She was taking tennis and art for the same credits, which meant I didn’t have to face her or the others until later.
The Seymores were a different story, I realized with dismay as I donned a pair of ancient coveralls.
Chris and Bradley were both in this class—the pretty-boy blonde and the massive Viking. Fantastic.
I found a spot as far away from them as possible and started flipping through the laminated manual beside me. It was for a twenty-year-old Ford Taurus.
The table in front of me was big and sturdy enough to hold a car engine or two.
To my left, a big garage door opened onto a repair bay, which contained two cars.
I could only see the very tops of them through the garage door windows, but I assumed they were Ford Tauruses.
The Seymores were peeking through the windows and talking quietly. I could ask them, I supposed. Or I could walk over there and look for myself.
Both ideas left me with a knot of anxiety in my belly and nervous sweat trickling down my spine.
Nope, better to ignore their existence. It was easy at first—they didn’t even see me until the instructor walked in.
“What’s up guys—oh, guys and gal! Hey there. Anyway, today…” He kept going, but I stopped listening. As soon as he said “and gal” Chris had whirled around to find me, and was staring at me with narrowed eyes.
He stalked across the room toward me as soon as the instructor turned around to grab a tool off the shelf and curled his lip at me.
“What the hell are you doing here? Trying to cause more trouble?”
The knot in my belly tightened.
I wanted to say something snappy, but I wasn’t as confident in my words as I usually was. After all, we’d really started the war this year, hadn’t we?
Even if Chris didn’t know that, I did. So I kept my face blank and shrugged. “Getting my elective credit. What are you doing here?”
He scoffed and took a step closer, lowering his voice to a growl. “This is no place for thin-skinned girlies. Better run before you break a nail.”
God, he was irritating, and rude. And…whether or not my group started the fight, he was definitely stirring the pot right now.
“Back off, baby face, before I—” What? Kick his ass? Sick Julianne on him?
Fortunately I didn’t have to decide how to finish that thought, because the teacher finally noticed the confrontation.
“Seymore! Get back to your table,” Mr. Foster snapped. He shook his head, his long brown ponytail swinging across his broad, bulky shoulders. “This isn’t the dark ages, guys. Girls are more than welcome here. I don’t want you giving Kennedy any crap, all right?”
“Just don’t come crawling to me for help when you can’t lift something,” Chris snapped. “Oh, I’m a weak wittle female, pwease pick up my twansmission!”
He flounced back to his table, flapping his hands from loose wrists. Mr. Foster shot me an apologetic look.
I shrugged and turned my attention back to the instruction manual.
“Today should be pretty easy.” The instructor went on as if nothing had happened. “You all get to change a tire—or four.”
It was four.
I showed up to track with tire grunge all up my arms and a pain across my shoulders that I’d never before felt in my entire life.
Feeling like I had something to prove, I’d changed all four of the stupid tires without asking for help, forcing Chris to swallow every nasty thing he wanted to say about women and cars.
He’d had more trouble with his tires than I did—not because he didn’t know what he was doing, but because he was so mad he ended up stripping the nuts he was supposed to be loosening. That, at least, felt like a bit of a win and maybe like I’d won the rights to a territory they all thought I didn’t belong on.
I was glad track was at the end of the day. No Julianne, no Seymores, just me and the wind in my face and the ground beneath my feet.
At least that was what I was hoping for—a hope that died as soon as I jogged from the locker room to the track, where a bunch of students were already stretching out. Rudy was one of them.
I’m not going to get any peace this year, I thought with an internal groan. At least not on A days. Starline High worked on a rotating block schedule. If I got lucky—very, very lucky—I’d have at least one period on alternating days when I wouldn’t have to deal with any of them. I wasn’t getting my hopes up again, though.
I stayed as far away from Rudy as I could, focusing solely on my stretches.
It’s fine that he’s in this class, I told myself.
As long as I don’t look at him or talk to him or engage with him at all, I could still get what I need out of track—active freedom.
Isolation.
The peaceful simplicity of movement.
“Kennedy!”
Damn it all.
I turned at the sound of Julianne’s voice and plastered a practiced smile across my face. Both Julianne and Macy were walking arm-in-arm, matching tennis outfits slick across their skin. Moving across the field beside the track, they came up to the blacktop.
Julianne wrinkled her nose, her brows furrowing as she scanned me from head to toe. “Ugh, why?”
“I like to run,” I said with a shrug.
She giggled, more out of disgust than humor. “I mean, I guess if that’s what you like to do. I really see you as more of a dancer or something, running is such a—common sport.”
“Common, or criminal?” Macy asked, batting her eyes innocently. “I spy a Seymore. He must be practicing his getaway from the cops.”
“Or mall security,” Julianne said, laughing.
My face was blazing and I glanced over at Rudy.
The girls hadn’t bothered to keep their voices down at all. In fact, it seemed as though they might have pitched their words just a few octaves higher when they got to the insults.
Rudy was staring straight ahead, his face a stoic mask, but the tips of his ears burned red.
“I really don’t think that’s why he’s taking track,” I mumbled.
“No, you’re right, Kennedy. He doesn’t need the practice, right? He gets plenty in his day-to-day. It’s a foster kid thing, you know. They’re all feral.” Julianne grinned menacingly in Rudy’s direction.
I followed her eyes all the way to him. His cheeks were paler, now, but he still stared straight ahead.
“It’s what predisposes them to bigger crimes,” Macy agreed sagely. “Like kidnapping and murder.”
The two of them giggled like bitchy little school girls and hurried away to the tennis court while I was still struggling to find something to say.
I’d wanted to defend Rudy, but I knew exactly how that would go.
Challenging Julianne in public put her on the offensive—she never got defensive, not that I’d ever heard. She would have just used whatever I said to make her point, the same way she’d twisted my innocuous comment to mean something worse.
I stretched deeply so I wouldn’t have to look at Rudy, but I couldn’t avoid hearing the whispers from the rest of the class.
I ground my teeth when I heard “Ouija board” for the hundredth time.
I didn’t want to snap.
Didn’t want to say anything until I’d had a chance to think out my words carefully. But if we didn’t get to run soon I was going to lose my temper.
“Three laps, on my mark!”
Thank God.
The sun in my face, the wind in my hair, and the steady drum of sand under my running shoes pushed everything else out of my head for a while.
I didn’t stop after three laps.
I didn’t stop until the gym teacher’s whistle had blown three times.
By then I was too out of breath to say anything even if Rudy did decide to confront me.
“You don’t follow instructions, Kennedy?” The gym teacher snapped.
Ms. Roach was a short, fit woman with skin so tanned it was a bruised version of r
ed and tightly-controlled brown hair, streaked with the tiniest bits of silver.
“Long day,” I gasped.
She narrowed her eyes at me, then nodded sharply. “Running is a great stress reliever. I have your times for your first three laps. Our focus for this quarter is speed—next quarter is endurance. Stick to sprinting for now. Run on your own time, it’s good training.”
I nodded breathlessly and propped my elbows on my knees, taking great gulping breaths.
When I looked up, I caught Rudy watching me. I couldn’t read his face, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he wasn’t thinking anything nice about me.
I looked away from him, ashamed. He hadn’t deserved that dig about foster kids.
I knew better than anybody that you couldn’t control your own parents, no matter how much you wanted or needed to.
I stayed in the shower longer than I needed to, waiting until the locker room was quiet before getting out and getting dressed, giving the Seymores plenty of time to leave before I made my own exit.
The last thing I needed was another confrontation.
Chapter Nine
“It’s not just because the Seymore boy was dating her,” Julianne said that evening as she swiped a spoonful of cookie dough out of the bowl. “It’s that her body was found in the reservoir right by their house. Like, their house literally backs up against the freakin’ reservoir.”
“I’ve never seen their house,” I admitted. “Which reservoir?”
Julianne grinned and flicked her hair over her shoulder. “You know what,” she started, prompting me to regret saying anything at all. A flash of mischief crossed her eyes as she covered my hand with hers. “I don’t think I want to make cookies right now. Let’s go for a drive.”
I gave her an annoyed look. She was the one who’d insisted on coming over and baking cookies in the first place. I hadn’t argued with her hanging out because she’d just sort of showed up—and, to be fair, I had ruined the matchy aesthetic this morning. I hadn’t argued against the cookies because it kept her out of my closet for a little longer, which gave me more time to come up with an excuse for why all the things she’d picked out for me were missing.
But I really didn’t want her in my house or in my space. Not right now, at least. She had a way of clouding my head—maybe it was the authority she carried or the fact that she was always so pretty and put together, or maybe it was just because I didn’t know what to do with attention, but I’d wanted some time to myself when I wouldn’t feel compelled to make excuses for her. Some time to analyze her without the magnetism of her interference.
She was already pulling plastic wrap over the bowl before I could think of an excuse that could separate the two of us for the rest of the day. “This needs to rise anyway,” she said.
“I don’t think cookie dough needs to rise,” I said doubtfully. Scratch that, I knew damn well that cookie dough didn’t need to rise, but I’d learned not to take too strong a stance against her unless I was dying to feel foolish.
“And that’s why I do the thinking,” she said with a sweet smile. “Come on, you need to see this anyway, it’ll be good for you.”
I shrugged and washed my hands before reaching over to turn the oven off. Before I could push the button to kill the heat, Julianne made a negating noise and nudged my hand away. “We won’t be gone that long, just leave it on.”
She grabbed her bag and started for the door. Like hell was I going to leave the oven on. As soon as her back was turned, I switched it right off. She might not be pleased that I ignored her, but I knew for sure that my parents would be a whole lot less pleased to come home to a burnt-out shell of a million dollar house. I paused to lock the door behind me, and she rolled her eyes.
“Seriously, we are literally going to be gone for ten minutes. Who’s going to come into your house in the next ten minutes, Kennedy?”
“Nobody,” I said, twirling my keys around my finger. “Because I locked the door.”
She huffed, then laughed. “Get in, dork.”
Julianne got behind the wheel of her powder pink convertible and I got in beside her without a second thought. The second thoughts hit a few minutes later, when she was going 75 in a 35, I remembered why I tried to avoid riding places with her. She whipped us across town, past the mall and the train tracks, then over the long, low bridge. It took ten minutes just to get that far—the population was tiny, but the spaces were big. Everything’s spread out in Texas and every time I traveled these roads, it was like remembering that fact all over again. There were good parts to the distances, but bad parts to it too. In this current situation, the minimal traffic was a highlight, the speed with which Julianne traveled was not.
She took the first right after the river and followed the street to the end. It pooled into a semi-formed cul-de-sac, no curb or sidewalk, just asphalt bleeding unevenly into the earth beside it. A scrubby desert forest spread out beyond the end of the street giving just a little something to look at. Just a little further down, a solitary brave little cactus grew on the border between asphalt and dirt, crumbling the edge of the street a tad bit more.
On the right side of the cul-de-sac sat a rambling two-and-a-half story house which looked as if it had grown organically, with add-ons sprawling out from a tall, sturdy center. The “half” was a shallow attic with dormer windows, and I suspected there was a basement too. The front of the house, apart from the walkway, was obscured by all sorts of growing things. In the dark I couldn’t tell if it was a cultivated garden or just the forest taking some of its land back.
“That porch wraps all the way around,” Julianne said. “Not just the house, either. It extends like a walkway all the way out to a dock in the reservoir. The reservoir where Sabrina’s body was found.”
She gave me a meaningful look and turned the car around. The Seymores didn’t have any close neighbors—the properties over here all sat on an acre or more of tough, unyielding land. The nearest house was a quarter mile down the road, hidden by a cluster of scrubby little trees. My neighborhood was similarly spaced, though the houses themselves took up most of the lots, and money had cultivated or zero-scaped the land.
“How do you know so much about the Seymores’ house?” I asked her once we were back on the bridge, heading for home.
She gave me a look. “I’ve lived here my whole life, remember? I know everything.”
I told myself she just meant that she knew about the town, and frowned as I realized that I was excusing her again. I wished I could stop doing that. I wanted to see her for who she really was, but I couldn’t seem to work up the nerve. After all, who else would bake cookies with me after the first day of my last year of high school? Friends like Julianne had all the potential of an enemy, if you were stupid enough to allow them to become that. Enemies were not something I was trying to rack up more of. The Seymores were already more than I wanted to handle.
Chapter Ten
Nobody should have calculus and chemistry back-to-back first thing in the morning.
It’s hell.
Hellacious enough that I was able to keep my mind off of the social conflicts whispering like the beginning embers of a brush fire up until lunch, which would have been nice if it hadn’t been hell.
When I dropped down in my usual seat, I could already feel the tension mounting between our table and the one behind us.
“Yep. Three foster homes in as many months. Just couldn’t keep the little Nazi under control,” Macy was saying.
“Who is a Nazi now?” I asked as I sprinkled a generous helping of salt over my fries.
“Oh my God, not so loud!” Julianne said, though I hadn’t spoken any louder than Macy.
She and Macy both glanced over their shoulders at the table where the Seymore brothers were sitting. Three of the four of them were glaring icily in our direction.
The youngest, Gary, was hunched over his food, but I could see the blush of shame flow up the back of his neck.
Th
e kids at the next table shot looks of angry disgust at him and he shrank lower.
Chris leaned back until his face was almost in Julianne’s hair. The tips of his ears were red, too. A different kind of red. Not from embarrassment, but from rage. “Nah,” he said, “you got it wrong, doll. Gary’s dad got put away for murdering nosy bitches who didn’t know when to keep their filthy fucking mouths shut.”
Bradley yanked Chris back up, but Chris and Gary were both chuckling.
Rudy just looked pissed.
Julianne paled slightly before a cunning smile twisted her perfect lips.
“I bet he did,” Julianne said lightly. “And I bet he taught Gary everything he knew about making girls disappear before he got locked up.” She shrugged, performing for the room. “Explains a lot.”
The guys went silent. And so did I, making sure my mouth was always too full to say a damn thing. This wasn’t any of my business. And the start of this school year was teaching me that I didn’t want to be fighting the fights Julianne was fighting.
Julianne ignored the tension between the tables and turned to me with a thoughtful look before moving her eyes to the Seymores and then back to me. “You know, with everything we were doing last night—”
My heart sank like a stone in the open ocean. I widened my eyes at her, silently pleading with her not to spill that we had essentially stalked the Seymore house the night before. She paused, then grinned.
“—I forgot to go through your closet with you. We can still salvage this.” She waved a hand in the air, indicating everything I was wearing. “I should come over again tonight!”
I shook my head. “Sorry, but I have like three hours’ worth of homework to get done,” I said apologetically. “I need this credit since I basically flunked science in ninth.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. I knew that she’d paid people to do her homework for her once or twice, and I could see the suggestion sizzling on the tip of her tongue.
I shook my head at her and went back to my food. She shrugged, effectively dropping the subject which, to be honest, I was thankful for. More thankful than she would care to know.
Them Seymore Boys: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 1) Page 5
