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  Scarlet paused for a moment, letting what she'd just blurted out sink in.

  "He's not a shirt," Charlotte said.

  "We're just in different places, and I don't know if I can bridge that gap."

  "Or maybe you don't know if you want to," Charlotte suggested, barely disguising the worry in her voice.

  "Maybe," Scarlet said flatly.

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  Chapter 14 Sweet the Sting

  You talk to me as if from a distance

  And I reply with impressions chosen

  From another time

  --Brian Eno

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  Assumptions are the death of a relationship.

  If you think you know what's going on inside someone else's head, think again. We imagine that love gives us the power to read one another's mind, when all we are really doing is reading our own. It's a great self-defense mechanism but no substitute for actual communication. The best way to know what's really on someone's mind is also the riskiest: you have to ask them.

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  Charlotte found herself alone with Damen again, his sole companion as he worked the phone lines on the radio station's graveyard shift. Worked was probably not the right word, as the board had yet to light up once. Watched the phone lines was more like it. Charlotte knew this feeling all too well from her first days at the intern hotline, but she also knew that if you waited, something would eventually happen.

  It was no secret that there was a time she'd have killed a small animal to be this close to Damen in a private, soundproof room during his radio overnight. But now, so much had changed. Though she could never completely forget the flutters and twinges of her first love, the days of her schoolgirl devotion were long gone. The bittersweet yearning that she'd felt for Damen in life was now replaced by plain old sadness. Not because she wanted him, but because Scarlet apparently didn't.

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  There he was, sitting behind the console, trying desperately to put together a few thoughts on paper that might reach her in a way his words could not. He wanted her to know how he felt about her, that he never wanted to change anything about her. That he loved her for who she was and everything she was going to be.

  Charlotte sat there helplessly, witnessing the heart-wrenching struggle. Damen was vulnerable and in pain, and it hurt her to see him going through this. She began feeling very much like the friend who plays both sides, except she wasn't playing either yet.

  He was her assignment, so she must have been brought here to help him in some way. Salvaging his relationship with Scarlet was a pretty good guess, she thought. Back when she was in Dead Ed, she had guided his hand to check off the right boxes and pass a physics test, but coaxing the emotions out of his heart and onto the page seemed far beyond even her own ghostly powers.

  But in order to help him, she needed to put some skin in the game, so to speak. She needed to make her presence known in some clever way that wouldn't completely freak him out.

  Suddenly, the blinking light on the console interrupted her strategy session and Damen leapt into action like a benchwarmer substituting for an injured player. He had a live one, literally.

  "INDY-Ninety-five, we're the difference, what's your problem?" he said in the raspiest, quiet-storm voice he could muster.

  The line was engaged but quiet.

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  "Hello?" he asked, a bit louder.

  This time he could hear the sound of whimpering coming through.

  "What's your name?" Damen asked gently.

  "Anais," she said, still teary. "What's yours?"

  "Damen," he said, reverting to his radio voice. "Your helpful host tonight on 'What's Your Problem?' "

  "My problem is my boyfriend," the caller said frankly.

  "Okay," Damen said nervously.

  He was totally unprepared for this kind of call. He had barely gotten through Psych 101 his first semester and couldn't even write a letter to his own girlfriend, let alone comfort someone else's. Charlotte, on the other hand, sensed an opportunity and placed a call of her own.

  "Polly?" Charlotte asked, telepathically calling back to the intern office. "You've got to connect me to someone."

  "I knew you wouldn't be able to hold out," Polly said. "Booty calls are technically toll-free, but they will take their toll, so be selective, girlfriend."

  "No, not that kind of call," Charlotte said to Polly's disappointment. "Listen, is anybody on the line with a girl named Anais?"

  "Yep, I am," Polly said, curiously. "Why?"

  "Oh, she's just someone I know," Charlotte said. "Would you mind transferring the call to me?"

  "Okay," Polly said. "But she's a total basket case, calling into late-night love lines, the whole deal."

  Charlotte wasn't interested in putting words in Anais's mouth as much as getting into Damen's head.

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  "So, you'll connect me?"

  "Gladly," Polly agreed with a giggle. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

  That was a piece of advice Charlotte definitely planned to ignore, but it was sweet of Polly to be so cooperative. Charlotte just assumed she'd be much more territorial.

  "You were saying," Damen said, easing his hand off the silencer and clearing his throat. "Something about your boyfriend?"

  "He is a great guy," Anais said, her mood turning suddenly sunnier. "But I don't think he really appreciates me."

  "What makes you say that?" Damen asked, his curiosity piqued.

  "I don't feel like he likes me for me," she informed. "Like maybe he wants me to be something I'm not."

  "Did he ask you to change?" Damen asked.

  "No," she said. "But he didn't not ask me."

  That was a pretty wacky way to put it, Damen thought.

  "Then maybe it's all in your head?" he responded dismissively. "Just some insecurities coming out."

  No, he did not just tell a girl it was all in her head! Charlotte was desperate to get through, but she was getting nowhere. It was like dancing with a guy who knows only one step. So, she decided to take the lead.

  "You are not hearing me," she said. "If it's real to me, then it's real."

  Damen was stung and tried to process what she was saying. He was kind of literal in his approach to girls and relationships. Things were either good or bad, true or false; gray area

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  was not his specialty. He tried to find an example from his own life that would suit the situation.

  "I once knew a girl that tried to change everything about herself," Damen offered. "And it really didn't go well."

  "So?" Anais said, not sure where this was going.

  "So, nobody asked her to change," Damen said. "She was smart, sweet, and helpful."

  "Helpful?" Charlotte quizzed, putting a little more of herself into the chat. "You make her sound like a pet or something."

  All she could think at the moment was that he left out "pretty." This was starting to get personal.

  "My point is," Damen said, "she was fine exactly as she was."

  "Maybe she didn't see it that way," she said defensively. "You can't tell someone else how to feel."

  "True," Damen argued, "but you can't blame someone else for the way you feel or the choices you make either."

  "Nobody makes decisions in a vacuum," Anais spouted, even more of Charlotte sneaking out of her mouth. "We can only react to the way people think about us."

  "You can never really know what another person intends," Damen suggested, mining his recollection of first-semester ethical philosophy. "It's easy to get it wrong."

  "So this girl you knew just imagined all of it?" Charlotte prodded.

  "No," Damen continued, "but there was a big gap between reality and her perception of it."

  "And she fell into the gap?" she said.

  "It's not hard to do," Damen explained.

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  Charlotte was both flattered and flustered that he thought to use her as a talking point, but his analysis was c
olored by a whole lot of hindsight. Sure, nobody asked her to change. Nobody noticed her enough to bother. This conversation was bringing up a lot of long-buried, so to speak, bad memories.

  "People expect you to be a certain way," she said, "to look a certain way, think a certain way. Otherwise they won't accept you."

  "Then they're not worth impressing," Damen said easily. "Anyone who really cared about you wouldn't expect you to change for them."

  "Easy for you to say," Charlotte let slip. "You have everything you want, great looks, great body, great girlfriend, great T-shirt."

  Damen looked around, feeling as if he was being watched. What did this caller know about him or his life? Charlotte could see his distress.

  "Do I know you?" Damen said.

  "You must have it all figured out," she said, ignoring his question. "After all, you're on the radio."

  "I don't have anything figured out, for myself or anyone else," Damen went on. "But, my guess is that your boyfriend loves you just the way you are. Thank you for your call."

  Damen was dripping with sweat as he hung up the phone. He wondered if he'd been a little smug with the caller. More importantly, he wondered if he'd been a little smug with Scarlet lately.

  Charlotte was not quite sure how she felt about the call either. This was the first real conversation she'd ever had with

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  Damen. It left her feeling good about him--she'd clearly been right about his innate steadiness, loyalty, and common sense--but melancholy about all those changes she'd made. Maybe she could have gotten him on her own merits after all. And lived happily ever after. Hopefully, Anais wouldn't make the same mistakes.

  The real takeaway, she thought--the thing she was sure of--was that Damen loved Scarlet just the way she was. The problem was getting Scarlet to believe it.

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  Chapter 15 Secret Girls

  I was feeling insecure

  You might not love me anymore

  --John Lennon

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  Tell-all.

  Sometimes divulging your vulnerabilities without any kind of filter can make you more human, but then again, it can also provide material that can be used against you. When you enter into a relationship, you want to know that person, every single detail, and you want them to know about you. You are an open book. But, if things don't work out, you better be prepared to duck when that same book is thrown back at you.

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  It was obvious from the second they pulled into the school parking lot that things had changed. Wendy Anderson and Wendy Thomas made the turn into the student entrance, and the early morning crowd parted, observing the invisible social barrier that separated them, to let them through. It wasn't just underclassmen; it was their peers, seniors, who were admiring them. At first, they just thought that everyone assumed Petula was with them, but as they made their way around the lot in Wendy Anderson's vintage MG Sprite convertible, it was obvious that wasn't the case.

  Once they came around to the perfect spot, right in front of the sidewalk to the gym entrance, they saw Darcy waving them in. They realized then that they not only had her to thank for their good parking karma, but for their newfound

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  fame--the fame that they deserved but had never found, the fame that Petula had kept them from, and kept from them.

  "I am getting dresses sent to me from everywhere. I haven't even gone through the boxes," Wendy Anderson said.

  They both knew she was lying, but it was okay because they weren't about reality anymore. They were about perpetuating the image they worked so hard to project. They were a team, now more than ever, and they had a new leader in Darcy. The Wendys felt like shareholders in a corporation now, instead of just trophy friends.

  "I have holds at three boutiques," Wendy Anderson said in a heated prom dress discussion. "I just can't make up my mind."

  "You shouldn't let anyone know which dress you pick until that night," Wendy Thomas chirped.

  "I'm actually thinking about wearing all three if I can reserve a quick change room," Wendy Anderson said. "Just keep it on the down-low for the media."

  "Speaking of down-low," Wendy Thomas giggled.

  The conversation turned from gowns to scowls as Petula pulled into the lot. As she exited the vehicle, a bag of giveaways rolled out with her, falling onto the pavement below and prompting chuckles from the stragglers doing their best to be late for class. She picked them up just as she would a tampon that fell out of her purse: quickly.

  Watching Petula scurry to scoop up the clothing, the Wendys felt a twinge of guilt until Darcy arrived to put it in perspective for them.

  "How selfish," Darcy said snidely, appearing from behind

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  The Wendys and draping her long, lean arms around their necks. "Airing her dirty laundry in public like that."

  "That's not her laundry," Wendy Thomas corrected, staring blankly at the bag.

  "Yeah," Wendy Anderson concurred, recalling Petula's germophobic repulsion toward public washers and dryers. "She limits her wardrobe to hand-washables and dry-clean-only."

  Darcy was impressed with both how observant and how stupid they were.

  "She has no idea how this reflects on both of you," Darcy continued to needle, shaking her head dejectedly to emphasize her point. The Wendys, clinging to Darcy like two parasites in need of a new host, nodded their brunette updos in agreement.

  Scarlet raced into the parking lot as usual and spied the last empty spot a few spaces from Petula. As she pulled in, she could see Petula pick up the last few items that had fallen from her car, toss them in her backseat, and trudge off, head down, toward the front doors. In all her life, Scarlet couldn't recall ever having seen Petula hang her head.

  Could this get any worse? Scarlet wondered as she saw the Wendys and Darcy leading the laughter. She was then slapped with an unequivocal "yes" as Petula was approached by a freshman wearing a handmade tee that had BANDTARD painted across the chest. He was obviously in the midst of being initiated and she was obviously being pranked.

  Scarlet actually felt sorry for Petula as she witnessed her comeuppance. She'd gone from popular to punchline just like

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  that. The guy's voice was so inappropriately loud it was impossible not to hear him, even from this distance.

  "Hey, I heard you need a date for prom," the freshman said, blocking her path, saliva unwittingly spraying from his mouth and onto her outfit as he stuttered out the invite.

  "Ewww, cobra mouth," Darcy shouted.

  Petula looked over and saw the Wendys and Darcy hunched over the hood of their car, laughing like rabid, über-fashionable hyenas. The bandtard came over to them with his hand out, and Darcy peeled off a few singles and thanked him.

  "That was cheap," Darcy chuckled to The Wendys.

  "You should know," Scarlet swiped as she approached, getting in all their faces.

  "What comes around goes around," Wendy Anderson said.

  "Just like an STD," Scarlet punched back. "Ain't that right, Wendy?"

  Wendy Anderson clammed up immediately, and Wendy Thomas wasn't about to jump in.

  "I'd really love to get into a battle of wits with you guys, but I never attack anyone un-armed," Scarlet said, silencing The Wendys' hope for retaliation.

  "Hey, maybe you can go with that bandtard if Petula passes," Darcy said, offering her a few bucks. "I hear you might need a date."

  The song contest was picking up steam, and the radio station phone lines started lighting up like crazy.

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  "Look at that," Damen said, studying his computer screen, as Scarlet's song topped the voter list. "I think we have a hit on our hands."

  He said "we" instead of "she" because he really considered it their song. She'd written the lyrics for him, but he'd laid down a smoking-hot guitar track on it.

  Wait until I tell Scarlet! he thought, and then remembered that she wasn't too happy he'd submitted the song in the first pla
ce.

  Charlotte watched helplessly as his mood changed. There was a sadness in his eyes that she'd never seen before. The optimism, confidence, and determination that everyone admired about him were giving way to self-doubt and uncertainty.

  "Don't worry," Charlotte said as she moved around behind his chair and placed her hands gently on his shoulders. "Scarlet will see that you're doing all this for her," she whispered in his ear.

  His neck and shoulders relaxed as he eased back into the chair. Charlotte was here to help him, and she felt that she had begun to do her part, however small, to comfort him.

  Seeing the phones lighting up in support of Scarlet made him feel especially close to her, so he pulled out his letter, determined to finish it up.

  Charlotte read over his shoulder as he collected his thoughts and copied them down. Finally satisfied that he'd said all he meant to say, Damen closed the letter, as he always did, with a "Y.T.N.F." and pulled back to read the valediction aloud before he signed it.

  "Yours... Till... Niagara... Falls, Damen."

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  Charlotte swooned. She would have died to hear something like that from Eric, or anybody for that matter. It was corny, sure, but Charlotte was a sucker for that kind of thing. The thought of roaring white water rolling endlessly over rocky cliffs to the riverbed below conjured up images of infinite, undying, ever-renewing love.

  Just then the program director, Jerry Stylus, burst in the room.

  "Dylan!" the PD barked. "Did you submit this track?"

  "Yep," Damen answered proudly, gesturing to the call-in board. "It's absolutely killing!"

  "Maybe so," Stylus acknowledged, "but unfortunately, it's my turn to do some killing. The song is disqualified."