Film at Eleven

  “IS he looking?” I asked Jessie about Lars. I mean, she could check on my sort-of boyfriend without raising anyone’s suspicions, but I had to act normal.

  “Nope. You’re in the clear.”

  Even though Mick hadn’t touched me yet, I could feel him on me. It was like my body recognized his on a molecular level. And it was electric.

  “We need to talk,” he whispered over my shoulder. “Outside.” Secretly, he ran his fingers along the inside of my arm.

  I couldn’t turn around, or I’d be found out.

  “Now?” I murmured, barely able to expand my lungs enough to speak.

  “Five minutes. In the parking lot. I drive a green Buick.”

  “Okay.”

  Like nothing had happened, I picked up my lunch tray and followed Jessie right back to our table. Mick was already gone.

  Film at Eleven

  A Novel by

  MAGGIE BLOOM

  Copyright 2011 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel

  Cover Art Copyright 2011 by Brittany Cain

  Cover Design by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel and Brittany Cain

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is coincidental and unintended.

  To Pete,

  for being my

  sweet, sweet Mickey D

  One

  IF you’d asked me at the end of sophomore year, I would have absolutely, unequivocally declared junior year was going to be the year. After all, it was the year you got a license (and if you were super lucky, a car). It was the year you got your first lame, gag-me part-time job (and the spending money that went with it to blow on a shi-shi new wardrobe). It was the year you worried yourself sick about the SAT (but at least once it was over, you knew your fate: Ivy League elitist snob or community college girl-next-door). And it was the year that, if the stars aligned just right, you had your first real adult love affair—or so I’d heard anyway.

  But in just a few short months, a lot can change. And doing things out of order can have tragic consequences. Take me, for example. I found the man of my dreams—a sexy, sophisticated gypsy boy named Mick Donovan—the summer before junior year. I loved him madly, and he loved me back. But it was the wrong time, the wrong place. And I ended up losing my sweet, sweet Mick—at least for the foreseeable future. Now nothing would ever be the same.

  Okay…so maybe some things would be the same. The same old, that is. Like the same old skuzzy bus I’d have to ride to school. And the same old faces I’d have to stare at in homeroom. See, Punxsutawney is a pretty small place, and as different as I was, everything around me was still stuck in a pre-Flora-falling-head-over-heels time warp. Irritating, to say the least.

  The bus pulled right up in front of my house, a convenience the Mental Hygienist (a.k.a. my mother) had arranged with the school department, probably by telling them I was such a fragile basket case I couldn’t be trusted to walk the two blocks over to my usual stop alone.

  I moped aboard, shuffled to the back, and plunked down beside my best friend, Jessie Haskell, for another miserable day of my Mick-less existence.

  “You are alive,” Jessie joked, as I shimmied in next to her.

  I guess I’d been ignoring her pretty hard recently due to my severe separation anxiety/depression over losing Mick. “Sorry. I’ve been kind of out of it lately. I should’ve called you back,” I said. “Forgive me?” I offered her the best puppy-dog eyes I could muster.

  “I suppose,” she relented easily. “But you owe me an explanation. No more of this strong, silent-type thing. I need details, you know. Or I can’t help you. Capiche?”

  I hadn’t told Jessie anything yet. I wasn’t ready. And it was all too painful anyway. “Lunch,” I said. “I promise. I’ll tell you everything.”

  What the hell. I needed to get some things off my chest. And Jessie was probably going to die of curiosity if I didn’t let her in on the specifics of my summer romance pretty soon anyway. Maybe once I’d spilled my guts, we’d both feel better.

  “Deal,” Jessie said. “If we have lunch together, that is.”

  “We better have lunch together, or I’m gonna make Ms. Aggie’s life a living hell.” See, Ms. Aggie is my guidance counselor; hence, she’s responsible for the good, the bad, and the ugly of my personal problems and my academic life. This year, I had a feeling she was going to have her work cut out for her.

  “That would so suck,” Jessie said. “I think if you’re not in my lunch, I’ll eat with Mr. Morrison—as long as he doesn’t mind if I drool into my food.”

  “He’s like forty, you know,” I pointed out, only mildly disgusted. After all, I’d found Mick’s father pretty attractive, so who was I to judge?

  Jessie grinned. “Old guys rock,” she declared, pumping her fist in the air. And the sick thing was, she was only half kidding.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Oh my God!” Jessie suddenly squealed, poking her finger at the grimy bus window.

  We were at the last stop before Punxsy Middle, and a bunch of snooty twerps from the rich side of town were filing aboard. But from the aisle seat, I couldn’t see much. “What?” I whined. I mean, it’s no fair to yelp in excitement if you’re not willing to elaborate.

  Jessie didn’t say a thing. She didn’t have to. Because as Carla Pearson boarded the bus, I followed Jessie’s shocked stare right to Carla’s swollen belly. Obviously, Carla was pregnant. Exceedingly pregnant. Pregnant beyond a reasonable doubt. And she was my age—sixteen—and just barely a junior, like Jessie and me. Plus, she was sort of my friend, which made the whole teen pregnancy thing pretty up close and personal.

  I gulped.

  “Hey, guys,” Carla said, all mellow and relaxed, like everything was just A-okay.

  I tried not to stare too blatantly as she squeezed sideways into the seat in front of us. “Uh, hi,” I muttered.

  Jessie had somehow managed to press her lips back together, but she was still unresponsive, so I elbowed her. “Yeah, hi,” she finally spat.

  Carla turned around. “Huh?”

  “Nothing. I just said hi,” Jessie repeated.

  “Oh, hi,” Carla said, disinterested. Then she went back to focusing on the bus driver’s head.

  Holy shit, I mouthed to Jessie.

  She leaned over and cupped her hand to my ear. “Who’s the father?”

  I shrugged.

  She bit her lip, as if she was ticking through a mental list of all the sex-crazed boys who could’ve knocked up the relatively tame Carla Pearson. As for me, my mind was a total blank on the subject. Last I knew, Carla was a virgin—like Jessie and me.

  Jessie shook her head. Apparently she’d drawn a blank too. And it wasn’t like Punxsy High lacked obvious man-whores either. I mean, the place had more testosterone-engorged apes than I cared to count. But to my knowledge, none of them had ever hooked up with Carla Pearson.

  Since we couldn’t openly gossip about Carla’s sex life—or the resulting pregnancy scandal—Jessie and I just sat there like mimes as the bus rumbled along the last few blocks to school. Personally, I couldn’t stop thinking about Carla’s fingernails. Obsessing, really. Because ever since fif
th grade, I’d secretly begged God for fingernails like hers: long, sculpted, always perfectly polished.

  So by the time we careened into the drop-off loop at school, I’d devised a preliminary theory about Carla’s situation: The fingernails were to blame. Maybe sexy fingernails led to other sexy things, which led to the whole pregnancy predicament in the first place.

  I glanced down at my own nails, pondering what they might predict about my future. If Carla Pearson’s alluring nails led to sex and pregnancy, my disastrous nubs had nunnery written all over them. Or ninety-year-old virgin. Maybe I should have taken advantage of Mick while I’d had the chance, since it might be quite a while before I got another shot at any serious action.

  “Mr. Xavier! Mr. Xavier!” I chirped, bouncing around in my seat like one of those annoying know-it-alls who’s dying to answer the super-hard question nobody else even understands. “I have to go to Guidance.”

  My homeroom teacher sighed. “For what, Miss Fontain?”

  “My schedule. It’s all wrong,” I declared. “The computer must have had a…a malfunction.”

  “A malfunction?” Mr. X said, narrowing his eyes.

  Okay, so the old guy wasn’t as gullible as I’d hoped. “Or someone made a mistake,” I offered, not naming any names.

  Mr. X shook his head. “Add/drop for seniors starts tomorrow. Juniors are Thursday. You can take it up with Guidance then.”

  “But…”

  I glanced around the room for some emotional support or a little backup muscle, but nobody came to my defense. Nobody but Ryan Goodman, my not-so-secret admirer.

  “My schedule’s wrong too,” Ryan claimed. “They’ve got me in Latin instead of Spanish, and I’m no good at languages. If I miss even two days, I’ll fail for the year.”

  Ryan winked at me a couple of times, but instead of coming off as slick, he just ended up looking like he was having a mild seizure. Still, I could tell he was going to get away with putting the screws to Mr. X.

  “If you insist, Mr. Goodman,” Mr. X said reluctantly. “If two days will make or break you, then I guess you should…”

  Ryan stood up and offered me his hand, but I had no interest in even going to Guidance if it meant I’d owe Ryan Goodman a favor—even if the result was two days of AP hell. Don’t get me wrong, Ryan’s a nice guy and everything, but he’s definitely not my type. Plus, I already had a boyfriend—at least a long-distance one anyway.

  “Thanks anyway,” I said, frowning. “But I’ll talk to Ms. Aggie later. I don’t want to be late for first period.”

  “Oh, okay,” Ryan said, leaving his hand stuck out in midair for a couple more awkward seconds. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  Hoping he’d take a hint, I ignored him and stared down at my schedule. But I could tell he hadn’t taken my hint at all. Instead, he was hovering over my shoulder like a stalker-freak.

  I pretended not to notice.

  “Hey, Flora. Do you have Braeburn for AP History?” Vivian Fisk asked, saving me from an uncomfortable confrontation with Ryan the stalker Goodman.

  I took my schedule over to Viv’s desk, and Ryan finally got the hint—or at least I assume he did, since as I set my schedule down next to Viv’s, he stomped out into the hallway in a huff.

  “Uh…no. I’ve got Emerson. Not that I’m staying in there, but whatever,” I said, wrinkling my whole face in disgust. “Braeburn’s teaching AP again?”

  Viv shrugged. “I guess so. According to this thing,” she said, shoving the paper aside.

  Great. If like half the junior class wanted to nix their schedules, we were all going to get screwed. I mean, there was no way Ms. Aggie could make everyone happy.

  So if the worst happened and I got stuck with the crappy classes I’d already been assigned, junior year would suck according to the following schedule:

  1-Fundamentals of Theater

  (They must be joking)

  2-AP U.S. History

  (Ugh)

  3-Spanish III

  (I’ll suffer through it)

  4-Advanced Math

  (Thank God for small miracles)

  Lunch Block 2 (Jessie had better be in my lunch, or I’ll…)

  5-Honors English

  (Ugh, again)

  6-Study Hall

  (Snooze-fest)

  7-Astronomy

  (Maybe I’ll learn how to read tea leaves)

  8-Probability/Statistics

  (A light at the end of the tunnel?)

  Okay… so at least they’d given me the two math classes I’d requested. And maybe Astronomy would turn out to be tolerable. But that was about it. Mostly, junior year was shaping up to be a heavy load of doom and gloom, and it hadn’t even started yet. If I had the energy, I would’ve sighed.

  Two

  AS the bell for lunch block two rang, I pushed my way between two timid freshman girls who were glancing up and down the hall in distress. And for a second, I even thought about helping them. But then I remembered how Evan Richards, one of my brother’s jock friends, had pointed me in the opposite direction of my third period Earth Science class on the first day of freshman year. High school was kill or be killed, and these shy Sallys had better learn how to swim before they became shark bait.

  I kept walking.

  And when I got to the cafeteria, I made a beeline for our usual lunch table. To the untrained eye, it was like every other table in the place: nondescript, industrial, worn out. But if you looked closely, you just might notice that our table was special. It had the best view of the football field, the squeakiest bench seats that groaned if you so much as breathed, and the dramatic graffiti that detailed the ups and downs of our private lives for all to see.

  So imagine my surprise when I got within view of our table only to find that it had been usurped by a surly gang of testosterone-stoked thugs. How dare they?

  I scanned the cafeteria for Jessie, hoping against hope she’d been assigned to lunch block two like me.

  Negative.

  Who I did see, however, were Lucy Tate and Jimmy Bickford. Sitting together. Close together. Practically cuddling. When did that happen?

  I shuddered involuntarily. I mean, Jimmy Bickford is ten times more aggravating than Ryan the stalker Goodman, which is really saying something.

  I took a deep breath. “What’s up with that?” I asked Lucy and Jimmy, nodding toward the thugs.

  Lucy stopped staring at Jimmy just long enough to shrug. “I dunno. They were there when we got here,” she reported, lacking the necessary outrage.

  “And you didn’t do anything?”

  “Like what?” Jimmy said.

  “Oh, forget it.”

  Even though I wanted to say Jimmy should’ve kicked their asses, or at the very least threatened to, I knew it was an unrealistic suggestion. I mean, Jimmy Bickford couldn’t scare a two-year-old on Halloween. He was that lame.

  “Hey, have you seen anyone else?” I asked, dropping my backpack under the table and slamming my ass down on the bench.

  Lucy shrugged again, which made me wonder if sucking face with Jimmy had turned her brain to Swiss cheese. I swear, I didn’t remember her being so lame before. Maybe it was contagious.

  “I’m gonna get something to eat,” I announced, like the lovebirds actually cared. “Let me know if you see Jessie.”

  At the mention of Jessie, Lucy giggled and Jimmy rolled his eyes, which meant something was up. Something I didn’t know about. Something to do with Jessie. But for some reason, I felt like ignoring the lovebirds’ odd behavior, only…

  Raging curiosity forced me to ask, “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Jessie just might not be here for lunch,” Lucy said cryptically.

  “Why? Does she have a different lunch block?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure Lucy wasn’t giggling over Jessie’s lunch schedule.

  “Actually, no. She got the same lunch as us. Maybe she’ll be here tomorrow. I don’t know,” Lucy said. Agai
n, she shrugged, which made me want to punch some sense into her before she descended any further into vegetable-dom.

  “Cut the bullshit,” I spat.

  Immediately, Jimmy tensed up, like he was going to pummel me for playing rough with his baby doll. Great. Now he got a backbone. Perfect.

  “Just tell me what’s up with Jessie,” I tried again.

  Lucy blinked a couple of times like she didn’t recognize me, which was kind of funny considering her total personality makeover. “I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it later,” she finally said, “but Jessie volunteered to show the new foreign exchange student around. She’s giving him a tour of the school right now.”

  “Okay, and that’s funny because…?”

  “Because she almost knocked out two other girls for the honor,” Jimmy finally revealed. “That’s why.”

  Oh, so that was the big news. Jessie had an obvious crush on a new guy from some exotic place. It figured. The girl was a sucker for anything unique or out of bounds. I mean, she’d probably even fall in love with an alien if she got the chance to see one up close and personal. It was a sickness.

  “Whatever,” I said, mostly to myself, since the lovebirds had gone back to cuddling to oblivion.

  And when I got in the lunch line, I discovered—to my pitiful delight—that at least one important thing hadn’t changed: The cafeteria still had Philly steaks for the first day of school. And since I’m a well-known carnivore and a pretty patriotic Pennsylvanian at heart, this little fact made me happy. Happier than it should have. But considering the state of affairs (long-distance boyfriend, screwed-up schedule, stalker, missing-in-action best friend) I’d take my pleasure where I could get it.

  I had just slid my handy-dandy debit card through the payment machine when I spotted Jessie and her newest project waltzing through the double doors of the cafeteria.

  Now to say Jessie and I don’t share the same taste in men would be an understatement by any definition of the word. Usually if she found a guy attractive, it was a rock-solid guarantee he would repulse me. And such divergent taste in the opposite sex was probably one of the main reasons our friendship had lasted so long in the first place. We’d never, ever once even liked the same boy. But I guess there’s a first time for everything, because Jessie’s little fascination was H-O-T hot. Did I mention he was hot?