Crushed (15 page)

Princeton. I don’t want Princeton. I want Stanford.

But it doesn’t matter. I’ll end up where ever my parents point me. That’s my job.

While we eat, random people keep coming over to our table and interrupting Dad. They slap him on the back and congratulate him. Every single time, Dad somehow manages to bring the conversation back to Harker’s needs, and how we can’t let the school slip in competitiveness. 

At one point he says, “Fletch was just telling us about the new science building, and you know, the humanities really deserve an upgrade too. Not to mention the dorms. Have you been in them lately?” He shakes his head. “I don’t think much has been done to Harring House since I lived there. Fletch’s room still has the same popcorn ceiling and linoleum floors.”

Calista slips back into her seat. Her hair’s pulled back now, and she’s wearing a dress cut low enough to show a hint of her tits, but not in a slutty way or anything. She looks nice.

Her hand reaches under the table and squeezes my leg. My dick throbs. Shit. I cannot get a hard-on sitting at a table with our parents. 

“You did a great job, Fletch. You didn’t seem nervous or anything.” She sounds a little too upbeat considering her mom just hauled her ass out of the room and clearly laid into her. 

“Thanks.” She squeezes my leg again, and heat spreads from my groin up into my gut. Crap. Crap. Crap. I shift in my chair, so her hand falls off. 

Dad’s groupies have eased up, and he turns his attention to me. His eyes move between Calista and me, and he frowns. 

“What’s the girl situation like this year, Fletch? Lots of good ones?” Next to me Calista stiffens, and Catherine’s eyes grow cold. What’s Dad doing?

“It’s okay.” I’d rather have Kyle Bennett as a roommate for the rest of my life than sit at a table and discuss my sex life with my parents, Calista, and the Desmaraises.

Mom picks at her salmon. “Remember how Will always had a trail of girls following him, Caty? How we used to sit in The Quad and watch him?” She places her hand over his. “You took my breath away.”

“Hopefully, I still do.”

My mom smiles and wrinkles her nose at him, something she does when she’s messing around. “Ask me later.”

It takes every bit of self-control not to groan at my pervy parents, but at least they managed to kill my hard-on.

Mom’s still joking when she says, “Someday, Cal, you’ll probably say the same thing to Fletch.”

 “Jules, stop. He’s eighteen, for Christ sakes. Stop trying to marry him off to Calista.”

An uneasy silence falls on the table. Catherine and Mom exchange glances. “It’s just a joke, Will. You know that, don’t you?” she asks Calista and me.

I nod, but Calista stabs at the fish on her plate. “Fletch has a girlfriend. Her name is Ellie.”

My mouth falls open. “Ellie is not my girlfriend.”

A hot flush rushes up my cheeks. How did we even get on this topic? I glance at Dad, but he’s sitting back in his chair with a pleased look on his face. 

Mom perks up. “A girlfriend. For how long? A few days?”

“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s just my friend. That’s it.” I shove away from the table. “I have to go. I’ll see you later.”

Mom throws up her hands. “Are you going to let him behave like this?” 

“What do you want me to do? Ground him? For liking a girl who isn’t Calista?” Dad growls. “He’s grown, Julia. Besides, you and Catherine are the ones who started it. I don’t blame Fletch for being pissed.” 

Without waiting for my dismissal, I storm off, weaving my way through the room full of tables. 

19

I run through the empty Quad, tearing at the tie around my neck, shedding my sports coat. I toss it on the stone bench Reid likes to stretch out on before class.

I need to get out of here. I need to be free.

Graduation. Princeton. A girl like Calista. 

That’s my life. That’s what everyone expects from me.

My brown dress shoes pinch my toes as I run, but it’s a small thing. The hole in my heart aches more.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Dust flies up as I run along the path toward the faculty lot. No matter how hard I search, I can’t find the side path Ellie led me down. Frustrated, I give up, and I pick my way through the fern-covered ground to a fallen tree and climb up. 

I shouldn’t complain. I have everything I could ever want: two parents and the best friends ever. My grades are good. I’ll go to a top college. 

I have everything.

And it feels all wrong.

***

I lumber down the hallway toward my place of refuge: Brady’s room. My parents won’t look for me here, and I’m hoping — no, trusting — Cal won’t tell them where to find me.

Brady’s deep laugh rumbles through his shut door followed immediately by Ellie’s playful scream. The faint smell of pot wafts around me as I shove the door open. The two of them are breaking about one million Harker rules: girl in the room with the door shut; an open bottle of vodka; and Brady drawing on a pipe.

“Close the door, ass wipe.” Brady throws a grungy pillow at me, but it misses by a mile. He must be really fucked up. “I don’t want anyone to smell it.”

“Dude, the hall seriously reeks. Why didn’t you make a spoof?” I re-stuff the shirt under the door before opening his desk drawer. “Don’t you have any incense?”

Last year, Paige gave us all a ton of incense for Christmas.

“Maybe one or two. Reid burns through most of it.”

I find a half-broken stick under a mess of pencils and jab it into a kneadable eraser. I carry the glowing stick around the room, fanning the smoke with my hand, trying to disseminate the smell.

“Hey, Ellie, open the window.”

She jumps up, crawls across the tangled comforter on Brady’s bed, and shimmies the window open.

 “How was your speech?” she asks.

“Fine.” I flop down next to Brady and hold out my hand. He takes another puff before passing the pipe. 

 “Was the food at least good?” Brady rests his head against his desk, his eyelids half-closed.

“Salmon, asparagus, salads. I left before dessert.” I strike the lighter and the buds catch fire. I draw deeply, sucking the hot air down into my lungs and count to five before releasing. 

Warmth spreads through me, and the knot of anxiety I’ve been nursing eases a little. Goodbye, Princeton. Goodbye, expectations. 

I hold out the pipe to Ellie, but she waves it away. “Not my thing.”

Brady lolls to the side. “Why’d you take off before dessert?”

“Calista.” The pot’s numbed my tongue, my mouth, and my brain, so it comes out a little mumbled.

Ellie sighs and collapses next to me. “Again? Why don’t you two just have it out and get it over with?”

My eyes zoom in on a scrap of paper on Brady’s floor. A laugh bubbles up in my throat. “Cuz it’s not her.” I rub the bridge of my nose. “Shit. If it were, I’d just fuck her, you know?” I shake my head. “No, it’s our parents. My mom and hers are always talking about us getting married and some crap like that. It’s bullshit.”

Ellie drinks straight from the vodka bottle and passes it to me. I gulp down two large swigs and briefly wonder what my parents would say if they found me piss drunk and high. 

They’d probably mark it up as a “phase.” 

When I reach for the bottle again, Ellie puts it behind her. “Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much.”

“I’m not the one who’s been drinking since this the morning.”

“I’m serious, Fletch. You’re getting too depressed.”

Brady mutters something that sounds like, “She’s right,” before face planting into the floor.

“I’m not depressed. Definitely high, but not depressed.”

“Then you’re acting like an asshole. Talking about Calista like she’s just something to get off on.” Ellie frowns. “Sometimes you only think with your dick.” 

“She deserves it.”

Brady snores loudly. Ellie kicks him with her foot, and he rolls over.

“No one deserves to be spoken about like that.” She shoves a pillow from Brady’s bed under his head, and he moans a little.

My face burns. “She’s my friend, and she’s acting like a little bitch. I can say what I want.” 

“Remind me not to be your friend.”

I sigh. My mind’s too clouded to have this conversation. I’m not making sense.

Ellie picks up the mess she and Brady left strewn across the floor: candy wrappers of the food variety — not the underwear kind, bottles, and cups. She’s acting like nothing’s changed between us as she tosses it all in the garbage can. Maybe she doesn’t remember, maybe she drank too much…

“About your birthday.” She messes with the books on Reid’s desk, lining up the edges until they’re all perfectly straight. Her back’s to me, and in my inebriated state, I admire her tight ass and the way her ponytail swishes back and forth as she moves. “It was just a birthday kiss. I hope I didn’t cross the line or anything. I thought, you know, on your birthday, you should at least get a kiss.”

I lean back against the lower bunk and stare at the ceiling.
So, that part about you liking me more than you ever liked anyone else? What was that?
“Yeah. Of course. I mean, we’re just friends.”

Her anxious eyes size me up. “Exactly.”

Long pauses say so much sometimes, and this one is telling me there’s more here. The things we’re not saying fill the silence, and an unspoken understanding passes between us. 

I need to break the awkwardness. “For what it’s worth, Ellie Jacobs, you’re not a bad little kisser.”

She sticks out her tongue. “You’re not so bad yourself, William Fletcher Colson, but you’ll never get me to admit that in front of anyone else.”

I run my hand over the back of my head and give her a pitiful look. “Never say never, Elle.”

She avoids my gaze and pokes Brady. “We’ve been drinking since ten. Do you think he has alcohol poisoning?”

“Brady? Naw, he’s massive. I’ve seen him chug two bottles before with no problem.”

Still, she holds her finger under his nose. Satisfied he hasn’t died, Ellie takes a cup off Brady’s desk and fills it with water before forcing it into my hand. 

“I want you to drink three of these every hour until it’s time for dinner.” She shakes her finger at me when I protest. “I don’t care how much it makes you pee.”

Brady lets out a long, floor-rattling snore, and Ellie and I crack up. “I can’t believe I shared a room with that once.”

She points at my cup, and I take a long swig. 

“He’s funny,” she says.

“Brady?”

“Yeah. He’s a good guy. A man-whore, for sure, but that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of reform.” 

She sits next to me on the floor and undoes her ponytail. Her hair tumbles over her shoulders and past her breasts.

 Strawberries. Ellie smells like strawberries today. Without thinking, I reach over and twist a piece around my finger. She doesn’t stop me.

We sit silently, listening to Brady’s wet, drunken snore for I’m not sure how long. It seems like forever. My eyes start to close as I finally succumb to the pot and alcohol.

“Elle?”

She stretches next to me, her legs almost as long as mine. “Yeah?”

“Thanks for being my friend.”

20

While the rest of the country passes platters of turkey and cranberry sauce around the table, I’m lounging on the floor of a music room, legs stretched in front of me, back against the wall, reading Alexie’s
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
. It’s pretty much the best book I’ve ever read, and it makes being stuck on campus, studying for finals over Thanksgiving weekend, a little more bearable.

Since we only get two days off, the school doesn’t close. Most, if not all, students stay around for the five-day weekend. 

“Are you getting hungry?” Ellie adjusts her music stand. Every year for Thanksgiving, Food Services puts together an amazing feast – turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing – and lets us gorge ourselves. It’s the one meal of the year in which they actually make an effort, and it’s amazing. 

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yeah, I’m kinda looking forward to dinner.”

When Ellie asked if I wanted to come to the music lab with her, my mind went right where it shouldn’t: that’s where kids go to hook-up. But then I saw her violin case and remembered that unlike most of us, Ellie has a legitimate reason for hanging out in a soundproof room.

She bites her lip in concentration and draws the bow over the strings. It sounds like someone is mutilating a cat. 

“That’s supposed to be a C. Did it sound like a C to you?”

I playfully cup my hands over my ears. “You’re going to get better, right? Please say you’re going to get better.”

Ellie clenches the neck of the violin. “Think you can do better?”

“Better than you?” I shake my head. “No.”

Only I don’t mean playing the violin. I want to tell her how watching her struggle with the instrument is one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever done. How I wish her fingers would curl around mine the way they do around the instrument. That I want her cheek pressed against me, and her fingers moving – no matter how clumsily — against my skin.

The bow touches the strings again, and Ellie scratches out the most pathetic sounds ever. She scrunches up her face, the right side of her upper lip raised in disgust. “God, I’m awful.”

I lay my book cover-side up on the ground next to me. “It’s a good thing these rooms are soundproof.”

She pushes the music stand away with her foot and lays the violin in its velvet-lined case. Thinking she’s giving up, I stand and tuck my book into my jacket pocket. 

“Are you positive they are?” Underneath her words, I detect a flash of deviousness. 

She grins, and I’m totally and completely under her spell. My pulse quickens. What is she asking? Does she want…

“There’s a way to find out.” A smile creeps across my face, and I take a step toward her. 

But she’s fast and already at the door.

“Stay here. I’ll go outside and when I hold up my finger, yell really loud.”

The heavy padded door shuts softly behind her. The small, thick glass window frames her beautifully. Some pieces of hair have fallen loose from her ponytail, and the arms of her hoodie are pushed up toward her elbows. The corners of her eyes crinkle when she holds up her finger.