Chapter Forty: Amalia

5/16

Life is weird when you're Sunny's best friend. I don't think she's my best friend, but she's latched onto me in a way. I know she's not really close with Dawn anymore, and she had that huge fight with Ducky, so I'm pretty much it. I'm neutral in Sunny's life. That's how I've become the only friend she really has left.

I'm okay with that, but I can sort of see why everyone has backed away from her. Or maybe she pushed them away. She pushes people, that's for sure. Half the time, I want to strangle her.

The other half of time, she's sort of cool. And a little scary.

Yesterday, she decides that we need to go out. She tells her Dad we're going to the mall. I'm there, I'm with her while she says this. I call my parents and tell them we're going to the mall.

"So now what are we going to do?" Sunny asks.

"I thought we were... going to the mall," I reply uncertainly.

"Oh, that was just to free us up," she says, waving a hand, like it's no big deal.

It's not as if I've never lied to my parents. I met Sunny (And Dawn, Ducky, and Maggie) by lying to my parents for crying out loud. I don't like the feeling that Sunny has just manipulated ME to do whatever she wants to do.

"Can't we just... do what we said we were going to do?" I ask.

She heaves a sigh like being honest will kill her. "Fine, fine. Let's go to the mall."

We go over to the mall. We window shop for a while. Sunny buys a new navel ring (a flashy looking fake diamond in the shape of a star), and I get that new pair of shorts I've been saying I needed for a couple of weeks now. While I'm trying on the shorts at Macy's, I hear,

"Hey, Amalia."

I spin around. I'm wearing shorts that are NOT flattering on me at all. In fact, that's what Sunny and I had been agreeing on when he came up behind me. It's Macon.

"Macon, hey," I say. "What's up?"

"I just saw you over here, and I thought I'd say hi. I work over there." He points to the pretzel kiosk.

"I'm glad someone is supplying the world with pretzels," I say.

He laughs. He looks at Sunny. "I don't think we know each other. I'm Macon Rhodes."

"Sunny Winslow," she says.

"Oh," he says with recognition. Pretty much everyone at Vista knows Sunny's name these days. He doesn't say anything else, except, "Nice to meet you."

"Macon's a member of the GSA," I say. I continue, even though it's not really true anymore, but hopefully someday it will be, "Sunny's friends with Ducky."

"He's a good guy," Macon says.

"Like a saint," Sunny replies. Her voice doesn't show any, but her eyes are glazed with sarcasm. "So, the GSA. You're gay?"

He laughs. "No, but, uh, my brother is. He graduated last year, and I just kept going to the meetings. Why the hell not, huh? Besides, it's not just for the gay among us. It's for straight people too. Like, well, us."

Sunny throws an arm around my neck. "Oh, Amalia, you haven't told him our little secret?"

I laugh and shrug off her arm. "Very funny."

She laughs, making a show that she really WAS just kidding.

"Well," I say awkwardly, "it was nice seeing you. I'll see you at the next GSA meeting."

"Yeah, um, I was sort of, since I saw you here, I kind of took it as a sign. And maybe it's bad timing, but on Thursday, it'll be too late. And it probably already is, but, uh, do you want, like, as friends, just, just friends, to go to prom?" He pauses and then adds, as if I wasn't really sure, "With me?"

"Oh!" I say. I'm not expecting this at all. My brain still isn't computing the words, so out come the usual jumble of things that don't make sense. "Oh, well, I, uh-"

Sunny gives me a hard poke in the back.

"Ow!"

"Amalia?" Macon asks.

"Yes!" I say before I can make more of a fool of myself, before Sunny injures me, or before Macon takes back his request because I'm such a spaz. "Yes, I'd love to go."

He grins. "Great. Well, uh, I'll come around sometime tomorrow and we can figure out what we're doing. I mean, plans and everything." He backs away and almost trips over a rack of jeans (how someone almost trips over a rack that comes up to their navel, I don't know, but he somehow accomplishes it). We all sort of laugh. Macon is pretty much as much of a spaz as I am.

"Ooooh! You have a boy-oy-friend!" Sunny sings at me.

"I'm not, you know, I'm just not looking for a boyfriend right now. Besides, he said just as friends," I point out.

"No one trips over a rack of jeans over someone they want to be friends with," she says. "So is he a junior? A senior?"

"Uh, a junior, I think. Obviously he one or the other," I say. I change out of the horrible shorts. The next pair I try on a perfect fit. Pretty much like they were made for me. I bought them. We go over to the prom dresses, so I can get an idea of what's out there. I can't afford a dress today. There doesn't seem to be a lot of selection left.

"He says "uh" a lot," Sunny says out of nowhere.

"What?"

"He says "uh" a lot. It's almost like a stutter or something. Not that it's a bad thing, it's just something I noticed." She pauses. "I thought you liked Alex."

"Alex? No, not like that, anyway. I mean, he's a nice guy, but I wouldn't date him. He's not really supposed to date right now, he told me. Something about rejection or something, I don't know all the details. It's like his latest prescription."

"I think he likes you, though," Sunny pushes.

"Well, even if he does, it doesn't matter, does it? I'm obviously going to prom with Macon," I say.

"But what if Alex asks you out? Would you reject him, knowing that's why he's not supposed to date? What if you rejected him and then something happened?"

By "something" she obviously means, what if Alex tries to kill himself again? I'm not so big headed to think that someone would kill themselves over something I said, but the idea does sort of present itself in my head. I like hanging out with Alex, but I'd never really consider going out with him.

"Stop it!" I say. "Stop putting these ideas in my head! Alex isn't going to ask me out, so it doesn't matter, does it?"

She raises her eyebrows. "I guess not." She doesn't believe that, I can tell.

I can't believe I'm taking dating advice from Sunny of all people. Look how things have ended up for her.

Wow. That was really cruel of me to say about Sunny. I shouldn't have said that. I can't erase it, though, since I'm writing in pen. You won't think any less of me for it, NBook. And it's not just Sunny's past with Mr. Rutherford that makes me think this. Sunny sort of doesn't know how to manage her own life. At least that's the impression I get. I really wouldn't know, I guess.

I like to help people, but I know that Sunny is way beyond anything I could even think about, in terms of being able to actually help her. So I'm doing what I can to be there for her.

"Let's go!" Sunny says, grabbing my hand. She practically drags me onto a bus before I can even think.

"W-what?" I ask. I'm forking over bus fee.

"This bus will take us right into LA," she says. "We can look at dresses there."

"But we said-" I cut myself off. It doesn't matter what we said. Sunny is planning on doing whatever she wants. The second we told our parents we were going to the mall, she wanted to go somewhere else. My idea of doing what we said we were going to do is almost silly in her mind.

"Don't you want to go look at prom dresses?" she asks.

"Well, yeah, but why do you?"

"We're friends. Even if I'm not going, which I've been asked by five different guys who are just looking for blow jobs, I want to help you find a dress."

We go into LA, but it's a short trip. I'm protesting that we go back to Palo City, and Sunny isn't interested in dresses. So we go back to Palo City, after spending less than an hour in LA. Sunny keeps making annoyed comments at me, but by the time we arrive at Palo City, she's stopped making the comments.

We go to McDonald's because Sunny says she needs some grease in her life. She orders a chicken sandwich and fries, and I get a salad. Sunny flirts with the guy who's taking our order. He's about sixteen, but he doesn't go to Vista, he must got to Palo High. He's super skinny and his face is covered with jaggy acne scars. Sunny is only flirting with him because he's there.

Now, it might be small of me to think that Sunny wouldn't really be interested in a guy with acne, but she's not. I know this because she flirts with the guy cleaning tables too. She only takes like two bites of her sandwich, and eats none of her fries. I, however, devour my salad.

"Sunny, why do you do that?" I ask.

"Do what?" she's eying some guys across the room.

"Flirt with anything that walks."

"I don't flirt with anything that walks. I flirt with anything that walks and has a penis," she clarifies, joking. "No reason, I just do. It's a hobby. I don't want to really do anything with them, I just like to flirt. Even when I was seeing... him, I still flirted with other guys. It's just what I do."

"Flirting for sport?" I ask.

She laughs. "Kind of. Besides, Dad's looking at sending me to some boarding school, or girl's school. I'm just trying to get everything I'm going to miss in before it's gone."

I don't really know what to say. I feel bad for her, even though I know she brought all of this onto herself.

"Well, can we just... do what we said we were going to do?"

"We did what we said we were going to do."

"Except for that side trip into the city?"

"Oh, that. Right," she says. "Sometimes the mall just doesn't seem far enough away from my Dad. Maybe Atlanta isn't such a bad idea. Don't worry, Amalia. You won't have to keep convincing me to do what I say I'm going to do. Not that I have a lot of choice. Not for much longer."

I don't believe her. I'm finding it harder and harder to believe anything that comes out of her mouth. I still want to be her friend. I still want to help her in whatever it is she's trying to do, but hopefully I can keep her somewhat in line. Unlike today.

We don't get caught. Everything thinks we were at the mall the whole time. I guess that's how Sunny got away with everything she did for so long, convincing lies. But why do people still believe her?

5/17

What is it about the last month of school? Everyone is totally stir-crazy. Sure, I want to go to the beach, Disneyland, and on vacation, but there's still a month left.

Even with everything going on, I'm actually beginning to feel like I have TOO MUCH time on my hands. However, nothing is going to be done about it until school starts again in the fall. I will spend all summer doing nothing if I have to.

Free time. It's amazing.

Kevin's trying to convince me onto student activities next year. We'll see.

Until then, I'm a busy bee working on my homework (and getting good grades- mostly B's with a couple A's and C's), working at the store, even though my shifts lately have been the directly-after-school and the directly-into-slow-time shifts. It always picks up at five-thirty, when I'm walking out the door.

However, it gives me plenty of time to do my homework.

And that's what I was doing today at work, my homework. I'm sitting at the counter, and Alex is shelving books almost right next to me. He's kneeling on the floor, stacking books on the bottom shelf. I'll ask him about The Tell-Tale Heart, or my question sheet in bio (our sub for the rest of the year is so generic, but I guess he's better than someone who sleeps with students, not to mention one of your friends). Most of the responses are jokes, but sometimes Alex is serious.

I've been quiet for a bit when Alex says, "Amalia?"

I look over. "Yeah?"

"Oh... never mind."

I go back to my work. Another five or so minutes pass.

"Amalia?"

"Huh?" I look over. He's sitting flat on his butt, flipping through a book. "Don't bend the cover."

"I won't."

"What is it?"

"Nothing."

I set down my pen. "Alex, what's going on?"

"Nothing," he replies

"Tell me!" I say. "Tell me or I'll have to... fire... you. I have... seniority."

Alex laughs. "Do you want to come to prom with me?"

"Oh, well, uh..." Everything Sunny said to me the day before about Alex comes rushing back to me. I take a big breath. "Uh, well, I'm going with Macon."

"Oh, okay," Alex says. "I just, uh, thought it would be fun."

I feel instantly uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, Alex."

"It's okay," he says. "I probably shouldn't have asked. Or at least kept up with the latest gossip."

Stupid, stupid Sunny! It's not that I REALLY think that Alex is going to try and kill himself over me. But then again, things like this are the reason that he shouldn't be dating. It's sort of making me a little sick, but I'm feeling a lot more angry at Sunny than anything else. She shouldn't have been putting these ideas in my head.

Maybe I'm not up to being Sunny's friend. It might just be too much for me.

I still feel sort of bad about Alex, though. But oh well. I want to go to prom with Macon. And even if I'd rather go with Alex, I'd still go with Macon, since he asked first and I accepted.

I don't know why I let Sunny get to me.

5/19

Today was... weird. Well, dress shopping with Isabel wasn't weird. But it's Thursday and I skip the GSA meeting and I'm not at work, so that was weird. I keep thinking it's Friday.

But that wasn't the weird part. I ran into Brendan.

It's not like Brendan and I don't see each other. We have a couple of classes together, we see each other in the halls, we say hi, but that's about it. Sometimes I think about the night we broke up, there at the hospital. I'll just find myself thinking about what he said. Really, NBook, sometimes I miss him. But not like I thought I would.

Maybe he really was just what I needed when I needed it. And that's it.

But running into him while he was holding hands with Cece (whom, if you remember, was the one pressuring me to go out with him in the first place) sent like shock waves all through me.

"Amalia!" Cece says. Was she being smug? That she was with Brendan? I'm really not friends with her anymore. It's funny how friends just drift apart sometimes.

Not that I have any right to tell him whom (Who? Whom?) to date.

Once I shook myself from my daze of staring at their clasped hands, I was able to put on a smile. "Hey, guys."

"Hi," Brendan says. He sounds shy.

"How's your dad?" I ask. I haven't visited in a couple of months. Visiting got harder and harder when Brendan and I broke up.

"Remission," he says, smiling.

"REALLY?" I lose all my uncomfortableness. I'm so happy. "That's great. When did this happen?"

"Oh, uh, about two weeks ago? Yeah, chemo, and an operation. He's still on watch, and, well, there's still things to go through for him, but, yeah, it's gone. He's a cancer survivor."

"That's so great to hear," I say. I really don't know what else to say. "I'll have to go over sometime."

"You should," Brendan replies. "I heard that you're going to prom."

"Yeah, I... how do you know? I only told like three people- Oh, I'm going to kill Sunny."

He laughs. Cece laughs too, but I get the feeling she doesn't know why she's laughing. Or maybe she's laughing at Sunny who is still a hot topic of rumors.

"I have to go," I say. "Isabel's taking me out to go dress shopping."

"Well, good luck," he says. He smiles sort of awkwardly, and I leave.

I feel weird about it the entire time Isabel and I are shopping. And that takes forever. All the dresses left on the racks are either ugly, size 0's or size 22's. I need something that's somewhere in the middle. And pretty.

So we got through like three department stores, some girly clothing stores, and then we leave the mall for boutiques, and there's nothing, so we end up at a fabric store.

"We're just going to have to make you a dress," Isabel says.

"In a week?" I reply. I'm not worried about how a dress would turn out. Between Isabel and Mami, both excellent sewers, I'm going to have a gorgeous dress, but it's just a time thing.

"Sure," she says. "I made a dress in two days once."

"But not a prom dress." I know what dress she's talking about. It was a cute sun dress, but it was the simplest of patterns and only came down to her knees.

"It's a challenge, but we'll do it. And there's nine days, not a week. Plenty of time. Now let's go pick out a pattern."

We go through the book of patterns until I find what I want. Then I go digging through fabrics. I find a pretty pale blue silky (but not actually silk) fabric that's just gorgeous.

"It's going to go beautifully with your skin," Isabel says. We get it cut, and then we go home. There, Isabel measures me so we get a perfect fit. Then she sizes the pattern and we cut out the fabric.

It takes like two hours. I've helped them sew before, but I've never been there the whole time. It's time consuming. I'm freaking out already that it won't be done in time.

After that, I have to go do some homework. I leave Isabel to her sewing and I start working.

I feel a little jumbled up.

I have the weirdest feeling that things are ending. That everything is about to change.

It can't be that bad. Change happens. I just need to get through this last month of school, and then I can spend my summer just concentrating on living for a bit.