Casting Call

1. bad decisions

Whoever said "sticks and stones may break my bones but words could never hurt me" had obviously never met me. Sure, most words have to be delivered in a certain order to actually hurt people - "I think we should start seeing other people", "I'm pregnant and it's yours", "We're getting a divorce", etc., etc., - but they could be used to get you into sticky situations as well. Situations like the one Blackwell freshman Eli Richardson is currently in, desperately attempting to hold onto his tenuous position in the tree outside of the head mistress's office with a camera dangling from one wrist and at least a third of the population of Blackwell Prepatory Academy watching below. A little part of me is disappointed, because hello - most of the time the stuff I'm able to pull usually brings out half the school and that's even after hours - but it's not too bad. Besides, I've only got a week of senior year left, seriously what the hell.

The particular combination of words I'd used on Eli earlier that day included the words "prank", "popularity", and "reward", which were three words that freshman tended to respond to, especially when they were coming out of the mouth of a pretty, popular senior. I'm not saying that I'm pretty and popular to be rude or anything, but I'm not a Hephaestus. My mother did not chuck me out of the hospital window once she got a glance at my face, so that has to count for something, right? Either way, the poor kid was now stuck in a tree, trying to get a good view of Headmistress Maria Eagleton's office, so he could get some good footage. Footage of what, you ask? Easy. Footage of her dailance with Coach Carr which, thanks to school office chatter, I had gotten wind of. I don't volunteer in the main offices sometimes during my free period for nothing, believe me. Just by one hour of sitting with all the kindly but viciously gossiping ladies gives me enough fodder for a week, maybe two, and those lozenges they have don't hurt either. Don't judge me, they're seriously good.

"Are you sure about this?"

With my arms still folded I gave my best friend Ali Morgan a smirking smile, looping my arm in hers so we could spectate on the spindly display side by side, squinting up at him. "I'm always sure, AA, you know that. I just didn't expect him to take it this far."

"Liar." Ali bumped my hip with hers, a knowing, if a little indulgent, look on her face. I've known Ali since we were four years olds in pigtails and sundresses, playing blocks together at the preschool near both of our houses, and we've been friends ever since. We weren't super close friends when we were younger, but when we got to eighth grade we'd become inseparable. Despite the many traits the both of us shared, Ali was the yang to my very devilish yin, the Meredith Grey to my Cristina Yang, the peanut butter to my jelly. You get the point. She's more hesitant than I am when it comes to doing things outside of our respective comfort zone's, steadfastly refuses to stop eating meat like I did several years ago (watched a documentary on where hot dogs come from. Never doing that again), calms me down when I'm nearing my freak out stages, and is the only person who will binge watch Harry Potter movies with me and not get bored. Of course in trade for the Harry Potters I watch all the Marvel's with her, but it's not a bad trade off. It's literally a contractual obligation to have at least one shirtless scene in each film, I swear. God bless Marvel and their ridiculously ripped heroes, to that I say a very emphatic amen.

Ali had been present when I'd given my little challenge to skinny, eager-to-please Eli, but she hadn't supported the action, just watched from the sidelines. If she got I was going too far with the suggestions she'd usually intervene, but normally she'd just let me work. Lying, verbal trickery, conversational suggestions, it was what I lived for and she knew it, had known it for the past five years. And it had helped that the closer we got to finishing up the year the more relaxed she was becoming with her mothering of me. A month or two ago, she'd have never allowed me to bargain a freshman with a guaranteed popularity status for the next school year by trying to film one of our teachers and our headmistress doing the dirty, because it had to potential to end up badly. Very badly, to hear her tell it.

It was why she had stopped me from trying to subtly suggest to this used car salesman that it was perfectly safe to let me joyride one of their newer cars last semester, or advising a junior that the best way to get her boyfriend to open up to her was to ask his mother about it earlier this year, or that time I nearly convinced my little brother Dev that Gesundheit was actually a curse word in German, or that one time I tried to assured sophomore Troy Garrett that if he advertised a skinny dipping party at his pool for the weekend no one would bring their cellphone cameras....I could go on and on.

If it weren't for Ali I would've ended up with a much different crowd, doing very different activities, and it was one of the reasons I loved her.

In retrospect, however, she should've stopped me from doing this one.

Eli let out a small squeak when the branch he was standing on creaked from his weight, shifting one ratty Van wearing foot in the small fir he was in. "I - I don't think it's worth it." he tried to back out of it, one foot already reaching down, until a jeer from the crowd stopped him.

"CHICKEN!"

"SELL-OUT!"

I didn't do much to stop the many other jeers raised to Eli but I did start to feel a little bad for him. When I told people the things I did I never wanted them to get hurt, I just wanted to have a bit of fun. Peer pressure is a really dangerous thing nowadays, and with all this negative support from the crowd Eli could get reckless and reckless means hurt.

So, like all good would-be lawyers, I tried for a compromise.

Cupping my hands over my mouth I yelled up at him, hoping Headmistress Eagleton's windows were as thick as she could be sometimes. "Can you at least see them?" I called, hoping that he did. Word of mouth wasn't nearly as good as a picture, but it would destroy her reputation amongst the students for sure.

Eli shot me one terrified gaze and turned a little, craning his head up from where he was perching. "I think I can -"

crack

And that's where things went very, very wrong.

See? Everything is much more clear in retrospect. Too bad you can't be retroactive too. I guess that's cheating.