Right in Front of You

13. Double Date

Kathy waited outside her Economics class, hoping Kelly would make it on time. Her friend never missed class, but she'd been running late, cramming extra homework in every available minute, and avoiding Joey like the plague.

Joey tried to avoid her, too, but it seemed that the more they tried not to see each other, the more they met by accident and were pulled into conversations that lasted hours.

Kathy's phone chimed and she pulled it out, hoping it was a text from Kelly. Donnie's name flashed on the screen. Kathy sighed and shoved the phone back in her bag without opening the text.

She knew she said they'd start over, but did that mean Donnie had to bombard her with texts containing nothing but hearts and kisses? She hadn't liked this stuff even when she was a preteen, let alone now. Was that what new couples did? She should ask Kelly. Who finally showed up, hallelujah! Closely followed by their professor.

Kathy sprinted inside the classroom, Kelly on her heals, and the two girls took their seats next to each other.

"Sorry for being late," Kelly puffed, pulling out her books. "But, on the bright side, I'm done with geography."

"That's great," Kathy responded, writing down the title of today's lesson.

Kelly sighed dramatically, writing the title down too. "Well, I did it."

Cured your unhealthy obsession with Joey? "Did what?"

"I've been trying to avoid it for weeks, but I finally went on a double date. Me and Joey and Kyle and Cecily."

Kathy's attention was drawn from the definition of GDP. "Really?" She shouldn't care, shouldn't be curious, but damn it, she was sooo curious.

She'd wonderd if she and Donnie would ever go on a double date with Kelly and Joey, but she'd avoided it, being sure Joey would take a stab at Donnie for getting drunk at the concert. And now, she and Donnie weren't actually dating anymore.

"It was horrible," Kelly said, obviously not needing more of an invitation to share.

"Why, what happened? Was Cecily mean to you?" Kathy doubted Joey or Kyle had been horrible, so Cecily was the only option.

"No." Kelly huffed, writing a few more things down in her notebook. "She was so sweet, joking around with me and the boys, tucked under Kyle's arm." She made a gagging noise.

"Then wha--"

"Honestly, all I could think of," Kelly continued, "was how she "accidentally" set fire to Lauren Silverman's hair in our freshman year just because she had beautiful curls, or how she altered Christina Thompshon's speech and she lost class president, and how she spread those rumors that Sybil Downey had STDs and was banging coach Johnson..."

"I think that last rumor was actually true," Kathy whispered. And it was the reason Sybil, the former queen bee, went down, just so Cecily could replace her.

"And it made me sick. Because no matter how nice she is to me or how sweet and considerate she is to everyone when Kyle's around, I know who she really is and what she's capable of."

Kathy wanted to argue that maybe she'd changed, but she knew it wasn't true. Cecily Howard was as mean as ever, only knew she had to hide it, because if she didn't, Kyle would dump her. At least Kathy liked to think he would.