Page 3 of Change of Course

The way people at high school had treated me set me on the course I’ve been on. I felt like I had to get away. Make something of myself. Make some money. Be treated with respect. That’s what I sought in my career.

When Cherry told me she couldn’t be with someone who didn’t care about doing something with his life and went blithely off to do something with her own life, it hurt. It fucking hurt. I went looking for the highest-paying job I could find, and if that meant an oil rig in Alaska, that meant an oil rig in Alaska. That was Step 1.

And now I’ve done what she was talking about. I didn’t stay in our hometown, working at a boring, no-future, low-paying job. I have skills and education. I have a tidy sum in the bank, from the extra money the oil company pays you to live at their beck and call in such a desolate location. And I respect myself, so by and large it doesn’t matter what other people think of me.

So I went ahead and applied for the job in Rivertown. I passed the first round of interviews, conducted virtually, and I’m scheduled for an in-person interview soon.

If worst comes to worst and I run into those smug assholes who dismissed me back then, I can rub my success in their faces. All those football players who thought they were God, and all those cheerleaders who thought they were God’s gift to the world…I’d like to prove they were wrong about me.

And yeah, okay, I’d like to see my Cherry.

Yeah, okay, I’d like her to see what I’ve made of myself.

Yeah, fucking okay, I’d like her to regret ditching me.

So I look her up, and the first thing I see on her page is that she’s coming to the reunion.

Wait, reunion? It’s time for that already? I count backwards. Yep, fifteen years. Holy shit, it really has been that long.

In a lot of respects, I’m not the same guy I was fifteen years ago. But down inside, I’m still the same guy who fell in love with Cheri Angell.

She was always out of my league—on the surface, anyway. Head cheerleader, honor roll student, Homecoming Princess, Prom Queen, and the most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen in my life. Little Miss Perfect. I used to watch her, when nobody was paying attention to me.

I could tell she wasn’t the kind of perfect everybody thought she was. She was a human being, like everybody else. She struggled, like everybody else. She wanted to do everything right, to make her parents and teachers and friends happy, and be able to think of herself as successful.

But there were times she seemed so lost. When she didn’t get named to the National Honor Society, she seemed to shrink inside herself. When she was on the homecoming court but Brittany Smith was chosen as queen instead, she put on a bright smile for her friend, but there was pain behind her eyes.

She wanted to shine. But when she couldn’t, it hurt her.

I saw it.

I was the only one who seemed able to see it.

But I knew she couldn’t see me because of my carefully-cultivated reputation as a bad boy. I didn’t fit the idea of the right kind of guy for her. I was the Beast to her Beauty. I was Danny Zuko to her Sandy Olssen, and I had no intention of trying to make myself into a jock, or a geek, or something I wasn’t.

I just had to hope that someday she’d see the real me, and want me.

It happened faster than I’d expected, though: February, our senior year. I’d gone to the movies, borrowing my mom’s ancient Toyota so I could go see “No Country for Old Men.”

I was on my own. I’d stopped picking up chicks because it seemed so meaningless. They were mostly girls who had some experience, anyway: the older sisters of guys from the neighborhood, or the younger girls who were hanging around the motorcycle club when I tagged along with my stepdad. They didn’t mean anything to me, and I didn’t mean anything to them, but I had learned about women’s bodies and how to do things they enjoyed.

Coming out of the movie and making my way back to reality after the incredible piece of film I’d just seen, I saw Cheri coming out of “27 Dresses” with Roger Wilkes, one tall mofo who was the basketball star at River Hills. Her long dark hair cascaded down her back, over her burgundy sweater, and she was speaking with animation, her face smiling. As I was looking, Wilkes reached down and took her hand off his arm.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he said. “That was the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen. Who fucking cares about dresses? Or weddings or bridesmaids or…whatever the hell that was?”

Cheri’s face clouded. “It wasn’t about the dresses. That was the whole point, Roger. It was about Jane realizing that what she wants matters. It was—you know, I really got her. I really, really understood what she—”

“You know what?” Wilkes said, cutting her off. “I’m so sick of this girly shit. Find your own way home.” He walked away from her, leaving her standing in the movie theater lobby all alone.

She didn’t cry. She just stood there, stunned and blank. Before I realized it, my body started heading toward her without my planning it. I stopped in front of her, but it took her a few minutes to realize someone was there. When she looked up into my face, it was like the person I’d seen a few minutes before, happy and excited, had been erased.

“I heard you,” I said. “I can give you a ride home. If you want.”

Her face didn’t change. After a moment of silence, she said, “I know you, don’t I? From school.”

“Jackson Moore. We had US History together last year.”

She blinked, and the life came back to her eyes. “Oh. Yes, we did.”

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