“Can I ask you a question?” Poe jumps in but before I can answer either way, she continues, “Why would Principal Carlisle send her own ward to St. Mary’s? I mean, she could very easily discipline you back at home, right?”
Well, I guess I spoke too quickly.
All my earlier lightness evaporates as Poe and Callie and Wyn look at me with curious gazes.
It’s a genuine question.
Very, very genuine.
So I don’t blame them for asking me that. In fact, I’m surprised it hasn’t come up before. But then, these girls are the only ones who have talked to me at St. Mary’s.
It’s just that I’m a little conscious about my crime.
A lot conscious, okay?
It’s not as if I do what I did everyday. But I had to do it.
I had to.
“Because I stole some money from Leah – Uh, Principal Carlisle – and sort of ran away,” I say. “Or at least, I tried to. Before they caught me.”
The cops.
I was at the bus station, ready to board and get out of this town once and for all when they caught up to me and brought me back.
I mean, I still don’t understand how it all happened.
I was so careful while getting out of the house. It wasn’t the first time I was sneaking out in the middle of the night anyway. I’m an expert, for God’s sake. But somehow, Leah woke up and when she found me missing, along with my sunshine-yellow bike and one hundred and sixty-seven dollars from her wallet, she called the cops.
And since she’d had enough of my bad girl ways and she didn’t want me to ruin my life any further, she sent me here.
To become good.
“I’ve been doing you and your mother a disservice. I should’ve been more strict with you and sent you here sooner. If I had, then none of this would be happening. So you’re going to St. Mary’s.”
That’s what Leah told me.
I could’ve refused. I’m eighteen now; turned eighteen a few weeks ago.
I could’ve just walked out but I didn’t have any money. Whatever money I had, I used that to buy the bus ticket and the rest, Leah confiscated.
So here I am.
“But I was going to return the money,” I continue. “I was going to get out of town and get a job and once I had enough savings, I was going to give the money back to her.”
Which is all true.
I actually have a part-time job, or had one. At a restaurant in town where I worked as a waitress. But I’d just blown my savings and I really needed the cash. And I really, really needed to run away.
“Why were you running away?” Poe asks, her eyes wide.
Damn it.
I never should’ve let out that information. That I was running away.
My heart swells and pounds inside my rib cage.
My witchy heart with a thousand secrets.
“Uh, I… was…” I try to think of an acceptable lie.
Maybe I can tell them what I told Leah, that I hated this town and my old school and everything else so I was just hauling ass.
She bought it. I bet they’d buy it too.
But Wyn gives me an out. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain.”
Callie smiles. “Yeah, we all have our secrets.”
“Yeah.” Poe nods, putting her hands up. “Sorry if I came on a little too strong there. It’s one of my weaknesses. I talk too much. And I always ask too many questions.”
Just like that the tension breaks and I can breathe easily.
Thank God.
I just met them. These are the first people to actually be friendly and talk to me in here. I don’t want them to hate me too.
And they will if I tell them why I was running away.
If I tell them my secret.
“Okay,” Callie chirps. “Let’s go to dinner. And you can definitely sit with us, if you want.”
Suddenly, Poe bursts into a series of gasps and actions. She looks at the clock hanging over the blackboard. “Oh my God, we have to go. Now. Forget dinner for a sec. I’ve got something to show you guys.”
“Show us what?” Callie asks.
“Hello? What else? Eye candy.” Poe wiggles her eyebrows again.
“Oh my God. Yes! I needed something nice the first week back to this hellhole.” Callie grins.
“I know. Apparently, there’s a press conference that we should see. This girl from junior year tipped me off. We gotta go.”
I’m confused. “What eye candy?”
At my question, Poe’s eyes go wide again as she takes me in. Not only that, she gasps too before lunging for my arm.
“Oh my God. This is perfect.” Then she turns to Callie and Wyn. “Isn’t this perfect? She knows him!”
I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. But Callie catches on and whips her eyes to me.
“Yes, she does,” she breathes out to Poe before turning to me. “You do!”
“I do what?” I ask, now more confused than ever.
Wyn is shaking her head again in that indulgent manner of hers that I’ve seen before. “Leave her alone, guys. She doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”
So Poe explains it to me. “You know him. You know the Principal’s hot son. Our eye candy.”
All right. I still don’t know what they’re talking about.
Principal’s hot son.
Who the fuck…
Principal’s hot son.
Him.
Oh my God.
The boy with sun-struck hair and summer blue eyes.
He’s the principal’s hot son now, isn’t he?
He is.
Because I’m stupidly at St. Mary’s and Leah Carlisle, along with being my guardian, is now my principal as well.
“You lived with him,” Poe says. “You lived with a soccer superstar.”
“Yes. The Blond Arrow,” Callie tags on.
The Blond Arrow.
That’s his soccer nickname.
That’s what they call him, his fans, the critics, the sports people, whatever. They gave it to him when he debuted last season. When he free-kicked the ball from the center of the field and it went soaring through the air, past all the players and hit the net, right in the center.
Holy fuck, they’re talking about Arrow.
My Arrow.
Before I can say anything though, Poe and Callie are dragging me out of the classroom with Wyn tailing behind and discussing how I can tell them everything there is to know about Arrow Carlisle, the celebrity athlete, because I lived with him before he went pro.
I’m not listening to them though.
I mean, I am, here and there but I’m mostly in… shock.
Which is stupid because I should’ve thought of this.
I should’ve known.
That he’d come up in conversations or that I’d hear his name in passing. It used to happen a lot, back in my old high school, normal high school.
He’s pretty famous around these parts.
He’s The Blond Arrow, the pro soccer player. Of course he’s famous. And of course he’d be famous here as well, at a girl’s reform/therapeutic school. His mom is the principal, isn’t she?
So yeah, I should’ve expected this.
But somehow I didn’t.
And now I’m here. In the third-floor bathroom.
Because Poe wants to show us something. A press conference, she said.
The reason we’re in the third-floor bathroom is because it’s always out of order so no one goes here. No one who’s up to any good anyway and we fit the bill perfectly.
Because Poe has a cell phone in her hand, which everyone knows is super duper forbidden, here at St. Mary’s. If we get caught, we will probably lose all our privileges and God only knows what else.
But Poe is hitting all the keys on her phone like she’s done it a thousand times before and Callie and Wyn don’t seem to care
and I’m in such shock that I don’t care either.
Especially not when the video Poe was trying to get loads and I’m staring directly at him.
His dirty blond, sun-struck hair is the first thing I see.
Maybe because it’s shining under what looks to be a thousand overhead lights. Not to mention the flash of a thousand cameras that are all pointed toward him.
He’s sitting on a podium with a bunch of other people whom I’ve seen many times before. I haven’t met them personally, of course, but they always hover around him on events like this.
It’s an MLS press conference.
There’s that yellow and blue shiny logo of his team, LA Galaxy, fluttering behind him on a giant screen with a black and white soccer ball, and there’s his coach with the shock of white hair, sitting beside him at the podium.
For a second, I get distracted by the moving strip at the bottom of the screen, displaying different headlines.
Emerging star of the LA Galaxy injured during practice; LA Galaxy to replace their midfielder superstar with a rookie; The Blond Arrow, hailed by critics and fans as the new David Beckham, to leave the season unfinished…
There’s more of it, more headlines, the same thing said in a variety of ways.
The same thing being: he is injured. And that he can’t play for the rest of the season.
But I don’t understand…
I don’t get it.
He was fine a week ago.
“So what does it mean for the team and the rest of the season?”
I’m still reeling from the headlines on the bottom when someone asks this question. Someone off screen, and of all people sitting at the long table with black mics in front of them, it’s directed at him.
I know because he hears it.
He hears it and his jaw that I’ve always likened to a sharp and sculpted blade moves back and forth. It’s very subtle and I don’t even think that anyone notices, not in the commotion of events like this, but I do.
I do because I’m attuned to him.
And because it’s such an… atypical reaction for him.
Arrow never moves his jaw back and forth. He never gets annoyed enough to do that.
He’s patient.
He’s patient and determined and level-headed. I’ve heard this about him a number of times, at the interviews, at the press conferences.
His calm is legendary.
“What it means – obviously – is that I won’t be playing on the team for the rest of the season.”
That increases the roar around him and the team coach leans forward and says, “What he means is that it’s very unfortunate and no one could’ve seen it coming. But Rodriguez is an excellent wide midfielder and as hard as it will be to fill the shoes he’s had to step into, we’ll be making every effort to help him. As we will help Carlisle as much as we can with his recovery.”
His blue eyes flash, then.
They go from a summery blue to stormy and wintry.
Again, it’s so atypical that I notice it right away.
I not only notice it but I absorb the shock of it.
Because Jesus Christ, a week ago, when I was packing my bags to leave for St. Mary’s, Leah and I, we watched his game together.
The soccer season is on and they were playing New York City FC. And okay, so they lost that game and as far as I know Arrow, it must have hurt him because he’s very competitive.
But he’s lost games before and he always comes back swinging.
He appeared fine at the press conference after. A little grim but fine. Also, he called the house to talk to Leah later that night – he always calls after every game of his – and well, I listened in – I always do.
The conversation was slightly critical on Leah’s part because they’d lost but nothing out of the ordinary. No signs whatsoever that there was something wrong with him.
I was actually mourning the fact that I wouldn’t get to watch him play all that much anymore because of the stupid TV rules at St. Mary’s.
So I really don’t get it.
What the fuck happened?
“Can you tell us how long you expect the recovery to take?”
Another question fired off screen and to him but this time, he isn’t even paying attention to them. He has his head dipped down and he’s looking at his fists on the table. He’s practically glaring at them and God, I have a very bad feeling about this.
Very bad.
What’s happening?
Why’s he acting this way, when he’s always been so professional and polite?
When the coach realizes that his player won’t answer the question – he looks kinda shocked by Arrow’s defiance too – he takes the reins. “It’s a very typical meniscus tear. I’m glad it happened during practice and we were able to get help quickly. It’s minor right now but we all know that knee injuries have a way of creeping up on you, especially if you play contact sports. So we want to take every precaution that we can so it doesn’t turn into something major.”
I swallow when Arrow still won’t look up.
His posture has gone even tighter, as if he’s repelling his coach’s words. As if he’s repelling everything that’s going on around him.
“Will you be staying in LA for the duration of your recovery?”
For some reason, it feels like the pause after this question is longer and heavier. Or maybe it’s my own anticipation of what the answer is.
My own anticipation to hear his voice, his rich, deep voice.
A voice that I dream about.
Leaning forward, he looks into one of the cameras and it feels like he’s staring directly at me. “No. It’s been kindly pointed out to me that I need to disappear for a while, go off the radar. So I can heal. Recover from the injury that frankly no one saw coming. And well, I agree. So I’ll be going east…” He trails off before his words become curt and clipped. “Back to my hometown, St. Mary’s.”
What?
No, no, no.
He didn’t say St. Mary’s, did he?
He didn’t say he’s coming back.
No, he didn’t.
He couldn’t have.
Because he can’t come back. I don’t want him to come back.
I don’t.
I want him to stay far, far away.
He was the reason I was running away that night. He was the reason I stole that money and I was going to go somewhere before they caught me and stuck me inside a cage.
So he can’t come back when he was the one I was running away from.
My Arrow, the guy I’m in love with.
My sister’s boyfriend.
Arrow.
It’s a crazy name, isn’t it?
I always thought so.
Crazy and unique and completely his.
I can’t imagine anyone else having that name. I can’t imagine anyone else owning that name like he does.
He wears it.
In every part of his sculpted face and his sleek body.
From his arched and arrogant-looking eyebrows to his high cheekbones.
God, his cheekbones.
They’re so sharp and yet so gracefully made that they almost cast a shadow on his jaw. His very angular and slanting jaw.
And then there’s his body.
It’s not bulky or massive but muscled and trim. Tanned from running under the sun. Athletic. Built for speed and precision on the soccer field.
Actually, every part of him is built and designed with such careful precision. Like someone up there decided to take their time with him. They decided to sit down and pick up tools, hammers and chisels so they could sculpt him and chip away at him and make him stunning.
That’s what he is.
Arrow Carlisle, the love of my life, is stunning.
Always has been, ever since he was fifteen and I was ten, and I saw him for the first time.
Even though it was eight years ago
, I remember everything.
I can tell you that it was early morning and the sunlight was streaming through the window like laser beams. Everything was bathed in yellow in that room, the kitchen to be specific. Orange, even.
I was wedged between a china cabinet and the wall, sitting on the floor, my knees hugged to my chest. I had a blanket wrapped around myself and yet, I was cold.
So cold.
I’d made rounds of the entire house, trying to find a spot where I could find some warmth, but so far, I’d been unsuccessful.
But then, he burst through the kitchen door, all sweaty and panting.
I remember thinking that he was tall. And that when he moved through the space, the sunlight rippled. The rays cast tiny patterns on his tall form.
He made a beeline to the sink and turned on the tap. He threw water over his face, his neck, and he did it so violently, with such agitated gestures that a few drops landed on my cheek.
I flinched automatically, thinking that it would feel cold.
But it didn’t.
The water that he touched with his hands, that landed on me, did not feel cold at all. In fact, it made me feel warm.
His whole presence made me feel warm.
Like he was the sun or something.
My sun.
After he was done with washing his face, he bent toward the fridge and took out a juice carton. He proceeded to gulp half of it before he realized someone was watching him.
He whipped his eyes over to me, where I was hiding, all crouched and trying to make myself into a ball to preserve the warmth in my body.
He frowned and I sort of smiled.
Because his eyes were blue. They made me think of summer and sunshine and melting in the grass while catching the sun.
“Don’t tell my mom,” he said, motioning to the juice carton. “She gets upset when people drink right out of the carton.” And then he frowned even harder, taking me in completely. “Are you cold?”
I wanted to answer him. I wanted to tell him that his secret was safe with me. That I’d never tell on him in a million years for breaking his mom’s rule.
And then I wanted to tell him that no, I wasn’t cold.
That somehow, he made all the cold go away with his sun-struck hair and sweaty, tanned skin and summer-blue eyes.
I wish I had.
I really, really wish that I had said something. Because when the moment passed, I never got the chance to tell him.
My Darling Arrow Page 2
