FicWad

Gerard froze.

I don’t know how I got to my feet so fast, but before I knew it, I was standing up, trying frantically to explain.

“I can explain,” I said. “I was just ---”

“You were sneaking out with this boy behind my back, is what you were doing,” Gram said. “I’ll tell you something, your mother is going to hear about this. And you know she isn’t going to be happy, Alixzandra.”

“I wasn’t sneaking out!”

“Well, would you like to explain what in the world you were doing? And you.” She pointed to Gerard. “Why are you standing in the middle of my sidewalk? Get up here.”

Ordinarily, I would have laughed at the wooden way Gerard walked up to my front porch, but this situation was no laughing matter.

“What do you think you’re doing with my granddaughter?” Gram said.

“I . . . was . . .”

“Nothing! Absolutely nothing. Alixzandra, get inside.” Gram pointed in the house.

“No!”

Gram looked at me like she couldn’t believe I was disobeying her.

Gerard looked at me exactly the same way.

“No,” I said again. “No. No.”

“Alixzandra ---”

“No. No. No. No.” I realized I was repeating “no” over and over again, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was the only thing that would come out of my mouth.

Gerard cleared his throat.

I stopped.

“Both of you, inside, now.”

“I can’t!” I said.

“And why not?” Gram said, folding her arms.

“I . . . I . . .”

At that moment, I honestly forgot all my plans and everything around me . . . The only thing I was aware of was this thought running through my head like a marquee:

My life is over.

Had I been asked my name at that moment, I probably wouldn’t have been able to answer (or remember it, for that matter), and just kept stuttering “I . . . I . . . I . . .” ad infinitum, as they say.

“What?” Gram snapped.

“See, we were just ---” Gerard started.

I, lacking all control over my tongue, interrupted him with, “I have an audition! All right? So, you know, I can’t come inside, because if I do, I’m going to be late. And if I’m late, I can’t audition, and if I can’t audition, well, you know, it should be obvious. And that’s why ---”

Gram waved a hand dismissively. “You expect me to believe that?”

I bit my lip. “Kind of?”

“I don’t believe it for one second. You were sneaking out with this boy for whatever reason . . . Just to spite me, probably. You’ll show your grandmother that she’s not the boss of you, huh?”

“I never said that!”

“I told you to stay away from him. I told you that people are going to get ideas. Well, that’s fine, it’s your reputation, not mine. But you are absolutely not going to bring shame on this family by sleeping around with some guy and getting yourself pregnant!”

I saw Gerard turn bright red out of the corner of my eye.

I knew I wasn’t so pale, myself.

I’ve tolerated this sort of thing from Gram for a while, maybe because she’s never said it in front of anyone except my mom.

And now she’s said it in front of Gerard.

Well, it was okay that my life was over. I was probably going to drop dead any second now from the sheer embarrassment of it all.

Or throw up all over the both of them and then die, or just faint and crack my head open on the brick and die from that.

Or at least become a vegetable. That would probably make Gram happy. She’ll never have to worry about me going anywhere without her ever again.

I don’t know how I managed to recover my powers of speech, but I did, and “I told you we’re not sleeping together!” came out of my mouth.

Gerard turned an even darker shade of red.

I threw up a little bit in the back of my mouth.

“So you say,” Gram said. “But I’m not having it. Your mother may let you run all over town with some guy, but right now, I am in charge and I am not allowing it.”

“But we’re not even dating!” I said.

Gram scoffed. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Alixzandra. Look at you two.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to take that.

“Now,” she said, “get inside.”

“I told you! I have an audition to get to.”

“It’s true,” Gerard said.

Gram glared at him, then at me. “If that’s true,” she said, “why didn’t you just ask me to take you?”

“Because . . .” I didn’t want to tell her the real reason, which was I didn’t want to have to listen to a random lecture the way over and back, along with a laundry list of faults of all the people she saw. Because, unlike my mother, she wouldn’t drop me off and come back in an hour or so to get me. She’d come inside and sit next to me the entire time criticizing the people around, and me, if she didn’t find someone else to talk to. “Be-because . . . Gerard is auditioning too, and, I figured, hey, why not just go together and save some gas?” I glanced over at him, hoping he’d say something to back up my story. “Right?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said, and nodded.

“Well, I’ll tell you something ---” Gram said, and stopped as she caught sight of something on the ground. Gerard and I turned to see what it was.

It was my cat, Halen, coming proudly up the walkway with a half-dead mouse in her mouth. She walked right into the middle of us, put the mouse down, and then laid down, one paw on the mouse to ensure it didn’t try to run, and looked up at us, purring.

Gram looked at me.

I looked at Gerard.

Gerard looked at Gram.

We all looked at Halen, who meowed.

I picked that moment to make my escape. “Well, we’ve got to go,” I said, hurriedly backing down the steps. “We’re going to be late.”

“Yeah,” Gerard said, following me. “It starts in a few minutes.”

“Bye!” I said. “I’ll see you when I get home!”

We rushed over to his car. He pulled out of the driveway before I even had my seatbelt buckled.

I realized my heart was pounding frantically. “I am so dead,” I said to him.

He looked over at me as he stopped at a stop sign. “So dead,” he said.