Teen Ink

Tuesday~ Smiles

Natasha called me at five in the morning.
“Hey, get up you have to get ready, Amanda.” She said, loud and obnoxiously in my ear.
“Ever hear of five more minutes?” I asked her, my voice sleepy.
“No such thing. Hey you should wear those white shorts with that top you like so much.” She said, forcing me to get up. I strode over to my closet and pulled out the clothes as ordered.
“Got it, hey how did you do your makeup yesterday?” I asked her, knowing that would make her talk for a while and give me a chance to set the phone down and get dressed.
It does, and when I’m done getting dressed I pick the phone back up.
“… and you have to remember to go from dark to light shading, never the other way around. The regular black to white shadow would look good with your brown eyes.” She says and after another minute of hearing her talk about colors that would be good for me I put the phone back down, clicking speaker, and poke a pair of contacts into my eyes.
“Are you there?” Tasha finally says.
“Yeah, I just had to put my contacts in.” I say, making her laugh.
“That time you didn’t whine about how it hurt to put them in, congrats.”
“They still hurt.” I lie, because the truth is that sometimes I don’t want Natasha to know that she has changed me completely. “Should I curl my hair?” I ask, and I can hear her nod through the phone when she says, “Yup, sounds good.”
“Ok, I’ll see you at school Tasha.” I said and she agreed, hanging up on me.
I look into my new vanity’s mirror. Not seeing a large amount of acne is surreal. Now I only have one zit. One! Lucky for me, cover up will make it invisible. Invisible. That was always me. It still is me; I’m only getting out of that label slightly.

***

Getting out of labels is hard. People expect something from everyone. For Kylie they expected a quiet ugly girl who wouldn’t break out of her shell, now she is dancing at parties and abandoning her old quota of being unconfident.
For Amanda, people expect her to be a smart, quiet, and sort of frumpy girl. A few people, including me, didn’t expect her to be consumed with pencil skirts and tight clothes. Nobody has really notice yet. Like Kylie, it will take time for Amanda to become noticed too, or maybe not as much considering how much Garry is talking about her.
“Did you see Kolbe yesterday Drew?” he whispers to me as we sit in homeroom which we both have first period.
“Yeah and why do you call her Kolbe? Her name is Amanda.” I say, trying not to sound defensive. “It’s annoying.”
“Well sorry.” Garry says, shrugging his shoulders. “Habit I guess.”

Yes, it has been his habit for quite a while now. To call people by their last names unless he’s face to face with them is just something Garry likes to do. I’m guessing he got it from his dad, who manages baseball and calls all of the players by their last names. Life is just a huge game to him, not my kind though.
“You wouldn’t like it if people called you Frisker when they were talking about you.” I say, writing down some math notes off of his notebook. Luckily we have the same math support class, one that Garry actually listens in.
Garry’s face turns a bright red. He has always hated his last name. How do I know this? Being a guy’s best friend has its advantages. One of those advantages just so happens to be that you know how to make the person shut up. He hates his name from being made fun of because of it. Think this through, what bad word does Frisker sound a lot like? Yeah, you get it.
“They have before, remember?” Garry says than gulps down a lump in his throat and his slender face turns back to its normal color. “As I was saying, what do you think about Amanda?”
“I think she’s very pretty.” I say, continuing to write so that I will be prepared for class, and because I don’t want to make eye contact with Garry. If I know anything about him, it’s that if you look at him he can practically read your mind! He usually knows when I have a crush on a girl before I do!
“Yeah, gorgeous actually.” He corrects.
“Who’s gorgeous?”
Natasha makes me jump a little.
“Where the hell did you come from?” I ask and she shrugs.
Ignoring my question she asks again, “Who’s gorgeous?”
Garry hugs Natasha, saying a faint hello. They’re close, but aren’t dating either. One time I brought up them trying to be friends with benefits and Natasha spewed her milk all over us from across the table. “We’ve been neighbors since pre-school, Drew. Garry and I are just friends.” She told me. That had to be extremely awkward for her considering I had dated her once, in eighth or seventh grade, somewhere in there.

“Who’s gorgeous?” she prods at me now, asking repeatedly.
“Amanda Kolbe.” Garry answers for me.
“Oh, so you guys like my work?” she smiles at us. “I gave her a total make over during the summer.”
“Really?” I ask, and she nods.
“Yup, now we’re best of friends and boys are going to be crawling near her feet in no time.” Isn’t that the truth, I think but don’t voice.
The bell rings just then. Garry’s hands fumble around his notebook that he stuffs into his binder.
“Thanks for the notes. Mr. Hilling would go ape sh** on me if I showed up today without them. I guess I just got distracted.” I tell Garry. Natasha uh hums to my lie and winks at me.
“Distracted huh?” she asks once Garry is out of ear shot and we are walking to our next class, math support.
“Yup, is that a problem that concerns you?” I ask her. She just shrugs.
“It is if that problem is my best friend.”
“Amanda isn’t a problem.”
“Just a distraction?”
“Yes… wait no.” I say, and this makes her smile at me.
“So you do like her?” Natasha asks. We stop at Mr. Hilling’s door, so that we don’t go in talking about Amanda.
Speaking of which, she is sitting down at the same seat she was yesterday. Her long brown hair flows down her shoulders in large spiral curls, and her white shorts make her tan legs even tanner looking, and her striped black and pink half shirt lays over her black tank top. She’s writing down today’s assignment in her agenda, like everybody is supposed to do before the teacher walks into the classroom.
“No, I don’t like anyone.” I lie. “Not like that.”
“Not like, well, love you mean?”
“Exactly!” I say and she smirks at me. “I like everyone, but I love no one.” I wink.
“Cheers Drew, for you have officially realized that you are a player.” Natasha says as she walks past me to go and take the seat in front of Amanda. It isn’t long before she turns around and they start whispering.

***
“Why are you whispering?” I ask Natasha.
“So that lover-boy over there thinks we are talking about him.” She says with a smile, nodding over to a guy I recognize to be Drew in the doorway. I look over at him, when he sees me his expression changes and he smiles back, heading over.
“Why?” I ask Tasha before Drew is all the way over here with us.
“I want him to feel bad about Kylie.” She tells me.

Kylie. Lord help her, please. She is an attention seeking girl that just wants to be viewed as pretty. I feel bad for her, no, I pity her. Because of Kylie’s actions guys look at her like a piece of meat. Kylie and Natasha have been friends ever since she moved here, and I think Tasha has a need to help the ‘less fortunate’ as she would call it.
“What did Drew do to Kylie?” I ask.
“He danced with her at that stupid party last night and ruined her chances with Caleb.” She says as if I were supposed to know this already.

“Oh poor, Kylie.” I splurge out as sympathetically as I can.

Drew takes a seat next to me after what seems like a million years.
“Hey.” I say, smiling at his droopy eyes. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

***

“Is it that obvious?” I smile. She nods, looking at me with those beautiful brown eyes.
“Just a little.” She says and now it’s my turn to nod.
“So where were you last night, everybody missed you.” I say, smiling wide and large.
“Even Kylie?”

Crap. How does she know about Kylie?!
“Yeah, everyone. It was really fun you should’ve been there.” I smile at her, making her drop the subject of Kylie. Damn, how does she know about that?!

That’s when Mr. Hilling comes into the room and starts lecturing us on who is going to help who in this classroom.
Somehow I’m not surprised when Amanda’s name is matched up with Natasha’s and when mine is matched up with Cody’s, who just so happens to be the dumbest of us all.

Amanda goes straight to work with Natasha, showing her how to do the problems that Mr. Hilling wrote up on the board. Every time and again though, I catch her looking at me. This only makes me stare more.

***

“You have got to stop staring.” Tasha tells me, snapping back into reality I look up at her.
“So now all you have to do is graph the parabola and make a situation that it can stand for in words.” I go on in teaching, but of course Natasha doesn’t let the subject drop.
“Do you like him?” she asks me.
“No.” it’s all a game, Tasha, why don’t you see that?
“Ok. Well, I think it’s almost time to go. I have to drive by science to pick something up, can I just meet you in the lunchroom?” she asks and I nod along to the bell ringing.
Not long after the bell rings Mr. Hilling yells.
“Drew and Amanda, I will see you after school, am I correct?”
“Yes.” We both answer together.
Just as we’re leaving Drew nudges past me through the door, winks at me and says, “See you after school?”
Somehow I go weak, I can barely speak. The most I can make out is a small:

“Yeah, see you after school.”
And he smiles.