I am excited to share the Falling for Shakespeare Book Blitz, hosted by Xpresso Book Tours. Stay tuned for an excerpt (the first five chapters) and a giveaway!
Title: Falling for Shakespeare
Author: Erin Butler
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Publication date: September 8th 2015
Publisher: Swoon Romance
Summary:
Katie thought she knew where
her life was going. She was dating the captain of the football team, had
a BFF for life, and everyone at school wanted to be her. But then her
pregnant teen sister’s pregnancy changes all that. Everyone dumps her,
including her friends and boyfriend.
Hey, Katie, welcome to life at the bottom of the high school food chain. This is how the other half lives.
Then there’s Nick. He’s a straight-A student and self-professed geek
who’s had a thing for her since middle school. He needs a date for the
winter formal, and Katie needs something to keep her busy. Nick’s plight
becomes her personal pet project. She will help him get over his
insecurities and get a date. Besides, she was popular once. She knows
how to get dates.
But Nick has other plans. He’s going to use these “dating” lessons as a way to win Katie’s heart.
Purchase:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Erin Butler is lucky enough to have two jobs she truly loves. As a librarian, she gets to work with books all day long, and as an author, Erin uses her active imagination to write the kinds of books she loves to read. Young Adult and New Adult books are her favorites, but she especially fangirls over a sigh-worthy romance.
She lives in Central New York with her very understanding husband, a stepson, and doggie BFF, Maxie. Preferring to spend her time indoors reading or writing, she'll only willingly go outside for chocolate and sunshine--in that order.
Erin is the author of BLOOD HEX, a YA paranormal novel, HOW WE LIVED, a contemporary NA novel, and the forthcoming YA contemporary romance title, FINDING MR. DARCY: HIGH SCHOOL EDITION. Find out more about her at www.erinbutlerbooks.com or @ErinButler on Twitter!
She lives in Central New York with her very understanding husband, a stepson, and doggie BFF, Maxie. Preferring to spend her time indoors reading or writing, she'll only willingly go outside for chocolate and sunshine--in that order.
Erin is the author of BLOOD HEX, a YA paranormal novel, HOW WE LIVED, a contemporary NA novel, and the forthcoming YA contemporary romance title, FINDING MR. DARCY: HIGH SCHOOL EDITION. Find out more about her at www.erinbutlerbooks.com or @ErinButler on Twitter!
Author Links:
Excerpt:
Chapter
One
Katie
A cry pierced
the five-second silence that could’ve raised the hackles on a cute baby seal.
If cute baby seals had hackles … I didn’t know. Pulling the worthless, spongy
ear plugs from my ears, I jotted down a note on an empty page in the notebook I’d
left open the night before. To Google: Do
baby seals have hackles? What exactly are hackles anyways?
The lined notebook paper was hard to see
in the dim light of my room, let alone the soft pencil marks I was scribbling.
Hoping I’d be able to read the quick, exhausted lines in the morning when the
world stopped punishing me, I pushed it aside and sat up.
Fluorescent teeth glared at me like a
lighthouse beam from the corner of the room. As the peacefulness of sleep retreated
further, a ghost of a face appeared around the mouth along with the rest of the
lanky but fit, and relaxed yet somehow staged form. More bodies came into focus
next to him with equally radiant, ten-minute, glow-in-the-dark smiles.
It was a poster of a boy-band I couldn’t
even remember the name of anymore. Pretty sure I was in love with the boy in
the middle once upon a time, but that had to have been at least two years ago.
His name started with an H. Henry, maybe? No. Harry. No. Horny? Yes. That was
it. Had to have been Horny.
The poster was a pre-niece poster.
Pre-sixteen-and-pregnant episode going on right in my own house. The only thing
I’d never have to write down in my musings notebook: Should I have a kid?
Second of all, my mom would probably
disown me, but first of all—the biggest first ever—I would never find out if my
mom was that heartless because I’d never let it get that far. I was never
getting pregnant. Like never. Because
what came from a pregnancy? Babies. Or hell spawn. Or schizoid minions, if you
wanted to be exact about it.
Sure, babies could be cute at times.
However, I was convinced my niece had horns that slid out of her blond curls in
the middle of the night. Hanna had this thing where she liked to scream her
head off at the most inappropriate times. Mostly sleeping times. Like right
now. The clock confirmed it was only four thirty in the morning. Four thirty!
Alicia wasn’t even home from work yet, which meant Mom was most likely trying
to calm the baby down in the baby/Alicia’s room. My sister gave up all rights
to her own room when she allowed herself to get knocked up.
I picked up a rolled sock at my feet and
threw it at Horny’s happy-go-lucky face. I’d be happy too if I was rich and
hung up in every adolescents’ bedroom for them to fawn over … and didn’t have a
sister who couldn’t keep her legs closed … and could ace school without the
necessary hours of sleep.
A shrill scream from the other room
punctuated my thoughts with a gigantic exclamation point. My own house was a
sideshow. No need to travel to Nowhere, Ohio to see oddities like the Biggest
Ball of Yarn. A quick drive down Clamberry Lane would do.
Untangling my legs from the sheets, I
stood and tiptoe-ran from the room. The soles of my bare feet allowed the cold
from the hardwood floors to seep through my skin and ice its way from my
chipped toe nail polish all the way to my mousy brown hair. There was no time
to put slippers on even if I could remember where my puppy ones were, or
remember where anything was lately. If Mom and I wanted any more sleep tonight,
we had to put Hanna back to bed. Immediately.
The door to Alicia/Hanna’s room was
slightly ajar. Before pushing it open, I took a huge breath. What was supposed
to calm me did the exact opposite. The smell of baby powder only served as a
reminder that I wouldn’t get a full night’s sleep until I left for college in
another year and a half. Distracted, and now thoroughly annoyed, I pushed the
bedroom door open.
Mom stood in the middle of the room doing
this bopping up and down swinging thing she thought Hanna liked, never once
realizing it hadn’t ever put her to sleep since day one. She turned, her wild,
snaky hair knotted around her face, her eyes a mix between sadness, exhaustion,
and relief. It was always the relief that bothered me.
“I got her,” I said.
She plopped the devil-crier into my
arms. Hanna looked up for a brief second and I thought her wails might subside,
but no, she was just gearing up for another ear-piercer. Why was it she always
looked so good, even when she was ensuring I’d need hearing aids when I was
sixty? Sure, she was red from screaming and snot was dripping from her nose,
but it was always Mom and me who looked like we were dragged through thorny bushes
and tossed into a manure patch to wilt. Hanna always looked adorable. Angelic.
Her tousled curls perfectly framing her face.
I made soothing noises and leaned down
to sniff her head. She smelled awesome too. Not fair. I wanted to be mad at her
but it was just so dang hard when she was so perfect.
Mom put her hand on my shoulder and
squeezed. “Thanks—”
I flinched away. “Just go to bed, Mom.
Get some sleep.”
She dropped her head to the side. A
flicker of wanting to say more shone in her eyes. I’d noticed the look more
often lately. Thoughts were rising to the surface and threatening to spew out. They
were practically on her lips, but I didn’t want to get into it. Not right now.
Not ever.
“Go to bed.” I said, patting Hanna’s
back. “You’re going to make her start crying again.”
Her eyes widened, more from hurt than surprise.
Slowly, she turned and I watched numbly as she walked away, her plaid pajama
pants twisted oddly around her waist. She must have been too tired to balk at
my attitude. Though we did kind of have this unspoken agreement that when we were
woken up in the wee hours of the morning, we were allowed to be moody.
Alicia and Hanna’s room matched the
décor of the rest of the house, which could only be described as baby dump. It
was like a parenting magazine threw up in every room. Except mine. Never mine.
I barred anything baby from being in my room except the actual baby.
Several Sippy cups sat on the dresser
and toys dotted every available horizontal surface, and some vertical ones too.
They were everywhere. Just everywhere. Unbelievable places I wasn’t even sure
Hanna could get at. A pink-tongued snake half slithered its way from behind the
dresser mirror. Hanna was too small to put that there, she couldn’t even reach
the top of the dresser let alone the dresser mirror.
The cooing noised I’d been making seemed
to work. Her lungs stopped expelling bloody murder and turned to soft cries. But
her tiny little fists? They still gripped my tank top and wouldn’t let go.
There was a time when I wanted to be
just like my sister. Up until she got pregnant, I tried to follow in her high
school footsteps. That seemed like eons ago now. Plush snake heads and baby
alarm clocks were not my idea of a good time.
Apparently, the baby in my hands never got the
message. When Alicia started working nights, I was the only one who could calm Hanna
down. I basically took over all Mommy functions when my sister wasn’t around,
which was at opposites with still trying to have a normal life and bringing my
grades up.
Good grades and a decent SAT score were
essential to me getting into college. Unfortunately, my pre-niece self had been
more interested in boys and parties and best friends than thinking about
college. I needed good grades so I could get out of here. This lack of sleep thing
wasn’t helping, though.
I lifted Hanna from my shoulder to stare
at her. Her eyelashes were wet and spiky. They fluttered and then, bam, she was
out again.
Just call me the baby whisperer.
I laid her down, zombie-walked back to
my room, and threw myself in bed again. A half hour later, Alicia came home.
Her car thrummed in the driveway, her key clicked in the lock, and her
exhausted feet stomped to her now-cohabitated bedroom. With her arrival, a
heavy, acrid, black cloud fell over our house.
I was a miniscule white dot in a sea of
dark, and, not for the first time, wished my sister would take her poor
decisions and wasted dreams and leave.
***
The alarm clock
clicked on at six a.m. and belted out the tune to that new soul-revolting pop
song, I’ll love you for the rest of my
life. It’s you or die, baby.
Gag. Me. Now. That wasn’t real life.
Real life was the fact that my eyes were stinging and tired from being painted
wide open, staring at the ceiling, and listening to Hanna get fussier and
fussier in the room on the other side of Horny’s smile. Alicia would have a fit
if neither one of us got Hannah from the room so she could sleep her night
shift away.
When she’d first got the job, she’d
tried to lobby for Hanna and I to share a room because we were on the same sleep
schedule. Yeah. Nope. Hanna, okay, but Hanna sleeping in my room would require
her bed, her bottles, her toys, and pretty soon my room would look like Alicia’s
and that sure as hell wasn’t happening.
The baby powder smell hit me again when
I walked into Alicia’s room. It used to smell like Tommy Girl perfume and nail
polish remover. Hanna stood in her crib, her little fists outstretched, opening
and closing toward me. I swung her onto my hip and didn’t bother being quiet as
I shut the door. I was pretty sure Alicia mumbled something that sounded like “itch,”
but I didn’t care. My being crabby toward her was yet another side effect of
her being a teenage mother.
I changed Hanna out of her nighttime
diaper, then watched as she clumsily walked around the living room looking for
something to do. Finally, she pointed at the television and said, “Tee?”
I turned cartoons on and watched along
with her as the writers and illustrators of today turned the perfectly awesome
cartoons I’d grown up on into travesties of nature. No wonder why the youth of
today were screwed up. What Hanna needed was a good old-fashioned cartoon, not
this crap. She needed the antics of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, not
this metaphorical nonsense.
When Mom got out of the shower, we
switched places wordlessly. This had been our morning routine for about a year
and it always felt like a personal victory when I actually made it to the curb
on time, with clothes on the right way, my book bag in my hand, and a fake
smile on my face to see Nic pull up. The thing about Nic though, what always
started out as me faking a smile, turned into a real one when he was around.
Nic was a juxtaposition.
Hmm.
Note to self to make note in notebook: Am I using the word juxtaposition
correctly?
He dressed like he could never quite
make out who he wanted to be and therefore ended up making himself new every
day. He wore punk rock T-shirts under Einstein button-up sweaters. He wore
loafers with jeans and Nikes with khakis. The only constant about him was his
glasses.
As the door swung open, Nic held out a
white Styrofoam cup. “Full many a glorious morning have I seen …”
I took it, smiling, and then after
taking a long, wonderful sip, I said, “And blessed is thee who brings me coffee
made from bean?”
His face screwed up and the glasses
slipped a little down his nose. He had on a red and black plaid collared shirt
over a Call of Duty T. He fixed his glasses, still squinting. “Made from bean?”
“…sss? Made from beanssss? Would that have
made more sense?”
He cracked a smile. “You never make
sense. Did they have coffee back in Shakespeare’s day?”
Of course I never made sense. He should
try getting interrupted sleep day in and day out. Wait … night in and night out?
See? Proved my case.
I leaned my book bag against my shins
and took another long sip of the steaming cup, squelching the need to say what
I’d just thought out loud. It upset Nic when I said things like that. He didn’t
get mad, only troubled, as if it made him sad to know I wasn’t happy.
I pointed to the cup in my hand. “Thank
you. For this.”
He shrugged. “I know you need it to
function.”
The word “now” was carelessly left off
the end of his sentence. He knew I needed it to function now. I never needed it before. Didn’t even drink coffee pre-niece.
I was good with OJ, or milk, or any of the other breakfast drinks. Just not
now. I needed caffeine.
“I take it you did the Shakespeare
reading we were supposed to do?” I asked. Stupid question. He always did. We
were taking the same English lit course. Unfortunately for us though, we’d been
put in different classes. It sucked. Big time. “What sonnet is that from?”
“One of the thirties I think. Did you
read them?”
Shaking my head, I said, “No. Not yet. I’ve
got study hall today first period, though. It’s on my agenda. Do you remember
it? The sonnet?”
“The beginning,” he said. He paused and
rubbed his chin. “It reminded me of you.”
It didn’t surprise me he’d remembered
it. Nic had one of those carbon copy memories when it came to literature. Words
just stuck inside him like fly paper. As he recited the poem, I pictured the
words catching to the paper and hanging on for dear life. I wished the inside
of me looked like the inside of Nic.
I brought out the notebook I’d slipped in
the front pocket of my book bag earlier that morning and jotted down: Juxtaposition. Then, I wrote: 30’s. Poem with glorious morning.
I wanted to see what poem Nic thought
was like me. Did he see me like I saw me? If he did, the sonnet would be
written in a tornado of words and I doubted Shakespeare would have written
something so hideous and disorganized.
Nic’s laughter penetrated my thoughts.
“Are you even listening?”
I didn’t even have the decency to get
embarrassed. He knew me too well.
“Sorry. Say it again?”
He took another breath and, like usual,
the words flowed from him like a trickling stream. Though Nic was considered a
science geek at our school, his true calling was something artistic. He could
be an actor or a writer or something where emotions ruled and not the brain. He
felt things more than normal people. At least, the way he said things was as if
feelings were pouring from every crevice.
“Full
many a glorious morning have I seen, flatter the mountain tops with sovereign
eye, kissing with golden face the meadows green, gilding pale streams with
heavenly alchemy; anon permit the basest clouds to ride.”
Right after
glorious morning in my notebook, I wrote down: Anon permit the basest clouds
to ride???
What the hell
did that even mean? Mentally shrugging, I decided it didn’t really matter. It
sounded beautiful coming from Nic.
Chapter
Two
Nic
Katie was an
anomaly of nature. Always had been, but not in this way.
She used to shine like the dawning of a
new sun over the depleted and war-torn dystopian societies I liked to read
about in my sci-fi books. Now it was as if she were one of the down-trodden,
the hindered, the fighting masses she’d reigned over. It gutted me to see the
curve in her back from all the weight when she’d always been a pillar.
Craning my neck to get a better look,
the quick slashes of her pen over the lined notebook paper were still
impossible to see. She was biting down on her lip again, a look of
concentration draining her face of all else. But then, just as quickly as she’d
brought it out, she stuffed the notebook away.
I’d been wanting to ask her what she was
always writing down, but figured she’d tell me if she wanted me to know. If it
was five years ago, when we were still close friends, I would’ve just asked
her. If it were two years ago, back in the dark days, I wouldn’t have even
known she carried the notebook. Currently, our friendship level was teetering
on the edge of skin deep. I wanted to be bone deep. Screw that, I wanted to be
marrow deep.
Marrow deep? I liked that. I’d have to
file that away.
She pinched me and I yelped. “Ow. What
was that for?”
She half-smiled around the Styrofoam
cup. “You were gone for a couple seconds.”
“A simple wave of your hand in front of
my face would suffice, thank you.”
“You’re driving. I was worried. People
do crazy things when they’re scared for their lives.”
The curve of her lips wilted almost as
soon as it bloomed and a wistful look blew into her face as she looked out the
car window. The leaves were changing early this year. It happened so quick I’d
barely noticed, but now that more and more trees were showing off their colors,
they were impossible to ignore.
Mrs. Barnes’ fire bush stood out like a
road sign as I took a left onto Maple and headed toward the school. Funny how
things changed. That bush had always been home base for any game we’d ever
played at she-who-must-not-be-named’s house and now I used it as a visual to
remind me to turn left to go to school. “You sure you’re going to be able to
read all the assigned sonnets in study hall?”
She shook her head and a tiny smile
returned to her face. “Don’t worry about me.”
The determination in her face said
everything. Sometimes it still shocked me. I didn’t know how far behind she’d
gotten herself before, but the fact that she was trying to make it up now awed
me. She wasn’t always Miss Gotta Get Into College. She was more like Miss
Carefree.
“I think Mr. Henkel is going to give us
the big Shakespeare project today. Can’t wait.”
She tapped a finger to her lips. “If we
get to decide what to do, you should perform a soliloquy or something. Or get a
bunch of people in your class to act out a scene with you.”
My eyebrows crawled up my forehead. Did
we somehow beam into another dimension? She knew the dork sign I carried. She
helped put it there. No one in class would decide to work with me unless they
were made to. “Are you insane? Did Hanna keep you up all night?”
She rolled her eyes. “She keeps me up
every night, but no, I’m not insane. I think you’d be great.”
Because she suggested it, I thought
about it briefly. Very briefly. Didn’t actors have to hide their true selves
and take over someone else completely? Half the time I felt like the me knob
was turned on full blast with no power-down button. It’d be impossible to
pretend to be someone else.
Katie swirled her cup, peered into the
little hole in the cover and frowned like she always did when she noticed how
little coffee was left. If I could find a way, I’d make her a never ending cup.
We pulled into the school and as soon as
I put the car into park, a knock came on my window. Katie jumped and I reached
my hand over her. To protect her? To what? Didn’t know. When I saw who it was,
I rolled my eyes and turned the ignition off.
My friend Jackson stared in at us. He
had that look on his face that pissed me off. I started to open my door into
him when he mouthed, you’re pathetic.
Drawing on Katie’s inclination that I
should be an actor, I gave him a you-suck look and hoped the translation was
clear. If his laugh and prompt exit were anything to go by, I nailed it.
Katie was smiling out the window,
watching Jackson’s tall, lean frame walk away in a shirt that, like usual,
looked like it was just a little too small for his long torso. “I think he’s
funny.”
I shot her a look and she laughed.
“What? I mean, he’s a weird kind of
funny, but aren’t we all?”
Considering she used to make fun of him
on a daily basis for his videogame t-shirts, this was quite an upgrade. I
studied her softening face. The hard lines I noticed this morning were already
relaxing. At home, she was a tight, nervous ball of energy. Away, she could let
herself relax. Her comment about Jackson was one-hundred percent proof of it.
The way her laughs came more easily and more frequent. What I wouldn’t give for
her to smile all the time. “I’d keep that praise of Jackson to yourself. He’d
probably die if he heard you say that.”
She shot me a funny look this time. “No
one cares what I think anymore.”
I was about to tell her how wrong she
was when she did a double take out the window, her face paling.
Reese Barnes walked with Katie’s old
friends toward the school. It had always been hard for me to place Katie in the
same group as the mean girls. She never quite belonged. It wasn’t really her who
called Jackson a “disillusioned gamer hack dork” in ninth grade. Or in eighth, when
she taped a feminine pad to Roseanne Gurtle’s bookbag, it must have been her
evil twin.
The not-too-distant memories hardened my
insides. I hoped she never went back to that clique again.
Reese looked over. When she saw we
stared back at her, she curled her lip into a snarl that would’ve wilted a
butterfly in three-point-five seconds.
Internally, I shrunk back. I had years’
worth of experience of avoiding Reese. However, fearless Katie flipped her off.
And she thought Jackson wouldn’t die if
she paid him a compliment. Who wouldn’t? No one thought of standing up to Reese
Barnes and the Skeletal Crew, except Katie. Except the one who had stood with
them.
Reese’s eyes flared and, like Cyclops, a
red beam lasered through the space between them and hit Katie square in the
chest. Katie put the empty coffee cup in the cup holder between us and brought
up another unwavering middle finger, all the while a tiny smile crept over her
face.
I guessed we weren’t on the subtlety
train today.
Reese stopped and about-faced, her hand
landing on her hip. Katie was up and out of the car before I could grab her. I’d
done some slight research over the past year and her bitch barometer never made
it past a point-five on days she had bad nights with Hanna. She usually handled
the backlash of being ostracized from the popular clique pretty well by
ignoring it, but last night must have been a doozy.
It was weird to see them like this. Enemies.
Reese, the mirror image of Katie from two years ago. Katie, a bystander, like
me. Back then, they would’ve been on the same side of the pathway, scorching
down some guy who happened to like school, or D&D, or anything else that
made people uncool. Katie belonged on the other side of that path. Not to be
bitch cohorts again, but because she was born to be noticed. She couldn’t be
noticed on this side of the path with me. Things just didn’t work like that.
They were already exchanging words,
Reese flanked by her crew and an unflinching Katie staring them all down, when
I got out of the car. The door banged shut and everybody jumped, even me. I
guessed I’d shut it harder than I’d meant to. Reese tried her butterfly-kill
stare but when I was next to Katie, I sometimes thought I might be able to
stand up to them too. Like her force field automatically expanded to shield me
as well as her.
Just like with Jackson, I shot Reese my
new you-suck look. But instead of running away, she threw her head back and
laughed. It was so Wizard of Oz witchy, but worked for her somehow. My new and
obviously faked confidence waned until Katie’s hand grabbed my arm.
This cut Reese short as her bitch radar
zeroed in on Katie’s delicate fingers. I knew what was going to come out of her
mouth the second her eyes twinkled and her lips curled into a smirk.
“Congratulations, Katie. I’m so happy
for you.”
It was the sickeningly sweet voice that
threw Katie off for a second, stunning her. I’d swear in front of Congress
Reese Barnes was bipolar.
“I think it’s great you two are finally
together. It’s been a long time coming.” Reese looked around and saddled up to
Katie like they were co-conspirators again. The semi-whisper that came from her
was dual-edged. It was supposed to be a whisper, but the kind of whisper that
she hoped everyone around us could hear. “I know how much you always talked
about it before. Your deepest darkest secret.”
Hope surged inside my chest. Reese wasn’t
someone you wanted to trust, but I’d take scraps from anyone.
The thickening crowd around us snickered
and everyone switched their gazes between Katie and me that read, She wanted him? How is that possible?
Katie had fallen from the very top of
the social ladder rung, but for someone like her, it was impossible to fall as
far down as I was.
Reese winked at me. My stomach knotted.
She used to do that when we were little, but back then, I was in on the joke. Now
I was the joke.
“Careful, Nic,” she said, her voice
louder now, “When you do your research about how to have sex, pay close
attention to the section on protection. Katie comes from a fertile family and
the last thing the school administrators need is another teenage pregnancy
statistic to pass on to the state. Disgusting how they’re all from the same
family too.”
Katie stepped forward but I clasped my
hand around her fingers still circling my arm. Reese wasn’t in front of us still
anyway. Once she delivered the final blow, she left. That was her MO. And a
good one too. It ensured she always got the last word and, with Reese, it was
most likely the last laugh too.
Katie’s eyes were closed when I looked
at her. I uncurled her fingers from my arm and brought our hands down between
us and squeezed her small fingers. Her eyes fluttered open and her lips curled
into a half smile.
Squeezing her fingers again, I said,
“Did she just insinuate I wouldn’t know how to have sex unless I looked it up
first? She does realize I’m far smarter than her, right? My IQ is probably
double.”
Her face broke into a smile that warmed
my insides. The first real smile all day. If I had balls instead of brains, I’d
pull her toward me and show everyone, including Reese’s crew, just what I
really thought of Katie Ross. If she kissed me back, the scene would probably
turn into X territory really quick because I’d combust inside.
But I couldn’t shut my brain off and my
brain was always telling me what everyone else’s looks confirmed. It was
impossible for Katie to feel the same way about me. It would bend the rules of
physics and everyone knows physics can’t be bent. Facts were facts. And fact
was, girls like Katie didn’t like guys like me. Guys like me were quarantined
to the friend zone.
Right on cue, Katie said, “You’re a good
friend.”
And though I smiled and nodded, deep,
deep down, I wanted to maim the person who invented the word friend. That guy was probably never
stuck in the friend zone with someone for years. I wanted outside the zone. I
wanted to be so far outside the zone I couldn’t see the property line.
Katie was quiet as we walked toward the
front entrance to the school. Somewhere between the showdown and here, she’d
dropped my hand, and it was currently wallowing in the empty space between us.
When we walked through the double doors,
it was like any other day. Reese and Jer, Katie’s ex-boyfriend, made out near
the hallway that led into the cafeteria. The rest of the Skeletal Crew left the
first lunch table one-by-one on the arms of guys in letter jackets. Soon, most
everyone was cleared from the hallway except for the group around Jackson’s
locker. My group.
Katie was an implant to the group since
Reese dumped her at the beginning of last year. She still didn’t quite fit in
fully, but I got the sense it didn’t bother her that much.
As we walked toward them, Katie said,
“Do you have any Shakespeare revenge quotes in your arsenal?”
I waved to Jackson who’d just spotted
us. “I don’t know, but it’d probably come from Hamlet. He’s one pissed off
character.”
Thoughts seemingly somewhere else, she
pulled on my sleeve before we reached my friends. “I’m going to go to the
computer lab before homeroom. I’ll see you later?”
I couldn’t keep myself from frowning. “Yeah.
Yeah, sure. See you later.”
She pulled her book bag up higher on her
shoulder and walked away.
When I turned back, Jackson was smirking.
My brain started firing scenarios to me all at once and not one of them left me
feeling easy. Jackson would say something about Katie. I would get pissed off.
It wouldn’t end well.
Instead of walking up to them, I raised
a hand and said, “Check you guys later,” then walked in the opposite direction
Katie had gone.
Chapter
Three
Katie
The hallway was
thinning out, which meant I had very little time to make it to Mr. Henkel’s
class. Only my favorite class of the entire day. Mr. Henkel was one of those
weird teachers that actually made school fun, so I booked it down the hallway.
The bell rang just as I stepped over the threshold. Mr. Henkel looked up from
his desk, smiled, and winked at me.
I took a seat in the front row opposite
a life-sized cutout of our literary hero for October. The cutout had one of those
quote bubbles floating from his mouth that said, “To be or not to be …”
We’d started Shakespeare last week. Mr.
Henkel was a big believer in learning about the person behind the stories. He’d
said, “Authors put so much of their personal lives into their prose, and to
truly understand their work, readers must first understand them.” Last week, we’d
taken a Google Earth visit to Stratford-Upon-Avon and watched a 1980’s
made-for-TV video about the life of the Bard. Today, we’d get instructions on
the main project due at the end of the month. I knew that because Nic already
gave me a heads up at lunch. Like clockwork, Mr. Henkel walked out from behind
his desk and started handing out a packet of paper to each student.
“As you can see, the project will be due—”
The door to the classroom creaked open
like an insufferable groan and my eyes immediately darted to the side of the
room and fell on him. Jer Davis. If I
hadn’t loved this class so much, I would’ve asked to transfer out of it the
first day of school. My heart simultaneously sped up and lurched, making for
this weird stuttering thing going on in my chest. I hated the way he still made
me react. It was half disgust, half … memories.
Mr. Henkel leaned back on his desk and
crossed his arms, the packets in his hand brushing his shoulder. “Mr. Davis.
How nice of you to make it.”
I looked down and tried to rub out a
stray pen mark on my desk.
“Sorry, Mr. Henkel. I got caught up.” No
doubt his face matched the cockiness in his voice. He didn’t always sound like
that.
A boy in the back snickered. “Yeah,
caught up in Reese.”
I tried to act as if a shot of venom
didn’t just rocket through my body, but when I saw him sit next to me out of
the corner of my eye, I sighed. It was a heavy sigh filled with revulsion and
disgust because I was completely filled with revulsion and disgust.
“Sorry, Princess,” he whispered. “Only
available seat.”
I tapped my middle finger against my
cheek, showing Jer what I really thought of him being late so he had to take
the only available seat next to me.
Jeez. Three flip-offs in one day. That
wasn’t a good sign. I’d go as far as to say this day was unrecoverable. Except,
I had found out this morning during my trip to the computer lab that I was
using the word juxtaposition correctly. Bring it on SAT’s. I was so ready.
Jer chuckled at my hand gesture and
leaned back in his chair with all the indifference of … well, all the
indifference of someone who knew I didn’t matter anymore.
Freshman year, the kid worshipped me. He’d
just transferred in and was so cute in this adorably dorky way. No, he didn’t
dress like Nic or anything like that, but he was so unbelievably shy. If that
kid from two years ago was sitting right next to him now, they would look
nothing alike. They probably wouldn’t even recognize each other in themselves.
Reese had made sure of that. And me, too. I’d helped. As unbelievable as it was
to me now, I’d helped him be this aloof asshole of a guy.
Mr. Henkel continued handing out
packets. “As I was saying class, your projects are due at the end of the month.
The rest of the class time is for you to get with your partner, which I’ve
arranged for you all at the back of the packet, and settle on a topic.”
I turned the packet over already not
liking the idea of assigned partners. One of Jer’s friends was in this class
and if Mr. Henkel had any humanity, he’d pair me with him. My mouth dropped at
the name scribbled on the back.
I looked over at Jerome Davis who was
still reading the first page and then over to Mr. Henkel.
As if sensing what I was about to ask,
Mr. Henkel said, “No, you cannot switch partners.”
I waited for Jer to look, to acknowledge
me, to read faster than at a fourth grade level.
Finally, he flipped his packet over. The
pencil he’d been bouncing off the desk ceased moving. He shut his eyes and
shook his head slowly from side-to-side. When he finally looked over, he
grinned. “Katie.”
“Jer.”
I briefly snuck a glance at Mr. Henkel
and contemplated asking if he’d reconsider his whole not-switching-partner
ruling, but Jer was already moving his desk closer to mine.
I read through the instructions again,
keeping my head down in an attempt to put off talking to him for as long as
possible. The directions stated we were to pick one of Shakespeare’s plays or
sonnets and research why Shakespeare might have wrote it, how it related to our
lives, along with an analysis of the actual piece of literature. We knew the
drill. This was the same as it had been when we did Ernest Hemingway in
September.
Jer broke the silence. “So, what are you
thinking? Plays or sonnets? Sonnets?”
Sonnets would be tough. They were so
personal. Seeing as how my ex-boyfriend, who was currently dating my ex-best
friend, was now my partner, I really didn’t feel like relating a sonnet to my
personal life. “I think we should do a play.”
“Okay
…” Exasperation laced his voice.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to
imagine stabbing him with my pen. “Are you sure that’s okay. We can do sonnets—”
“No. Play’s fine.” He rolled his eyes. “Which
one?”
I scanned down the list Mr. Henkel had typed
out for us. “I’m thinking Macbeth. I do love a good ‘ol revenge plot.”
His eyes leveled on me. “You do know
Macbeth gets it in the end, right?”
I sneered his way. “Oh, and which play
do you want to do? Romeo and Juliet because you’re so in love?” I batted my
eyes for good measure.
Red blotches crept up Jer’s neck. “Actually,
how about Taming of the Shrew? You
know a thing or two about being a grumpy, sarcastic bitch.”
This was the most we’d spoken in two
years. It wasn’t going well at all. “Not sure grumpy, sarcastic bitch would be
Webster’s definition of the word shrew but hmm, Taming of the Shrew?” I pretended to think about it. Jer Davis was
not about to get the best of me again. No way. “Fantastic idea. Let’s do it.”
He sighed, almost as if he’d regretted
what he’d said. “We don’t have to.”
I ignored him and brought out a fresh
piece of paper. “We’re obviously going to have to work on this outside of
school. You’re still in football, right?”
Admittedly, this was petty of me. Jer
had been playing football since Peewee and I’d have to be a complete idiot,
blind, and deaf to not know Jer was still in football. The Monday morning
announcements were a highlight reel in his honor.
He just stared, so I shrugged. “What
time do you get out?”
He stared me down harder.
“Listen, I don’t keep up with your
schedule anymore. Are you going to help me out a little bit or do I have to ask
Coach when you’ll be free?”
His grip tightened around his pen and I
wondered if he was having the same stabby thoughts I had. Not that he’d have a
reason to. I was being as nice as could be expected. “About six every night.
Unless we have a game Friday.”
I pulled out my agenda and flipped to
the calendar page.
He peered over my shoulder. “You’re in
Volleyball again, right?”
I pointed out the places on the calendar
where, in big block letters, it said, Home
4:30. Or Away 6:00.
“You can use your words, you know.”
“Yes, I am in volleyball again. It looks like the best time for
us to get together is Mondays and Wednesdays after six. Sound good to you?”
He nodded and fake smiled. “Looking
forward to it.”
Wonderful. Sarcasm. Pretty sure I taught
him and his boy band perfect teeth that, too.
Nic
I’d just written
Marrow Deep on the top of a blank, inconspicuous, white piece of unlined paper
when Jackson sat next to me. My whole body sighed. I’d been working on the poem
all day in my head and that fresh piece of paper begged me to fill it with the
perfect words. Instead, I pretended I’d been taking notes and stuffed the paper
inside my spiral notebook before Jackson noticed. “Yeah?”
The corners of his lips tipped up in
that casual way he always did things. Jackson was a total live-in-the-moment
type of person. He was the guy that would run into the mayhem of war in Call of
Duty and yell something cheesy like, “YOLO.”
“Dude, you’ve been avoiding me all day.”
I shuffled papers haphazardly around the
small library table where we sat. It was best not to look him directly in the
eyes. He didn’t get that I wasn’t like him. Half the time I didn’t think he
truly understood that we were the outsiders, not everybody else. “That’s
because you’ve been looking at me like that
all day,” I said.
“It’s not just me. Everyone can see it.
It’s practically blasting off you all the time. Just ask Katie out already. At
least then you’ll know where you stand.”
Totally not like me. He was from Mars, I
was from Saturn.
I wished he didn’t know anything about
my feelings for Katie. One of these days, he’d probably walk into the
lunchroom, get on top of a table, and yell it at the top of his lungs. Besides,
I was quite content to never know what Katie thought of me. If that friend word
were to show up, I’d be wishing I had Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about,” I said, mustering as much nonchalance as I
could.
The lie filled me with an ugly, prickly
sensation. Jackson and his group had pretty much kept me afloat in middle
school after Katie and Reese dropped me for telling on them for shoplifting. It
was Jackson’s group that made sure I didn’t turn into a creepy loner kid.
They’d asked me to sit at their lunch table when no one had wanted anything to
do with the “narc”. Then, lunch table friends had turned into hanging out after
school. I was thrilled they befriended me. Jackson turned out to be a great friend.
He was my best friend so lying to him didn’t feel right.
But this feeling for Katie was bigger than
that. I could barely even admit my feelings to myself without turning right around
and trying to squash any hope. I didn’t need Jackson filling my head with ideas.
And possibilities. It was good to have dreams, but they also meant you would
never be normal.
Me? I was practically pegged as average
at birth. I came when I was supposed to, was a normal weight, a normal height,
nothing extraordinary about me.
I scanned the library and noticed no
less than three girls. The three girls were cute and they were at a library so
their intelligence levels were most likely higher than most. Why couldn’t I
like them? Someone attainable, someone who might look past the “dork” part of
me?
I shook my head. By liking Katie, I’d
doomed myself to knowing the hurt that came when you could never accomplish
what you wanted deep down inside—marrow deep.
That was why I didn’t want to talk about
Katie with Jackson. That was why I never really wanted to talk to myself about
Katie. It would only suck more when the eventual heart sickness began. She’d
reject me and she’d probably even do it nicely, which would make it suck all
that much more. Then I couldn’t even be pissed off at her for it. I’d probably
feel bad that she felt bad for letting me down.
Jackson peeked down at my notebook and
then back up at me. His eyes lost the earlier teasing. “You keep saying you don’t
know what I’m talking about and that’s fine. Warning, though. If you keep
saying it long enough, someone else will figure out what I’m talking about and
will actually act on it.”
Cringing, I shuffled my papers together
again. I tried to cover it up, but his words were like a blow to my stomach.
Could I stand to see Katie with anyone else? I’d seen her with Jer of course,
but that was a little different. We weren’t friends then.
Jackson clapped me on the back. “Think
about it, Nic. I’m only trying to look out for you.”
When Jer and Katie were together, it was
as if I were watching a movie. They were just some actors acting out the
typical jock gets the cheerleader romantic comedy flick. He’d make the winning
touchdown, she’d throw her pom-pom’d arms around him, and I watched from the
bleachers. As one of Katie’s only friends, I’d be in the movie now. I’d be the
third wheel and the third wheel wasn’t a position I wanted at all.
I wanted the lead.
Jackson left and I was finally left with
paper and my own thoughts. Slipping the poem I’d been working on out of my
notebook, I switched around the last two lines to two new perfect lines, signed
it Romeo—totally corny, I know—and enclosed it in an envelope.
This time, on my way out of the library,
I dropped it in the book return slot and walked away casually.
Chapter
Four
Katie
“Excuse me, Mr.
Henkel?”
Reese walked in dressed in angel wings
alongside Trish, my replacement, who dressed in the exact same outfit. It made
me sick to think I used to do the same stuff. For all the talk we always did
about being ourselves and ragging on others when we thought they were being
joiners or followers, we were the biggest hypocrites.
Since middle school, Reese and I had
dressed in the same Halloween costume. We were both witches, or vampires, or sexy
cowgirls (only when we got a little older). Whatever it was, we were it
together. And I’m not just talking about being the same thing, we wore the
exact same costume. We were clones of each other. Actually, I was more like her
clone. She said, “Let’s be Indian princesses” and I said, “Sure.”
She strutted up to Mr. Henkel’s desk,
her translucent, sparkling white wings flowing behind her. “The Halloween grams
are here.”
“Oh joy.” He sat at his desk in front of
the class and clasped his hands behind his head. “I do so enjoy when education
is interrupted for frivolity.”
He waved them forward but there was such
disdain in his gesture I had to hide the smile that slipped onto my face by
burying my head in my notes. I’d tried to start reading Taming of the Shrew yesterday when I got home from school but it
was difficult. Even with the little notes in the margins of the textbook, it
was hard to grasp every little nuance of the prose. I knew I’d have to ask Nic
for help, which I hated doing.
Nic was a true Einstein, while I was the
dumb assistant. Sure, he never acted put out when I asked him, but I hated
showing my weakness, even if it was just in front of him. If I could understand
things like him, I wouldn’t need his help. Not for the first time, I wished I
was as smart as Nic or Jackson. Basically anyone in their group. I was
surprised they’d even let me in, considering I had to be the dumbest member.
I tried to keep my head down, but every
time one of Reese or Trish’s angel wings fluttered in my peripheral, I couldn’t
help but get a spark of hope. There once was a time when I expected to get a
handful of grams. Not so much anymore. It was stupid to think anyone would send
me one.
Reese and Trish glided past me again,
dropping off notes attached to big huge lips on desks in the aisle next to mine.
Reese had saved Jer for last and made a big show of giving him his lips. I didn’t
see how many grams he got but it must have been a good haul because she
whispered, “I’m only allowing you to have these because you know, along with
everybody else, that you’re mine.”
Puke,
I thought. However, there was an unexpected twist in my stomach. Was it because
Reese and Jer were together or because there weren’t any more lips in their
baskets for me?
I was betting on the lips.
They were almost to the door, Mr. Henkel
just beginning to stand, when Reese turned around. “Duh. I almost forgot.” She
reached into the bottom of her pearlescent basket, her fist curling around
something, and then sprinkled chunks of paper all over my desk. “This got
ruined but it was for you.”
Heat pricked behind my eyes as I stared
down at the piles of white. I blinked a few times, tamping the threat of tears
of pain and anger that wanted to spring out. I wouldn’t let Reese get the best
of me.
I looked away from the white confetti
decorating my desk and stared at Reese. She was looking down at me with her
sickeningly sweet smile. How could I ever have been friends with this horrible
person?
I stood, my legs shaking but willed my
hand steady as I held it out. “My lips?”
Her own lips curled into a snarl. “It
turned out we didn’t have enough for everybody so you didn’t get one. More
people got grams than we thought.”
I smiled right back. “Oh, well, since
Jer got so many I’m sure he won’t mind sharing.”
I snatched a set of lips from his desk
and ripped the note attached to it off. “You don’t mind, do you?” I asked,
trying to mirror Reese’s smile as best I could.
Jer looked amused. Reese looked anything
but. I could practically feel the heat coming radiating from her.
“Mr. Henkel,” she hissed.
“Miss Ross,” Mr. Henkel sighed. “Please
give Mr. Davis back his lips, and Miss Barnes, might I suggest you keep better
track of the grams when Christmas comes around?”
Her body relaxed and the perfect façade
she always wore shone through again. “Oh, of course, Mr. Henkel. It won’t
happen again.”
After tossing Jer back his lips, I
looked down at the ripped chunks of my gram. There were words on most of the
pieces. I saw “mask” and “inside” and a big cursive “R”, but that’s all I could
take. Someone had actually written me something but it was all ruined now. All
ruined because of Reese. I swept the pieces onto my page of notes, walked to
the front of the room, and let them fall in the trash.
I stared at the clock the rest of class
and was the first one out when the bell rang, Jer following right behind me. “Katie.”
I waved him away. “Not right now.”
He grabbed my shoulder. “You know how
she is.”
That was the excuse I always used for
her. She’d say something mean about my mom and I’d shrug it off.
That’s
just how she is.
It was a justification for her behavior.
An explanation for why I was still friends with her. If she couldn’t be a
different kind of person, why would I try and make her be? If that was just how
she was, I couldn’t get mad at her for it. If that was just how she acted, I
had to live with it because she was my best friend.
It was all bullshit. I knew that now.
I spun on Jer, my hands curling into
fists around my book bag. “I can’t believe you’re dating that bitch. What
happened to you?”
He frowned and looked at the ugly
lockers. A moment or two passed and then he pulled his hand from my shoulder.
Without another word, he turned and walked away.
Well, wasn’t that par for the course?
That was exactly what he did when he found out Alicia was pregnant, just on a smaller
scale.
Reese was a bitch and Jer was a coward.
Nothing had changed. Absolutely nothing.
“Katie?”
I closed my eyes and let the warmth of
Nic’s voice seep inside me. I had no right to even be calmed by his voice. I
was a hypocrite. Had been a hypocrite. It was still a wonder he’d even decided
to start talking to me again. Seeing Reese in all her glory always made me ache
for the hurt I’d caused others.
I shuffled my feet around to face him.
“Hey? You okay?” he asked.
I shook my head slowly, still not
meeting his eyes.
“What is it?”
His voice trembled. I looked up,
expecting he’d seen Jer and me talking. Expecting he knew Jer had upset me.
Expecting he was so angry his voice trembled because of it. Instead, his face
was pale and ashen.
He looked as if his dog just died.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, reaching for
his hand but noticing they were both occupied with text books, I brought it
back down to my side. “You okay?”
His face pinched. “You first.”
“It was Jer and Reese,” I said, needing
to erase the weird look on his face. “They’re being themselves.”
His eyes closed and he was still, a
frozen replica of himself.
“Reese said I got a Halloween gram today
but it got ruined. She dropped little pieces of white paper all over my desk. I
couldn’t read a thing. And I didn’t get any lips.”
His eyes flew open. “She tore up your
gram?”
I nodded. Then, remembering how good I’d
felt for a split second only to have it ripped apart and scattered all over my
desk, pricks of tears returned to my eyes.
“Hey,” Nic said, switching his textbooks
to one hand and grabbing my hand with his other. “Don’t do that. I’ll buy you
another one.”
I looked away, blinking again. “What
good would it do? She’d just rip it up anyway and I’ll never know who the
original one was from.”
Nic gazed at me as the warning bell rang
over our heads. When it stopped, he steered me away from the classroom. “Come
on.”
He was quiet as we walked toward gym. Instead
of taking a right down the gym hallway though, he led me right out the front
entrance, his fingers still wrapped around mine.
I couldn’t help but smile. “What are you
doing, Nic?”
“I’m getting you a replacement gram.
Something better. And besides, it’s just gym. No one has ever not gotten into
college just because they skipped gym class once.”
That was probably true. If Nic said it,
it was most definitely true.
When we got to his car, I pulled back on
his hand and he stopped by the passenger door. I swallowed, there were all
sorts of words bubbling to the surface but none of them seemed appropriate. Nic
was really great to me. Not only was he the smartest person I knew, he was also
the most kind-hearted, which sounded weird when I was talking about a
seventeen-year old guy who enjoyed blowing people up in video games and reading
sci-fi stories. But he also read poetry and was a good friend. Better than I
could ever hope to be.
When I’d called Nic a juxtaposition, I
was right. Juxtaposition is the state of being side-by-side, especially for
comparison purposes. To me, Nic always needed contrasting. There were always
two parts of him to compare. There was the shy, geeky guy and the almost confident
guy.
Nic licked his lips and stared down into
my eyes. I swallowed again, my throat suddenly dry. This was the other part I’d
started to notice about him recently. This serious, secretive part that made my
skin tingle a little.
He stepped back to lean against the car,
drawing me with him. When the anti-theft alarm blared all around us, I jumped
back, my legs hitting the side of the car next to us. Nic spun, grabbed the
keys from his pockets, and started pushing buttons on the remote key chain as
fast as he could until the alarm stopped.
My heart beat like mad through my shirt.
Nic slowly turned and after seeing the horrified look on his face, I started to
laugh. Hysterically. His eyes narrowed at first but then they softened and a
smile filled his face.
He glanced toward the school and then
opened the passenger door for me. I got in, still chuckling my butt off while
Nic walked around the front of the car.
When he sat, he said, “As you can tell,
this is the first time I’ve tried to skip. I could never be a secret agent.”
“Yeah, I don’t think they usually
announce their whereabouts when they’re trying to be sneaky.”
“Next time we try to skip, I’ll let you
handle the details.”
Ouch. That stung. Not that Nic had meant
it as a dig to how I used to be, but it still stung knowing I was seen that
way, no matter how true it was.
He started the car and pulled out of the
school parking lot with his normal calm demeanor, not realizing all he did was
bring me back to the past and made me see how different from him I was.
Nic was good. I was striving to be, but
I had a hell of a lot of making up to do.
Nic
I’d come to the
conclusion on the short trek to the mall that I’d always be a dork. I was one
of those too-stupid-to-live characters in books, who instead of making the
obvious correct choice, made the worst decision possible just so the story
could continue on.
I almost kissed Katie.
Shit. What was I thinking? I was two
seconds away from pulling her to me when the stupid car alarm went off, which
was another total dork move. I’d never been so pissed at technology in my life.
Yet, it had saved me from copious amounts of embarrassment. She probably would’ve
laughed at me. Or worse, felt bad for me and my stupid unreciprocated feelings.
Katie was quiet on the drive across
town. I could tell she was thinking of Reese and Jer. Or maybe even Alicia and
Hanna. It was something that made her forehead wrinkle. I didn’t ask her about
it. As much as Katie used to idolize her sister, she hated her now. One mistake
made Katie question everything, made her life as she knew it crumble, and it
wasn’t even her mistake. That was a hard pill to swallow.
I didn’t need to complicate her life by
buying her grams and writing her love poems, and mentally dreaming about the
feel of her lips on mine. I was glad Reese decided to ruin Katie’s gram I’d
bought her. It’d been an impulsive move. She wouldn’t have exactly known it was
from me but she probably could’ve figured it out. I’d left some subtle hints in
the few lines I’d scribbled down.
Oh well, it was all for the best.
I parked outside the mall entrance
nearest to Gertrude Hawk and waited until Katie made the first move.
Eventually, her gaze lifted out the window. “What’re we doing here?”
“I told you I was buying you another
gram.”
The upturn of her lips made all my
wallowing on the way here worth it. “You don’t have to.”
“I know, but you deserve to have one.”
She stared down at her hands. “I’ll
never know who the original one was from.”
“Katie. I …” I stopped myself from the
word-vomit that was about to explode from my mouth. I could never control
myself around her. She made my guard fall. She made all my thinking cells turn
off and go on feel.
“Reese is such a bitch,” she said. “Always
was a bitch too. I don’t know how I stayed friends with her for so long. She
deserves to be humiliated in front of everybody, just like she humiliates
others. Like you and me. And half the stupid school. She should really know
what it feels like.”
The sharpness of her words startled me. Not
that I didn’t entirely agree with her, but I always took the passive approach.
Ignore Reese and she’ll go away. Eventually. For instance, I’d go off to
college and she’d become a waitress at the local diner. Then, when I graduated,
I’d be one hell of an awesome physicist and she’d still have her crappy little
job at the diner.
“I see that look on your face, Nic, but
I’m serious. What goes around comes around.”
I lifted my gaze to hers. The steely
look in her eyes troubled me for a reason I couldn’t pin down exactly. I didn’t
want her to go through any more hurt, but that wasn’t all of it. There was
something more. “I thought you handled yourself pretty well the other day, Miss
Double Barrel,” I said, bringing up my two middle fingers and pretending they
were guns.
She shook her head and smiled. “Maybe
that’s just the beginning.”
A cold smile disfigured Katie’s face. It
was worse than the fake smile and worse even than no smile at all.
“Before you start plotting everyone’s
demise, can we please go get some chocolate? You weren’t the only one who didn’t
get a gram today.”
The forced, teasing smile on my face
fell as I saw the look on Katie’s. Her coldness vanished and sympathy filled
its place. “I’m sorry, Nic. You deserve a gram more than I do. I’ll buy, okay?”
I shook my head. “No way. I’m buying.”
We argued back and forth a couple times
but she agreed to my buying the chocolate. Eventually.
Chapter
Five
Katie
A day later, I was lying on my bed, Shakespeare’s Taming
of the Shrew opened in front of me, when there was a knock on my bedroom
door.
I flipped another page I couldn’t quite understand. I needed a
Shakespeare translator and stat. “Yeah, Mom,” I said, grumbling. “Be right
there.”
The knock sounded again.
Jeez, how did they ever expect me to get good grades when they were
constantly interrupting me to watch Hanna? I groaned and ignored it.
The knock came again.
I needled my fist into my eyes. “Mom, I know. I’m just finishing up
some work.”
The door started to inch open and I let the book fall closed, defeated
for now. “What?” I snapped.
Nic came in with his hands lifted in the air. “Unarmed,” he said.
I suddenly felt lighter. “What are you doing here?”
He waved. “You said you were doing work. I had to see it for my own
eyes.”
I sat up and rearranged my tank top. “You know I do work.”
“This is a Saturday. Even I try not to do work on a Saturday.”
“Right.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re always doing work. You probably
spend most of your Saturdays pouring over books and doing research.”
I should be a lot more like him. If my brain worked like his, I would
be.
He frowned and he seemed troubled, his eyes dark and forehead wrinkled.
“What? I just mean you’re a good student. I should try to be more like
you.”
He shook his head. “I’m more than a good student, you know. You used to
think I was pretty fun to hang around with.”
I smiled, remembering his attempt at cutting class the other day. “I
know you’re not good at sneaking around, but I still think you’re fun anyways.”
He sat next to me. “Not just then. I’m talking about when we were
younger. Don’t you remember when we used to ride our bikes all day? Or spend
the day in Reese’s pool until our fingers were old and wrinkly?”
I smiled at the memories. The good ones when we were really young and
Reese and I hadn’t got caught up in the popularity contest of school yet. “We
had some good times.”
A smile spread across his face. “I’m glad to hear that, because I’m
taking you out today.”
I folded my legs underneath me on the bed. “What?”
“I’m taking you out. Already talked to your mom. She’s going to watch
Hanna while Alicia’s working an extra shift so you and I can go hang out.”
I stood. “Really?”
He held up a finger. “On one condition. We don’t talk about school. We
just hang out. No Shakespeare project. No Reese. Nothing.”
“I think I can handle that.” Instead of thanking Nic, I pulled him from
the bed, pushed him out the door and shut it behind him. “One second,” I
called.
Finally, a weekend where I didn’t have to watch Hanna. A weekend where
my life wouldn’t totally suck. I needed to dress for the occasion.
Nic’s rumble of laughter from the other side of the door warmed me. It
was so familiar.
I threw a cute zippered hoodie over my tank top and changed my jeans.
When I walked out to the living room, Nic was tossing Hanna into the air. She squealed
and laughed so hard a smile immediately took control of my face.
I hid behind Nic and popped up. “Gotcha!”
She squealed louder. “Kay, Kay!”
Nic handed her to me. I set her down on the couch and tickled her. “I’m
going to get you, Princess.”
“Kay Kay siwy.”
I picked her up, kissed her on the cheek, and handed her off to my mom.
Then, for good measure, I kissed my mom on the cheek, too. “See you later.”
“Whoa. Is that you? I haven’t seen you this excited in a long time. I
guess we should get you out more often.”
I grabbed Nic’s hand and led him out the front door before I got
involved in a feelings look again. “So, what are we doing today? Going to the
library, the museum, the historical foundation?”
Nic stopped me. “You really think I’m just a dork, don’t you?”
I’d planned to make a joke but the hurt look on his face squashed that
idea. “I’m only joking.”
His eyes pierced mine. “I don’t know what’s wrong with trying to do well
in school. To make something of myself. So what? I do homework. So what? I
prefer to get 90’s rather than 70’s. Sue me.”
“Hey.” I grabbed his arm to stop him from turning away. “I’m sorry.”
He pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “I just don’t know why
people only see me as this studious person. I like to have fun too.”
I’d hit a nerve. If I’d known it bothered him, I never would’ve teased
him about it. “I thought you liked to be seen as the studious person.”
He cocked his head. “Not only. When you were little miss popular, did
you only like to be seen as a bitch?”
I recoiled. “Um. Ouch.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just saying that wasn’t who you
were. Not entirely. And I’m not just the smart kid in the front of the
classroom. Or the guy that can kick your ass in Black Ops.”
I wanted to make a smartass comment on how he couldn’t kick my ass in
Black Ops but it wasn’t the time. I knew how it felt to be labeled. “No. I know.
You’re right, Nic. I know you’re much more than just a goody-goody teacher’s
pet.”
He opened the car door for me and I got in. When he got in on the other
side, he said, “I actually don’t like to be the teacher’s pet. It’s kind of
weird to have some old person act like you’re their best friend. If I’m their
best friend, they’ve got more problems than me.”
“Like Mr. Nicholson. You and him are like this.” I laughed and crossed
my fingers to show him how tight they were.
“He’s a bit creepy.”
“If he ever invites you to his house for dinner, don’t go. He’s
probably got this massive sex slave chamber in his basement.”
Nic’s lip curled upward, half amusement, half horror. “Wrong. You’re
just … wrong. And that is completely disgusting, I can’t even focus right now.”
Despite shaking his head every five seconds or so, Nic started the car
and pulled out onto the road. We drove for a while, neither one of us talking,
until his cell phone on the center console buzzed.
I looked down. “It’s Jackson.”
“Just leave it. I’ll check it when we get there.”
I was already picking it up and reading the text out loud to him. “You
have zero chance if you don’t even try bro.” I looked at Nic and then back down
at the phone. “Ugh, Jackson says bro? Tell him to please stop saying that stupid
word.”
He grabbed the phone from my hands. “Jesus, Katie. I said I’d check it
when we got there.”
“Okay … sorry. Just trying to help.”
He laid his head back against the seat rest and sighed. “It’s not you.
It’s Jackson. He’s been bothering me about something. Forget I said anything.”
“What’s he talking about?”
Nic rubbed his temple and sighed. A few moments of silence went by
before he finally answered. “It’s just some scholarship I might go for. That’s
all.”
“Well, Jackson’s right. You do have zero chance if you don’t even try.
A couple minutes later, we pulled in to Putt-Putt Pumpernickel’s. I
smiled at Nic. “We’re going to play mini-golf? That’s awesome.”
“I remember you used to love to come here when we were younger.”
“I was the reigning champ too. Be prepared to get your ass kicked,
Nicolai. Just sayin’.”
He smirked. “Just sayin’? People still say that?”
I pushed the door open. “No reason to be a sore loser already. I haven’t
had a chance to beat you yet.”
***
I didn’t beat him. Not by a long shot. He kicked my
ass. And he wouldn’t let it go either. I sat on the picnic table, chocolate ice
cream he’d just bought me in my hand, and pouted.
“Remember hole eleven when you went into the water? That was classic.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, and fourteen when you completely missed our green and hit it onto
the other one and hit that old dude’s ball. I thought he was going to smack you
with his cane.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And—”
I reached out with my cone and stamped some chocolate on the end of his
nose.
His eyes widened. Shock rippled off him, leaving him mute.
I laughed. I not only laughed, I doubled over with laughter. The look
on his face was like I just kicked his puppy or something.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a massive dairy mess coming at me. I
turned my head just in time but he got my cheek with his chocolate and vanilla
twist.
“Nic!” I grabbed a napkin and wiped at my face.
“That’s what you get for being a sore loser.”
“You were being a sore winner.”
He wiped at his nose but he only succeeded in smearing the chocolate.
“Here. Let me get it.” I grabbed a fresh napkin off the picnic table
and reached out.
He backed away. “I can do it.”
I rolled my eyes. “You can’t see it, Nic. I can, so let me do it.”
He sagged back on the bench and shut his eyes.
I took the napkin and wiped at his nose. He looked so stoic sitting
there, his glasses pushed up on his nose, his eyes closed, his face unpinched
and unworried. I took a few seconds to stare at him.
His eyes opened and then rounded. “Why are you staring at me like that?
Did you leave some on my face?”
“No, I got it. It’s all gone. I was just thinking how great you are to
bring me out here. Thank you. I needed this mini-vacation. It means a lot to
me.”
He took a strand of my hair and pulled it away from my face. I could
see from the corner of my eye that it had ice cream on it. He took a napkin and
threaded the hair through its folds before pushing it back around my ear.
My face heated and I didn’t quite know why. “Thanks.”
He studied me for a moment, his stare roaming all over my face. “You’re
so pretty, Katie.”
I smiled. “I was kind of just thinking the same about you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He leaned closer. I watched as his lips moved forward and was sure he
was about to say something smartass. Not wanting him to ruin the moment, I said
the first thing that came to mind. Something unselfish, something to help him
because he was always helping me. “I could teach you, you know.”
His eyebrow lifted, eyes full of confusion. “What do you mean?”
I wanted to take it back but then again, I kind of didn’t. Nic looked
smug as if I wouldn’t be able to teach him anything. “I don’t know. I could
help you get a girlfriend. I know what girls like. What makes them crush on
guys.”
He got up and threw his ice cream cone in the trash. “So you want to
change me?”
“No. No, oh god no, I don’t want to do that. Maybe just give you some
confidence. Some pointers on how to talk to girls, to get them to see how
awesome you are.”
“I talk to you, don’t I?”
“Well yeah, but we’re not talking about me, right?”
He jammed his hands in his pockets. “Right. Of course we’re not.”
“Don’t be like that, Nic.” I stood and put my hand on his shoulder. “I
just think you deserve to have a girlfriend. Someone who you could do things
like this with all the time.” When he didn’t respond, I took it as a good sign.
“Mark my words, I can help teach you. You’ll have a girlfriend by winter formal.”
“Yay. Can’t wait,” he said drily.
I pushed him playfully in the arm. “Do I detect sarcasm?”
He looked away, almost as if he refused to meet my eyes. It was clear
he didn’t want to talk about this let alone joke about it.
“I just don’t want you to be lonely,” I said.
His gaze locked with mine. “I’m not lonely. I have you.”
“But before me? And—”
“I had Jackson.”
“Oh fantastic. Jackson. Did you guys sit in your room and play Dungeons
and Dragons all day long?”
“Nobody plays that game anymore.”
“Wouldn’t know but that’s beside the point. One day soon you’re going
to go off to smarty mcsmartyson’s college and I’m going to be lucky to get into
a community college and you’re going to need to know how to talk to girls without
me there.”
He pushed his glasses up on his nose and with a cold stare said, “I don’t.
need. dating lessons.”
“But—”
“Drop it, okay?”
Nic
She dropped it alright. Along with an extra side of
silent treatment. There was really never going to be a shot for us. I didn’t
need to come right out and tell her to get an answer like Jackson suggested. I
knew the answer. Deep down, I’d always known it. She only confirmed it when she
said she’d help me look for someone else. If she liked me, no way would she have
offered that.
When I pulled up to her house, her lips pursed as she stared out the
window. “You know, Nic,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you when I
said that earlier. I really was only trying to help.”
Her eyes were shiny when she finally looked over. My resolve softened.
My legs turned to rubber. I couldn’t still be upset with her when she looked at
me like that. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t like me. I just needed to get over
it and move on. “I know. You were just being a good friend.”
Her voice, thin and high, and so unlike her, filled the interior of the
car. “I’m trying. I spent so long thinking friendship was one way. Reese never
did anything for me that was just for me. It always had an angle for her, too.
I just want to help you and only you and that was the only way I could think of
to do it.”
“Hey. You don’t have to try to do nice things for me.” I reached for
her knee but instead of rubbing it like I’d intended, I gave her a little
friendly shove. “I already like you.”
A smile split her lips. She leaned over, her face moving closer. And
closer. My heart rate kicked up a few thousand notches as anticipation rang all
the nerve bells in my body. I closed my eyes and just when I thought I knew she
was going to make contact, she did. But her soft lips landed on my cheek, not
my buzzing lips.
One thing was for sure, it was going to be hard to get over Katie Ross.
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