I wrote this scene after completing the first draft of SHIFT and tried adding it to the beginning as a way to slow down the plot and give us more insider info about Megan/Megan and Leah’s friendship. But I didn’t like it. So I took it back out. I always save every scene I remove, however, just in case there are cookies I can use later. This outtake afforded no tasty tidbits for reuse, so here it is, just for you.
**Disclaimer–being an outtake, this is unedited and unreviewed!**
What a burden, I thought sarcastically to myself, to have guys fawning over you. Sheesh.
In all honesty, Megan wasn’t much more popular than I was. It was only with some guys that she seemed to have copious luck. She was a little too…different. Too free-thinking for the kinds of guys who liked their girls in tight jeans and shoes with three inch heels. The kinds of girls who carried designer purses, like my sister. No, it was a different kind of guy that went for Megan. They invariably seemed to have no self esteem—in which case they thought she must have been in their league since she wasn’t traditionally pretty and popular—or too much of it. If it was the latter, they seemed to see her as a challenge that they were ready and willing to embark upon. Either way, it was sort of pathetic. I, on the other hand, seemed not to draw the attention of either group, which I sometimes found comforting, even while I was a little jealous of Megan and her wayward luck. We’d been friends for so long, I was mostly used to being the sidekick. Megan was a little wild—too grown up for her age—where as I was always the logical voice of reason. The practical one.
“Ugh, talk about something to distract me from the feeling of his greasy little eyes digging into my back,” Megan whined.
“Oh, come on, is he really that bad?” I chided, abandoning my peripheral vision attempts and looking at her in earnest.
“I told you what he tried to do after Prom. Yes. He really is that bad.”
Franc, it would seem, faired on the side of an overabundance of self-worth. He viewed more than Megan’s smarts and attitude as a challenge.
“Okay, okay, fair enough. I’d forgotten about that,” I relented. “Do you want me to give him a nasty look? The rumor is that receiving the stink eye from the wicked witch of Meyer High School curses the recipient to a life of genital warts.”
Megan laughed. “You are so dramatic.”
I just shrugged and opened my soda. “I don’t know, it sounds like he probably deserves genital warts to me.”
She wordlessly agreed with my assessment while she chewed her fries.
The lunch hour passed, too quickly, with much discussion of similar topics as well as what we’d like to be able to do to boys who over stepped their physical grounds—namely what we wished we could do to Franc as his punishment for his uncouth behavior when he’d dropped Megan off at her mother’s house after Prom. Manacles were involved at one point. Pepper spray. Derringer pistols hidden in garter belts. The usual. Megan and I parted ways with our common remarks about one of us calling the other later that night, and headed to live out the rest of the school day. Thankfully, only two classes more to go.
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