felt my cheeks burn and looked out at the ocean like it was fascinating. Which I guess it was, being the ocean and all, but I was too uncomfortable at that moment to appreciate its wild beauty.

  Isaac came off the bus a few moments later. He was a slight, small sophomore with overgrown curly brown hair, which he tugged on in moments of stress—which seemed to be most moments in his life.

  He went straight for the packets Cantori was handing out and eagerly started leafing through the worksheets, while Cantori said, “You, my friends, will be at station number four.” He pointed down the beach a little ways. “Your telescope is set up and pointing right at—” He stopped and shook his head with a grin. “Nope, I’m not going to tell you. I’ll let you figure it out for yourselves. You have all the info you need to ID it in your packet.” Instead of his usual jacket and tie, he was wearing a T-shirt and Windbreaker, all very “cool guy in his off-hours” casual. His hair was ruffling a bit in the wind, and he gave me a wink that suggested he knew that every girl in the class had a crush on him, and he was okay with that.

  I said to Isaac, “Let’s go.” We headed toward the telescope, the other three trailing behind us.

  It was a beautiful evening, a little cool, but the breeze coming off the ocean was mild and left a salty taste on my lips. Back home—on the East Coast—an October wind could chill to the bone, but here it just gently moved my hair around. The sun had set, but the sky was pink and yellow above the horizon, and it wasn’t completely dark out yet, just twilighty.

  It was, I thought—a little wistfully—the perfect setting for a romantic evening. I wished I had someone to share it with.

  As if on cue, Isaac spoke. His voice was low and soft. “Do you think he’ll grade us as a team or as individuals?”

  Guess our thoughts had been running in different directions.

  I said I didn’t know, and we arrived at the telescope that had a big “4” label dangling around its neck. “Let’s see what we need to do first.” Isaac started flipping through the pages of his packet. He glanced up at the sky anxiously. “It’s getting too dark to read.”

  “Cantori said we should bring flashlights,” Sylvie said. The three of them had caught up to us. “Did any of you guys bring one?”

  Isaac yanked at his hair. “I never heard him say that. When did he say that? Was it in class? I never heard him say that.”

  “It was on the bus form.”

  “It looks like that group has two.” I pointed to team three. “Maybe they’d lend us one.” I looked at Derek. “They will if you ask.” It was true, and since he already hated me, I figured I couldn’t offend him anymore.

  “Fine,” he said with a cold shrug. “I’ll ask.”

  Sylvie immediately said, “I’ll go with you,” and attached herself to his side.

  Outmaneuvered, Chelsea pouted angrily and looked around for someone to take it out on.

  And there I was.

  “Hey, Elise, how’s your sister doing?” she asked with venomous sweetness. “I haven’t seen her around much lately.”

  “She was sick.”

  “I see. And that explains why she and my brother aren’t talking . . . how?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he’s a germophobe.”

  “Maybe he’s realizing some people aren’t as nice as they pretended to be at first.”

  “That’s so true,” I said. “Your brother seemed like such a good guy.”

  “Until your sister went all psycho on him.”

  “‘Psycho’?” I repeated, genuinely surprised. “Juliana? What are you talking about?”

  “We got it!” Sylvie sang out, waving the flashlight triumphantly as she and Derek rejoined us.

  “She went totally psycho-bitch on him,” Chelsea said, ignoring Sylvie. “Derek knows all about it, don’t you, Derek?”

  “I bet he does,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Chelsea asked.

  “All I know is that Chase spends a few days traveling alone with his buddy and suddenly he’s like a different person.”

  “He’s not the one who cut things off with no explanation,” Derek said in a low voice.

  “No,” I agreed. “He’s the one who sent nasty texts about how much fun he was having without her—and with someone else.”

  Chelsea said with an abrupt change of tone, “Come on, guys, we should get to work.”

  “I can read this now!” Isaac was shining the flashlight on the packet of information. “Who wants to look first? It’s already aimed, so don’t touch it except to focus.”

  “You go first,” I said.

  He scuttled over to the telescope and squinted into the eyepiece. “Cool! You guys have to see this! It’s incredible.”

  No one moved. Derek was staring at me, his eyes narrowed to slits. “Wait—what do you mean ‘nasty texts’?”

  “One after another,” I said. “Telling her how happy he was to be away from her.”

  “That’s impossible,” Derek said.

  “I saw them myself.”

  Chelsea tugged on Derek’s arm. “We only have, like, an hour to do all the work.”

  “I see it!” Isaac called out, still crouching but now waving a hand wildly. “I see . . . something. Wait, what is that?”

  “Let me look,” Sylvie said, and he obligingly ducked out of the way.

  “You see it?” he asked, hovering. “You see it?”

  “I don’t see anything,” she said. “Oh, wait—I think I’m closing the wrong eye.”

  “It’s impossible,” Derek said to me again. He irritably jerked his arm away from Chelsea’s grip without even looking at her. “Chase didn’t even have his phone.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He didn’t have his phone,” he repeated. “People were sexting at the tourney last year, and the coaches from the different schools decided at the last minute just to ban all cell phones this time.”

  “But Juliana got a bunch of texts from Chase while you guys were gone.”

  “Why is this so hard for you to understand?” Then he said slowly and carefully, like I was a little kid, “He couldn’t have sent any texts.”

  I thought for a moment. Then I looked over at Chelsea—who seemed suddenly fascinated by the pink clouds clustered at the horizon. My face got hot with anger. I turned back to Derek, whose own eyes were widening with sudden insight.

  “Come here,” he said, cutting off what I was about to say. He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me down closer to the ocean, away from the others. Chelsea was watching and took a step to follow us, but Derek flashed her a savage Stay away look. She stopped but watched us uneasily.

  Derek didn’t drop my arm until the sand was damp and packed under our feet. He faced me. “Okay. Let’s go over what happened. Me first. Chase and I leave on this trip and all he’ll talk about is how fantastic Juliana is. Then we get back and she refuses to talk to him or look at him—and she’s blocked him from her phone. He has no idea why. Okay, your turn.”

  “Juliana was missing Chase like crazy, and then she started getting these super-nasty texts—sent from his phone—all about how he—”

  He cut me off. “Chase didn’t send any texts. End of story.”

  “Yeah, we’ve established that. But someone did.” We both glanced up the beach at Chelsea, who pretended she wasn’t watching us, even though she was.


  Derek kicked at a piece of seaweed. “They were pretty bad, huh?”

  I nodded. “He—or whoever it was—called her a ‘dead end.’ She thought he didn’t like her anymore, and then, when a girl answered his phone, she assumed he’d found someone else, so she avoided him when he came home to make it easier on both of them. Juliana would never be mean.”

  “Neither would Chase.” He groaned. “What a mess.”

  “We both know what happened, right? I mean, if Chase left his phone at home, and a girl answered it . . . it’s pretty obvious.”

  “I can’t believe she’d do that.” We both looked up the sand again. Chelsea was wearing tight jeans and a sleeveless ruffled top that was too light for a fall night on the beach. She must have been freezing, but she looked great. Derek said, “She can be a total pain in the butt, but she and Chase are close, and this really hurt him.”

  “I can believe it,” I said. “My mother had just suspended her from school, and she was mad at Juliana for not doing anything about it.”

  He considered that, his expression unreadable as he watched Chelsea moving around the equipment.

  “Also,” I said, “people have a way of justifying what they’re doing. I mean, if she looked at it as saving her brother from a really awful family . . .” I hesitated, and then said, “She wouldn’t be the first person to feel that way about us, you know.”

  Flashlight beams shimmered in the dark around us like enormous drunken fireflies. “I have nothing against you or your sister,” Derek said quietly. “And I’m sorry if I said anything offensive about your family.”

  “It’s okay.” I was surprised to find that I wasn’t angry at him anymore. At least now I knew he hadn’t poisoned Chase’s mind against Juliana.

  Someone else had done that.

  We fell silent again. I kept sneaking little looks up at his face, though. And caught him sneaking one at mine.

  Chelsea unwisely chose that moment to come fetch us. “You guys might want to think about helping out here,” she said loftily, as she picked her way carefully through the sand. She was wearing platform sandals that I guess were better for the beach than her usual spike heels, but sneakers—like mine—would have made more sense. “I mean, I don’t mind that you’re not contributing, but the others might.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Derek said tonelessly. He headed up the beach but said over his shoulder, “Sit with me on the bus, will you, Elise? I want to finish our conversation.”

  “Okay.” I was following him back toward our group when Chelsea caught my arm.

  “What did you say to him?” she hissed. “You said something about me, didn’t you? He gave me a weird look. What did you say?”

  “Maybe he’s just not that into you,” I suggested, and shrugged loose of her grip.

  In the end, Derek, Isaac, and I did most of the work—or, more accurately, Isaac did most of it, and Derek and I helped. Chelsea sulked and Sylvie posed seductively against the telescope and occasionally wrote things down on the worksheets for us in her childishly round handwriting. Thanks to Isaac’s nervous energy and focus, we finished up well before the allotted time, which left the five of us standing around with nothing to do.

  Isaac offered to find some other planets with the telescope, and I told him I’d happily look at them. Sylvie and Chelsea were less entranced with the offer. Chelsea complained to Derek that she was freezing.

  “Go wait on the bus,” was Derek’s uninterested response.

  “Come with me?” You could see the nervousness in the look she gave him: she knew something was going on.

  All he said was, “No, thanks.”

  Sylvie said, “I’m cold, too.” Like Chelsea, she had neglected to wear a jacket. “I’ll go with you.”

  Chelsea waited one more moment, but Derek didn’t show any signs of changing his mind, so she gave up, and the two girls moved off.

  Derek and I stood side by side, watching Isaac fiddle with the telescope.

  “So,” Derek said.

  “So,” I agreed, and then we were silent again, but it felt amiable, like something had changed—yet again—between us. I didn’t know if we were friends, but we weren’t enemies, and that was an improvement over yesterday. Which made me wonder what tomorrow would bring.

  Given our history, probably more enmity. We never seemed to be able to stay friends for long. At this moment, now that I wasn’t angry at him, that seemed kind of sad to me.

  People were goofing off all around us. It was nighttime, we were on the beach, and the weekend was beckoning. A couple of guys had rolled up their pants and waded into the water.

  “You tempted?” Derek said teasingly, gesturing toward them. “I know how much you like to get wet.”

  “Only when I’m unique,” I said loftily. “Other wet people cheapen the experience.”

  Cantori came racing down to the ocean, yelling at the waders to get out immediately. “Cut it out! This is a liability issue for the school!” No trace of his usual geniality. Guess he was having a rough night.

  “So much for that idea,” Derek said as the boys cheerfully complied.

  “I can’t find anything.” Isaac twisted around to look at us. “I think something’s wrong with the telescope.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s such a beautiful night. Just enjoy it.”

  Isaac wasn’t the kind of kid to stand around gazing up at the stars—he was the kind of kid to stoop, peering into a telescope at the stars. So he went back to doing that.

  The moon had moved higher in the sky, and it was actually easier now to see than it had been earlier. I stole another peek at Derek.

  I had disliked him so much before, and all that not liking him had been a sort of defense against his handsomeness. Whenever I used to look at his face, I’d convince myself that all I saw were the proud, pampered looks of a celebrity brat. But now that I wasn’t hating him so much—hardly hating him at all, really—I mean, almost not at all—I was suddenly aware of how his cheekbones slanted under his dark and thoughtful eyes.

  It made me think that maybe I should have gone to the semiformal with him.

  Cantori must have suddenly noticed the change in mood from scholarly to celebratory—half the class was now working on an enormous sand castle—because he abruptly called for our attention and told us all to get back on the bus. He stayed behind with his friends to help pack up the telescopes and wearily waved us on our way.

  Derek scored us an empty bench and let me slide in first, so I could have the window seat. We put on our seat belts and listened to the bus driver’s obligatory safety speech about exit windows and what to do in an emergency.

  And then . . . silence.

  Awkward silence.

  Really awkward silence.

  All around us, people were chattering away, laughing, gossiping, screaming, whispering . . .

  And we continued to say nothing while the bus rolled out of the big parking lot and onto the Pacific Coast Highway. I actually thought we’d make it the entire twenty minutes to school without either of us saying a word, and was wondering why Derek had even bothered to sit with me when he finally spoke.

  “We have to get them back together.”

  By the time the bus parked in front of the school, we had what you might call a plan.

  Derek took hold of the seat in front of us and swung himself up into the aisle. He held out his hand toward me. I took it and started to rise smoothly to my feet—

  Only to be slammed back at the waist by the seat belt I’d forgotten to undo first.

  “Fail,” I said, ducking my head to cover my embarrassment as I let go of his hand and quickly unfastened the buckle.

  “At least you were safe at any speed.” He grinned down at me, his hand still extended.

  Derek Edwards was smiling at me again, after a week and a half of glares.

  It didn’t suck.

  I took his hand once more, and this time managed to get up without any additional h
umiliation. As I slid into the aisle, the guy behind me—a junior named Jesse—tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Webster never showed and he was supposed to be on my team. You know what the story is?”

  I quickly said, “No idea,” but his question had wiped the smile off of Derek’s face.

  He dropped my hand and faced front.

  I didn’t know much about Jesse, but he sure had lousy timing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I had called home as we were packing up to leave the beach, so Juliana was already waiting at school for me in the minivan. As soon as I opened the car door, she said, “We have to hurry. Mom’s a wreck and Dad asked me to come back as quickly as possible.”

  “What’s wrong with Mom?” I asked, getting in.

  “The parents of that boy she suspended—the one who was making out with Chelsea—called the head of the Board of Trustees to complain about her.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  She shook her head as she pulled out of the lot. “She was on the phone for two hours defending herself—like she had done something wrong, not them.”

  “That’s so unfair.”

  “I know. Her job’s tough.”

  “We should be more supportive.”

  “We really should.”

  “On another matter . . .” I told her about Chase’s cell phone.

  Like I had earlier, she took a while to absorb the information. “He definitely didn’t have it with him?”

  “Definitely. Come on, Jules, think about it. It’s totally not like Chase to say those things.”

  “But I’ve spent the last few days convincing myself it is.” She thought some more. “You really think it was Chelsea?”

  “He left his phone at home. Who else?”

  “Why would she do that? I thought we got along okay. Except for that night when—” She halted. “That’s why. Because I didn’t help her with Mom.”

  “You have my permission to loathe her.”

  “So he really didn’t write those things! I should—” She gasped suddenly. “Oh my God, Elise!”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been so mean to him since he came back!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Derek promised me he’d explain the whole thing to Chase. He was sure he would understand.”