Junior Year Box Set

I was then set free to go terrorize the dance.

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I arrived at the dance just as the band was ready to play. I was glad to see that most everyone took dressing up seriously. The cheerleaders all came as witches this year. The defense all dressed as werewolves. Most of the offensive players were vampires. I had to laugh at Wolf because he came as a hobo. He had been a hobo ever since I could remember. It was his go-to costume. It was also inexpensive to pull off.

I found Brook. She was my twin, except she had been talked into wearing the contacts. I would have to get a picture of the two of us together.

“What are we supposed to be?” I asked.

“We’re demons,” she informed me.

“Come, my Demon Queen, and dance with me,” I said.

I was prepared to not allow another night like Homecoming. I planned to dance with my date, not watch as others did so. Once Brook had me on the dance floor, she didn’t let me off. I had a great time because Brook had some moves. I should have expected as much, because she was a cheerleader, after all. The only things that I didn’t like were that leather doesn’t breathe, and makeup sucks when you sweat. I was very glad I’d had my leather pants lined so I wouldn’t be stuck in them, which was possible because they were custom-made to be very fitted. That translates to ‘tight.’ It didn’t take long for me to lose my leather coat.

When the dance ended, I took Brook home. She understood that tomorrow was a big day for me.

Plus, I promised her I would take her to Mona’s and my party. All the girls tried to get details on what had been planned. Mona was our party queen and usually on top of the planning, but I’d taken it out of her hands. I just let it be known that everyone should plan to have a good time.

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Chapter 32 – Hell Hath No Fury Saturday October 31

The past week had worn on me. It had probably been one of the worst weeks of my life. Only a couple of other weeks might have challenged it. The avalanche and Lily almost losing her life jumped up as possible contenders. Then there were the two that had happened recently: Jeff drowning, and when I found Alan and Tami in bed together. Therefore, I guess you could easily put this in the top five, but with an asterisk since it wasn’t over yet.

I lengthened my stride as I ran and Duke looked up at me. I needed to run to organize my thoughts. I dreaded today. I was sure I was about to experience the ugliness that Pam’s father had become. It would take everything I had not to the throttle the bastard. He’d had the audacity to accuse me of domestic violence, and even the police suspected that he had laid hands on his own daughter. What sickened me was we had to go through this little opera of a meeting today.

It was a valuable life lesson that you really didn’t want to get to the point where you got lawyers involved. If for nothing else, the money I had already spent: Ms. Dixon alone had cost me nearly $30,000 this week just in billable hours. Add the services of my PR firm, hotels, travel expenses, food for reporters, and I was quickly into six figures, and the week wasn’t even done. Frank had warned me that a full-blown scandal would easily run me a half-million dollars. I wondered how others afforded something like this.

Frank had been tracking my Recognition and Q Scores. When he was first hired, my Recognition Score was a three. Since my recognition was so low, there was no way to get an accurate Q Score. Your Q score was your likability score. A good example was Jim Parsons, who played Dr. Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory. He had a Recognition Score of 45 and a Q Score of 33. Both were stratospheric numbers. After my week in the news every night, my Recognition Score had climbed to nine with a Q Score of seven. We would have to work to rehabilitate my image. Frank was ecstatic that people had started to recognize me. I guess what they said about even bad press is good for you was right. Of course, that same press had said that I had assaulted and raped my pregnant girlfriend.

I found my run didn’t have its normal calming effect. People would never look at me the same way ever again, and it was all due to one Cal Bell. The more I thought about everything he’d done, and the potential and actual damage he’d caused me, the madder I became. I normally got angry about something and quickly got over it. The repeated attacks this week made me realize that Cal didn’t intend to ever work things out. He was out to destroy me, and if I hadn’t had good support, he would have done just that.