“Do I have to go?” Christine groaned.
“Listen, I know it will be hard, with Nick there and all, but you’re going to have to do it eventually.” Christine rolled over and looked at her friend. Sandra gasped. “You don’t look so good.” She had red, puffy circles around her eyes. Her face was puffy. Her hair was in sticky clumps from her tears. Sandra pulled the flower bedspread back over her. “I’ll tell Fatima you need a day off.”
“Thanks, Sandra,” Christine said appreciatively. She closed her eyes and immediately fell back asleep.
Sandra pulled the choreographer aside. “Fatima, there’s no way Chris can rehearse today.”
“Is she still upset about Nick?” Fatima asked quietly.
“How did you find out about that?”
“I don’t think there’s one person here who hasn’t found out about it. Nick is going around telling everyone that Chris is pregnant with his child and she tried to sleep with Brian. I don’t know how those two fit together, but I haven’t heard her side of the story yet. She can probably explain what happened a little better than Nick. What do you know about it?”
“Not much. All I know is what Chris told me, and she made me promise not to tell. She was up crying most of the night. She looks terrible this morning. Her face is red and puffy, and her eyes are bloodshot. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she got run over by a semi.”
“Okay, she can stay back today. When we get back, I want to talk to her. I want to hear exactly what happened. She and Nick need to at least be civil to each other, and that’s not going to happen without some interference from me.”
Christine slowly opened her eyes and looked around. The room was empty. Where was Sandra? Oh, that was right. There was rehearsal today. She sat up and closed the blinds. God, what had she done? Her life had fallen apart in a time span of two hours. First, she was pregnant. Second, she and Nick got into a fight. Then, she tried to have sex with Brian, which cost her both her boyfriend and her best friend. What was left? After a moment of debate, she picked up the phone and dialed Katelyn’s number, hoping to make peace.
“Milton residence,” said a male voice. It belonged to Katelyn’s father.
“Mr. Milton, this is Chris. I know Kate won’t want to talk to me, but this is really important,” she said.
“Why? What happened?” Mr. Milton replied. Katelyn must not have told him anything about the fight.
“Long story,” Christine sighed.
“Okay, I’ll put her on…Kate, telephone!”
“Hi, this is Kate,” said the familiar voice.
“Please don’t hang up on me, as much as I deserve it,” Christine said.
“What do you want?”
“I want to apologize, and say that I’m a total bitch, and Nick is right about me, and that I probably did deserve everything that Jeff did to me.”
“I don’t want to hear it. You have no idea how betrayed I feel right now. Don’t even bother.” There was a click, then a dial tone. Christine sat down on her bed and hung up the phone, defeated.
Annoyed, Fatima looked at all the boys. Kevin was just as annoyed as she was. AJ was goofing off. Howie was in a dreamland; he had met a new girl the previous night, and he really liked her. Brian was confused with thoughts of Christine and Katelyn. Nick had forgiven him, but Katelyn had broken up with him. Nick was by far the worst, though. His bright, ocean blue eyes were worn to a dull gray, and his smile was nonexistent. Even his voice could not be heard, when he was usually the one she had to yell at to keep quiet. The dancers were their normal, spunky selves, but she didn’t think the boys could take much more work for the day. “Okay, I think we need a break. Be back here in an hour. Nick, I want to see you.”
The tall blonde man sauntered over. “Yeah?”
“What is going on with you? You are so out of it!”
Nick hesitated, but Fatima put her hand on his shoulder reassuringly. “I can’t believe she’d do that to me.”
“Nick, she wasn’t thinking straight.” He looked away, tears gathering in his eyes. Fatima sighed. She could see what was going on. “You still love her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. How could I not? She made it clear, though, that she doesn’t care about me.”
“Give her a second chance, Nick!”
“Why? So she can hurt me again? No way, Fatima. She doesn’t deserve a second chance. That’s not an option.”
“You know, you probably weren’t exactly the greatest person to her, either. I don’t know what happened, but I’d be willing to bet that she had a reason for what she did.”
“I know, I know! That doesn’t mean that she should go and sleep with my best friend, though. That’s not revenge. That’s just pure cruelty.” With that, he shrugged her hand off his shoulder and walked away.
Fatima knocked softly on Christine’s door. “Chris, can I come in?”
“Yeah, sure!” Christine replied quietly.
As soon as she opened the door, Fatima saw exactly what Sandra had been talking about. The normally happy, smiling teenager had been crying all day, which was told by the tearstains on her face and pillow. She was curled up in a chair, reading a crumpled piece of paper. “I know this isn’t the best time, but I want to talk to you.”
“No problem.” Christine looked up and tried to smile. “Where’s Sandra?”
“She decided it would be best if she stayed with Andrea tonight. She thought maybe you needed some time to yourself.”
“Oh, all right. What do you need to talk to me about?”
Fatima sat down and got straight to the point. “You and Nick. Like I said, it probably isn’t the best time, but it’s my job to make sure that you two can at least be in the same room together, and I can’t do that without knowing what happened. Could you tell me?”
Christine sighed. “What do you know already? What has Nick told you?”
“Nick didn’t give out many details. He just said that you were pregnant with his kid, and you tried to sleep with Brian yesterday. That’s all I know,” Fatima said.
“Ugh, where do I start?”
“From the beginning. Start from where you got pregnant.”
Christine proceeded to explain everything, up to the point where they were on the way home from the doctor’s. She paused, debating whether to tell Fatima about Jeff, then decided against it. “On the way home, Nick asked what we would do with the baby. I told him I had to get an abortion because my parents would kill me. He said I should have thought of that before we had sex, which really made me angry.”
“He should have stopped himself.”
“That’s what I said. He apologized, and told me I could have an abortion, which made me even angrier. I don’t need his permission. I told him that, and he called me a bitch. Then he said that I was a slut, and it was impossible for him not to sleep with me that night,” Christine sobbed.
Fatima held out her arms and comforted her. “Guys are jerks, aren’t they?”
“Well, Brian came to comfort me, and I kissed him. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was just this urge for vengeance, I guess. We started making out, and he took off my shirt, and I was taking off his, when Nick walked in. Needless to say, he was really mad. He asked Brian to leave, and he told me that he was coming over to say that he thought he was wrong, but obviously not. He told me again that I was a slut. It’s over now. I blew it. He called Kate and told her, and she called me. Of course, I wasn’t about to tell her that I tried to sleep with her boyfriend, so I told her it was AJ who came over, because I didn’t know that Nick had told her everything. Now Kate won’t even talk to me. I lost my best friend and boyfriend.”
“Chris, it wasn’t your fault. You did what any girl would have done. I would have done the same thing.” She paused. “If you want to quit, I understand. We can find a replacement dancer for you.”
“No, I’ll be fine,” Christine said determinedly.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m positive. This is my dream, and I’m not going to give it up because of some guy, even if it is Nick Carter.” After Fatima left, she went back to looking at the sheet of paper. It was in Nick’s handwriting, and all over it, it said “Nick and Chris, Always and Forever.”