Unlocking my car had both Bubba and Coop scrambling for doors. “You ride with Archie? I’ll drive Thing 2 and Thing 4?”
Jake frowned for a split-second, then relented. “Okay.”
Bubba grinned widely for a moment, but Archie looked as disgruntled as Jake for a moment.
“Thanks, because I really don’t want to turn into a sweat puddle.” Bubba opened the driver’s side door for me letting out a balloon of hot air from inside the car, then snagged my backpack before I could store it in the back. Coop fell into the front passenger seat while Bubba climbed in back. He couldn’t be comfortable back there, but he didn’t issue a complaint.
I got the car started. Jake had slid into the Ferrari with Archie and they were arguing about something, or at least they were having an intent conversation based on what I could see via my rearview. The air conditioner blew more hot air for all of thirty seconds as we waited on the a/c to kick in.
Archie and Jake hadn’t moved though. Twisting in my seat, I met Bubba’s blue-eyed gaze, more awake than he had been all day for a beat, before I looked behind him at the other car.
Still arguing.
Rolling my eyes, I hit the horn and the pair jumped. Archie flipped me off and I had to laugh. The impatient scowl on his face was so put upon Archie that it reminded me of how much I’d missed him.
Ass.
Then the Ferrari revved, and he accelerated away. Backing up neatly, I threw the car into gear and followed.
“So…” Bubba said from behind me. “Before anyone else asks, are you free tomorrow night?”
Chapter Four
Scheduling
Fifteen minutes later, we were packed into the Crimson Cup. Bubba staked out the round booth in the corner while Archie placed the coffee order—iced coffee with two pumps of sugar for him, iced coffee with cream and no sugar for me, blended smoothies for Jake and Bubba, and a vanilla crème for Coop. Despite the sandwich in my backpack, I still perused the bakery case. They had muffins, cookies, coffee cakes, pound cake, and some croissants.
“Hungry?” Archie asked, and then added three of the chocolate croissants—bastard, I really didn’t need to eat those, and they were my weakness—along with a couple of the blueberry muffins.
Jake drifted over to wait at the counter with us, and Archie shot him an amused look. “We’re not running away together.”
“Not making Frankie try to balance five drinks by herself.”
“What am I?” Archie almost looked offended. Almost. Except he smirked.
“A pain in the ass,” Jake retaliated with a smirk of his own. Thankfully, the iced coffees were ready first, and I sucked down a deep gulp of mine even as Archie pushed the plate with the chocolate croissants toward me.
Evil bastard. I made a face and his grin only grew. Chocolate stuffed croissants were like my kryptonite. I could try and ignore them, I could aim to eat something healthier, but they pulled me in like a siren luring ships to their death.
Or in my case, extra pounds on the scale. Not that it would stop me from eating them. I spent thirty-two hours a week on my feet and moving. According to the pedometer I’d worn for a couple of weeks, I was clearing thirty thousand steps a week easily. I could afford the splurge now and then.
The fruit smoothies and Coop’s vanilla crème came next. I took possession of the crème and the croissants along with my iced coffee and then led the other two over to the booth. Bubba and Coop were both sitting at the edges and both stood up. I handed Coop his crème and set the plate of croissants onto the table before I slid in, doing a butt scoot and hop to move around to the middle. Coop followed right behind me, and Jake rolled his eyes as he settled in near the edge. Bubba’s legs bumped mine as he slid in closer, too, and Archie got the end where he’d been sitting.
Well, I wasn’t going anywhere fast. After another drink from my coffee, I dug around in my backpack and pulled out my spiral-bound notebook, and the three-ring binder where I’d clipped all the syllabi and broken them down by subject. As the year went on, I’d add three ring binders to the classes that needed it, otherwise I’d work out of these two books.
Flipping the spiral-bound to the second page, I wrote the date out in pencil and then flipped to the syllabi for government. “Are we doing this in my class order, or do you want to do it in the order you asked me?”
Helping them with homework had been one of the supporting columns of our friendship for years. It was how I navigated the shark-infested waters between the various cliques. By high school standards, Archie and Bubba shouldn’t even be friends. They ran in completely different circles and had for years. They had almost nothing in common, except Jake—who in addition to being into sports and probably Bubba’s best friend was also into robotics and engineering, like Archie. Then there was Coop, who didn’t do team sports or engineering, but he was a whiz at physics, even if he downplayed it.
I’ve had classes with all of them, but since freshman year, we hadn’t shared one class with all five of us in it. The closest had been AP Physics in junior year with Coop, Archie, and me. That had been great, or it had been until the week before AP exams. Shaking my head, I dispelled that thought and then eyed the guys who were all being conspicuously nonverbal.
In fact, Jake and Bubba were actively glaring at each other. Archie caught my gaze, flicked a look to the boys, and then rolled his eyes. Fine, they didn’t want to volunteer? “Coop?” I shifted to glance to right.
He grinned. “Still want to do an escape room where all the clues are based off The Death of Ivan Illyich?”
“I think it’s weird,” I admitted. “But also kind of cool. How are we planning to present that? A model?” We could do a diorama, but that would take a lot of work to plant the clues in a clever and inventive way that was also easily translatable.
“We design the room with the clues in mind… have you ever done an escape room?”
I stared at him. “Nope.” Never had the desire either.
“Project is due next week, so let’s hit an escape room Friday, they’re always doing them—they have one called the Budapest Express, I think it would be a perfect model for this.”
That sounded great but…
“The first game of the season is on Friday,” Bubba said. “You can’t miss our last first game, Frankie.”
“Then let’s go to the escape room tomorrow,” Archie suggested. He already had his phone in his hand. “You don’t work until Wednesday, right? If not tomorrow, what about Saturday evening? You working days or nights on the weekend?”
“It’s kind of our homework project,” Coop pointed out. “Frankie doesn’t even like football.”
“I don’t dislike it,” I said, kicking Coop lightly with one foot. No, I wasn’t a fan, but Jake and Bubba both played. Hating on it would be like them hating on my…well, on my reading or something. Bubba didn’t read like Jake and I did, and he’d never treat it that way.
“You don’t have to go to the game,” Bubba said almost immediately. “Would the escape room get out in time for you to meet us after?”
“No, she absolutely has to come to the game,” Jake countered. “Then we all go out to eat afterward. Tradition.”
We’d done that for the last two years—that didn’t make it a tradition, exactly.
“Besides,” Jake continued. “I kind of want to see what the escape room is all about.”
“There are tickets for tomorrow and Saturday,” Archie tossed into the fray, waving his phone.
“What time on Saturday?” Bubba had already asked if I had plans the following day, but he wasn’t arguing about doing this the next day. Still… he probably needed tutoring, but he hadn’t wanted to discuss it in front of Coop.
“Last one to start is at 10:40 at night.”
I’d be done with work, even if I had evening shifts.
“I get off at six.” I was due in at ten and I worked until six. Then I didn’t go in until noon on Sunday.
“They have one at eight,
” Archie suggested. “That good?”
It would give me time to go home and shower, feed the cats, and get the laundry sorted to do on Sunday morning. “How much?”
“I got it,” Archie said dismissively. “It’ll be fun. So, five tickets for the eight o’clock. I’ll pick you up at seven?”
“Why don’t I pick her up at seven?” Jake said dryly. “I’ll get everyone, since everyone fits in my car.”
Which was true.
Archie made a face. “That works.”
Next to me, Coop sighed and said, “So, if we go Saturday night, are you going to have a freak that we’re not done with our project by Monday morning, even if it isn’t due until a week from Friday?”
Picking up one of the chocolate stuffed croissants, I flipped him off then took a bite of it. Jake snickered.
“Hey,” Coop said before taking a sip of his crème. “I’m just saying. You get that little frown right here… when you think we’re behind, even when we’re a week ahead.”
Flicking my fingers at him, I said, “Hush.” After licking the chocolate off those fingers, I made notes in the spiral-bound. Escape Room. Budapest Express. The Death of Ivan Illyvich. Under that, I wrote the word supplies and underlined it.
“Don’t worry about that,” Coop said, leaning close and tapping the line. “I’ll take care of those. After you see the escape room, you come up with the clues, then we’ll compare. I know you’ve got a full schedule, so I can put most of that together and I’ll send you photos or you can, you know, just come over. But we’ll get it done.”
Don’t worry. Yeah, that would happen. But I added the notes to my list. That was one project locked down.
Archie leaned back in his seat, pulling apart one of the chocolate croissants. “I think we should get together every Friday after school. We’ll get dinner before the game, go over whatever the assignments were for the week in government and economics, and knock those out. Then I’ll take you to the game, if you wanna go.”
“What if we don’t have assignments that week?” Really, based on what Mr. Brewbaker had said during his intro lecture that morning, nearly everything we did would be in class, at least for government. Mr. Anderson handled economics and this semester that would only be Tuesday and Thursday, but still.
“There’s bound to be something,” Archie said with a shrug. “We can always do drills on terminology. The AP exams for Government and Economics are both big on understanding the basic terms for everything. We always need to eat.”
If I said yes to that, then I was also stuck going to the games. And every single Friday? I frowned, then flipped to my phone and did a count of the Fridays for the semester.
“You work Wednesdays and Thursdays,” Archie said, building a case. “Mondays are probably going to end up being this, all of us grabbing coffee after school and going over study schedules and whatever new projects we have. I might need some help for Advanced Robotics…”
I snorted.
“… it could happen,” Archie argued. “Jake and I already have to build a robot this semester. You could help us tweak it.”
“Oh, so now I’m invited to Friday dinners?” Jake asked, his tone sarcastic.
“No,” Archie said with a grin. “Not even. You have games pretty much every Friday between now and the holidays, so you’ll just have to wait until next semester.”
“Ass,” Jake muttered, and Coop just shook his head.
“Look, I’m not saying yes to every Friday,” I finally said. “I know I have zero social life, but that could change, and I like to do other things and, sorry guys, that doesn’t mean going to every football game.”
I’d sooner be dipped in honey and rolled through fire ants.
“It’s fine, Frankie,” Bubba said almost immediately. “But you’re coming to the first game for sure, right?”
I didn’t groan or make the face I wanted to make, but I did sigh. “I won’t miss it. I’ll be right there and hopefully I can figure out when to cheer.”
They all laughed, only I wasn’t joking. Maybe I should bite the bullet and actually check out a book on football. I was probably the only person in the whole state who really didn’t see the point of that game. Still, I wanted Jake and Bubba to do great, and maybe I could be a tad more supportive.
Maybe.
Ugh.
After writing down the notation for Friday check-ins and possible homework dinners with Archie, I looked at Bubba. “How much time are you going to need for calculus?”
“All of it?” He raised his eyebrows.
“You’re not bad at math,” I reminded him. If anything, he was damn good at it. Yet every year he insisted I go over the work with him, broke down every line, and make sure he hadn’t missed anything. I got it, I was paranoid about my grades, too. But Bubba had never seemed that focused on them. Not until the last couple of years, and maybe that was why.
“I’d feel better about it if you could help.” That was the crux.
“Okay, we didn’t get homework today, but we do have to go over all the practice questions in the first two chapters by Wednesday.” Ms. Dillard said we wouldn’t get their first actual homework until Thursday. “So, why don’t you do chapter one, I’ll do chapter two. We can meet up tomorrow after school. I’ll go over yours and you go over mine. Whatever either of us doesn’t understand, the other one explains.”
“Works for me. Right after school? I don’t have practice until Wednesday afternoon.”
“Yeah, we can come back here or…”
“Hello?” Coop tapped my arm. “Ride home?”
I hated them all. “Or…” I made a face at Coop, before looking at Bubba. “You can ride home with us—wait, don’t you have a car?”
He grinned. “I’ve been riding with Jake to practice. Seemed kind of a waste to drive to school, too, but I can.”
“Nah, we can go over to Frankie’s tomorrow,” Jake said, grinning slowly. “You two can get your math on. Afterward, Frankie and I can work on history.”
“Get caught up on dummies first,” I told him.
“I intend to.”
“Well, if we’re all going to Frankie’s tomorrow…”
“No, we are not all going to Frankie’s tomorrow,” I said abruptly before Archie could turn it into a party. My words might have come out harsher than I meant because they all went quiet. “Bubba asked me if I was free to help him with something tomorrow, and I already said yes. So, tomorrow, I’ll drop Coop off at his place. Bubba and I can go over to his house. We’ll work on math and his project, then I’m going to go home and get other stuff done.” Or eat ice cream and watch Netflix. Whatever the hell I wanted to do.
I almost asked if that was all right with all of them, but I’d bite my tongue off before I asked for their permission for a damn thing.
“Sounds like a plan,” Bubba said, a slow grin curving his lips before he claimed a blueberry muffin. “Okay, so if all the academic stuff is done, when’s our first party of the year? I don’t want Frankie to miss it.”
“Good call!” Archie had his phone out again. “What are we thinking? Back to school bash weekend after this one? Saturday night when we’re all free?” He smirked at me. Because I’d already said what my schedule was, it meant I couldn’t duck the party with the excuse I had to work.
I hated them so much.
So.
So.
Much.
* * *
I ended up having to run Bubba back to the school so Jake could give him a ride home. It was almost six before Coop and I made it back to the apartments. Mom’s car wasn’t in her parking spot under the carport, but I hadn’t expected it.
“Want to come over for dinner?” Coop asked as we got out of the car. His phone rang at the same time and Laura’s name popped up on the screen.
“I’m good,” I told him. “I’ve got some stuff to do.” Like feed my cats, review my own homework, and write up some sample essays. I didn’t know what the questions would be exact
ly when they opened the application process, but practice couldn’t hurt.
“Okay,” Coop said. “I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Yep, you know where I’m parked.” I lifted a hand to wave at him, but I didn’t make it far enough away to avoid hearing him as he answered his phone.
“Hey Laura-babe, whatcha doing?” Or the next line. “Me? Nothing.”
Yeah.
I let myself into the quiet apartment, and barely got my backpack on the counter before Tiddles, Tabitha, and Tory assaulted me from all sides. The cats weaved against my legs and yowled their complaints. How dare I leave them all day? Where was their dinner? What a terrible human I was!
Laughing, I ran hands over each of them as I avoided tripping. They had access to dry food and water all day, both of which were more than half full. But they each got a half a can of wet in the evenings and they knew it.
It took me a couple of minutes to get the cans open and served out. In no time flat, the cats were on their meals like they lions falling on prey in the midst of a drought on the savannah.
I wondered sometimes if that was how the cats envisioned themselves. Did they see great big predators? Kind of like how I fancied myself a superhero sometimes? Or maybe a big shot reporter breaking the story of a lifetime? It was fun to fantasize about who I’d be in my favorite books or movie franchises, course those were usually focused on those great or terrible moments in their lives. We saw them at their highest or lowest, often both. We didn’t see all the boring crap in between, which was where most of us, myself included, lived our lives. Or maybe that was just me.
After feeding the cats, I got the chicken out to defrost for Tuesday evening, though I needed to text Mom I might not be home. Considering the time, she was probably on the date I wasn’t supposed to know about, so I’d text her later—closer to my bedtime. While my leftover lasagna heated, I carried my backpack to my room and changed into a sleep shirt. I had zero intention of going out again.
Rules and Roses: Untouchable Book One Page 5
