Just A Dorky Nobody

Be cool. Don’t be a baby. Everyone does it, right? It’s fine. He finally noticed you exist, and this is how you’ll impress him. Gracie stood rigidly in the back of the abandoned, overgrown KFC parking lot. As the wind whipped her hair around wildly, she attempted to soothe her racing mind by wringing her hands and biting at the dead skin on her lip. She couldn’t help but look suspicious as she anxiously peered in all directions, keeping watch for any passersby. Her stomach twisted into a knot as she nervously twiddled her thumbs, watching her handsome new beau attempt for the 100^th time to ignite his lighter against the ambushing wind. Derek cursed and grunted in frustration, his embarrassment heightened by the gawky, infatuated girl, who was concentrating on his fruitless attempts to light the cigarette.

His cheeks burned red, and he turned his back to her and crouched down to provide more cover for his sputtering lighter, “Hang on… I’ve almost got it.” Gracie’s shoulders dropped a minuscule amount, and she quietly sighed with relief at the realization that after the ten minutes he’d been trying, Derek probably wasn’t going to be successful. Smothered by Gracie’s uncomfortable and almost pitying energy that hung in the air between them, Derek whipped his head around to read her expression, and she halfheartedly flashed him a meek, reassuring grin.

After what felt like a tortuous amount of time of Gracie being on a one-man watch, her boyfriend slowly rose and slanted into his default, cocky posture. Derek spun to the shy girl waiting on him across the parking lot and wore the cigarette in his mouth with a cool, lazy grin. As he took an obnoxiously long, showy drag, he swaggered over to poor Gracie, who was now way in over her head, and stopped toe-to-toe with her, sizing her up. “Well?”, he taunted her as he blew the smoke in her face, cigarette still dangling from his smirk. Gracie made eye contact with Derek for only a moment before it became too heavy, and she inclined that it felt safer to stare at their feet.

Her brows knitted with concern as she tucked her wind-styled frizz behind her ears. Though she’d been ecstatic when Derek had asked her to be his girlfriend at lunch, his plan to meet up here to smoke after school was the part she’d been worrying about all day. Her endless boasting about stealing packs of cigarettes from her father’s convenience store had certainly caught everyone’s attention (which was mostly intended to catch Derek’s), but at what price? Was this who she wanted to be? A child criminal?

She was held captive by the awkwardly long silence and the foreboding consequences she feared would find her. If Dad finds out I did this, I’ll be grounded literally forever. But I don’t want to be seen as a wimp. Nobody is ever going to forget it. I don’t want to smoke. I don’t want to become addicted. What if this gives me lung cancer? I’ve heard you don’t need to smoke very much to get cancer. What if I’m the 0.00001% that gets it from one cigarette? I’m sure it’s happened before.

Derek interrupted her chickenhearted inner dialogue to provoke her, “Come on, don’t be a wuss. I thought you said you do it all the time.” He smirked and slicked back his ruffled hair with his fingers. She quavered, “I...I only smoke Malboro cigarettes. Nothing else is as good.” Derek scoffed, “This is a Malboro. Come on, are you gonna do it or not? Because if not, I’ll just go home since you wanna waste my time.” Gracie knew that it was now or never. She’d had a huge crush on him for the entirety of 7^th grade—fantasizing about their life together, drawing pictures of their future children, making up scenarios in her head where he professed his love to her—the whole nine yards. She’d always wanted to be noticed by Derek, and if she didn’t do this now, he’d see how much of a baby she was, and she’d go right back to being a dorky nobody.  This was her chance to prove herself—to Derek, his stupid, mean friends…to everyone. Electricity zinged throughout her body as she lifted her eyes to meet Derek’s unflinching gaze and plucked the flimsy cigarette from his lips.

Gracie fixed her index and middle fingers into a “V” and led the butt of the cigarette to her mouth. She locked eyes and gave her brand new boyfriend her best attempt at an alluring expression as she took an overconfident, but short-lived drag. Gracie deeply inhaled, mirroring Derek’s arrogant smirk, but was suffocated by the wall of thick, inky smoke assailing her lungs. Her eyes grew wide as she spat the cigarette out and coughed and coughed and coughed. She forced as big of a breath into her raspy lungs as she could muster, her lungs wheezing and sizzling with each pant. The pair stood in silence for several minutes, the only sound being the deep gasps of air that Gracie was struggling to capture.

Eventually, Gracie managed to regain her composure. Derek broke the awkward silence by belting out in hysterical laughter, then bent down and snatched the mangled cigarette off of the ground. Her face burned with red hot shame as he mocked her, “You can’t even handle one puff? I thought you smoke a pack a day. That’s what you said earlier! Were you lying?” Gracie’s humiliation twisted into anger and defensiveness as she stood up straight and barked back in retort, “I do! I’ve smoked since I was twelve!” Derek blew another cloud of smoke into her face and chortled, “No way, man! You couldn’t even take one puff. ”

Gracie’s face contorted in frustration as she swatted away the thick cloud hanging in the air before her. She’d seen Derek tease people before, and knew that if he stuck to his guns, she wouldn’t win this argument. So, Gracie simply folded her arms, stuck her nose in the air, and harrumphed, “I don’t need to explain myself to you.” Her boyfriend snorted, “I don’t care, really. I thought for a second you could maybe be kinda cool, and I decided to give you a chance. I know you’ve liked me the entire year, and I see you staring at me all the time. You should be thanking me!” Gracie’s stomach became heavy with hurt and disappointment. “Thanks for giving me a chance, I guess. I should’ve known you’d be a jerk to me, just like you are to everyone else. I’m going home. We’re through,” Gracie seethed at her now ex-boyfriend and turned her back to him to begin her walk home.

With only a few steps passed, Derek shouted after her, “I don’t care! I never even liked you anyways! I only asked you out because of a bet!” Gracie halted, that pit in her stomach now starting to burn more intensely. She spun around to face him. “What bet?”, she quietly probed, willing the tears building to remain unfallen. That unyielding stare of his fell upon her as he explained sadistically, “ I don’t even like you. You’re weird, your friends are weird, your clothes are weird. I’ve never liked you, and I never will.” Gracie nervously wrung her low ponytail in her hands and solemnly looked down at the outfit she’d so confidently chosen for herself this morning—a patchwork pinafore dress, colorful stockings, and thick turtleneck sweater, and shame washed over her.

Derek didn’t stop. “When you were bragging to everyone before school today about smoking a pack a day and stealing cigarettes, Carson, Elliot, and I all knew you were lying. So, they bet me $20 that I wouldn’t be able to get you to smoke a cigarette by the end of the day. I bet that I could,” he proclaimed arrogantly as he shrugged his shoulders. “So, at lunch, I asked you out, and of course, you said yes. I just flirted with you a little, and you fell for it immediately. And on the other hand, if it turned out that you were telling the truth, I would’ve been able to get free cigarettes from you. I lured you here so Carson and Elliott could record it for proof, and… well, I guess that’s it.” Gracie went cold as she prodded, “Record it? What do you mean? Why?” Derek sneered, “Because it’s funny! I couldn’t record it while I was right in front of you, so they came with me and hid. So now, I have proof, a funny video to show everyone, and $20. Right, guys?” He grinned devilishly as his two friends appeared from behind the large dumpster adjacent to Gracie, cackling madly at the looping video of her embarrassing confrontation.

Gracie’s eyes lit up in shock and horror at the sight of the two boys, and the video that she knew would definitely ruin her life. She furiously stamped towards Carson, who held the phone with the recording of her on it. He giggled crazily, backing away and taunting her, leading her around in circles as she repeatedly lunged for his phone. The 3 boys formed a triangle around her, tossing Carson’s phone back and forth amongst one another, teasing her as she pleaded and ran back and forth in an effort to commandeer the phone. The three boys cackled as the video continuously played, which agitated Gracie even more. Gracie was enraged as she ran in circles for what felt like forever, arms shooting into the air to try and grab the phone mid-toss, pounding the pavement from Carson to Elliot to Derek, and back to Elliot, and Derek again, then Carson, always just out of her grasp…up until Derek failed to catch the phone, and it clattered to the ground—right in front of Gracie, who did not waste a second before scooping it up.

 The gaggle of boys rushed her in a frenzy, but she weaved her way through the tangle of arms and broke free. However, it was only a moment before the boys caught up to her once more, and Gracie panicked. She was aware that the only way she could make sure the video wasn’t released to her 7th-grade peers was to delete it—but how? Derek and his friends were too fast for her to delete it right there in the parking lot. So, Gracie used the only solution that her brain could provide quickly enough—she ran.

She sprinted through the cracked, overgrown parking lot and onto the main road. She knew of a place where she’d be safe that was pretty close by, so she set upon her course. She raced past house after house, block after block, as fast as her gangly legs would carry her—jumping over uneven curbs, dipping beneath low-hanging tree branches, bounding past unbalanced sidewalk panels—the boys always just out of step from her. Gracie knew this path well, and easily eluded every tricky drop, crack, and obstacle that littered her path, while Derek and his ne’er-do-well friends stumbled, tripped, and rolled as they attempted to catch up. Although they could never quite reach Gracie, that did not keep them from hurling names and insults at her, which only bounced off her back.

But finally, Gracie had reached her place of asylum. She cut a hard right and stumbled through the heavy double doors, for once, grateful to hear the obnoxiously loud greeting bell, and dipped behind the tall, gated counters bordering the doors. Gracie crawled over the creaky wooden platform and plopped down beside a familiar pair of shoes that turned to face her. “Gracie? What on earth? What happened? Why aren’t you at home?” her father exclaimed with a shade of concern. Gracie said nothing but only hugged her knees close to her chest and panted, staring up at her father with a guilty, pleading expression. The only sound in the entire store was of the video on Carson’s phone looping in the background.  But the silence didn’t last long, as Derek burst through the barred double doors, his gaze aggressively perusing every inch of the store, followed by his troublemaking friends in tow.

Dad shot Gracie a split-second look of confusion, and gave the boys a tone to match as he asked them, “Can I help you, boys?” Carson stepped forward and addressed Dad with a bold tone, “We’re looking for Gracie. We know she’s here. She stole my phone, and I want it back.” Carson, Derek, and Elliot gave Dad a piercing, expectant stare. But, unfortunately for Gracie, the sound coming from Carson’s phone gave her location away almost immediately. The boys tore away from Dad and smugly paraded over to the gated entrance that led behind the clerk’s counter, their irritation now falling upon Gracie. Dad wore a bewildered expression. “Gracie, please tell me that you did not actually take this boy’s phone!”

This time, Gracie did not shy away from the bullies’ stares, as she sighed and explained, “I did. They recorded me doing something embarrassing and are going to show it to everyone. I took it so I could get away from them and delete it.” Dad looked up at the boys from beneath his brows, and demanded, “Is that true?” The boys stood in lengthy silence, their throats uncomfortably bobbing, and that was enough reason for Dad. “Gracie, delete the video and give him his phone back.” The three boys immediately clattered in protest, but Dad shoved a hand out at them and demanded that they step back or he’d report this incident to their parents. The boys stifled their objections and watched scornfully as Gracie navigated her way through the process of deleting the video, her thumb briefly hovering over the trash can icon before Dad commanded, “Wait”. Gracie halted, baffled, as Dad said “Let me see the phone.”

 Gracie’s head hung in shame and hot tears forcibly fell down her cheeks as she gingerly held the phone up to her father, who calmly took it from her outstretched hand and watched the entire video. The store was completely silent except for the faint sound of Gracie coughing and arguing with Derek. The boys wore feline smiles as Gracie buried her red-hot face into her hands, moments away from dying of embarrassment. When Dad finished watching the recording, he silently shot firm looks at both his daughter and the boys, and without any hesitation, deleted the video from Carson’s phone, and handed it back to him.

 The boys shot Dad and Gracie a glare, cut their losses, and departed. When it was just him and his daughter, Dad faced Gracie and reprimanded her with a shade of frustration and worry, “Why on Earth would you smoke a cigarette? You know better than that! There are serious consequences for you smoking—think of what could happen!” Gracie, more than sorry for her actions, met her father’s frustration and conceded, “I know, Dad. I’m sorry. I knew you’d be upset with me, and I did it anyways. I know you don’t like smoking.” Dad interjected, “No, Gracie. Bigger consequences. No, I’m not happy that you smoked a cigarette, but—” Gracie beat Dad to the punch, “I know, I know. What if a police officer had found me? I could get arrested! I could’ve gone to jail! I’m a criminal now.” “No, Gracie—” Dad started, only to be interrupted once more by his daughter’s pity party she was throwing for herself. “I let you down, I let myself down, I broke the law, I—"

Dad loosed an exasperated sigh and drug his hand over his face. “No, Gracie, you have asthma!”