He had a slip of paper in his hand. For a moment I didn't know what he wanted. He repeated, "Here," and I took the paper. The moment I did, he walked away. When I paused to open the note. Karen moved closer. I felt her approaching and I shoved the paper into my math text.
"Didn't Chandler Maxwell just hand you something?" she asked me. I turned to her.
"Yes."
"What was it, something secret between you?"
I was annoyed, but for some reason, I decided to lie.
"I dropped some notes when I left English literature just now, and he picked them up and gave them to me. Why didn't you say something about it?"
"I didn't see you drop anything," she insisted.
"How could you miss it?" I countered. "You've been watching me like a hawk,"
"I have not," she protested, but fell back as if I had just slapped her face.
I knew she was just waiting for me to take out the note in my next class, so I deliberately pretended no interest. I don't know why it was so important to me to be surreptitious, but it was obviously important to Chandler. so I maintained the same very low profile.
It wasn't until I had time to go to the girls' room that I took out the note and read it. It was, as he promised, details about Saturday night: what time he would pick me up, where he would take me for dinner, what time the show started and ended, and what time I could expect to be home. He hadn't even signed it or anything. I was disappointed, but I was more angry. How could he be so impersonal and so insensitive? Was I the first girl he had ever taken on a date? Maybe he didn't know how to behave.
That did give me reason to pause. Maybe I was his first real date. too. Why did I assume that he had taken other girls out? No one ever spoke about it. If anyone would know, it would certainly be Karen Jacobs. and I never heard her pass any gossip along concerning him.
I was hoping he would be friendlier at lunch. Chandler usually sat with some computer heads in the rear of the cafeteria. I was ahead of him in the line and deliberately found an empty table, anticipating his joining me: but he didn't. He went to his usual place and, moments later, some of the girls in my class, including Karen, sat at my table. I could see from the looks on their faces that Karen had begun to spread a story. I de
cided she was going to be the editor of the
National Enquirer one day.
"Is something going on between you and
Chandler Maxwell?" Susie Weaver asked me almost
immediately. She was a very attractive red-haired girl
who was already dating college boys and had an air of
sophistication about her that made her the target of
every other girl's envy. All of us, including me, hung
on her every comment and pronouncement as if it
were relationship gospel. Her seal of approval on a
boy someone was seeing was sought after and
appreciated, and when she condemned someone,
everyone joined the bandwagon and found faults
where none really existed.
"Why?" I replied, which was a mistake. I
should have either vehemently denied it. if I wanted to
deny it, or owned up to it and defended it.