The Van Pact

6: Stevie

Valerie and I were sitting in the auditorium at school. And I was thinking that she was stupid.

I often think Valerie is stupid.

I know she isn't. She never seems to study for any test, and yet always manages to score exactly one point higher than anybody else. Of course, she doesn't like for people to know she's as smart as she is. When our lunch table was comparing our class ranks at the beginning of our second semester in freshman year (back when the ranking system was new and interesting to us), she was vague as to what her actual number was.

"I dunno," she had puffed out her wide lips as if the conversation bored her beyond belief, "thirty-something?"

Out of the then-almost-nine-hundred kids in our class, that was an impressive enough rank, but still somewhat within the realms of 'normalish.' Everyone at the table nodded and shifted their attention to the next person. Later that week, at one of our usual sleep-overs, I was fishing around Valerie's desk for the One Direction authorized biography I lent her and saw her report card, crumpled up underneath her laptop. She was first. She still is.

And I had been so proud of ninth place.

What makes me think Val is stupid is that she has no idea of the effect she has on other people. They love her. It drives me nuts. Don't get me wrong, I love her too. There's a lot to love. She's talented, but never too talented. She wears high heels and oversized military jackets and animal print mini-skirts and looks comfortable, as if those are the most normal clothes in the world. She's got an even, olive complexion and the thickest head of straight, glossy black hair I've seen. She's the sort of average pretty that people instinctively like. It's not ice queen or blonde queen bee. She gets things easy.

Me? Not so much.

I didn't want to sign the pact she came up with yesterday. I still don't know how she got it out of me. I was bamboozled. I already know how this is going to end. Valerie will do something that would put most everybody else into a cringe-induced coma, and somehow come out of the experience looking even cooler and having more friends than she did beforehand. I will do something, probably less cringe-worthy than even what Valerie did, and everyone around me will become very uncomfortable. Their discomfort will make me even more uncomfortable than them, because I will be the one causing all the discomfort in the first place. In fact, the initial thought of all the discomfort I'll cause will make me uncomfortable from the start, which will probably, in turn, magnify all potential discomfort. It's like a Rube Goldberg machine, except instead of turning on a lightbulb or blowing up a balloon, the ultimate result is to alienate as many people as possible. Valerie should have anticipated this. But she didn't. Because she has no idea that life is different for people like me.

All through AP Chemistry this morning, I was thinking of ways to get out of the pact. I wished Valerie had given me a copy, so I could have reread it for loopholes. Valerie's more the lawyer of the two of us (the silver-tongued devil), but even she's not infallible. There ought to be a loophole in there somewhere. It's not the most carefully crafted thing she's ever written. In lieu of scouring the actual document, I decided it would be safest to avoid assigning her a "feat of courage" until she forgot about the whole stupid thing altogether in a few weeks. If she never completes any, she can't expect me to.

But since this is me, and I am Stevie O'Shaughnessy, plans just don't come together. Instead of third period, all the seniors had an assembly. Valerie and I normally have AP Calculus third period. So we ended up going down to the auditorium in the commons building together, and sitting next to each other. We wouldn't have been able to do this, if the assembly had been called say during second period, when I have AP Chemistry and she has AP British Lit. Or first period, when, on non-band days I have a study hall and she has Yearbook in the library (yes, I know. The valedictorian takes Yearbook. Really. She's been doing this since freshman year). Now this detail about our schedules is actually very important. You'll soon see why.