Her somewhat hesitant answering smile turned Tyler’s brain to mush. He tried to look away, act all nonchalant like he hadn’t been checking her out, but he couldn’t move. She burned through his brain. And the song took him.
I walk into the room,
And you’re there.
I tremble like a lunatic,
But you only smile.
I’m gone.
Half of what I am is yours.
And I’m lost within you—
Someone jostled Tyler as they passed, jolting him back to the present. But rather than hightail it to his homeroom he stood there, absorbing the girl, etching her into his brain until she turned away to answer a question from one of the admin staff, and released him from her spell.
He blinked like a short-sighted owl and shook himself. Then his lips curved and self-satisfied warmth pooled in his belly. She’d smiled at him. And checked him out—definitely checked him out.
A bunch of guys sauntered past. Amongst them Tyler spotted his sister’s boyfriend, Shawn.
The warmth drained away. Crap. He knew exactly how this was gonna play out.
Sure enough, Shawn spotted the new chick and did a classic check out the hot babe head-to-toe-er. The other guys looked equally impressed but they hung back, waiting for their cues, unwilling to risk getting smacked down by the guy who called the shots.
Shawn sidled up to the admin counter and leaned against the wall to strike a pose. Shoulders back, arms crossed over outthrust chest, high-top-sneakered feet crossed at the ankles, he waited for her to notice him.
Tyler snickered. Dude!
Then reality smacked him like a stinky wet fish. Typical. This girl had been here all of five minutes and Shawn already had her in his sights.
Tyler skulked off down the corridor. The new chick was a lost cause. And when Caro learned her boyfriend was hitting on someone else? No way did Tyler want to be anywhere near the disaster zone when his sister lost it.
Ten minutes into first period Bio, Tyler wished he was someplace else. Like, anywhere but here. Bad enough he was shortly gonna have to
dissect
a frog, first he had to sit through the gory diagrams and graphic explanations. He tried not to think about what had happened when he’d dissected the cow’s eye. If he didn’t hold it together this time, his life wouldn’t be worth living.
A rap on the door ended Mr. Gilbert’s lecture.
Tyler heaved a ragged sigh of relief and slumped across the desktop, burying his nose in the crook of his arm. Kermit stank. The odor coated his throat like rancid cream. He closed his eyes, wishing for a lab partner he could bribe into doing the dissection. But after the last episode, and given his current status, kids were hardly beating a path to the empty stool beside him. Not that he blamed them.
At the adjacent table someone giggled.
Tyler pried opened his eyelids and spied his sister’s hopefully-soon-to-be-ex boyfriend nudging his lab-partner… who just happened to be cheer captain, and obviously watched far too much TV because she slavishly imitated the whole cheer-captain-who-ruled-the-school stereotype.
Shawn and Bettina. Now
there
was a match made in heaven. Or hell. Take your pick. If there wasn’t such a major ick-factor about step-brothers and -sisters hooking up, they would have been perfect for each other.
Bettina giggled again, whispered something back to Shawn, and then fished a gold compact from her pocket. She flicked it open and gave a breathy gasp.
Was it too much to hope for a nice juicy zit to mar that perfect complexion?
Apparently so. For Bettina didn’t shriek and have a tantrum, she merely reapplied gloss to her already shiny lips, primped her hair and smooched her reflection.
She was one of those inhuman creatures who never got zits. And the gasp was probably because she’d found a hair out of place.
Next, she pulled out a perfume atomizer and sprayed it over her frog.
Huh. Tyler wished
he’d
thought of that. Then again, spraying his mother’s perfume around a classroom would hardly enhance his already dubious reputation.
Bettina caught him watching her. She curled her lip into a somehow still-attractive sneer. Took real talent to pull that off.
“What’re you staring at?” she said.
“Just comparing you to this highly fascinating, unidentified stain on my desk,” he said.
She hissed like a pampered cat denied a cushion. “Shut up, freak!”
“Yeah,” Shawn said. “Shut up, freak.”
“Wow. Original. Color me impressed.” If Shawn ever did have an original thought, his poor underused brain cells would probably go postal.
Tyler pretended to let his eyelids drift closed and watched them, alert for the particular vibe they gave out when they were planning something heinous. Not that Bettina would ruin her manicure by doing the dirty work herself. She’d simply co-op her peeps to do it for her.
B might not be that snappy on the verbals, but when it came to masterminding public humiliation? Legend. As numerous Greenfield High students who’d done something to piss her or Shawn off had learned to their cost. Tyler had been on the receiving end of an upended paint tray, had soda poured in his lap, and his chair “accidentally” whipped away just as he was about to plant his butt— “Oops! Didn’t see you there. Sooo sorry.”
Yeah. Riiight. He’d landed on his tailbone. It’d hurt like crazy, and he walked like he had a poker up his butt for the next few days. But that was minor compared to the girl who’d had her bra and panties stolen while showering after Phys Ed. Going commando in a skirt? Yikes. Poor kid was going to need a lifetime of therapy to get past that one.
Yep, beneath B’s pampered, pretty exterior lurked an evil-genius brain. And Shawn was all too happy to follow his step-sister’s lead. God only knew what Caro saw in him. Sometimes Tyler didn’t understand his sister at all.
For now, Bettina and Shawn seemed distracted by some little drama playing out at the front of the room. The tension oozed from Tyler’s muscles and a relieved sigh escaped his lips.
Shawn had switched his attention to the pair of Bettina wannabes seated behind him. He stared at them so long they squirmed on their stools and started giggling.
Bettina rolled her eyes. “Just pick one of them, Shawn. How hard can it be?”
“Whatever.” A pause while he vacillated some more, and then, “Hey, Ash, do me a favor?”
Ashlee simpered, throwing a triumphant glance at her lab-partner. “’Course, Shawn. Like, anything you want!”
“We’re gonna play musical lab-partners, and you scored the jackpot. You get to sit next to emo-freak-boy and partner him for the rest of the semester.”
“But—”
“No buts, Ashlee,” Bettina said. “Unless you want me to announce just how big
yours
is getting tonight at practice. About time you cut back on those double-mocha lattés, don’t you think?”
Ashlee glanced sideways at Tyler. Her face scrunched up and her lower lip did a primo wobble. Even an idiot could tell she thought her life was “like,
so
over!”
Awww, shame. But he had far more important worries than Ashlee’s imminent social demise. The girl didn’t have a brain cell to call her own, and she barely breathed without getting Bettina’s approval first. He’d rather kiss Kermit than put up with Ashlee sitting next to him for an entire semester.
He peeled his cheek from the desktop and sat up. Despite his churning stomach, he even managed a credible sneer. “Forget it, Shawn. No way am I getting stuck with Bubble-brain for—”
“Are you talking about me?” someone said.
Tyler jerked and knocked the dissection tray with his elbow. Kermit flopped limply onto his forearm. He swallowed, and shook the frog off onto the desk. Using two fingers like forceps, he picked up one of its froggy legs and eased its limp body back on the tray. When his stomach had quit trying to crawl up his throat, he glanced up at the girl who’d spoken. And almost fell off his stool.
It was the totally hot chick from this morning.
His head echoed with the pounding of his pulse, and his chest felt so tight it was difficult to breathe. Mr. Gilbert must have assigned her to be his lab-partner. Please, God, he should be so lucky!
Please, God, he didn’t go for the whole déjà vu thing and pass out cold on the floor the instant he stuck the knife in Kermit’s froggy body.
“Well, hiya,” Shawn said to the new girl. “Again.” He drew the word out for effect while giving her a blatant once-over that made Tyler want to smack him a good one.
When Shawn got a blank-faced response instead of the expected gush of girly enthusiasm, he blinked. A tiny frown puckered his brow. “Remember me? From this morning. Outside the office. We had a real
connection
. If you know what I mean.”
If she was dumb enough to fall for that line, she sure wasn’t worth getting worked up over. Shawn could have her—with Bettina’s fricking cherry chap-stick on top.
Tyler clenched his jaw, waiting for the inevitable.
She opened her mouth to reply but Shawn rushed on, working the charm for all he was worth. Which, considering Shawn’s daddy didn’t bother drawing his “meager” salary as Snapperton’s mayor, was quite a bit. “Hey, wouldn’t you know it? Ashlee was just saying to emo-freak-boy, here, how much she’d lurve to be his lab partner. And Bettina’s gonna ditch me for whassername.” Shawn gestured vaguely at the girl sitting next to Ashlee.
“E-E-Eloise,” the newly christened Whassername managed to splutter, overcome with joy, even though the god of jock-straps couldn’t be assed to remember her name. Tyler would have loved to shake some sense into her but it wasn’t worth the effort. Shawn spoke. Girls panted and swooned. Sadly, that was the order of the known universe.
Shawn gazed into Hot-Chick’s eyes, acting like he was everything she’d ever wanted, and he was just waiting for her to fall into his arms and sniffle with gratitude. In a most attractive manner, of course. No reddened noses and impassioned blubbering for Shawn’s chicks.
Tyler held his breath, wondering whether she would succumb, hoping she’d be the exception to the rule. Needing her to be different.
Hot-Chick’s impassive gaze settled on Bettina, sized her up, and then returned to Shawn… who seemed at a loss to understand why she wasn’t playing The Game According To Shawn.
Tyler observed the confusion sloshing around in Shawn’s brain with increasing glee. Ding-dong. There it was—Shawn’s dawning realization that Hot-Chick probably figured he’d hooked up with Bettina and was now ditching her in public. The two of them always had their heads together, leaving their respective hook-ups to trot along behind them like so much window-dressing. Now Shawn’s reliance on Bettina was coming back to bite him in the ass.
“Hey,” Shawn said, a note of panic infusing his voice. “If you’re wondering about Bettina and me? As if! You know what I’m saying?”
Dude. Even Tyler winced at the brutal dismissal of Bettina’s charms.
Bettina threw Shawn a look that would have shriveled his balls if he’d been paying her the slightest bit of attention, and intervened before he could dig himself an ever bigger hole. She slid from her stool and sidled over to command the newcomer’s attention with a hand on her arm.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Bettina.” Cue wide, doll-like eyes and cutesy pursing of her gloss-slicked lips. “And isn’t that, like, such a coincidence about me and Eloise deciding to partner up? It means you and Shawn can be—”
“Mr. Gilbert has already assigned me a lab partner.” Hot-Chick dropped her backpack on the floor and plunked her butt on the stool next to Tyler.
Was it his imagination, or had the whole class gasped with collective shock and ground to a halt? He bit his lip to hide his grin. This new girl was something else. Shawn was many things, but ignored by girls was not one of them. And Bettina? Tyler doubted anyone had dared cut her off since she’d graced the world with her first complete sentence. They were so out of their depth he almost felt sorry for them both. Then again—
Nah. Shawn was a grade-A asshole. And Bettina did a stellar impression of Miss Toxicality. They deserved whatever they got.
The grin slid off Tyler’s face. Hot-Chick would soon learn the consequences for not following “The Rules”. He wondered how long it would take her to give in to the pressure and conform. And whether he should do the right thing and clue her in that at Greenfield High, dissing Bettina and ignoring Shawn’s overtures equaled social suicide. Maybe if he did, she’d be grateful enough not to give him hell if—
when
—she joined Bettina’s crew.
“Is your name really Emo-Freak-Boy?” Tyler’s totally hot new lab partner asked. “It is a very unusual name.”
Hot-Chick either had a weird sense of humor or she was smart enough to realize the best way to redeem herself in Shawn and Bettina’s eyes was to treat him like pond-scum.
A lump of disappointment settled in his gut but he managed to force a laugh. “Ah, nope. Just their pathetic idea of a joke.”