By lunch I want to go home. Facing the cafeteria is too much. Garret will expect me to sit with him and Keira, to support them when I don’t. The team will expect me to sit with them, and if I don’t there’s no telling what Dallas will do. I’m tired of being thrown back and forth.
I stuff my bag in my locker and take my time organizing the mess in there. Then someone leans against the locker next to me.
“Hey,” Mercedes says.
Great, just what I need. “Hey.”
She takes a deep breath, as if she’s prepared a speech. “Look, I’m sorry I got a little crazy at the dance.”
“A little?”
She holds her hands up. “Okay, a lot. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess…I guess you’re the only guy I know who is a genuinely nice person and I like having you for a friend. I hoped we could be more, but I don’t want to lose our friendship because you don’t want to date me. So can we just forget it?”
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to forget it, but I nod anyway. “I have missed commiserating with you about average people classes.”
She smiles. “Didn’t you want to die when Mrs. Cannon made us sing that folksong?”
I groan. “What are we, five?”
We head for the cafeteria, and somehow having Mercedes by my side makes it seem okay. I can feel people looking at us, or maybe it’s just her. Whether I want to date her or not, there’s no denying she’s gorgeous. Tan, tall, curvy, and graceful. She has it all.
“So…Garr’s dating some skater chick?” She sounds hurt, no matter how hard she tries to cover it up.
“Yeah, weird, huh.”
“Very. What are you gonna do? Sit with him?”
I slow down. So much for feeling better. “I don’t know, maybe.”
She jumps in front of me. “You can’t!”
Her certainty takes me by surprise. “Why not?”
She pulls me into a quieter hall away from the lunch traffic. “You’re the most popular guy in school, Russ! If you go nuts like Garr, everything will go crazy. And Dallas…”
“Wait.” I hold up my hand, confused. “Since when have I ever been the most popular guy in school? That’s Garr.”
She laughs, actually laughs, as if I’m being completely ridiculous. “Are you kidding?”
“Uh, no. Garr’s the one who gets the girls. He’s the star receiver, the perfect student, the one everyone admires.” I almost feel embarrassed saying it all out loud. I don’t want to sound like I’m jealous of him, even if it’s the truth.
She gasps. “I get it now.”
“Get what?”
She laughs again. “Here you think you’re some sidekick when you’re, like, the Holy Grail.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
She pokes me right in the chest. “You are the guy everyone wants—tough, cool, funny, hot. And you cook, apparently, because you have to be even hotter. You’re the guy who’s impossible to get, the one every girl fantasizes about.” She shakes her head, like I’m an idiot for not knowing. “And here we all figured you thought you were too good for us, when you just honestly had no idea.”
I lean on the wall, unable to believe what she’s saying. “The only reason girls talk to me is to get to Garret.”
She leans next to me. “The only reason we date Garret is because we can’t get you.”
“I…that can’t be right.” I feel like I just got tackled. I’ve spent my whole life thinking Garret had the edge, especially when it came to girls, but threads of conversations come back to me. He always refused my claims he was king of the school. Did he see me as king? Daphne said I’d never understand not being popular, as if there was no chance I could be demoted. Mercedes said she wanted me first. Were all the girls I’ve passed to Garret really after me?
Is this how others really see me?
“You know, last year Emma Waters had this bet going that she could get you in bed before she graduated,” she says.
My eyes go wide. This can’t be happening. Emma was this smoking hot senior last year, yet another girl I thought was after Garret whenever she’d hang out with us at parties. She was nice, but I never would have guessed… “You’re joking.”
She shakes her head. “I’m dead serious. She lost four hundred bucks when you set her up with Garret for Prom.”
“No way. That’s crazy.” But I remember how much she talked about Prom. I figured she wanted to let Garret know she was available before he asked anyone else.
“I can name at least twenty girls who’d jump in bed with you right now if you asked.” She laughs again. “You really thought they were talking to you to get to Garret?”
“Can you stop laughing at me?”
“Sorry.” She wipes her eyes. “You know what, though?”
“What?”
“Knowing that you were totally clueless about this makes you that much hotter. It’s disgusting, actually.”
I can feel the smile creep onto my lips. All this time I was looking at what Garret had, never realizing that I might have something, too. Mercedes makes it sound like I’m James Bond or something, untouchable, the guy every girl wants. “Really? Because it makes me feel like a freaking idiot.”
She nudges me. “It’s adorable.”
I sigh. “Please, Mercedes, I beg of you, don’t tell anyone about this.”
“There’s no way in hell I’m telling anyone!” She flashes this smile that says our “just friends” thing could be changed anytime I want. “Let’s go eat.”
As we head for the cafeteria, my head spins. People see me as something completely opposite to what I am. I thought I was constantly on the verge of being outed as a total loser, when everyone thinks I’m the one judging them. No wonder Dallas hates me.
The whole cafeteria stares at us when we enter. The team waves me over. Garret looks on hopefully, probably knowing that whatever I do will cement his new social status.
Mercedes stands next to me. “Where are you sitting?”
It’s the first time I feel it—the power I never knew I had. I’m not sure I like that I’m in charge of this entire room, maybe the whole school. It doesn’t feel right that one person should have so much influence. Especially when that person is me.
My eyes meet Garret’s. I want to help him out, I honestly do. But then I see Keira holding his hand, pretending she did nothing wrong, like she wanted this to happen. I know differently. She would have played us both for as long as she could. She likes the secrets, the mystery, the rush—skating without a helmet.
And that I can’t forgive. I just hope I can find a way to explain it to him. For now, it’s safer for everyone to choose a neutral position.
“I’m sitting with you,” I say to Mercedes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What the hell, Russ?” Garret storms up to me in the locker room and gets in my face and everything. I haven’t seen him this genuinely mad in a long time, and I take a step back.
“What?” I pull off my shirt and grab my workout clothes.
“Excuse me?” He puts his hand on the lockers. “Why did you sit with Mercedes? You said you—”
“Nothing’s going on with us. We’re just friends, like I’ve said a thousand times.” I pull a tank over my head and then look around. Some of the guys seem to be listening in, so I lower my voice. “It was the best option, all things considered.”
“You couldn’t sit with me? That wasn’t the best option?”
The guilt stings, but I push it down. I’m sure I did the right thing. “Have I ever sat with you when you had a girlfriend?”
He calms down while he thinks it over, and then he turns the dial on his locker like he wasn’t thinking of punching me a second ago. “No, but I thought…you’re friends with them, too. Izzy’s your sister, and you know Daphne and Colin better than I do.”
“I have a lot of friends, Garr.” It sounds horrible coming out of my mouth, but I don’t know what else to say. Even if I still want to sit with Garret, I refuse to be in close proximity to Keira. “If you can sit with your girlfriend, then I should be able to sit with whoever I want, too. Otherwise…”
He sighs. “Are you saying you didn’t want the guys to think you were dissing me?”
I nod. That was part of it, anyway. “If I sat with you, they’d think we were making some kind of statement. So I hung out with Mercedes.”
He grins as he pulls on his workout shirt. “You’re kind of an evil genius.”
I smile. Crisis averted. For now.
Too bad I have more than one crisis to deal with. As I’m doing bicep curls in weights, Dallas joins in. I already know what he’ll say, so I head him off. “Dude, she’s just a friend.”
“Doesn’t look like it.” He lets out a breath each time he pumps the weights.
“I wanted to sit with the girls today.” I put down the dumbbells and grab heavier ones for the next set. “I’m…checking out the prospects, you could say.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” I pump the weights, letting them down slowly. Dallas doesn’t seem as intimidating after what Mercedes told me. “Thought I might try out that whole having a girlfriend thing.”
He laughs. “Ready to settle down, huh?”
“Something like that.” I never noticed how well he responds when I’m nice, like he wants my approval. Weird.
“So…” He glances across the room, and I follow his gaze to where Garr’s doing squats. “What’s with Taylor and that freak chick?”
I take my time answering—finish my set, put the weights back, wipe my face with a towel—because whatever I say next means everything. “He’s dated half the squad and dance team, I guess he’s branching out. And freak or not, she’s pretty hot.”
He nods slowly, mulling it over. “Yeah, I guess so. What’s her name?”
“Keira. She’s cool, you know, for a skater.” I hate saying it, because it’s true even if she’s a cheating whore. For a second the pain of missing her comes back, but I force it down.
He sets his weights down. “Well, I guess it’s not my business as long as he catches my balls.”
I try not to roll my eyes. It seems like I’ve managed to salvage some of Garr’s social standing. If Dallas buys it, then everyone else should, too. I’m glad Mercedes told me not to sit with Garr, because I really might have. And if I had, then I probably wouldn’t have been able to save his ass. That’s the least I can do, even if it’s still hard to wrap my mind around this whole “I’m the cool one” thing.
“I’m planning a huge party after the championship game,” Dallas says. “You better be coming. Win or lose, we’re gonna get smashed.”
I smile. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
After practice Garr’s meeting up with Keira, so he drops me off at home with hardly a wave. I try to forget that I did the same thing all last week. It feels like it’s been forever since I kissed her. For something that changed my life so much, it should feel more real. But it doesn’t. It’s so crazy I keep thinking I made it up.
The house is silent. I’m not sure where Izzy is, and for a second I get this image of her and Colin making out. I run up the stairs and check her bedroom. Then I feel stupid for acting so overprotective, but that doesn’t stop me from texting her.
Where r u?
She replies quickly.
Finishing a project w/Daph & Col.
When will u be home?
Wow, now I really sound like a parent.
Lol. Soon. Miss me?
I smile.
Maybe.
I do miss Izzy. What with working and football and the Keira debacle, I feel like I haven’t seen my sister at all. Since we’re almost exactly two years apart, I can’t remember a time she wasn’t there tagging along with me. It wasn’t until junior high that things started to change. We stayed close, but no one knew that from the outside. Now that she has a boyfriend, it seems like I might never see her again. I hate that feeling.
When I can’t take more homework, I push away from my desk. My chair catches on a pile of clothes and almost sends me crashing. When the clothes carpet becomes a health hazard it’s time to do laundry, so I gather up all my stuff and head downstairs.
As I throw a load into the washer, I hear the garage door slam. Izzy’s laugh fills the silence, and suddenly the house seems more like home. But it’s not her who comes to say hi.
“Look at you. Finally run out of clean stuff to wear?” Daphne says.
“Don’t you ever go home?” I glance back at her. Daphne leans on the door, and behind her I see Izzy and Colin laughing in the kitchen. She points over her shoulder, and he runs to the fridge to grab her a Fanta. He even cracks it open for her, and she kisses him before she takes it. A lump forms in my throat. My little sister doesn’t need me anymore. She has her own world, her own life, and I’m becoming less and less a part of it.
Daphne hops up on the dryer. “My mom’s working a big case and my dad is on a road trip with his guys. They’re doing Route 66 or something for the nostalgia factor.”
“I see.” I’ve never actually met Daphne’s dad. He’s a biker—a hardcore, tattooed, leather-wearing biker. She swears he’s the nicest guy in the world, but from the pictures I’ve seen it looks like he could crush your skull with one hand. When he’s not on a ride, he details motorcycles at his shop. Bikes are his life.
She swings her legs back and forth. “I don’t like being alone in my house. I start freaking out about someone breaking in.”
I laugh. “You could just kick their asses, you know.”
She shoves me. “Not if they have a gun!”
“True. Could you hand me the soap up there?”
“Where?” She looks at the shelf above her. “Which one? There’s four soap-like items up here.”
I sigh. “Never mind.”
When I move in front of her, her knees dig into my stomach as I reach for the detergent. Then she spreads her legs, and my belt buckle clanks against the dryer as I fall forward.
She gasps, putting her hand on my chest before I smash into her. “I expected you to have better balance.”
I put my hand on the dryer, right near her hip, to steady myself. A thrill runs through me as her knees brush my waist. I look at her lips, so close to mine. They really are nice lips when they’re not covered in neon lipstick. And the tank under her hoodie scoops low. Damn her perfect Judo body.
I have to move. Except I can’t make myself do it. Why isn’t she pushing me away?
“Russ!” Izzy’s voice makes me jump back.