by Patty Blount
You shouldn’t have gotten so drunk! You asked for it!
You don’t even remember what happened, and you’re ruining someone’s life. Get over yourself!
You deserved it!
I hate them all. I don’t need any of them.
I roll my shoulders and grab my bag, quietly sneak from the bathroom down the stairs to the exit so I can make it to the athletic field before anyone notices I’m gone. A whistle blows, and I hear light applause. The team is still on the field. I guess Jeremy decided to ditch. Stick close to the tree line. Blend in. Stay low. I can only make it as far as the scoreboard this way. The rest of the field is open—parking lot, bleachers, running track. I unzip my bag, remove the camera, and use the zoom lens to find Zac.
He’s in the net, standing with his hands on his hips, looking bored. My body instantly reacts to the sight of him—muscles tense, adrenaline surges, legs coil to get ready to run. It takes every ounce of energy I have to stay there.
It’s overcast, and there’s a zing of ozone in the air that tickles my nose. But I think I can grab some shots before the storm hits. I leave the flash off and snap shots of Zac flipping off one of the players, laughing at a teammate’s spectacular trip, and diving for the ball. The long-range zoom lens grabs some detailed images, but none of them are the one I need. The next play gets rough—sticks fly, and tempers flare—and I feel it in my gut. This is when Zac shows who he really is. Come on, come on! Zac shoves a guy out of his crease, and I keep my finger on the shutter button throughout the entire altercation. It’s got to be here. I can’t know for sure until I upload the images to my computer, but I feel it. I got the shot. I’m smiling, actually smiling as I slowly pick my way back through the trees. There’s got to be one decent shot I can use there.
I pause while Jeremy jogs from the exit back to the field, and I blow out a sigh. Thank God I won’t need to run into him. He hits the turf, and that’s my cue to cross the parking lot, quietly open the door just wide enough to slip through, and return to the girls’ bathroom. I wash my hands and make sure there are no leaves or twigs stuck to me, breathe in, breathe out, force all the tension out of my muscles. Wonder if I can sneak upstairs to an empty classroom and shoot from a window? All this sneaking around crap is giving me chest pains. The first crack of thunder rumbles in the distance, and I tense right back up. The team will quit practice now. What if Zac or Jeremy come looking for Ian?
Once again I hear the murmur of a deep voice through the common wall. Jesus! Are they inside already? But the tone is off. It’s not arrogant and bragging like Zac’s. It’s soft and soothing. It’s Ian’s.
I open the door and stand in the hall between the two bathrooms.
“Yeah… I wanted to get an estimate. Creased side panel on a Camry. Yeah….uh-huh. I see…thanks.”
There’s a loud “Fuck!” followed by the clash of a lav door getting kicked. Shit! He can’t find me here, eavesdropping. I scoot down the hall, and after a few seconds I hear Ian’s steps behind me.
“Grace.”
I stop, turn, cross my arms, and shoot him my most fierce glare. “What?”
He winces, and I have to give him points for it. At least he’s capable of remorse—unlike his pal, Zac. “Look.” He rakes hair off his face, and his hand shakes. “I’m, uh, sorry for before. That was seriously uncool.”
I forget how pissed off I am and let curiosity take over. “What exactly was uncool? Kissing me or the horror you showed at almost getting caught kissing me?” I wave my hands in the air.
“Actually, both.”
What? I’m stunned and just stare at him, jaw dangling.
“I…um, well, you were so close to me, and you’re so pretty. I guess I kind of forgot we’re not seeing each other, and I just went for it. That was wrong, and I’m sorry.” He stammers and shuffles. “The door opened. Figured it was probably Miranda and Lindsay coming back for seconds and didn’t want them giving you a hard time because of me, so I pulled back.”
Whoa, back the truck up. This was all about me, not him? He’s shitting me. Nobody’s this decent. I examine his face for clues to what he’s really thinking, but I can’t find any. His expression matches his words. Holy crap, he’s sincere, and I am not this lucky, so what the hell do I do?
“Okay. I guess I’ll just…be over there.” He gives me a perplexed look and heads back to the cart, and I still can’t believe what I just heard. My lips want to smile, and then I figure out why.
Ian Russell thinks I’m pretty. Oh, God, I am pathetic.
• • •
By 4:00 p.m., the rain is coming down in sheets. I text my mother, but she can’t be here until five. I can’t stay here at the school alone, not if the lacrosse team is in the locker room. I could walk if I’d been lucky enough to find an umbrella in somebody’s locker, but I wasn’t. No surprise there. I tie my hair back, draw my hood up and resign myself to a cold and wet trek. I walk fast, almost run. I need to be off the main street before the lacrosse team’s cars start speeding by. If they see me—
I shiver.
They can’t see me. It’s that simple.
Just as I jog across the street, I hear it. A car pulls up alongside me. A window powers down. A cold dread numbs my legs, and I’m running through quicksand and sinking fast, the panic attack pressure that’s become so familiar already building in my core. A figure steps from the passenger side, and I brace. Please don’t let it be Zac. Please, please not him. Please don’t let it be Miranda or Lindsay. The figure is huddled into a hoodie and is obviously male. Oh, God, no. My hands curl into fists. Hair on my neck stands up, and I beg my muscles to move.
“Grace?”
It’s Ian. I skid to a stop, breath coming in loud gasps, my relief so enormous that I almost cry.
“Come on. We’ll give you a ride.”
We? Oh, God.
“My dad and me, Grace. No one else,” he adds when I hesitate.
Good. Okay. That’s good. I can do this.
“You’re wet, and you’re shivering. We can drive you home.”
I look down at my clothes. I’m soaked through. I nod and follow him back to the car. The white Camry. I swear, there’s this tiny ray of sunshine beaming through the rain that illuminates the car, and all I can think is safe. I follow him to the passenger side. He holds the back door open for me. I climb in, my bag on my lap, and draw my arms around my legs, watching the little bobblehead figure of some football player stuck on the dashboard nod at me. Ian climbs into the front seat and flips on the heater. “Dad, this is Grace.”
“Hi, Grace.”
The man behind the wheel looks just like Ian. Same brown eyes, same smile, same hair, though there’s a bit of gray in his. He’s dressed in khakis and a golf shirt with a light jacket. He looks at me and frowns, tugs a handkerchief from his pocket, and hands it to me.
“Here you go.”
When I reach out to take the square of fabric, our eyes meet, and I freeze. It’s there in the same brown eyes Ian inherited—a mix of sympathy and discomfort.
He knows.
It takes everything I’ve got to hold my head up, and it’s not enough. I hide my eyes behind the handkerchief, wipe my dripping face, horrified by the black stains I leave on it. Damn it. Scowling in the backseat, I almost miss it when Mr. Russell rants about not being able to find his camera.
“Searched the whole house for it. I know we have one.”
I wait for Ian to mention I’m the school newspaper photographer and that I have a camera right here in my backpack, but he says nothing. I think about that for a minute—how being forced to scrub lockers with me for a week must be putting a serious kink in Ian’s life and how me mentioning the camera in my bag at this moment would complicate it even more. “Mr. Russell, I take pictures for the school paper. Anything I can help you with?”
In the mirror his eyes pop. “You’re a photographer? This is great!”
“Um, Dad, I—”
“Ian, you couldn’t tell me
your partner’s a photographer? All that time, searching for a lost camera. Whoa, why do you smell like oranges?” Mr. Russell turns back to me. “Grace, how much would you charge to take some pictures for me? Tell her, Ian.”
“Dad, I really don’t think Grace—”
“You haven’t even told her yet. Grace, I need to update my website and marketing materials. I just finished a few jobs that came out really amazing. I need someone to take pictures of them that don’t look like they were shot with a cell phone, you know? I’d pay you for the time.”
I swear I can hear Ian’s gut slowly twisting. “Actually I could use some extra money to buy my brother’s birthday gift. How much are you offering?”
“I don’t know. Ten bucks a picture sound good to you?”
“Great.”
“Perfect. You’re hired.”
“What do I have to do?”
“I’ll show you when we get home. Can you come to our place, or do you have to be back by a certain time?”
I think about that for a minute. Mom won’t be home from work until six, and my dad calls me only on Fridays. Ian is oddly quiet in the front seat. Half his face is reflected in the side-view mirror, and he looks…worried. Uneasy. I debate with myself for a minute and agree. “Yeah, I guess I can.”
In the front seat Ian makes an odd croaking sound. The idea of spending more time with Ian away from the school and away from Zac appeals to me. Guess I’m not that bright. I stuff the camera back in my bag, zip it up tight, and settle back while we ride to the Russell house, my fingers tapping out a beat in time with the windshield wipers.
It doesn’t take long. Turns out Ian Russell lives only about four streets away from me. Wow. All the time I was crushing on him, and he lives in my own backyard. My lips twitch at the irony, and suddenly I want to cry. As soon as the car stops in the driveway, I shove out of it and zip by Ian, while his dad chatters on about the job.
“Won’t take long. I’ll give you the addresses of each job site, call the owners, tell them not to freak out when they see this girl with a camera, and that’s all there is to it. When can you start?”
“Oh, um, well.”
“Dad. Let’s take this a step at a time, okay?”
Mr. Russell rolls dark eyes. “Ian, it’s not rocket science.”
He unlocks the front door, calls out a greeting to whoever is home—Ian’s mother maybe. “Come on in, Grace.”
I follow him inside, aware that Ian is hanging back, watching me with that same frown of worry I noticed in the car. After a moment he moves past me, climbs the stairs to the second floor, and disappears.
“Um. Yeah. Sorry about that. He doesn’t quite know what to do with you.”
Yeah, right.
“Come on. Let’s see if we can find you some dry clothes.” He turns to the staircase and shouts, “Valerie! Claudia! You home?”
There’s a creak in the ceiling over my head. A door opens, and a girl appears at the top of the stairs, wearing yoga pants, a sweatshirt, and no socks. Her hair is pulled up in a messy bun, and she’s wearing black glasses over green eyes. But despite the differences, I can still see Ian in her.
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Oh, hey, Val. This is Grace, one of Ian’s friends. You got any clothes she can borrow?”
“Sure, come on up.”
I head up the stairs, squirming under my skin, but Valerie is already pulling out drawers and tossing stuff on her bed.
“So you’re the famous Grace Collier, huh?”
The polite smile I wear freezes in place, and I halt just inside her room. She stares at me for a long moment. “I’m sorry. For what happened to you.”
My jaw tightens. “You didn’t do it.”
“True, but from what Ian says, there are lots of people who didn’t do it but haven’t exactly made it easy on you.”
From what Ian says? I don’t know what to say to that, so I stay silent.
“These should fit you. Come on. Bathroom’s this way.”
I take the pile of clothes she hands me and follow her to the bathroom across the hall. She nods once and leaves me alone. I lock the door, strip down, and dry myself with a towel folded neatly on the sink. The mirror is a horror show. I grab some tissues and wipe at the makeup that’s running down my face in goth-black rivers and finally just wash my face, conceding defeat. The clothes are practically identical to what Valerie was wearing—yoga pants, sweatshirt, tank top. I pull a brush from my bag, drag it through the nest that’s become of my hair, and scoop it up into an elastic band.
I feel naked, but at least I’m dry again.
I pull open the door and nearly collide with Ian, who also changed his clothes. In a fresh pair of jeans and a black T-shirt under a plaid shirt, he looks great and smells even better now that the orange scent is gone. He still looks like he’d rather submit to a root canal than be anywhere near me, so I smirk and can’t resist needling him. “I kind of like you orange-scented.”
A slow grin spreads across his face and turns evil when he takes a step toward me. I’m not frightened because it’s Ian, but I realize—too late—that he’s carrying his dirty clothes under one arm. “Yeah? Well, here. Take all you want.”
He rubs his shirt into my face, and I shove him back a step, laughing and cursing.
“Ian.”
Valerie is back, and Ian and I separate, still laughing.
“Thanks for the clothes.” I smile at her.
“No problem.” She rolls her eyes and laughs.
We head back downstairs, find Mr. Russell sitting behind a desk in a home office behind the garage. “Oh, good. There you are. Nice and dry?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Have a seat. Ian, you too.”
There’s a small leather sofa under the window, facing a cool glass desk. I sit, and Ian sinks down beside me. Mr. Russell scoots over on his desk chair, hands me a sheet of paper.
“Here you go. Those are the addresses of my best projects. The first one? I want to feature that one on the cover of the new brochure and the website.” He swivels around, taps a few keys on the laptop on his desk. “Here’s the design for the project. This is a pool where I designed the fish at the bottom. I’m hoping you can take shots with special filters, make the sun glint off something bright, stuff like that.” A few more taps, and a new design appears. “And this one’s a kitchen backsplash.”
“Dad, um—”
But Mr. Russell’s too excited to hear him, so Ian mouths, “Sorry,” over his head while his dad chatters on. “And the others I’ll use for the new online gallery I’m planning. Three of the six are pretty close by, and the other two are kind of a long drive. But I was thinking maybe Ian and you could ride out there on Sunday, if you don’t have plans.”
Works for me. My mom’s not trusting me with the car anytime soon, so I’d need him to drive me to all these sites. “Fine by me. Okay with you?” I turn to Ian, and he’s staring at his cell phone, a frown puckering his brow.
“Hey. Ian.” Mr. Russell snaps his fingers. “Grace asked you a question.”
“What? Oh, sorry.”
“Is all this okay with you? I mean, if you have issues being seen with me—”
“Of course he doesn’t, right, Ian?”
Ian smiles and takes the list from me. “We can go right now if you want. The first one’s just a few blocks from here.”
“Now? It’s pouring out.” I point out the obvious.
“Well, you’ve already melted.” He grins, indicating my face, which is now free of all makeup.
“I don’t care about my makeup. I care about the camera.”
“Oh. Right. Okay, tomorrow. After we finish. Dad, will you let me take the car?”
“For the purposes of taking pictures, yes. Nothing else, Ian. You’re still grounded.”
“Okay, Dad.” Ian rolls his eyes and stands up. A second later, it dawns on me that I should probably leave, so I stand up too.
“Thanks, Mr. Russell. I rea
lly appreciate this. I’ll email you a link to the pictures I take so you can pick your favorites.”
“This is great. Thanks, Grace. I can’t wait to see what you do.”
“Thanks for the ride.”
“Oh! The ride. Right.” Mr. Russell slaps his head. “Here, Ian. Drive Grace to her house.” He slips keys from his pocket and tosses them.
Ian snatches them out of the air with one hand, and for a few seconds I panic.
Me.
Alone in a car.
With Ian Russell.
My lungs stall out, and I figure another one of those panic attacks is about to deck me. But then logic comes to my rescue. I’ve scrubbed lockers alone with Ian Russell since Saturday, and he hasn’t attacked me.
I’m safe with him. I’m safe with him. I’m safe with him.
“Grace, you okay?”
I nod and hurry outside where I can breathe. I’m safe with him, I’m safe with him. The panic fades when my body finally listens to my head. Outside at the curb, Ian clicks the remote to unlock the doors and quickly slides behind the wheel. I sit beside him and wonder if maybe I should sit in the backseat so no one sees him with me. A second later I think, Fuck that. I’m not the guilty party here. I won’t hide.
“Okay. Out with it. You hate the idea, don’t you?” I say when I can’t take the silence anymore.
“Driving you home? Yeah, it’s as hard for me as it obviously is for you.”
I let that go. “No, smart-ass. I mean me taking these pictures for your dad.”
“No, it’s fine.” He drives in silence for a long moment.
Crap, I knew he wasn’t cool with this. I consider him. I could just shrug and tell him it’s too damn bad and he’ll have to deal. But then I remember this is Ian, the same boy who carefully replaced a sick girl’s locker contents instead of trashing everything, the same boy who worried about me. He’s not a jerk, despite his choice of friends, so I guess I can cut him a break.
