Monsters Are Forever

22. Girlfriend Troubles

 Carmine went out to track, vaguely wondering yet again if it was worth it. She'd been on the team since freshman year, and she'd never missed a practice until she was a junior. But suddenly, it seemed to take up so much of her time. And now that she had to go out every couple of nights, it just felt like such a hassle. At least she didn't need to sleep much anymore – she'd never realized how much that really cut into her schedule. If she had to sleep, sneak out at night, and go to practice, Carmine was pretty sure she wouldn't have time to do anything.

She tried to use practice as a way to distract herself from what was going on, but it didn't help. The drills were really too easy, and it didn't exactly take a lot of effort not to try hard.

Practice was about ten minutes in when Luke came hurrying towards the field. Carmine was actually kind of surprised to see that he'd bothered to show up. She might not have known exactly how sick he'd gotten, but if Zev was any indication, she would have thought Luke would be too sick to worry about something like track. Maybe that's why he'd been a little late; he probably wasn't doing as well after all that as he might have hoped. As he joined her, she gave Luke a vague kind of nod before turning her attention back to running drills.

As she ran, Carmine let her mind wander, going over what happened at lunch today. She knew Mia had been having problems, but she hadn't really thought it was that bad. Did she really need to carry mistletoe with her to school, too? And how much had she brought anyway? Really, things were getting out of hand. And why hadn't any of the boys done something about this before it got to this point?

Obviously, whatever Luke had told Rudi didn't exactly persuade her. And what about Zev? Carmine was sure Mia would have told him exactly how bad this was by now – wasn't that something girlfriends did? By the time practice was done, all Carmine had managed to do was make herself annoyed at the whole situation.

"You ok?" Luke asked, walking back to the school with her.

"Yeah, fine." Carmine said. But of course he wasn't fooled; he'd been running with her all day, and he'd seen the look on her face.

"You barely said anything to me all practice." Luke told her. "That's not like you."

"Gee, thanks." Carmine muttered. Nothing like one of her friends implying she never shut up to really make her feel better.

"What's wrong?" Luke asked. "Why is everybody acting so weird?"

"Who's acting weird?" Carmine shrugged, trying to brush him off. Unfortunately, it didn't work.

"You right now." he told her. "And there's still something going on with Mia...And then at lunch..." he trailed off.

"Yeah, ok." Carmine guessed he did kind of have a point.

"You know Anna ran out of the cafeteria after that, right?" Luke asked her.

"She did?" Carmine thought about it, but she didn't remember seeing Anna. It must have been when Zev was throwing up, she figured.

"Yeah." Luke looked grim. "And she wouldn't talk to me at all in math. Actually, after that she only talked to me once today – right before practice."

"So...?" Carmine asked slowly.

She didn't want to be unsympathetic or anything, but she didn't exactly see the problem. So why was he acting so weird about it? She started to turn back to her own, actual problems, but Luke said something that made her stop short.

"She tried to break up with me." he said flatly.

"Really?" Carmine couldn't believe it.

"Well, I mean I think so. But she kind of stopped herself halfway through."