11th Grade, High School

Age: 15-16

September 2008

The auditorium is just as empty as Mikey said it would be. Spinelli steps through the side door, glancing around at the rows of chairs, all covered in dark maroon fabric that probably hasn't been replaced since the auditorium was added to the school a couple decades ago. The stage is open, with bits of half-finished set designs peeking out from behind the curtain.

She hadn't realized that the musical didn't rehearse right after school until Mikey had made a passing comment at lunch. She should have realized though – most of the theater kids also do band or choir and so they adjust the schedule to accommodate those. Plus, the theater director is one of the school district bus drivers and is working the route during the immediate afterschool period.

She climbs up onto the stage and looks out at the rows of chairs, scuffing her boot on the polished wood stage. This isn't dissimilar to her dance recitals in the grand scheme of it. It feels very much the same standing on this stage as it does Madame Pavlova's. She kneels down, setting her bag on the stage and digging through for her iPod. She pulls out her homework folders and books, flinging the worn paperback copy of Carrie that her English class is reading for their assignment with a hard thud on stage, until she finds the device. She digs further down to the bottom for her headphones, plugs them in, and picks a song.

It isn't the song that Mikey will sing when she actually has to do her dance in front of a crowd of people, but she isn't really practicing for her part. She kicks off her boots and closes her eyes, letting her feet move to the music.

As the music floods her ears and her feet glide across the stage, the entire world crumbles around her. Here in the quiet auditorium, away from the prying eyes of everyone around her, she can take a deep breath even as she feels like she's drowning. The voices in her head disappear, even if it's just for a moment, as she bares her soul through her movement. When the song ends, she stills at center stage, glancing out at the empty chairs. There is no thunderous applause, just the sound of her own breathing.

That is when the world comes back.

She doesn't get it. No matter how hard she tries, she can't seem to get her reputation back. If anything, she was the subject of pity all through the school day. Sam and Dave have suddenly stopped teasing her, both of them holding back their typical jokes with an uneasy awkwardness. Her soccer teammates walked between classes with her, as if they were afraid she would walk right out the front door and back to Butch if they didn't personally deliver her to her classes.

Her fingers graze against her lips and then down her neck as she remembers the previous day. Even though she brushed her teeth for what felt like an hour last night she still tastes the cigarette, like burned newspaper in her mouth, and her throat feels coated in a thick, slimy film of regret. She sat on the bath mat and brushed and brushed and brushed to the point where her gums bled from the irritation.

She takes a seat on the edge of the stage and puts her face in her hands.

When she was younger, she used to have a little plastic kitchen and as her mother would make their family's dinner, she would pretend to do the same. When her father would walk through the door after a long shift, he'd kiss her mother's cheek and then hers, complimenting her on her meal and causing her to giggle and laugh. She had fooled him into believing that her fake plastic spaghetti ever held a candle to her mother's time-tested secret family sauce.

She lifts her head and glances over at her boots, laying haphazard by her backpack. As much as she wants it back, her reputation is gone. She is nothing but a silly little girl playing make believe.

And maybe that's all she's ever been.

She waits until the last possible moment to leave the auditorium, dragging her soccer bag behind her through the parking lot on her way to the playing field. As soon as she enters the complex, she can see the rest of her team mingling about on the turf, some finishing up tying their cleats and others lackadaisically stretching while they wait for their pregame routines to begin.

None of her teammates speak to her as she sits on the edge of the bench to tie up her cleats. Perhaps this is the cold shoulder she had been expecting since she said she wasn't going to practice yesterday, insinuating that she didn't care that she would be leaving them all hanging during one of the biggest games of their season. They couldn't be angry with her while they had to babysit her through school, but now, now that she has made it safely to the field and will be playing tonight, they can air their frustrations with her.

She doesn't attempt to engage. Instead, she uses the warmup period to stretch by herself and take deep breaths.

The first half of the game doesn't go well. She is sluggish in goal and misses a shot that she should have blocked easily. During halftime, Coach Ramsey pulls her aside to yell at her. He must have heard the rumors about her and TJ breaking up because he insinuates that her awful game play is because she's thinking about that.

"I know you're a sixteen-year-old girl, but get over it and get your head in the game," he tells her gruffly. "It's a big sea. There are plenty of fish."

His words are aimed to put fire into her, but instead they fall flat. She just stands, letting the words wash over her as he berates her game play and picks at her performance, until he tells her to go back to the team.

Most of her teammates are hovering around the bench, drinking water or sports drinks and chatting between themselves. The one person not with the rest of the team is Meghan Rigalli, who stands near the fence separating the field from the spectators. On the other side of the fence is TJ. The two of them stand together talking in hushed voices.

He gives small shakes of his head, his lips pursed, before turning around and heading back up into the bleachers. Meghan spins around and Spinelli meets her eye. Meghan's lips are pursed just as TJ's had been and she looks around Spinelli for an alternate route back toward the rest of their team. Unable to find a way to avoid Spinelli, she tries to walk past her.

"What were you talking to TJ about?" Spinelli asks as Meghan storms by.

The other girl stops in her tracks, taking one step toward her so the two can stand face to face. Then she shrugs.

"I figured he should know about what happened with Butch yesterday."

Spinelli turns to look at where TJ is now back sitting in the stands, with his head in his hands and rubbing his temples with his fingers. Even from a distance, she can tell he is frustrated with what Meghan told him and, deep down, she knew that would happen. She knew yesterday when she went to Butch that TJ wouldn't be happy, but at the time she hadn't cared. All she cared about was her reputation and she caved into the selfishness.

But now, she feels the familiar pull of guilt in her stomach. She had assumed he would be mad at her, but he looks just as worn down as she feels.

"He came down here all concerned about how you look like shit out there," Meghan continues. When Spinelli turns back, the other girl crosses her arms and glares. "So I told him that you were going to skip out on us yesterday and now you're out there looking like you can't stop a goal to save your life! And I guess if you were more interested in smoking with weirdo Butch behind the school, you should have just quit soccer at the beginning of the year. Then at least we could have trained someone else to be in goal."

Spinelli looks down at her cleats as Meghan pushes past her once more.

She tries her best in the second half, but it is far from her best performance and the only reason why they win the game is because their offense is able to squeak in a goal during the final minutes. As the rest of the girls cheer and celebrate together, Spinelli walks in the other direction, quietly grabbing her things and hoping to disappear without anyone noticing.

TJ stands by the gate and when she sees him, her entire body deflates. All of the adrenaline that had been coursing through her veins during the game is gone, leaving her already exhausted body completely depleted. She looks away, afraid that she may burst into tears if she meets his gaze.

"You're mad at me too, right?" she breathes.

"Let's just get out of here," she hears him say and that almost seems worse than him yelling at her.

He takes her bag off her shoulder. She drags her feet as she walks out of the complex with him, away from the prying eyes of her team and the few spectators that had been there to watch the early afternoon game. With each step further, she waits for him to start yelling at her but they just continue to walk in silence. Her heart pounds in her chest, quicker and harder with each passing step, as she waits for him to start in on her. Once they get into their neighborhood, passing Kelso's and the other storefronts they so commonly frequent, she can't stand the bubbling of her gut any longer.

"Aren't you gonna rip my head off?" she asks, looking up at him and finding herself upset that he won't look back at her. "You're mad at me. I know you are. I knew you'd be when I went to Butch."

"So, why did you do it?" he asks, continuing to look straight ahead of him.

She lets out a breath. The truth is unflattering. Yesterday, she was being selfish and only thinking of herself and her reputation.

"You know why," she mumbles, hoping that will suffice.

He shakes his head and they continue down the road for a few blocks in silence again. TJ comes to a stop just as they reach the Third Street School fence and blows out a breath, ready to launch into whatever speech he has just created into his head. She knows this stance well, having seen it time and time again, just rarely on the receiving end of it.

"I'm not mad at you, Spin," he says. "I'm frustrated by some of your behaviors and I'm angry at the situation because I don't know how to help you when you are clearly struggling."

"Teej, I'm fine."

He shakes his head and cuts her off.

"No, you're not," he says. "You're not eating. You're not sleeping. I can't remember the last time I saw you smile. Spin, you look miserable all the time. And it is killing me seeing you dig yourself into this hole trying to portray this image that you have in your head of who you're supposed to be."

He sighs heavily before finishing with, "Your reputation is not worth this kind of pain."

She looks over the fence and glances at the playground. When she was younger, the other kids feared her. No one crossed her. She was respected for her grit.

"Yeah, well," she grumbles. "You'll be happy to know my reputation is long gone. It doesn't matter what I do, people don't fear me anymore."

"Your reputation was never about fear," he says quietly. "It was about respect."

She turns back toward him and he steps beside her, the two of them standing side by side against the chain link fence. She follows his gaze into the schoolyard and wonders what he thinks of when he looks at their old stomping grounds.

"People were afraid of Gelman and Kurst because they beat people up for no reason," he states, tapping his fingers against the metal fence before turning back toward her. "People weren't afraid of you, Spin. They respected you because–"

"Because what? I had morals," she spits. She rolls her eyes. "I was part of the brigade of do-gooders?"

"Exactly."

"Bullshit."

"You stood up for the little guy, for kids who couldn't defend themselves," he insists. He gestures out toward the playground. "When I think about you at Third Street, I don't think about your temper or how many people you beat up. I remember a confident girl who stood up for what she believed in. There was a reason why people called you queen of the playground–"

The word queen triggers something in her gut. Instantly, she doesn't hear another word he says. She lets go of the fence and crosses her arms, cutting off the speech she knows he means to use to inspire her.

"Hold up," she spits. "You're really going to pull that? This isn't one of your big speeches where you can look back on things and make it shiny and pretty. People called me queen as a joke because we liked each other and it was obvious."

TJ clearly wasn't expecting her anger, his eyebrows raised and his eyes slightly widened. She takes his silence as motivation to continue.

"You don't get it," she sneers. She shakes her head, uncrossing her arms and letting them fall to her side in an exasperated huff. "You don't get it and you won't ever get it."

She sees a flicker of something flash through TJ's eyes and in an instant, he has reached forward to take her hands in his.

"Then explain it to me," he begs. "Trust me enough to listen to you."

She bites her lip and glances down at her feet. Prior to this moment, she would have said that she trusted TJ with her life, but hearing him beg for her trust makes her pause. This part of her is something she hasn't trusted with anyone, not even TJ.

And it feels scary to say aloud.

TJ reaches forward and takes her hand, giving it a squeeze and she looks up into his comforting blue eyes.

"I'm a girl," she says, her voice soft and threatening to break. TJ's silence urges her to continue, but it takes all she has to say more. "So, my entire worth is based on…what I look like, who I'm dating…how I act, the way my voice sounds."

She takes a quick breath to steady herself.

"I have tried so hard since kindergarten to not be just another Ashley. To have some kind of identity outside of being a silly little girl," she says. "But, in the end it didn't matter. My worth was determined the same way it was always determined for girls."

She shakes her head.

"I'm not popular because I'm a good leader or a fantastic athlete, like you and Vince. It's not because I'm strong," she says. She takes a deep breath. "It's because of the way I look and who I'm dating."

Her eyes well with tears.

"I'm popular because of you," she whispers. "And if it wasn't for you, no one would care about me at all."

She can hear Megan King's words from the other day at ballet taunting her in her head.

She's dating TJ. It gives her social immunity for everything. If they broke up the whole school wouldn't care less about her.

"Spin, is that really what you think?" TJ asks quietly.

She turns away because seeing TJ close to tears is making her throat clench. TJ squeezes her hands and she closes her eyes, tightening the seal to avoid crying. She takes a breath and chokes on the tears in her throat. At the sound, TJ lets go of her hands and in one swift motion has his arms wrapped tightly around her. With her face pressed against his chest, she allows the tears to fall from her eyes.

Notes

Sorry for how long this took to get out. I rewrote it about 15 times because I couldn't get it right. I'm still not sure I'm super pleased with it, but maybe that's just the nature of it.

I imagine that Spinelli is listening to Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls during the first scene. I'm not sure why I've pegged her as a Goo Goo Dolls fan (there is also a Goo Goo Dolls song on her playlist in chapter 17), but here we are.

Quotes that I drew on for this chapter:

In Mama's Girl, Spinelli says: "It used to be that the name Spinelli struck fear into kids' hearts. Now it just squirts milk out their noses."

TJ says this in The Break Up about Spinelli in his paper: "I have a friend who could take down a guy twice her size, but instead she stands up for kids who can't defend themselves." This scene has always gotten me because of the five, Spinelli is the only one to look remorseful when TJ includes her in his paper, as if she's disappointed in herself for how she acted – Vince, Gretchen, Mikey, and Gus in contrast all appear flattered or excited to be included. I just find it an interesting characterization of her.

Next chapter will take place in October and we'll start to transition from Spinelli to Vince.

Thank you for reading! Your reviews have been so kind to read. I greatly appreciate them.