by Saba Kapur
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Was that supposed to be a joke?”
“Yeah,” Jack replied, looking at me expressionless. “Why, do you not have a sense of humor?”
“Not when it comes to you,” I replied. “Rule number three, minimal talking. People at school can get kind of crazy about a new student, and you’re . . .” I trailed off, eyeing him up and down. “Just try not to talk to anyone.”
“What if they talk to me first? I can’t not reply. They’ll think I’m weird.”
“You are weird.”
“You read articles about people who sleep naked, and I’m the weird one?”
Oh lord. I felt my cheeks begin to blaze up, immediately grateful that my sunglasses were covering the embarrassment in my eyes.
“Just don’t talk! Okay?”
“Do you give all your friends these rules, or—”
“Uh,” I said, cutting in. “We’re not friends. Your time here has an expiration date, and it’s coming up.”
Jack smiled. It wasn’t a full grin or anything, but he was clearly enjoying himself.
“GIA! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET IN THE CAR ALREADY!” Brendan screamed, roughly pulling a CD out of the player.
“He seems nice,” Jack said. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.
“Rule number four, no insulting my boyfriend.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Good, don’t.”
“Should I be writing these down?”
“You got a pen?”
__________
The first half of the day had gone painfully slow, and by the time lunch came around I couldn’t bear to introduce Jack one more time. I had told the cover story so many times, I was actually starting to forget why Jack was really around. I managed to find my short-lived escape when the lunch bell rang, bolting out of class and away from Jack before he could stop me.
Usually my friends and I would drive off campus at lunch, just to get away for an hour, maybe for a milkshake to brighten our moods. Not that we really need to, there’s a Starbucks at school. With Jack around, I needed that milkshake more than ever, but no one was interested in leaving. People were fawning over Jack like he was actually a Calvin Klein model. Even my best friends, Aria and Veronica, were sitting opposite me at our usual table, wide-eyed with curiosity.
“I’m just going to say it,” Veronica began, and I looked up from my lunch. “That Jack guy is the most attractive person I’ve ever seen.”
“What about your boyfriend?” I asked, pulling my sunglasses off the top of my head and putting them on the table.
“What about him?”
“I don’t think it’s even legal to look that good,” Aria added, inspecting her heavily rhinestoned acrylic nails. “I couldn’t stop staring at him in History. That boy is sex on a stick!”
“In more exciting news,” I said, desperately trying to steer the conversation in a different direction. “I’ve been dying to tell you guys something! It’s going to blow your minds, but you have to keep it on the D-L.”
“Oooo!” Aria said, leaning in. “This sounds scandalous.”
“So Mom called last night . . .”
“She’s dating Orlando Bloom?” Veronica said, looking hopeful.
“Even better,” I said with a grin. I paused momentarily, just for dramatic effect. “The Hollywood Foreign Press are considering me for Miss Golden Globe this year!”
Aria’s jaw dropped and Veronica clasped a hand over her mouth in excitement. My smile widened. It was just the reaction I had hoped for.
“No!” Aria exclaimed. “Shut up! No way! That’s amazing!”
I nodded and said, “I practically died! She said the person they chose had to back out last minute so now they have to find a replacement.”
“Which could be you!” Veronica finished.
I squealed in excitement, my friends joining in. Mom’s phone call last night had started off as the perfect opportunity for me to complain about my dad’s stupid bodyguard plan. But before I had even gotten around to mentioning Jack and the gross injustice I was facing, Mom had dropped the news on me about Miss Golden Globe, the coveted opportunity of a lifetime. Only the children of the very best stars are chosen for the chance to help hand out awards to the winners at the prestigious Golden Globe ceremony, and I actually had a shot! I had been so excited; I had completely forgotten to mention the bodyguards to my mother. I was too busy imagining what it would be like to get to hold the statues in my hands, looking like Grace Kelly, as I helped hand them out to the elite class of Hollywood. Maybe they would consider giving me an award just for doing such a fabulous job.
“So when do you find out?” Aria asked.
“I’m not sure, she didn’t say. But it’s already been delayed by a few months, so I’m guessing it’ll be soon. There’s no time to waste!”
“Hey guys,” Jack said suddenly, placing a bowl of salad down next to my chicken parmesan. “If I’m going to be your bodyguard,” Jack whispered, leaning in close to my ear. “I’m going to need a body to guard. Don’t disappear again.”
My whole body tensed as he eased into the chair next to me and gave a cheerful smile to Aria and Veronica. All the happiness that had been running through my veins had been replaced by dread within seconds. Even Aria and Veronica had forgotten all about my amazing news and were now beaming at Jack, completely oblivious to my discomfort.
“So Jack,” Aria began, looking at him from under her eyelash extensions. “How come we’ve never heard about you before? I mean, we’ve been friends with Gia since fifth grade, and she’s never mentioned you.”
I glanced at Jack uncertainly. He opened his mouth to reply, but I cut in between.
“That’s because he used to live in . . . Guam. We barely ever saw his family.”
“Oh!” Veronica said, clearly a little confused.
“Guam.” Aria repeated. “Isn’t that a fruit?”
“Of course not!” I snapped back, my voice becoming shrill. “It’s just off the coast of . . . Africa.”
Alright, I had no idea what I was talking about. I’m pretty sure I had only ever heard about Guam on TV, and there was a big chance that it actually didn’t exist. But it seemed random enough to fit my story. Besides, did Africa even have a coast? What is a coast?
“So, Guam. That must have been different than L.A.,” Veronica said, turning to Jack.
“Uh, yeah. Africa’s, um, definitely different.”
I bit my lip, reasoning with myself not to have a nervous breakdown. I could practically feel my organs shutting down from copious amounts of stress.
“So how do you like LAC Elite?”
“It’s a huge change from . . . Guam,” Jack replied, glancing at me with a smile. I stabbed my chicken with my fork, whimpering a little. “But I like it. I have to admit though, everyone seems a little overdressed for school. All the elite schools in Guam had uniforms.”
“Years ago, LAC Elite used to have a uniform policy,” Aria explained, tossing her insanely long, brown hair behind her shoulder. “But then all these mothers went all Real Housewives on the school and started to complain about how the uniforms weren’t good enough.”
“Our school is a little different from others,” Veronica added. She didn’t need to elaborate; we all got the picture.
Jack raised his eyebrows in surprise, and I wanted to kick my friends under the table. Now he probably thought we were all stuck-up, pretentious snobs who wouldn’t accept anything less than Chanel. Which was kind of true, but it wasn’t a great first impression to make.
“Hello ladies!”
I looked up from my stabbed chicken and saw Brendan walking toward me with Veronica’s boyfriend, Aaron. Veronica and Aaron have been dating for just over two years, and I secretly think they’ll get married. To be honest, I’m crazy jealous of
Veronica. She’s a natural brunette, but in ninth grade she dyed her hair a blood red color and instantly turned into a sexy, supermodel look-alike. I had begged dad to let me dye my hair red as well, but he told me I’d look like Elmo, and he refused to father Elmo. To spite him I dyed the ends of my hair blue with one of those washout DIY packs. I looked liked an idiot. Thankfully it washed out in a couple of weeks.
Veronica has the perfect relationship with Aaron. He’s the kind of guy who unexpectedly buys her flowers and quotes poetry to her. But I didn’t get any of that. My relationship had been seven months of boredom, decent make-out sessions, and zero common ground. Brendan was great, but he was the anti-romantic. Once, he gave me half of his Hershey’s bar and quoted a scene from White Chicks. Hardly something to write home about.
“Hi!” I said a little too enthusiastically, as Brendan and Aaron approached the table.
Aaron pulled up a chair and sat next to Veronica, kissing her on the cheek. Aria was concentrating on Jack, and was completely unfazed by the lack of romance in her life. If it was possible, Aria was even more attractive than Veronica. But it was impossible for one guy to hold her down. It wasn’t like she went around making out with any male who passed her on the street, but the word “commitment” just wasn’t in her vocabulary. Plus, she could do the splits, which I think added to her appeal.
Brendan lowered himself into a chair next to me and kissed me on the lips. I went completely rigid, as if my body had temporarily paralyzed itself from sheer awkwardness. I didn’t know if Jack even cared, but I had suddenly become shy and self-conscious.
“Hey man. How’re you liking school so far?” he asked Jack.
Jack leaned back in his chair and said, “Algebra was torture, but so far, so good.”
“Algebra is definitely not the highlight of LAC Elite. But it gets better, don’t worry.”
Oh lord, why were they even conversing? Couldn’t they both just shut up and let me hyperventilate in peace? The two were clearly continuing their polite conversation from the car ride to school. It had been excruciatingly awkward until I finally got Brendan talking about the fight with his dad, who was apparently making him miss out on a bar hopping adventure with his best bud Danny that night. Instead, he was forcing Brendan to go to some college mixer where he was giving a speech about building a successful empire. Brendan had described it as “giving lectures and drinking expensive whiskey. My father’s two favorite things.” I’m not a fan of Danny, but I disliked Brendan’s dad far more, so I could sympathize.
Dad and I had been to a few of those lame mixers last year, so that I could suck up to the professors and deans well enough to slip into an Ivy League. But people were either extremely excited by my last name or extremely bitter. “It’s not a reputation you need, Gia. I’ve already built one for you,” Dad had said, when he finally gave up on his networking plan. “It’s really your grades you should be worried about.” Apparently my grades weren’t the only thing crashing and burning, now that my father had decided to hire full time protection without so much as an explanation.
Fortunately for me, getting lost in thought had allowed me to stop freaking out momentarily. Brendan and Aaron had lost interest in Jack and were talking about basketball, while Aria and Veronica were engaged in a deep discussion about Ellie Saab’s latest collection. I couldn’t join either quick enough to cut Jack out of the group. He leaned forward in his chair and eyed my untouched food with the fork protruding out of it.
“Not hungry?” Jack asked.
I pushed the plate away from me, frowning. “I’ve lost my appetite.” Jack laughed and pulled the fork out of my chicken, placing it on the tray. I noticed his food hadn’t been touched either.
He looked around silently, as if taking a few moments to soak in his surroundings. “It’s been a while since I was at school. It feels weird.”
Jack couldn’t have been much older than I was; he looked to be in his early twenties. He was definitely young enough to not raise eyebrows at a high school. He probably saw me as kid though. The whole schoolyard setting wasn’t particularly helping my cause. A thought suddenly crossed my mind, that Jack could potentially be a vampire. I mean, it was unlikely. But he was definitely hot enough to fit the quota, plus his skin was flawless. No sparkles though.
“You guys have a sushi stand at school?” Jack asked, turning to me with an incredulous look.
“Yeah, next to the waffle stand.”
“That’s crazy!”
“Why? It’s just sushi.”
“Yeah, but do you really need four sushi stands?”
I blinked at him. “We actually have five. There’s one the other side of the school.”
“Oh of course,” Jack replied wryly. “My mistake.”
“It’s not a big deal!” I shot back, suddenly feeling defensive. “We just have a lot of options.”
“You get options at a Burger King, Gia. This is something else.”
“Jack,” I dropped my voice to almost a whisper, making sure my friends couldn’t hear. They were too immersed in their own conversation to notice anyway. “You’re a bodyguard. Don’t you deal with rich people all the time?”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “But not like this. I’ve never seen wealth like this around people so young.”
“Jeez, its just sushi,” I mumbled, ignoring my phone as it let out a little buzz on the table in front of me.
Actually it wasn’t just basic Japanese food. Jack was completely missing the point. He thought he was just sitting amongst spoiled kids with overpriced shoes, eating overpriced lunch. But in my world, it’s not just about money; it’s about where you’re from. And if he was going to be around and survive, even if it was for a short while, he was going to learn that a pair of Alexander McQueen stilettos and five sushi stands represented a postcode and not just a dollar bill.
But I just shrugged and played along, not bothering to explain this to Jack. He wouldn’t have understood, and I’d have come across looking like a stuck-up brat, which was a reputation I was desperately trying to steer clear of. It hadn’t even been a proper twenty-four hours of knowing the guy and my self-consciousness was through the roof. I was so aware of every move I was making, I felt like someone had attached strings to me and was moving my arms and legs like a puppet.
Jack leaned forward and rested his arm on the table next to our untouched food. “So let me get this straight,” he said, pointing at Brendan, who was still immersed in conversation with Aaron. “He’s the quarterback and you’re head cheerleader?”
I looked at Brendan and then back at Jack. “I’m sorry,” I scoffed. “Does this look like a Bring it On movie to you? We don’t do that stuff here.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. You don’t look like the overly perky type anyway.”
I pursed my lips, not sure if that was a compliment or an insult. My phone buzzed again before I could reply, clearly annoyed that I hadn’t bothered to check my texts the first time it alerted me. The screen read “Unknown.” Without giving it a second thought, I clicked open. It read:
I’m always watching you
- DR. D
Alrighty then. Whoever thought that text was a good way to scare me clearly needed to up their game. Why would someone have secretly sent me a message and then signed it off? Didn’t that just defeat the purpose of the anonymity? Granted, I had no clue who this Dr. D was, but still. And how did they manage to mask their number? I had heard of private phone calls, but never a private text message. It wasn’t adding up.
“What’s the matter?” Jack’s voice broke into my thoughts.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re glaring at your phone. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, jeez.”
And it was. It was just a text, not a bomb threat. Okay sure, it wasn’t exactly normal. And Dad had hired Jack for a reason,
right? What had he said about that threat to my life, again? I really should pay more attention when he speaks. I put the phone down on the table, but forgot to lock it. Jack leaned closer and read the text before I had the chance to snatch it away from him.
“Gia,” was all Jack said, his mouth forming a grim line.
“What’s up?” Aria asked me, as I glared at Jack. He clearly had issues with respecting privacy.
“Nothing,” I replied, waving a hand as if I was swatting a mosquito. “I just got this weird text. Whatever, don’t worry.”
“Who’s it from?” Brendan said.
“Don’t know,” Jack replied for me. “It just shows up with unknown.”
“Unknown?” Veronica repeated. “Can you even do that?”
At least I wasn’t the only one lacking knowledge in that department. “Clearly you can,” I said. “But it’s signed off with ‘Dr. D,’ which is pretty bizarre.”
“Do you know who that is?” Aaron asked, and I shook my head no.
“Try replying,” Brendan suggested. “Ask who it is.”
Jack leaned forward in his chair, shaking his head. “It won’t work. There’s no number listed, remember?”
Brendan cut his eyes to Jack. “Right,” he said, a few seconds after he probably should have.
“I heard once,” Aria said, looking dead serious. “That music producers watch their possible new clients for months in advance to gain more information on the type of person they are. It’s all part of a marketing strategy.”
We all looked at her blankly for a few seconds before Aaron finally said what we were all thinking. “What? That’s ridiculous!” he exclaimed. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Some guy at a party told me!” Aria told him defensively. “He said his dad was a music producer so he knows all about this stuff.”
“You really think a record producer is reaching out to me?” I asked, doing a half-assed job of stifling my laughter.
“It’s a possibility. I mean, maybe this Dr. D is some guy who’s been watching you because he wants to do an album with you.”
