Complete Nothing (22 page)

He was going to kiss me. It was blatant to the entire world. And I had a million thoughts at once. Where was Peter? Would he see? What had I eaten for lunch? How gross was my breath? Did everyone think he was too hot for me? Oh God, he really was so insanely hot.

And then he did kiss me, and I no longer cared. About any of it. Because when he kissed me the only thing that mattered was the kissing.

Everyone was still whooping and shouting and laughing when I got out of the shower. I felt like some kind of actual hero as my teammates clapped me on the back and tossed their towels at me. I slapped hands and did everything I was supposed to, but what I really wanted to do was get out of there and find Claudia. She was going to take me back. She had to. It wasn’t like she actually liked Keegan Traylor. They’d only gone out once. And besides, he’d just had his ass handed to him. Publicly. That couldn’t have been attractive.

I yanked on my jeans and pulled a blue Rams T-shirt over my head. It stuck to my skin on the wet patches left over from my shower, and my hair was dripping on my shoulders, but I didn’t care. I jammed my feet into my sneakers and headed for the back door, hoping I could still catch her. Hoping that maybe she’d even be waiting back there for me.

“Marrott! Wait up!”

I stopped, my heart sinking. It was Coach. Anyone else I would have ignored right then, but I couldn’t ignore Coach Morschauser.

“What’s up?”

When I turned, I almost dropped my bag. Coach was standing
inside his small office off the locker room, and with him was a man with tan skin wearing a blue polo and visor. The visor had the New Jersey Lions logo on it. The scout from TCNJ.

“Peter Marrott, I want you to meet Justin Crouch, the scout from the College of New Jersey,” Coach Morschauser said as I stepped into his office. He put one hand on each of our shoulders as if it was draft day and he was the commissioner, posing for the camera.

“It’s nice to meet you, sir,” I said, shaking Mr. Crouch’s hand.

Outside the office windows, lockers slammed, my friends shouted to one another, something crashed, but it was like I was existing in a different space. One where college was possible. Not just possible, but standing right in front of me. It was not just a far-off thing I would one day have to deal with. It was here. And it was smiling.

“Pleasure’s mine,” Mr. Crouch replied. “You showed some skills out there today, son.”

“Thank you!” I said, my pulse racing. I felt so hot, suddenly, it was as if I’d never showered.

“Have you gotten your application in to admissions?” he asked.

I gulped, glancing at Coach. “Um, no. Not yet. I’ve got it on my desk, though.”

Coach Morschauser picked up on my panic and clapped Crouch’s shoulder. “I’m sure he’s just putting the finishing touches on it, right, Peter?”

“Right. Yes. That’s it. Trying to get it perfect.”

“Good. That’s good,” Mr. Crouch said. And I sighed in relief. “There are some people in our athletic department who might be interested in meeting you.”

“Wow, really? Um, thank you,” I stammered, my palms starting to sweat. “Yes, definitely.”

Coach Morschauser and Mr. Crouch chuckled. I felt like the butt of my own joke.

“I’m not making any sense, am I?” I asked, running my hand over my wet hair. “Sorry, I’m just . . . thanks, yes. I’m definitely considering TCNJ.”

“Well, we’d love to move to the top of your list,” Mr. Crouch said. “Why don’t you come down for a tour of the school and give me a call while you’re there? I’ll set up a meeting with some of the players, and they can tell you what it’s like to be a Lion.”

Coach Morschauser beamed. Mr. Crouch handed me a card, and my hand shook as I took it. TCNJ. Me at the College of New Jersey. It was a great school with an up-and-coming team. And they wanted me.

This was really happening. I felt nauseous and excited at the same time, like I’d just gotten strapped into a roller coaster I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to ride. I needed to talk to Claudia.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll definitely do that.”

“Good. It was great meeting you, son,” he said, reaching for my hand again. “Keep up the good work.”

“Thank you. I will. Have a good day,” I said, sounding like some random guy behind the counter at McDonald’s. I turned around and walked slowly out of the office toward the back door. I felt like my insides were vibrating, and I thought for sure I was gonna throw up, but when I shoved open the door and stepped into the sunlight and the fresh air filled my lungs, a huge smile spread across my face.

College. They wanted me. And TCNJ wasn’t that far from Princeton. Maybe next year wasn’t going to be so bad. For the first time this year I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. I felt like the old me. I’d been so worried about not getting into school, about being
separated from Claudia and my family, and now, suddenly, none of it had to happen. If I went to TCNJ, I’d be able to drive home to see them whenever I wanted. I’d be able to drive to Princeton in less than an hour.

Suddenly I felt better about everything. Every. Last. Thing. It was going to be okay. I was going to have a future. Now I just needed to figure out how to fix things with Claudia and make her a part of it.

There were a few groups of people hanging out behind the gym. I didn’t see Claudia right away, but I did see her friend Lauren with True and a couple of guys, standing a few yards off. Lauren looked kind of sick when she saw me, and then her eyes darted to the right.

Automatically, I turned in that direction, and suddenly everything that scout had said, the excitement I’d wanted just seconds ago to shout to everyone in sight, faded to nothing.

Claudia was standing ten feet away with Keegan Traylor, and it looked like she was trying to swallow his face.

Suddenly it became totally clear that everyone around me was staring at me. Pitying me. Or waiting to see if I would pound the guy to a pulp. And I was angry. I was. But even more I was disgusted. Sad and disappointed and confused. I’d thought Claudia loved me. This time last week we’d still been together, and now there she was, humiliating me with the opposing quarterback outside my gym.

Maybe she’d
never
given a crap about me.

“Dude, you cool?”

I glanced up to find Gavin hovering near my shoulder. He was looking at Traylor like he would have done the pounding for me, if I’d asked. I stared as hard as I could, as if I could somehow make what I was seeing different. Change the fact that her fingers were
digging into his sleeves, that his hand was touching her face, that their bodies were pressed so close together you couldn’t have slid a playing card between them.

“Yeah, man,” I said through clenched teeth. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

We turned around and walked away, headed back for the field where Gavin had parked his car. I clutched my card from the scout in one hand, my duffel in the other, and decided right then and there that it was time to move on. For real this time.

“I need to do something, man,” I said to Gavin. “I need to get out of here.”

“The city thing’s still on. You wanna go?” Gavin asked. “Tiquan said he’d drive.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling a rush of freedom. A rush of rebellion. Screw Claudia. She didn’t give a crap about me, then I didn’t give a crap about her. “Let’s do it.”

I took out my phone and brought up Josie’s number.

“What’re you doing?”

“Texting Josie to see if she and her friends want to come,” I said, pissed off that my fingers were trembling.

“Wow, when you rebel, you rebel big,” Gavin said.

“Go big or go home,” I recited.

And from what Claudia was doing back there, it was pretty damn clear, there was no going home.

“Well. That happened,” Lauren said wryly as Peter stormed past us.

“He’s clearly jealous, so that part’s working,” I replied.

Lauren rolled her eyes at me, then flounced off to break up Claudia and Keegan’s lip-lock. It was too bad the guy was such a jerk. The two of them made a stunning couple.

“Things aren’t going so well for you today, are they?” Hephaestus said, his tone sympathetic. He dexterously pushed his chair through the grass, and Wallace and I walked alongside him, Wallace checking his phone for whatever might have changed in his world in the last ten seconds, me trying not to spontaneously combust.

“I’ll figure it out.”

I lifted my chin as we passed by Claudia, Lauren, and Keegan and rounded the corner to the front of the school. What I needed to do was talk to Peter. I had to find out what he wanted. Why he’d really broken up with Claudia. He was half this equation, and I’d largely ignored him until now. That was my new plan for the afternoon. Track down Peter and convince him to fight for Claudia. I was certain that if he made some grand gesture for
her love, Claudia would forget about this temporary attraction to Keegan and true love would be born.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” I said.

And I believed it for half a second, until I practically tripped over Orion and Darla Shayne, who were latched together by their lips. Flashes of bits of their bodies assaulted me like harsh slaps to the face. His fingers in her hair, her hand on his ass, their pelvises smashed together. I staggered backward, my vision going gray at the edges.

“No. Wrong. No. Wrong.”

I had no control over my tongue. Words were spilling out of me at will. My brain seemed to be spinning a kaleidoscope of horrifying images over and over in front of my face. A flash of tongue, a half smile behind pressed lips, and groping fingers. Groping, needing, wanting fingers. I shook my head and closed my eyes.

“Can’t. Don’t. Can’t. Wrong.”

“True? Are you okay?” Wallace asked.

“Wow. Things aren’t going so well on an Olympian scale,” Hephaestus deadpanned.

Orion was not supposed to be with Darla. He was supposed to be liking me. Wanting to kiss me. Hephaestus had even said so. He’d bet on us getting together. What had gone wrong? What had I done wrong? I tripped backward over a rock or a curb and my arms flailed out. Wallace caught me before I could break my ass on the ground and make this moment even more horrifying than it already was.

“True?” Wallace’s face loomed over mine. His grip was tight on my arms. “True? Are you having a psychotic break?”

Jealousy.

The word reverberated inside my mind, and I did the only thing
I could think to do. I grabbed Wallace’s head with both hands and kissed him. I kissed him deeply, with tongue, hoping that Orion would see and miraculously recall how much he loved me.

“Um, True? They’re gone.”

I yanked my mouth away from Wallace’s, a string of saliva connecting us for two seconds more before it snapped. Wallace wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as I watched Orion and Darla walk off toward the parking lot, each with a hand inside the back pocket of the other’s jeans.

“Um . . . True? I’m sorry, but . . . I don’t like you that way,” Wallace said, turning ten shades of purple. “I like Mia. Remember?”

I pressed the back of my hand into my lips, shaking with horror and disgust, with jealousy and anger and sorrow.

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what got into me.”

“Psychotic break?” he offered in a gentlemanly way.

“Psychotic break,” I confirmed.

Yards away, Orion and Darla got into some sleek red car and sped off. I imagined the two of them ensconced inside the cocoon of the car’s cabin, music blaring, fingers entwined as he drove with one hand. She had him all to herself.
My
love. She was able to touch him whenever she felt like it. To kiss him, hold him, listen to his voice. If anyone was going to be dying of envy around here, it was me.

How could I have been so wrong about what he was feeling, what he was thinking? How could both Hephaestus and I have been
so
wrong?

“I’m sorry, True,” Hephaestus said. “I really thought that he—”

Suddenly he flinched. His gaze shifted, and he stared past me so abruptly that I turned around, the tiny hairs on my neck standing on end.

“What?” I asked, scanning the blue sky, the green trees, the rooftops of the houses on the street below. Apollo and Artemis. Were they here? “What is it?”

“Nothing.” He turned his chair and headed for the parking lot. “I have to get home.”

“Since when?” I asked, throwing my palms up. “I thought we were going to the diner.”

“I’ll drop you there if you want,” Hephaestus called over his shoulder, pausing to let a herd of students traipse by.

And then it hit me like a meteor to the cranium. I knew that look—the wide eyes, the frozen features—as if he’d been shocked with a couple hundred volts of electricity.

Similar to the way it felt when my mother used to summon me back to Mount Olympus from Earth at the end of my Valentine’s Day sojourns each year. Was that what he was doing? Was he running off to be alone so that some upper god or goddess could whirl him back to the Mount? Was that who he’d been talking to in his room the other night? And if so, who the hell was it? Who was he plotting with?

The herd finally cleared the sidewalk and Hephaestus forged ahead, crossing the driveway for the parking area beyond.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why!” I shouted after him.

His response was to yank open the door of the van with a loud creak. “I’m leaving in five minutes whether you guys are in the van or not!” he shouted, lowering the lift.

“Come on,” Wallace said, loping past me toward the van. “I’ll buy you some pie.”

Pity pie. That was what he was thinking. He thought I liked him, and he needed to buy me pity pie. Could this day get any worse?

I sighed and followed after them. I didn’t want to let Hephaestus out of my sight. If he was whirling out, I wanted to catch him in the act. But it couldn’t be now, when he knew my interest was piqued. Right now he was going to be extra careful. No. It would have to be at a moment when he wouldn’t expect me to be watching.