Liz shrugged. "She died or something, I think. A long time ago, I guess. I mean, I never heard him talk about her, anyway."
So Will"s mom was dead. He hadn"t mentioned that, either, I noticed.
Maybe that"s why he liked sitting around by himself in the woods, listening to medieval music, so much. Maybe if your dad had killed his best friend, then scooped up the guy"s wife for himself, all the while insisting you have to go to military school to make a difference in the world, you"d feel like you had a lot to think about, too.
I was kind of glad right about then that I had been born Elaine Harrison and not A. William Wagner.
"Why are we talking about Will Wagner, anyway?" Stacy wanted to know, as we piled into her car.
"Harrison here scored an invite to his pool party after the Broadneck game Sat.u.r.day night," Liz crowed.
"Whoa," Stacy said. "Looks like the new girl"s doing pretty well for herself. Hanging with the popular crowd already."
"I"m not popular," I said, because the way she"d said it made it sound like it wasn"t a good thing. "And it"s not like that-"
"Yes, you are," Liz a.s.sured me. "If Will Wagner is inviting you to parties at his place, you"re part of the In Crowd, big time."
"And I heard you have Lance Reynolds as your partner on Morton"s oral a.s.signment," Stacy said.
"It"s not like I had a choice," I said. "Mr. Morton a.s.signed us together."
"Listen to her," Stacy said, chuckling. "So outraged! Don"t you know how many girls would die to be in your shoes, Ellie? Lance Reynolds is the school hottie du jour. And he doesn"t have a girlfriend...."
"You have got to be kidding me," I said. "That guy is a behemoth!"
"Behemoth," echoed Stacy. "My, that"s a bit harsh."
"Yeah," Liz agreed. "For someone going to his best friend"s party on Sat.u.r.day."
"I can"t believe people consider Lance hot," I said. I couldn"t believe it, either. Compared to Will, Lance was like...well, waffles with freezer burn.
"Aw, Lance is all right," Liz said. "Kind of dopey, but nice. Like a teddy bear. The problem is, he"s chronically single. He just needs the love of a good woman to mold him into the man he has the potential to be."
"I think that description fits Ellie perfectly, don"t you, Liz?" teased Stacy.
"Totally," Liz declared.
Then both girls had a good laugh at my stricken expression.
I knew they were just teasing. And even if they weren"t, it was better that they suspected I had the hots for Lance than the truth...that the form I was warm for was Will. I had spent all day hoping to see him in the hallway between cla.s.ses. I"d even rehea.r.s.ed what I was going to say to him. I hear Broadneck"s 2 and 0. Guess you guys better do some serious playing.
Yes, geek that I am, I had looked up Broadneck on the Internet the night before, then practiced the line in the mirror a few times that morning. So it would seem like I knew something about football, when, in fact, I knew nothing.
But I"d never seen him. And now I realized it wasn"t just football I knew nothing about. I knew nothing about A. William Wagner-the guy I was apparently falling head over heels in love with-either.
But I did know one thing: Anyone who could joke around with a bunch of kids, the way Will had at that lemonade stand, or defend a geek the way he had that day outside Mr. Morton"s cla.s.sroom, would have my good opinion forever, no matter what his dad-or stepbrother-was rumored to have done.
I knew something else, too: that anyone with as dysfunctional a home life as Will"s needed a laugh or two now and again. It was no wonder that he"d taken to hanging around me, the Queen of the Yuks.
And no matter what Nancy might think about guys not falling in love with girls who make them laugh, I wasn"t changing a thing. Because if that"s what Will wanted, that"s what I was going to give him.
Even if I broke my heart in a thousand pieces doing so.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
I"ve never been a very girly girl. I mean, I"ve never collected stuffed animals or cared too much about clothes. I"ve never had a manicure, and my hair is all one length because I"m too lazy to get it cut or styled regularly. I basically just slap it back into a ponytail most days.
But the night of the game and Will"s party, I really made an effort to look my best.
I don"t know why. I mean, it still wasn"t like Will was available. And even if he were, there was no reason to think he"d like me. I mean, sure, I was the girl who"d made him laugh-who"d sat on a rock in the woods and listened as he"d told me about his problems with his dad.
But he hadn"t been totally forthcoming with all the details about his dad. It wasn"t like I was his big confidante, or anything. I was just a funny girl he"d met. He obviously liked me: The day after he"d given me the rose-the day I made the track team-I got home to find an e-mail from him.
CAVALIER: Hey! Hope it went well today, and you ran like the wind. You"re a shoo-in, don"t worry.
He remembered. I"d only mentioned briefly, as he"d been dropping me off at my house the day before, that I was planning to go out for the track team.
And he"d remembered.
Because that"s what friends do. They remember things about each other. It didn"t, I told myself sternly, mean anything. Anything beyond that we were friends, I mean.
I wrote back at once, of course. Well, it seemed only fitting to share the good news.
TIGGERTOO: Hey, back atcha! I made the team. Thanks for the well wishes.
CAVALIER: See? Told you so. Congratulations. With you on board, the team"s actually got a shot at State, for a change.
Which is the kind of thing a friend would say. Because friends support one another. Just like friends say hi when they pa.s.s each other in the hallway (as Will always did). And wave when they see each other in the parking lot (ditto). It"s just what friends do.
And Will had a lot of friends. Everyone at Avalon High, it seemed, loved him. He was immensely popular, not just with his fellow jocks, but with the less athletically inclined kids as well. On Friday, when we were summoned to the gym for a ma.s.sive pep rally prior to the Broadneck game, and Will"s name was read and he came running out onto the court, the applause for him was thunderous. Everyone in the entire school-including kids who"d been looking sullen about having to be at a pep rally in the first place, the skateboarders and punk rockers-leapt to their feet to give him a standing ovation.
Will, for his part, had looked embarra.s.sed, and then, when the applause didn"t die down, he had to reach for the microphone that Mr. Morton, who was emceeing the event (and generating pep by making us practice the Avalon High rallying cheer, "Excalibur!" which is possibly the lamest cheer in the history of high school), was holding and say, "Thanks, everybody. We"re just going to go out there and play our best, and we hope all of you will be there to support us."
The roar this statement provoked was far louder than any of the Excalibur!s Mr. Morton had elicited from us.
And when Will was handing the microphone back to Mr. Morton, and his gaze happened to fall on me-me, out of all the people in the bleachers-and he gave me a wink and a smile, I told myself that"s just what friends do. Even though both Liz and Stacy, beside me in the stands, glanced at me sharply, and went, "Did he just-?"
"We"re just friends," I said quickly.
"Sure," Liz said, just as quickly. "Sure. Because, you know, Will and Jennifer-"
"They"re, like, the It Couple," Stacy finished for her.
"Right," I said. "Will and I are...just friends."
"Wish I had a friend that hot," Stacy said. "And nice. And smart. And funny."
Liz smacked her in the arm. "What about me? I"m hot, nice, smart, and funny."
"Yeah, but I don"t want to stick my tongue in your mouth," Stacy pointed out.
Liz sighed, and gazed down at Will, who was taking a seat with the rest of his team. "True," she said. "If Will Wagner and I were just friends, I"d make sure we didn"t stay just friends for long."
"Oh, right," Stacy said sarcastically. "Good luck competing with that."
We looked where she was pointing. Jennifer Gold was doing a series of backflips up and down the gym, in time to the band that was playing a speeded-up version of "What I Like About You." Her deeply tanned legs flashed like scissor blades. Every time she landed, her l.u.s.trous blond hair fell effortlessly back into perfect waves.
"I hate her," Liz said, without any real rancor, summing up exactly what I was feeling at that particular moment.
But I knew these kinds of feelings were unfair. Jennifer wasn"t a bad person. Everyone liked her. I had no right to hate her. Sure, Will had confided in me, and even given me a rose, and invited me to his party.
But we were just friends.
But telling myself that over and over again didn"t stop me from fishing out my shortest skirt and using eyeliner and even mousse on the night of the Broadneck game-enough so that when my dad saw me, he went, "All I ask is that you stay away from downtown," on account of the middies.
Then, when I ran out of my house to get into Stacy"s car-she was driving Liz and me to the game-both girls let out hoots of mock admiration, and Liz asked me if I would still sit near them, being such a glamour queen, and all.
I didn"t mind their teasing me, because I knew it meant I"d been accepted. And that felt way better than if they"d said, all politely, "You look nice, Ellie."
I had never been to a football game before. My brother Geoff had been on the basketball team at my old school, so I"d been to quite a few games to cheer him on...not out of any sense of sisterly support, but because Nancy had always had a big crush on Geoff and had insisted on going to his games.
Nancy hadn"t had a crush on any of the football players, so she"d never made me go to any of those games.
I honestly can"t say I missed out on anything much-at least if the Avalon-Broadneck game was any indication. Oh, it was fun hanging out in the bleachers, under the vast night sky, eating popcorn.
But the game itself was way boring, and practically incomprehensible. And the players wore so much padding, you could only tell who anybody was by their names on the backs of their jerseys.
Still, I appeared to be the only person in the stands who was of this opinion. Everybody else-including Stacy and Liz-was way into the game, joining Jennifer Gold and the other cheerleaders in their chants, and screaming hysterically every time our team got a point or a down, or whatever they were called.
Liz tried to explain the finer points of the game to me. Will"s position, quarterback, was like the brains of the operation. His friend Lance was a guard, whose job it was to keep Will from getting flattened every time he was holding the ball-which was fairly often.
Apparently Avalon High had a good team-so good they had even gone to the state championship the year before. It was widely believed they"d go again this year, if they played as well as they had last year.
But we were not doing as well against the Broadneck Bruins as everyone had hoped we would. At halftime, we were down by fourteen points, and a lot of people in the stands were grumbling about it.
I have to admit, I didn"t much care whether or not we won. I hadn"t spent a whole lot of time watching the game. Mostly I just watched Will. It was hard not to notice that he looked very cute in his tight white pants while he was out there making up plays and telling everybody else what to do. There"s something sort of intoxicating, I guess, about a guy in a position of power...at least one with a b.u.t.t that looked as good as Will"s.
I didn"t mention my crush on Will to Liz or Stacy, of course. I mean, for one thing, I"d gone to great lengths to convince them that Will and I were just friends (which, in his case, anyway, was actually true).
But I knew if I"d confessed to them that in my own case, I longed for more than just friendship with him, they"d look at me all pityingly for being stupid enough to fall for such a popular guy-especially one who was dating Jennifer Gold.
Besides, they still seemed to think there was something going on with me and Lance (so not), if the way they elbowed me every time Mr. Morton said his name over the loudspeaker (besides emceeing the pep rallies, Mr. M also announced the game) was any indication.
I didn"t tell them to cut it out, or that I didn"t like Lance, or anything. It just seemed easier to let them go on thinking that than to let them in on the truth.
Anyway, I was so bored by halftime that I volunteered to get us all hot dogs, and was making my way to the concession stand when I heard someone call my name.
I turned, not having the slightest idea who could be talking to me, since I still barely knew a soul at AHS. I was more than a little surprised to see Mr. Morton, having emerged from the announcing booth, trying to flag me down.
"Hey, Mr. Morton," I said, wondering what he could want. I mean, there were lots of his other students milling around. What was he singling me out for?
"Elaine," he said, in a stern voice. Since he was British, and all, my name sounded even more old-fashioned than if he"d just said it in an ordinary American way. Sort of the way that whenever he said the word "Excalibur" it sounded extra important.
I realized from the sternness in his voice that I was in trouble. What for, I couldn"t imagine. I mean, I was only trying to buy a couple of hot dogs, for Pete"s sake.
"I read your proposal," Mr. Morton went on.
"Oh," I said. It dawned on me that I probably wasn"t in trouble after all. I didn"t inherit my dad"s bad eyes or his slow-but-steady running habits, but I had inherited his excellent research skills, as well as my mom"s talent for mega-organization. n.o.body writes a better, more exhaustive term paper than I do. I"ve never gotten less than an A on one. Ever. Mr. Morton probably wanted to compliment me on the supremely excellent job I"d done on the proposal I"d handed in about The Lady of Shalott.
Only that wasn"t why he"d stopped me at all, it turned out. He wasn"t a bit pleased with what I"d handed in. Not a bit.