Authors: Courtney C. Stevens
I need to stop him before we get to the gym doors. Hayden, angry and tipsy and alone with me, is a nightmare on repeat.
“We barely even danced,” I say again, looking for my rescuer’s blue shirt. Bodee will come. He promised he would get me home safe. Right?
“No, but at least you got to keep your promise to your mom about Bodee. I’m sure you’ll remember that for the rest of your life.”
As Hayden snickers about Bodee, I realize the only thing Bodee actually promised me was that he wouldn’t interfere with my date. These lies are starting to confuse even me. Sure, Bodee offered to come to the dance, but he only gave me a look after the game. A look I must have misinterpreted because I wanted it to be protective and more than it was.
Hayden nearly runs over a sophomore girl and her date when he looks over his shoulder to say, “We can dance somewhere else. Dane’s. The bottoms. Anywhere but here.”
Sweet Jesus, he wants to go to the bottoms.
“The bottoms,” I mumble to Hayden as the strobe light quits blinking and the twinkle of the disco ball looks like a solid fluorescent bulb. Why did the DJ stop playing music? My mind tilts and spins. Like God used Earth to shoot marbles, and I have to roll dizzily along with it.
“Yeah, that’s where the team always goes on Friday nights. You’ll love it,” he says.
Heather’s told me all about the bottoms. Four-wheeling is the only legal thing that happens there on the weekends. The county could put up a little green marker that explains the bottoms as the most popular place for teen drinking, drugs, and sex. Or almost-sex, in Heather’s case. I have to stop us. This desire is louder than anything in the dance and yet a mouse squeaks from my lips, “Yeah, okay.”
I want to stay here. Want to tell Hayden that Liz and Ray will take me home. Or that Bodee, with no car, will find a way to get me home safe. But no. I’m tethered to Hayden for the night. His fingers are wrapped around mine like a noose, and I go where he wants.
What is wrong with me?
“You don’t care about some stupid high school dance, do you?” Hayden asks as he wobbles across the parking lot.
One last look through the double doors of the gym. No Bodee. “I don’t care,” I tell Hayden.
“Good, you can drive.”
“I only have a learner’s permit,” I say.
“So. It’s not like I should drive.”
He’s right. His speech is normal, but his balance is way off. I have no idea how much he’s had of what, but he shouldn’t be behind the wheel. Neither should I. I’ve barely practiced beyond passing the written test. Life has been too crazy for me to drive.
When we reach Hayden’s truck, he walks me around to the driver’s door. Well, it’s more like I walk him. He opens the
door. In the pause, while his fingers weave through mine, he kisses me. Minus the whiskey on his breath, it’s perfect in a non-important way. Last semester it would have sent me over the Big Dipper and back again. But now, I’m only thinking about what he might want next.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he says.
My face flushes; I can practically hear the blood beating in my veins. “Whatever. I know Heather talked you into this.”
“No.” He brushes the back of his hand over my cheek. “I talked her into it. She said you have some rule about dating football players.”
There’s a reason for that. I stare at Hayden. He’s handsome all over. From his steel-gray eyes to the way his nose flares slightly and his cheeks dimple when he smiles. He’s smiling now, and I put on a grin to match as I realize maybe I can stop him before he starts.
“Yeah, I have a rule about dating boys who sleep with half the school.” The words roll out of me like a herd of horses.
“Good. ’Cause I have a thing against girls who sleep with a quarter of the school.”
“You do?”
“Alexi, we’re not all man-whores.” He grips the door for balance. “I’d rather have a girl who’s hard to get. Like you.”
When
his
hands explored beneath my swimsuit or when his body pressed mine into the concrete while I counted the stars instead of kisses, my words were gone. Deleted. Zapped. But here, while there is still breathing space between Hayden
and me, I find the courage to delay him. “Very hard to get,” I say.
“I got all the time in the world, and I like a challenge,” he says as if I’m Saint X, the only team our guys haven’t managed to defeat in the last three seasons.
“What about Janna?” Maybe this reminder will put some distance between us.
“You”—he kisses below my ear—“are nothing like Janna.”
“I know.” Which is why this is a very bad idea. A guy like Hayden was with a girl like Janna for a reason.
“Actually, you’re not like anybody I know,” he says. “I mean, who dances with Bodee Lennox? The guy’s a loser, but you’re nice to him. Maybe it’s because his family’s jacked up, but Janna would shove her heel up her own ass before she’d dance with a guy like that. God knows I’m not perfect, but I’d like to be with someone like you for a while.”
“Someone like me.”
For a while?
I escape his spider hands that seem to keep me against the truck. Backward, I struggle to climb the running board and sit facing him in the driver’s seat. “What’s that mean?” I ask.
Hayden’s body is a perfect Y as he hangs on to truck door and the truck to look at me. “I don’t know. Nice and stuff.”
“You already said that.” I grip the wheel and the limp seat belt and think there are huge gaps in what he just said. Like pretty. Or special. Or . . . well, that’s the end of the list, but he could have thought of something besides nice. “And I wasn’t dancing with Bodee because I’m nice.”
“I know. It’s because of your mom. Same thing. You, like, promise your mom stuff. Who does that?”
I’m getting ready to say, “No, it’s because . . .” even though I don’t know what comes after that because Hayden steps up on the running board and slides my knees apart with his hips.
“Someone like you could make me a better guy,” he says as Kayla’s black dress skims up my thighs. I pull it down. “You
are
hard to get,” he says.
This can’t happen. Not here. Not again.
“You’re not just nice, Alexi.” His hand is on my skin; skin that had a dress covering it a moment ago. “You’re beautiful.”
Then his coat is off and behind the seat. I see the look—it’s not evil or forceful, but I know what he wants as he lays me down. Not sex, but something worth bragging about to the football guys. His wide shoulders seem a mile across as they descend toward my chest. “Uh,” I say, and wiggle beneath him. Only two layers of fabric separate our skin. And one zipper and some nylon between Hayden’s excitement and my terror.
“Um,” he says. Or
yum
or some other word that means he’s very, very happy. Then his mouth is on mine so hard his lips could be made of concrete.
I owe Heather ten dollars.
I kiss him and the whiskey back because I don’t know how to stop him. My hands find his at my thighs and lace us together. He can’t touch me if his hands are occupied with mine. “Uh,” I try again, hoping it sounds remotely like
stop
or
wait.
“Alexi,” he says back, as if I moaned with pleasure.
Please, stop. Please, stop.
Please.
But thoughts are not words. He doesn’t stop.
Hayden’s eyes are closed. His hip bones dig into mine as all of his weight smashes my chest against his. My eyes are wide as peach-colored skin and dirty-blond hair blur into a claylike blob. It’s not crazy that I hate him and that stupid smile, but it might be insane that I hate myself more. Why can’t I rescue myself? Another girl would either do it and like it or tell him to keep his dick in his pants. I’m not either girl; I’m nothing.
Then, he catapults backward, yelling as he goes.
I shove my knees together and sit up as Bodee, who has a handful of Hayden’s shirt, swings his fist into Hayden’s jaw.
The pop sounds like a firecracker in a jug. Contained, hollow, and forceful.
The guys are at war before I can shut the door and beg them to stop. Hayden’s fist is in Bodee’s stomach and then both guys are on the ground.
“Don’t you ever touch her again,” Bodee says. There must be muscles in his arms where before I thought there was only T-shirt. But it’s not those muscles that pin Hayden against the ground: it’s white-hot fury that’s as visible as Hayden’s grimace.
“I wasn’t hurting her,” Hayden says, and twists against Bodee’s hold. “I was kissing her.”
Bodee sniffs the air and cracks Hayden against the pavement. “You’re wasted. You don’t know what you were doing with her.”
“Hey!” an all-too-familiar voice yells as he pounds the pavement toward us. Craig pulls the guys apart as quickly as Bodee pulled Hayden off me.
Sweat breaks out on my forehead. This is a terrible mess. Craig is the first and last person I want out here.
“What’s going on?” Craig asks. And he is much more Mr. Tanner than he is my soon-to-be brother-in-law.
“Kool-Aid’s gone crazy. He jumped me,” Hayden says.
Bodee has a look I know his father must have worn while he chased his wife around the kitchen, but for a very different reason. “He was hurting Alexi.” He licks some blood off his lips.
“I was not,” Hayden says. But he doesn’t say what we were doing.
Craig collars both guys and turns his concern to me. There’s no Coach Tanner now; there’s only Craig, who has known me since I was six. Craig, who sat next to Kayla on my bed and read to me by flashlight to make the stories scarier. “Lex, is that true? Did Hayden try to hurt you?”
One pair of puppy-dog gray eyes and one pair of angry muddy browns await my answer. “This is all a huge misunderstanding,” I say.
“Is it?” Craig presses. This puts him nose to nose with
Hayden, or rather breath to breath. Disgust is easy to see on Craig’s face; the whole stadium saw it in the first quarter of tonight’s game before we scored. Hayden can’t hide the whiskey now.
“You’ve been drinking again,” Craig says.
“Hayden didn’t hurt me, but I can see why Bodee thought he did,” I say, trying to keep both guys safe from penalty. Because as much as I dislike Hayden for pushing my boundaries, I didn’t say stop, and I don’t want everyone to know about this incident. Tamping it down into a nonevent seems safer.
“I guess you planned on her driving, eh?” Craig says, and releases Bodee, who smooths his borrowed shirt and cracks his knuckles without making eye contact.
“I, uh . . . ,” I try to explain.
“Lex, stop. You should have come and found me.”
Yeah, right. Like I would do that. Craig’s anger with Hayden is understandable, but when we left the dance I didn’t know this would happen. Now Craig’s on a different planet of mad than I’ve ever seen him with Kayla. Than I’ve ever seen him with anyone.
“You guys always have to celebrate. Don’t you?” Craig says to Hayden. “You should thank Bodee here for misunderstanding, because if you’d had Alexi drive you out of this parking lot because you’re drunk, I wouldn’t just run you at five a.m. tomorrow, I’d turn your butt in to the principal, and he’d suspend you in a heartbeat. Bodee, get Alexi out of here.
I’ll handle the two of you later at the house. I have a few more words to say to Mr. Harper.”
Bodee and I don’t move.
“Go,” Craig says.
And we do. Quickly.
Bodee and his cracking knuckles. Me and my shaking body.
“Was it?” Bodee asks.
“Was it what?”
Bodee puts a hand under my elbow and faces me. “A misunderstanding,” he asks tenderly.
All the tension ricochets through my body as I answer, “I guess it all depends on who you asks. Lots of things are misunderstandings.”
“Well, just so you know, I’m not sorry I hit him.”
My shoulders pop as the shaking twists my upper body into a pretzel knot. “Just so you know, I’m not either.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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ONE
. Two. Oh God, keep breathing. Three. Keep counting. Is something screwed up in my head? Why am I so weak? Four. Five. Will I always hate this part of me? Six. Seven. Eight. If Bodee hadn’t hit Hayden, how far would I have let Hayden go?
Damn you, stupid air vent. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Don’t stop counting.
Bodee hit Hayden because of me. Did that really happen?
Twelve. Thirteen. What did Craig do to Hayden after we left? And Kayla? Could I keep her from telling our parents? My friends. What will happen Monday at school? Fourteen. Fifteen. Does Hayden hate me now? Sixteen. Will the football team retaliate against Bodee? Seventeen. Is Bodee safe?
Will I ever be safe from myself?
How far would I let Hayden go?
Eighteen. How far would I let Hayden go?
I blink and I don’t care that I lose count.
How far would I let Hayden go?
Of all the questions, this is the only one that matters. It cycles automatically as I stare at the familiar dark slits in my ceiling. I know it cycles because I don’t have the answer.
Or maybe because I do.
All the way. I would have let Hayden go all the way.
Because I didn’t stop
him,
either.
I tumble neck-first off the scratch-and-tear wagon. My weeklong self-discipline ends as my nails claw at my neck and rip into skin. The pain is comfortable and the counting subsides, but not the reality.
Stopping Hayden felt like trying to halt Earth’s orbit.
But
why
?
I don’t understand this about myself. This invisible enemy, this inability to say no. I need answers. Isn’t there a reason why I’m so afraid to assert myself?
My life has been nothing like Bodee’s. I mean, I’ve never had to live in a tent, and my parents love Kayla and me. They’d never hurt each other or one of us. My mom even listens to my side when we’re arguing, so I’m not one of those kids with no voice at home. And as far as I know, no one abused me as a baby. There’s never been a traumatic event that would cause . . .
But . . . is that true?
Images, out of sync, from my earliest memories. They’re blurring in and out of focus, like cable TV during a thunderstorm,
and I struggle to make sense of them.