Discovering April (14 page)

As if on cue, something drops from the trees: a figure wearing a red and grey striped shirt, and a grotesque mask. Stacey screams but my reaction is
slightly
different. He dropped a few centimeters from my face, and I whip around and punch the actor right smack dab in the face.

“Ow! What the fuck?” he screams before being pulled back up into the trees.

“Oh!” Stacey begins to laugh.

Mack’s earthquake laugh shakes the truck and Zach’s has a high-pitched tone to it. Jared is clapping his hands.

“Finally! April got her fight back!” he yells to everyone in the back of the truck as they laugh louder.

I can’t hold back the smile as I think,
it’s about time
.

We are then escorted out of the park and banned for a year because I caused harm to one of their employees. They even gave me a pink slip to make it official.

“I think you should frame that.” Jared sneaks his arm around my shoulder as he peers at the pink slip of paper between my hands. “To remember when you got your fight back!”

I smile over at him, our faces once again inches apart when he suddenly slips away and runs over to say goodbye to Eric and Stacey.

I sigh, settling the butterflies before glancing down at my red knuckles. I almost forgot how to punch and my knuckles hurt. I can’t quite stop rubbing them until we get back to our street, and then they ache with another kind of pain.

Jared is silent the entire ride; not like we could have talked, anyway. But it feels different, strange somehow. I saw Eric say something to him as we said our goodbyes and now I feel as though it’s weighing on him. Knowing what he said to me in the corn maze, I wonder what he would say to one of his actual friends. As he pulls into his driveway, I know I have to act faster than him. I’ve come to learn how he works. I hop off and Jared follows suit, unhooking his helmet.

Before he has time to think I pull him into a hug. “Thanks Jare. I needed this.”

With that small statement, I turn and leave him staring after me. Without a single glance, I shoulder my way into the front door and take a deep breath before closing it behind me. Jinx meows a loud, annoyed grumble.

“I know, I know,” I mutter, walking into the kitchen and opening a can of his food. “Here you go, Princess!”

Hopping up on the table he gives me a wary look before digging into his food. Coming to sit down at the kitchen table, I watch him as he eats. I’m still full off of funnel cake. The good thing about going out with Jared; he always feeds me.

I chuckle out loud at my thoughts. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever thought!” I tell Jinx.

He doesn’t even look up.

“Good talk, good talk…” I continue to mutter to myself as I run my hand down his back and off the edge of his tail.

AFTER THE EVENTS OF
yesterday, I realize I need some girl time. I’ve had just about enough of guys. Thankfully, I didn’t have to think a lot before I receive a text from Ro to meet her at the mall. I swear, that girl has psychic abilities. I wait for her by the wishing fountain on the ground floor, checking my phone a few times to make sure she hasn’t stood me up.

“Heeeeey, girrrl!” I hear screamed from somewhere above my head.

I look up to lock eyes with Ro, leaning over the side of the wall. I shoot her a shy wave as I look around at the attention she’s grabbing.

“I’ll be right down!”

Disappearing from view, I see her pop out of the store right in front of me before I have time to even put my phone away. She’s dressed to the nines, with tight jeans and knee-high boots highlighting her legs.

“So, are we here to shop for clothes or boys?” I ask, walking forward to meet her.

Smiling a flirtatious grin, she says, “Clothes. The boys will follow.”

I smile at her confidence. I envy her in some aspects. “I need your help…” I admit, beginning to walk ahead slightly.

“Oh?!” She draws the word out, finding this last piece of information extremely interesting.

I’m completely unable to look at her when I whisper, “I need to step up my wardrobe slightly…” I point to the pink entranceway of Victoria’s Secret.

“Oh,
wardrobe
!” She winks at me. “Come! This is just my area of expertise!”

After Jared almost saw the embarrassing display within my undergarment drawer, I came to the conclusion that I’m single and I need to up my panty-game. Hopefully, this will cause a chain effect of me feeling more confident and sexy. Following Ro’s lead, I enter the store and begin to peruse the table in front of me.

“What about this?”

I turn to see Ro holding up some black ensemble that looks like it’s been through a shredder.

“I don’t even know what to do with that!” I roll my eyes and turn back to my digging.

“I see I’m going to have to pull out the big guns.” Coming up next to me, she grabs a black thong. “This is a thong. You see, this part goes—”

“I know what a thong is, thank you!” I hiss, thoroughly embarrassed as I feel the stares from the other patrons around me.

“Well, you look like straight missionary to me, hunny, so I was just—”

“What?! Excuse me!” I pull my hands back from the bin to stare her right in the eye. “I’m not as missionary as you think,” I tell her grabbing a lacy, devil-red thong. “You’d be surprised!” I exclaim over my shoulder as I saunter over to another section.

Ro follows, wide-mouthed. “I don’t believe you…” she announces to everyone in the new section, pointing a finger at me.

“I don’t care if you believe me,” I keep walking, looking for something that catches my eye.

“Okay, fine you win. I see holding that red thong is making you pretty ballsy.”

I smirk over my shoulder in response.

“Can I ask you a serious question?”

I’m surprised she even knows how to ask; usually Ro seems to just dive right in. “Sure.”

“What’s up with you and your neighbor? You can be honest with me. It’s just us now.”

I freeze in my browsing and spin around to face her. “Honestly…? Well, honestly, I have no freakin’ idea.” I feel my shoulders slump, relieved that I finally said it out loud.

“See, I knew you needed my—”

“No, I mean I have no idea. One minute he’s sweet and taking me for a ride on the bike, then the next he’s dropping me home like I slashed his tires. I don’t know if he’s bipolar or he doesn’t want to give me the wrong impression, but he must like hanging out with me if he keeps asking to, right?”

“How does he act? Has he kissed you yet?”

“No, and when I was drunk I tried to make a move and he turned me down! He keeps telling me that I’m not the person he used to know. I keep thinking that maybe that’s the person he likes and the real me isn’t measuring up anymore.” My whisper turns out to be more of an excited statement.

“Hmmm, honey I can find out for you,” she says, twisting her fingers through her brown curls at the side of her face.

“How the hell are you going to find it out when I’ve been trying for weeks now?”

“Trust me!” She winks and spins around to grab some turquoise babydoll off the hanger. “Now this, this is more
my
style.”

“THIS ISN’T GOING TO WORK!” I mutter, looking up from my notebook.

“Will you trust me?!” Ro peers one eye at me from her horizontal position across the top bleacher on the far side of the football field.

“Fine,” I snicker back, returning to my homework.

She starts to hum to herself as she lies there, pretending to soak up some autumn sun before the impending winter. In fact, we are both sneaking glances at the construction crew behind us as they work with such diligence. Actually, it’s a warm autumn afternoon and they are catching quite a lot of attention from the female student body because Jared, Eric, and Mack have resorted to taking their sweat-stained shirts off while they work today. We are sitting at the top row of the bleachers along with a few other groups of girls. One skank even had the audacity to bring a beach towel and set herself up behind us, trying to jive for someone’s attention. I can only guess who that could be; Jared is totally the hottest one. Besides, Eric is taken and Mack would crush any of us.

All this fighting for attention is not my style. I’m sitting with my back against the post, looking out towards the football field as I finish up some homework. Trust me, Ro had said repeatedly, she better not make me regret this! This is not something new April, or childhood April would have done. Actually, childhood April would have probably been doing flips across the scaffolding below us.

I catch some movement out of the corner of my eye. It looks like Ro’s little scarf – she has her hair up with today. Floating away with the wind, it tumbles through the air. Spinning once, I think it’s going to get stuck in a tree before the wind takes it the opposite direction and sends across the fence in the construction zone.

Ro sits up immediately. “Oh, shucks!” She winks at me.

So this was her plan. Smooth.

She hops down the bleachers, catching a death glare from pretty much all of the other girls. She then struts up the slight incline and around the fence. Jared is the first to notice the floral print scarf stuck in the grass. I watch as he picks it up and hands it to Ro as she skips right up to him. I can’t make out what they are saying but Ro is obviously flirting: her eyes peering up at his, her stance, the way she brushes dirt off his shirt. A pang of jealously trembles through me. It takes everything in me not to hop off this bench and punch her in the face. She told me to trust her. Am I crazy? To trust her when I only just met her? Ro shifts her weight from side to side like she’s debating something, and I also happen to notice the way her body sways with it as if tempting him. Suddenly, they both simultaneously look over at the bleachers. No, no they look over at me!
Busted
, I think, shifting my eyes back to my homework, trying to look casual and not like I want them to both burst into flames. Just as quickly as it started, I see Ro making her way back to, me climbing up the bleachers.

I hear the group of girls at the bottom giggle and snicker as she ascends to the top. Without missing a beat, Ro whips around.

“What the hell are you laughing at? Huh? Sam—Your boyfriend is that way!” She points towards the football field as the boys begin to line up for drills.

Climbing the last step, she assumes her position again, lying back against the metal bleacher. “Can you believe that whore? Laughing at me! Pshhh.”

“Sooooooooo,” The anticipation is burning its way through me.

“Relax, girl. He’s yours.”

“What?!” I almost scream, dropping my notebook. It catches on the lower bleacher, saving me the embarrassment of having to climb all the way down to the grass.

“SHHHH, stop being so obvious... I’ll tell you later,” she tells me, pretending not to move her lips and keeping her face towards the sky.

Later feels like an eternity. We don’t have any classes together today, so she makes me wait until after school to finally hear what she has to say. I catch sight of her sitting at the top of the hill, continuing to soak up the sun, like her olive skin needs it or something. I practically run up to her and collapse beside her head before she finally sits up. We sit there, sharing her little blanket in silence when she finally starts in.

“Girl, I was pulling out all the stops. I was flirting hardcore, twirling my hair. I touched him, told him he looked like he took good care of himself, I asked him what he was doing after work and he wasn’t having any of it. He was polite, but he wasn’t giving into anything I was putting out. When I asked him what he was doing after he got out, his reply was giving you a ride home. As if that was his plans for the whole night – just driving
you
home. I’ve never seen anything like it. When we both looked over at you— you were obviously staring at us. By the time he looked back to me, he was wearing the biggest smile. It was written all over his face.”

“But I don’t understand. Why doesn’t he ask me out on a conventional date?”

“Maybe he’s not conventional.” She shrugs, continuing her stare down the hill, probably scoping out her next victim.