Bad Taste in Boys (2 page)

I went out to the quad to make the call since it was the only place I wouldn’t get lynched for using my cell. The Ho’s phone rang nine times. I was just about to hang up when someone finally decided to answer.

“Dr. Ho’s office,” said a bored-sounding female.

“I’ve got an emergency. Could I talk to Dr. Ho?”

“If you have a medical emergency, you should call nine-one-one immediately.”

“Not a medical emergency. An I‑need-to-talk-to-Dr.-Ho-right-away emergency.”

She gave me a long-suffering sigh. “What kind of emergency?”

“Uh …”

“Gynecology or acupuncture?”

What the heck would an acupuncture-related emergency be like? The idea was so ridiculous that I couldn’t keep from snorting.

“I’m waiting,” she snapped.

“Look, my name is Kate Grable. I’m the student trainer for the Bayview High football team. I need to talk to Dr. Ho. It’s important.”

“He’s not in the office.”

“Could you please let him know I need to talk to him before the exhibition game tonight?”

“If you insist, Katie.” And then she hung up on me. I thought about calling her back and correcting her on the name thing but decided it wasn’t worth it.

I walked out of the quad and into the hallway, which was much less crowded than usual.

“Hey, Kate! How’re you?” chirped some girl I only vaguely recognized. Did I know her from Key Club? My friend Kiki had talked me into joining all kinds of social organizations, even though I hated going to meetings and could never remember anyone’s name. I kept waiting for someone to realize that geeks like me didn’t belong in Key Club, but it hadn’t happened yet.

“I’m late,” I said, waving a hand as I hurried down the hall. I was the compulsively early type, but in this case my lateness was justified. I was worried about my players collapsing on the field due to unregulated steroid use. There
was
an empty slot in the tray, not to mention the used syringe in the cabinet.

I wasn’t going to let that slide.

ou’ll be my lab partner today, won’t you, Kate?” Kiki Carlyle asked approximately five seconds after I got the first demerit of my life for being late to AP Biology.

I used to think anyone over the age of three who went by the name Kiki deserved to be drawn and quartered with a spork. Then I got to know Kiki Carlyle, and, well—she was just about the nicest person I’d ever met. Kiki was a Triple‑B: blond, busty, and brainy. She was the senior class president, head varsity cheerleader, and front-runner for salutatorian. In the halls, she said hi to everybody, even the nobodies. If she didn’t have the word
perfect
tattooed on her behind, she should have.

She’d moved to Bayview halfway through freshman year, and we got assigned to the same table in earth sciences. She’d pulled
me out of social purgatory, and we’d been friends ever since. We’d even stayed close when she was dating Aaron Kingsman last year. I’d been jealous, sure, but I couldn’t get mad at her.

Kiki was a great lab partner. She pulled her own weight instead of expecting me to do all the work. It became even easier to work with her once she and Aaron broke up; I no longer had to feel guilty about crushing on her boyfriend. I actually wanted to be
his
lab partner, especially after he outscored me on the first bio test and left me with a B+ and the conviction that he was the most perfect guy on the planet. But it was never going to happen, because he always paired up with Mike Luzier, a total jerk who for some strange reason was his best friend.

Mrs. Mihalovic instructed everyone to gather around and watch her demonstrate the dissection process. We were doing fetal pigs. I was so excited I’d practically memorized the book. It was pretty disappointing when Mrs. M started reviewing basic dissection techniques; I wanted to start cutting so badly. But Kiki seemed content to hang in the back of the room with me. We sat at our station and didn’t even pretend to listen.

“Sooo … what are you doing after the game tonight?” she asked, playing with an empty dissection tray.

That night was the annual homecoming varsity/JV game. After it was over, I planned to follow Aaron to the parking lot like the desperate semistalker I truly was. I couldn’t exactly say that, though, so I fiddled with the end of my braid and shrugged.

“I’m having a bonfire, and I really think you should come,” she said.

“On a school night?” I asked.

“We’ve got homecoming week events every other night, and my parents come back into town on Saturday. If I don’t do it tonight, I can’t do it at all. So what do you think?”

I sighed. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly the party type.” Especially after what had happened at the last party I’d gone to.

“Yeah, but Rocky will be there, and she’ll be sad if you don’t show. Don’t you dare tell me you have to study. You could get straight As with one brain tied behind your back.”

Rocky Miccuci was my best friend. On the surface, we were total opposites. She was the star of the choir … and I was really great at dissecting frogs. She had long curly hair that belonged in a shampoo commercial, and she liked to wear tiny dresses that would fit her five-year-old sister. She had the body for it too, unlike me, who had the body of a string bean and looked like the kind of girl who belonged in a library doing research on weird medical mysteries.

In fact, I had been that girl … up until last year, when I’d started branching out socially. But still.

Rocky and I had been friends since grade school, even during my übergeek years when I was last to be picked for everything there was to be picked for. She was always on me to get out and be social. “The swirlies are in the past!” she’d say. “You aren’t the queen geek anymore.”

Kiki was waiting for a response to her invitation, so I shrugged again.

“I’ll talk to Rocky in choir,” she said, giving me a smile of such brightness that I suspected my corneas might be irrevocably damaged. “We’ll double-team you.”

“Fine,” I huffed. “I’ll clear my busy social schedule if it means that much to you.”

Kiki threw her arms up in triumph, knocking the dissection tray to the floor.

“Girls!” Mrs. M said, waving a small scalpel at us. “You’ve finished your discussion just in time.”

I drove straight home after eighth period. Dad was still at work, and my mom was teaching theoretical physics for two semesters in Germany. Mom and I were supposed to Skype at three-thirty. I wanted to get back to school before Coach, though, so I nuked a plate of spaghetti before going to the computer.

I sat at my dad’s desk and ate while the laptop booted up. Armstrong, our dog, stared at me with his most pitiful expression until I gave him a noodle. He loved pasta, and I was a sucker for his cute doggy face.

Mom appeared on the screen just as I shoved a huge bite into my mouth. Sauce dribbled down my chin.

“Guten Tag!”
she said.

“Mmph!”

She laughed. “Early dinner, huh?”

“Gotta leave for the game in a half hour. It’s homecoming week,” I said, covering my mouth with one hand to avoid spewing tomato sauce all over the screen. “I’m sorry. I should have told you before.”

“That’s all right; I have about a hundred projects to grade tonight anyway. But I didn’t want to miss our weekly chat.” She smiled at me. “I miss you.”

“Miss you too, Mom.”

“So did you talk to him yet?”

About a month ago, when I was desperate for conversation material, I’d made the mistake of telling her about my crush on Aaron. And ever since, she’d been pestering me to ask him out. I could barely string together two words in his presence; something told me that wasn’t going to happen.

“I’ll do it, Mom. Just give me time,” I said.

“You say that, but you never do it. For all you know, he really likes you.”

“He barely knows I exist. And he only knows at all because I bring him Gatorade.”

“He’ll never know you exist if you don’t talk to him.”

I loved my mother, but her constant pep talks killed me. It was hard to keep the exasperation out of my voice. “I. Will.”

“Tonight,” she said firmly. “And I expect a full report on Sunday afternoon during family chat.”

“No way. Not in front of Jonah. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Jonah was my little brother. I’d have given myself a paper cut and soaked it in battery acid before I told him I liked a guy.

“Good point,” she said. “Next week, then.”

“All right.” I took another bite. I thought about bringing up the steroids and asking for her help, but what was she going to do? She wasn’t even in the country. It was my problem to deal with, whether I liked it or not.

“I’m so sorry to cut this short, honey,” she said, “but I’ve really got to run. These papers won’t grade themselves.”

“Love you, Mom.”

“Love you too.”

I signed off and shoveled down the rest of my food. Then it was time to go back to school for the game.

Time to get my hands on one of those vials.

“You’re the varsity!” screamed Coach, his forehead bulging. “They’re the JV! You should win this, you sissies! I don’t care if this is an exhibition game; I just want you to score one freaking touchdown for a change!”

The night was not going well. I hadn’t been able to get into Coach’s office; he’d spent the entire afternoon blabbing on his office phone with his feet up on the desk, and I thought he might notice if I took some of the black-market drugs out of the cabinet right next to him.

The Ho hadn’t shown up, so the team went onto the field
without him. I’d set up my kit on the sidelines, totally distracted because Aaron was warming up about ten feet away. He noticed me watching him and did his little nod thing in my direction. Every cell in my body squeed in unison.

Coach started screaming as soon as the teams lined up for the first play. It looked almost comical; on average, our varsity players had two years and about fifty pounds on the JV guys. But I still wasn’t surprised when the whistle blew and the JV overran our team like a herd of Pamplona bulls. Blocking had never been our strong suit. They hit Aaron really hard; I heard the
whoosh!
his lungs made when all the air was forced out. I wanted to beat the heck out of the JV guys for that, except I wouldn’t know what to do in a fistfight without a manual.

“Get up,” I urged from my spot on the sidelines, clenching my fists so hard that I could feel my nails dig into my palms. “Come on. Get up.”

He staggered to his feet. I had to resist the urge to cheer as he straightened his helmet. The players lined up again, Aaron calling out numbers that sounded completely random to me. Derek LaBianca snapped him the ball, and the JV team took him down again before he could get rid of it.

With two minutes left in the half, the ball squirted out of Logan Smith’s hands, and every single guy on the field leapt at it. I shifted nervously as the refs began pulling padded guys off the mound of players and didn’t relax until I saw Aaron’s face. He wasn’t hurt, and he even had the ball.

But after everyone else got up, Logan was still rolling around in the grass, clutching his hand. Coach didn’t ask if Logan was okay. Instead, he charged out onto the field and started yelling. I barely registered the words at first; I was too busy staring at Coach’s face. He’d been chewing ferociously on a pen, and his lips were stained with blue ink.

“Jeez, Smith!” Coach ranted. “You look like one of Jerry’s Kids! What do you mean you got to sit out on the next play? Man up and get back in the game.”

No one intervened, not even the referees. We sucked so badly that the officials didn’t even pay any attention. No one in the bleachers cared either; the only reason anyone showed was because the Key Club was giving out free Lady Gaga bobble heads at halftime. Normally, about five people came to our games, and two of them ran the concession stand.

I walked across the field to stand behind Coach.

“Excuse me?” I said, tugging on his sleeve. “I’ve got to clear him to play.”

He whirled, flinging blue-tinged spittle into my eye. The guy was practically foaming at the mouth. “Grable. What do you want?”

“He’s not allowed to play until someone checks him out.”