Getting Over Cameron Grey

Prologue

Six Years Before

It was senior prom night. My date was supposed to be Eric Robinson but he had gotten so drunk off of the spiked punch that he instead decided to slobber all over Heather, the only girl that I didn’t like on my cheerleading squad. He’d completely forgotten about me, and within twelve minutes of being in the school’s auditorium, he had whisked the giggling and sober Heather off to a dark corner. So then it was just me and Christine, the second in command on the squad and one of my closest friends back then. Her date didn’t react well to something they had eaten earlier in the day, before prom, so he was in the bathroom. We moved down the line at the buffet table and tried to count calories in our head.

“I don’t even know what it was,” she mumbled as she filled her cup with water by the food area, “we eat black bean tacos every Friday, and suddenly he’s flooding his pants.”

“Maybe he ate something else he didn’t tell you about.” I dropped a few sweet plantains onto my plate. We were going to sit on the bleachers like a bunch of losers. “Or maybe they prepared it differently today.”

“Maybe.” Christine took a sip from her cup as we moved down the line. “Do you think there’s anything that I can do now to fix it?”

I stopped to look at the turkey and chicken. There were always so few options for vegetarians at that school. “Did you guys come in his car or...”

“His.”

I scooped some rice. “We can use my car then, and drive over to the pharmacy and we can get him something there."

“Really?” Christine smiled. Then she made an urgent noise and held my arm. “Wait, don’t get the beans.”

“I can’t have plantains and rice and not have beans, though, it’s just wrong.”

“Look what happened to Mikey! They’re contaminated.” She moved my arm over to the desserts section. “Get something sweet. The season’s over anyways.”

“Don’t be prejudiced against beans just because Mikey got sick.” I took a handful of cookies anyways.

“Oh my God, just be safe about it. Where do you think they got all this food anyways? Not from the one hundred percent white PTA.” She held the rim of the cup between her teeth, got me a fork, put a hand on my shoulder and then guided me to the chairs. We sat in the second row, all the way at the end. “Can I have a cookie?”

“I don’t want to have to be like this, but you were just by a huge thing full of cookies.”

She took one anyways. “I can’t believe Eric would do that to you. That’s so messed up. And with Heather, of all the girls on the squad, if you’re going to go with a girl on the squad.”

“If I were him, I would’ve chosen you.” I wiggled my eyebrows.

“Of course you would’ve, my lovebird,” she wiggled her eyebrows back for a moment, “but seriously, you should go over there and do something. You’re way too nice about all of this.”

I started to eat. “There’s nothing that I can really do. He’s drunk.”

“Well, you could go tell a teacher that they’re, like, having sex over there. I mean, who knows what they’re doing. It’s gross anyways. Oh, you know what we could do?” Her eyes went wide. “You could totally pretend you’re okay with him tomorrow, and then you could go to his place after school like you guys are about to make out, and then break his trophy.”

“He would die if that happened.”

“Or, or, tomorrow, take him to some restaurant before rush hour, put a laxative in his drink and then send him off to drive home. Because you know how far he lives away, he’ll totally be stuck in traffic needing to take a crap.”