Impossible (3 page)

But, now, I could come in here without getting depressed. I still thought about dad, but I remembered the good things instead, and it balanced out the pain.

I walked into the center of the room and looked around at the bare surroundings. It was a good sized room and was a lot bigger than the one I had now. I might even be able to fit a set of drums in here if I positioned them right. My room at the moment barely gave me enough space to move around in.

A light from outside caught my attention and I walked closer to the window. The light was coming from Ashton’s room. She was sitting on her bed with her back against the window. Damn, it was so hard to get away from that girl.

I pressed my forehead against the glass and watched her for a while. Standing here in my old room, it was so easy to remember when we’d been younger and pulled faces at each other for fun. I would never have that with her again.

Shaking my head, I turned away and headed back to my room. I’d had enough of Ashton Summers to last me a lifetime

Ashton

On Saturday morning, as soon as Mom and Blaze had left for the school fundraiser, I plopped down on the couch and called up Kance.

“What’s up?” she asked, picking up her phone on the second ring.

“Nothing much,” I said, making myself comfortable. “My mom and brother are at the fundraiser and I’m about to study for my math test. What about you?”

“My whole family’s at that stupid fundraiser too. Isn’t it funny how basically none of the seniors are going?”

“Do you think Oliver will be there?” I trailed off and bit my lip.

Oliver Carson was the quarterback of the football team who I had a huge crush on. At the moment he was single, but I planned on changing that very soon. Ever since I’d become captain of the cheerleading team over the summer, I’d been determined to ask him out. Everyone expected the head cheerleader and the quarterback to get together. It was like tradition.

“I doubt it. He has a reputation to uphold. Any decent person wouldn’t be caught dead at that thing.”

I thought about all the band geeks and social outcasts who would be at the fundraiser, and laughed. The only reason those students spent their weekend at school was because they had no lives. It was just sad and pathetic.

“I’m going to do it,” I declared. “I’m going to ask him out after the pep rally. He’ll be my boyfriend on Tuesday.”

“
If
he says ‘yes’.”

“Of course he’ll say ‘yes’. Who else is he going to date? Everyone knows the quarterback and head cheerleader are meant to be together.”

“If you say so.” There was a pause on the other end of the line and Kance giggled. “I gotta go now. I’m gonna go practice some tumbling.”

“Yeah, I better go and study for that math test.”

“Have fun, nerd.”

After we hung up the phone, I flicked through my math text book and started on some algebra problems. Math was by no means my weakest subject, but all these complicated algorithms were giving me a headache.

I leaned back against the couch and became distracted by thoughts of Oliver Carson. He wasn’t the most popular guy in school—a couple of the other jocks beat him at that—but he was definitely the best looking. He had short dark blonde hair and these blue eyes that seemed to pierce your soul. Being on the football team had done wonders for his body—he was tall, broad-shouldered and well-muscled.

I doubted there was a single girl in school who didn’t have a crush on him, but he was mine. I’d been picturing this moment for years now, and this was my year. This was the year that I would become the most popular girl in school. No one would dare talk crap about me then.

I loved my mom but, in our small town, getting pregnant at eighteen, and her failed marriage, was high on the list of major fails. When I walked down the street, I saw the way certain people looked at me, like I was some sort of disease. I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted them to see me for me.

If I started dating Oliver I’d finally be associated with something good. People would still talk about me, but it would be because they wanted to be me, not because they were judging my life and my mom’s mistakes. I couldn’t live in the shadow of her failures anymore. I had to make my own way in the world.

My eyes fluttered back to my textbook and I sighed. If I wanted a good reputation then it was up to me to make that reputation for myself. And that began with having good grades.

Hovering my pencil over
x
, I tried to calculate its value in relation to
y
. My mood brightened when I figured it out, and I quickly filled in the spaces before moving onto the next problem. I did this for about 15 minutes before a loud banging sound, followed by a crash disrupted me.

Leaping up from my seat, I glanced around, startled. Where the heck was that noise coming from? When the banging started up again, and was joined by a guitar, anger flooded through me. The disturbance was coming from Luca’s house—actually, his garage. His loser friends were over again killing music.

There was no way I could study for my exam with that ruckus going on next door. Seriously, how dare he make so much noise in the first place? Did he think the world revolved around him and his stupid garage band?

Every time I’d wanted to go over there and complain, Mom would tell me not to make a big deal about it and reasoned that if Luca’s mom wasn’t objecting to it, then who were we to say anything? Then Mom’s eyes would glaze over and she’d spout something about artists and creativity, and that my analytical mind wouldn’t understand. Seriously, when had my mom become such a hippie?

Fortunately, Mom wasn’t here and neither was Luca’s momma. This was the perfect opportunity to go over there and give him a piece of my mind. As I slipped on my flip-flops, I thought up various scenarios of what I would say to Luca and how he would react. There was a chance Luca would apologize and beg for my forgiveness. Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen. Most likely, he and his friends would laugh in my face kick me out. That seemed more plausible.

When I stepped outside, the cool autumn breeze teased my hair, and I wrapped my arms around my body. The weather wasn’t too bad at the moment, but it became unpredictable as fall wore on. The days still had their warmth, but soon the trees would lose their coloring and then a chill would really start to set in.

I marched across our lawn and onto the Byron’s property, stopping briefly to admire their red-brick house. Despite Luca’s dad passing away, they had still managed to maintain their house in good condition. It hadn’t always been that way though. Mr. Byron had always kept up the maintenance of the house but in the aftermath of his death, the house had become unrecognizable. Their garden had become atrocious, the grass much taller than ours, and it seemed like the house was falling to shambles. Then, about three years ago, Luca had gotten out the lawn mower and cut the grass. It was like someone had breathed life back into the Byron house. Since then, he’d fixed up every little problem the house had, after getting Mr. Woodley—who lived across the road and was the king of home improvement—to show him the ropes. At least Luca actually did something other than sing like a banshee.

The racket grew louder as I stormed up to the garage and banged on the door several times. When a minute passed by, and the music didn’t cease, I realized they probably couldn’t hear me. Luckily, I knew where Mrs. Byron kept her spare key, or at least that was where she’d always kept it 7 years ago.

I walked to the left and onto the Byron’s porch. There were numerous pot plants hanging from the ceiling and placed neatly on the floor. I moved towards the tall green cactus plant in the corner and dug my fingers into the dirt, feeling around for the key. I didn’t have to search for long before the familiar chink of metal met my fingers.

Grinning, I picked it out and eagerly headed to the front door to unlock it. Those boys were about to get the surprise of their lives. They had trodden on my nerves for the last time.

When the door unlocked, I stuck the key in the back pocket of my denim shorts and soundlessly shut the door behind me. I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for abusing a privilege given to me by Mrs. Byron many years ago. Technically, this was breaking and entering, but drastic situations called for drastic actions. Besides, Mrs. Byron would never know any different unless Luca blabbed to her, and I doubted that he would.

The house hadn’t changed much over the years. It was almost exactly how I remembered it from childhood. The door that led to the garage was connected to the laundry room which was a doorway located off to the right of the kitchen. I noticed that they had a new fridge and stopped to stare at the photos that were stuck onto it with magnets.

There were lots of family photos from when Luca had been younger to more recent ones depicting his transformation into the Prince of Darkness. As I was about to turn away, my eye fell on a photo of me with Luca and his dad. The memory of that day was so clear in my mind that it could’ve happened yesterday. It was from the summer that I’d turned 5 and Luca’s dad had taken us up to Willow Creek to teach us how to fish. Instead of catching any fish, I’d tumbled into the water and nearly drowned. Luca’s dad had jumped in and saved me.

Mr. Byron had been like a father to me, the only thing as close to a father that I’d known. He’d taken the training wheels off my bike, taught me how to kick a football, and taken me to local baseball games against Penthill and Statlen. When he’d died, it was like I’d lost my own dad, lost a part of me.

Brushing away a tear that had escaped my eye, I removed the photo and tucked it into my side pocket. Hopefully Mrs. Byron or Luca never noticed the missing picture. When I was a bit more composed, I tiptoed—not that anyone could hear me over all the noise—into the laundry and flung open the adjoining door to the garage.

The music was so loud that I could actually feel my eardrums vibrating. I wanted to cover my ears, but decided that I’d look a lot more imposing with my hands on my hips instead. Luca was playing his guitar and singing into a microphone. There were two other guys who I recognized from school whose names I couldn’t remember. The one playing the bass guitar
was tall with a thin, pointed face and
had spiky black hair with blue streaks. The other guy
, who was banging away on a set of drums, was shorter, stockier and
had a lot of piercings on his ears.
His hair wasn’t an artificial color like Luca and the other guitarist’s—it was a shade of dirty blonde.

Someone else was in the room too. A girl
with atrocious fashion sense
was sitting on a chair with her back to me, watching the guys perform.
Today she was dressed in an ugly, purple vest and a long, grey dress that I’d seen her wearing a few days ago. Gross.
She had long, bright red hair that hung in a messy knot down her back. It looked like she hadn’t washed it in weeks. She didn’t need to turn around for me to know who she was. Her name was Stacey Parker and she was always hanging out with Luca. They weren’t exactly dating, but I suspected that the two of them were sleeping together.

At first no one noticed my entrance. The music was too loud, and Luca’s eyes were closed as he leaned into the microphone and belted out a few words that I managed to catch.

Deep in my eyes

Can you see the light?

And I fight for you

But it gets so hard

And I don’t wanna be

Knocking on your door

I don’t wanna see

You don’t want me anymore

Cos’ you make this real

This is how I feel

Tell the truth

Me and you

It’s never gonna work out

Luca’s eyes fluttered open and he faltered when he caught sight of me. A crease formed between his brow and he didn’t look happy to see me.

“What the hell are you doing here?” His voice was amplified by the microphone and the other two guys stopped playing their instruments and glanced around, startled by the sound of his voice. Stacey turned around in her seat and, catching sight of me, shot me a dirty look.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I said, glaring at him. I was not about to be intimidated by a bunch of losers, and most certainly not Luca Byron.

“Maybe Malibu Barbie got lost on her way to the beach,” Stacey chimed in, making the other two guys snicker.

I felt my face heat up in humiliation and, for a second, I lost my cool. Luca glanced over his shoulder and shot the guys a look which made them quiet down. He gently placed down his guitar and walked over to me, his face a mix of unreadable emotions. “You still didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here in my house, Ashton? And how the hell did you get inside?”

“Learn how to count. That’s two questions.” I stuck my hand in my pocket and pulled out the key. “I used the spare key, genius.”

Luca

My eyebrows shot up when I saw the silver key in Ash’s hand. “You remembered where Momma keeps the spare key?”