Nathaniel Likes the Weird Girl

3. The Bet

Jay watched eagerly as Oskar approached Stephanie, her back turned to us while she chatted with some of her friends sitting in the bleachers. He walked up to her with nonchalance, stopping at her side with his hands in his pockets and nodding to her friends before saying something to Stephanie herself.

"Damn, wish I knew what they were saying," Jay breathed, squinting his eyes as if he might be able to read their lips.

Stephanie and her friends all started laughing, but it was impossible to make out Oskar's expression from that angle.

"Do you think that's a good or bad sign?" Jay asked, but I wasn't really paying attention anymore, because I'd suddenly realized Sami Bauer was nowhere to be seen. I glanced around the gym, but couldn't find her anywhere.

"Oh, he's coming back! And from his face, it doesn't seem like he heard what he wanted," Jay rubbed his hands together, and I looked back to see Oskar approaching us with a furrowed brow.

"What happened?"

Oskar shrugged when he met back up with us. "She said yes but..."

Jay's mischievous grin faded into a look of annoyance. "But what?"

"She said she would only go out with me if I did her a favor first."

"And? What does she want you to do?" Jay snapped his fingers impatiently. "Spit it out. Because I'm not gonna give you the full hundred unless I get a for sure 'yes' from her."

"She said she would only go out with me if I dance with Sami Bauer in front of everyone," Oskar finally explained.

"The hell?" Jay burst out laughing. "Sami Bauer? You mean that weird girl that never talks to anyone? That's hilarious! She'd never come to something like this. She basically set you up to fail."

"But she's here," I cut in. "At least, she was not that long ago. I saw her walk right in the doors over there."

Jay looked at me with astonishment.

"Yeah, she's here alright," Oskar continued. "So all I gotta do is ask her, really."

"Pff," Jay recovered quickly, his arrogance never straying too far. "Still sounds like you're shit out of luck. I don't think that freak show will dance with anyone--except maybe one of the hundreds of cats she probably has at home."

Oskar smiled slyly. "We'll see about that. She may normally be too uptight to dance, but Stephanie is loosening her up a little bit with some sweet talk, as we speak."

My stomach began to churn. I was beginning to understand what Stephanie had meant when she said Sami being there would be "hilarious." She had planned for this.

I looked at the people around me, the people that I called friends, and saw something sinister in them for the first time. Or, rather, something sinister that I had been trying to ignore for a long time. For someone like me who was accepted by them, someone on the inside, it was safe. It was easy to turn a blind eye to their less-than-pure intentions.

See, high school social dynamics function in much the same way as the rest of the world. The "accepted" people participate--they join the clubs, play for the teams, organize the events and then attend them. The "weirdos," or "outsiders" do their own thing. They don't bother the other people. They just want to be left alone to do what they enjoy, and for people like Sami Bauer, reading a book alone at lunch, or knitting, or staying in on the weekends were things that she enjoyed. But for some reason, to the participators, this is the most evil offense you could commit.

If you're not one of us, you're wrong. And you must be punished.

Those words echoed in my head, first in Stephanie's voice, then in Jay's. And I realized that I had been hiding behind them, submitting to the idea that if I was not in, then I was out. And I was scared of what it might be like on the outside, what it was like for someone like Sami Bauer.