“What?”
“I am so sorry, Kennedy. I’ve been so caught up with other things that I have totally been neglecting you. You know I finally got Stew to agree to go out with Joan? Well, sort of. She invited him to my pool party and he said yes, which automatically means they’re going together. Oh! I forgot to tell you about that, my bad. I’m having a pool party this weekend. God, that will be the perfect opportunity. You can thank me later.”
“Perfect opportunity for what?” I asked. I was not nearly awake enough for her rapid-fire chatter and I was struggling miserably to keep up.
“To set you up with a guy, silly! Adam asked Macy out last week so he’s off the table. Joan claimed Stew, so he’s out too. Oh! What about Renny? I think he just broke up with Angelina, but I’m sure it’s been long enough for him to recover. Guys are simple like that.”
“Renard?” I asked, frowning. Once upon a time I might have considered it—he was cute, in an old-money sort of way. The kind of guy who recognizes that he’s out of touch with the general population and does what he can to bridge the gap, which made him seem more down-to-earth than his trust fund would suggest. I shook my head. “Not interested.”
“What? Why not? He’s cute and fun and he has a pretty good sense of humor. Besides, he’s ridiculously loaded. Not just financially, either. He’s got a crazy number of connections, you would be set for life no matter what you decided to do if you could make him fall in love with you. I can give you some pointers. It’s not hard.”
All of that was true. But he wasn’t Rudy, and I didn’t have eyes for anybody but Rudy anymore. That realization surprised me. I knew I liked him—I just didn’t know how much until then. I’d dated boys before, but I always had my eyes open, checking out cute guys, listening to Julianne’s advice about strategic partners, never really giving myself over to the relationship. Which was fine, I’d rationalized, because it was only high school and high school boyfriends didn’t matter. They were like bicycles that still had the training wheels on. If, somehow, you managed to fall off, the hurt would only be minimal.
But it was different with Rudy. I hadn’t even noticed another guy since the day Rudy kissed me and the idea of being set up with Renard made my stomach feel watery the way it used to when I’d contemplate lying to my parents.
“I’m just not interested,” I insisted. “There’s no spark at all with him. He’s a cool guy and all, but I’m not attracted to him.”
Julianne raised an eyebrow. We were walking into homeroom and she really should have stopped talking—the room wasn’t big enough for a private conversation and the bell was about to ring—but she didn’t.
I noticed Rudy sitting in his usual spot behind my chair and my heart skipped a few beats. God, he was gorgeous. Way too gorgeous. And exactly the kind of distraction I didn’t need when I was meant to be engaged in the conversation Julianne was having with me.
“If you aren’t attracted to Renard, you’re either stupid, a lesbian, or lying, and I know you aren’t stupid. Something you want to confess, Rainbow Dash?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not a lesbian and I’m not lying. I don’t want you to set me up with Renard. He’s not my type.”
“Then tell me who is your type and I’ll set you up with them. It wouldn’t be fair for you to be the only one of us at the party without a date. Plus, it’s kinda depressing going solo all through senior year. I mean, we’ll have prom coming up and all of that. What are you planning on doing? Kicking it solo?”
I could almost feel Rudy listening to the conversation. I felt like I was walking a tightrope over a pit full of crocodiles. Too far to one side, and I’d get eaten up by the fury of a scorned lover. Too far to the other, and Julianne would pounce all over my secrets and turn the rest of high school into a deadly barrel roll.
“I don’t mind,” I said. “It’s easier to mingle when I’m not trying to make sure some guy is having a good time. Besides, I wouldn’t want a first date to be a pool party. Too much temptation for the poor boys.” I struck a pose and made a silly face. Joan snickered, covering up Rudy’s low growl.
“That’s the whole fun of it,” Julianne said with a wide-eyed pout. “You get to show them what they could get—if they’re lucky. Then you have somebody waiting on you hand and foot all damn night.”
“Now that you’ve all had your morning TED talk on the battle of the sexes, let’s get down to business,” Mr. Franks said wryly.
Fortunately that was enough to shut Julianne up for the rest of class. I could still feel Rudy bristling, though—it was in the way he breathed, the force with which he wielded his pen, and the way he wouldn’t quit tapping the back of my chair with his toes.
I doodled a heart on one corner of my paper and tore it off. I held onto it until I was sure that Bradley was absorbed in his work, then pretended to scratch my head and dropped the scrap on Rudy’s desk.
He calmed down after that. It gave me butterflies—butterflies with a newfound sense of power. I’d be a mess if I heard his brothers talking to him about all the girls he could dangle off his wrist. It felt good to know that jealousy existed in him and that he hated hearing Julianne list off people who could rock my boat because it meant that I wasn’t the only one who was in deep.
When class ended, Rudy moved faster than me and accidentally-on-purpose dropped a bit of paper on the floor next to my desk. It was a surprisingly good sketch of a man and a woman caught in the moment before kissing. I picked it up and folded it, tucking it into my book under the guise of putting my things together.
Julianne picked up her train of thought as we left class, following me to my locker even though hers was on the other end of the hall and we had different classes this period.
“Okay, so I had some time to think,” she said, “and I decided that Renard is probably too much like your dad for you to be interested.”
I gave her a sideways look. My dad wasn’t nearly that laid-back, but whatever.
I crouched down to twirl the lock and inhaled deeply. Something smelled extra clean, like soap, a slightly masculine soap, and I liked it. Something about it smelled a little familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“So I’ve decided that you should go out with Maxwell instead,” she said happily. “He’s got money, but it’s all sports and investments. He’s a real masculine sort of guy, likes sports cars and trucks and stuff.”
“Ah yes, everything I’ve ever wanted in a man, an appreciation for things that go vroom,” I said sarcastically.
I pulled my locker open and gasped, then gagged as the soapy smell overwhelmed me. I swore, crawling backwards away from my locker as liters of foamy shaving cream oozed out onto the floor.
Julianne clapped a hand over her mouth and stared wide-eyed at the mess. “They got you,” she said in a horrified whisper. “Did you have anything important in there?”
“Oh no, just a paper I spent three hours working on,” I growled. “No big deal.”
She made a sympathetic noise and patted me on the back. “I’ll go get the janitor,” she said. “You should probably stay here and make sure nobody slips in the puddle.”
I took up my guard position reluctantly. This was the kind of shit that I had neither the energy nor the motivation to deal with. And did I mention the fact that I hardly fucking slept the night before?
Rudy passed by, glanced at the situation, and raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged miserably and nodded my head at his brothers, who were walking ahead of him. Chris and Gary were snickering loudly, making comments about hygiene and just being all-around obnoxious. Rudy narrowed his eyes at their backs and veered away from them down a little hallway.
He jogged back a minute later with two big handfuls of paper towels. He shoved them at me and I took them, then he winked at me before running to catch up with his brothers. I was glad. I’d figured Julianne would have been back by then, but the halls were emptying quickly and there was no sign of her or the janitor. I got to work cleaning up the mess, tr
ying to save papers that were unsavable and wiping off books that had seen better days. This wasn’t exactly the kind of inconvenience I thought I’d be dealing with today, but here we are.
Julianne still hadn’t found her way back to me by the time the bell rang. I was also nowhere near being done cleaning up a mess that I didn’t make. When, finally, I got enough of it mopped up that I could go to class with a clear conscience I was ten minutes late—and there was still no sign of her or the janitor. In fact, I didn’t see Julianne again until lunch rolled around. But at least she had the good manners to look ashamed of herself.
“Kennedy! Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I tried to find the janitor but he disappeared somewhere, and by the time I thought about going to the office and having him paged I was already so late for class that I just panicked. Forgive me?” She batted her eyes at me, reminding me why she could always manage to get Thomas to do whatever the hell it was she wanted. I didn’t even swing that way and I couldn’t stay mad.
“Yeah, it wasn’t an issue. Someone brought me a bunch of paper towels and I got it mostly cleaned up.”
Her expression froze for a fraction of a second, then she smiled, looking relieved. “Oh, good. Who was it?”
I shrugged. The way she’d hesitated bothered me and I didn’t know exactly why. “Just some guy,” I said.
“Anybody you would be willing to bring to the pool party?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I couldn’t even tell you his name,” I said, keeping my voice steady. I mean, I wasn’t exactly lying. Sure, it wasn’t that I didn’t know the name of the guy who brought me the paper towels. It’s that Julianne would murder him, and then me and then spit on our graves until she ran out of saliva.
She sighed, disappointed, then leaned over the table with her eyes sparkling. “I almost forgot to tell you. I got them back for you.”
“What?”
“Wait for it,” she whispered, giggles pressing at the back of her words.
She glanced over my shoulder and I heard Rudy swear loudly on the other side of the room. I turned to see him pull his backpack out of the lunchroom trash can. It was dripping with discarded food and random liquids.
He glared furiously at our table and my three friends all put their heads down and hid their laughter.
“That’s not all,” Julianne hissed as she snickered at the table.
A noise from the other table had me snapping my head up. Gary choked, his face bright red, gagging and gasping only to dissolve into wracking coughs again. I stood up in a panic, thinking he was choking, and Joan jerked me down into my seat.
“He’s fine,” she said under her breath. “It’s just shaving cream.”
Gary threw up all over the floor, earning ire from every table in sight. I looked at his plate and winced—there was a perfect-looking cupcake on his tray, topped with fluffy white icing. It looked completely irresistible—and it had a bite taken out of it.
“Shaving cream on a muffin,” Macy murmured. “Charmingly classic, yet somehow original.”
I wrung my fingers under the table while Rudy and his brothers tended to Gary. The janitor showed up a moment later with his mop, grumbling under his breath. Bradley apologized to him profusely before putting an arm around Gary and leading him out of the room.
“Drama queen,” Julianne sniffed. “It’s not like it was poison.”
Maybe not technically, but I was pretty sure it would be treated like poison if Gary decided to press charges. He’d looked really sick, too, and it suddenly occurred to me that he could have been allergic to whatever was in the shaving cream.
“You really shouldn’t have done that, Julianne,” I said quietly. “What if he tells his dad and Mr. Seymore decides to get the police involved?”
She made a dismissive noise and waved a careless hand. “My dad’s got more money than their entire family. It was a harmless prank, that’s all. Anybody with any sense won’t see it as anything else.”
I wasn’t sure about that. I also wasn’t too sure about what I was smelling—the greasy aroma of cafeteria food hung thickly over the janitor’s bucket, but underneath that I could almost smell the shaving cream, soapy and vaguely masculine and extremely familiar.
“Where did you get the shaving cream?” I asked her, careful to keep any hint of accusation out of my voice.
She grinned at me. “I had Thomas take it out of Rudy’s gym locker,” she said. “Proof positive.”
My stomach flipped nauseatingly. I was almost completely positive that Rudy hadn’t pranked me. Why would he? That didn’t change the fact that the shaving cream in my locker was the same as the one on the cupcakes—and I only knew one person for sure that touched the shaving cream.
I pushed the thought out of my head. She wouldn’t have done that to me, would she?
I didn’t give myself a chance to actually think about the question before telling myself no, she absolutely would not have. Not because she was nice or loyal or any of that. But because she had no reason to.
“Chris and Gary make a lot of noise, but Rudy’s the one you really have to watch out for,” Macy said, nodding sagely. “It’s always the quiet ones who do the most extreme things.”
Joan smirked and Macy nodded at her. “Case in point,” she said.
Worry about Gary—and Julianne, if she were to get caught—occupied most of the space between classes. I’d never seen someone throw up as quickly as he did. And, where Julianne was concerned, well, if she got caught, I knew I’d somehow find my ass on the line, too, even though I had nothing to do with her stupid prank. But guilt by association was just as real a thing as getting thrown under the bus by your friends.
I only kept half an eye out for Rudy. I didn’t really want to see him until I could talk to him openly. I was sure that he would be furious with me. Even if he didn’t think that I’d put the shaving cream on the muffins, he would assume that Julianne exacted revenge because of what his brothers did to me. And maybe he’d think I’d signed off on it. Which wasn’t the case. Pissed as I was, I was over trying to get back at them. The truth however, was that his brothers couldn’t possibly think they could do something like that without getting hit back, could they?
I just wished it hadn’t been Gary. He could dish it out as good as Chris could, but he never seemed to instigate anything. He always looked just a little bit lost and only seemed to find himself when he was doing things with his brothers. Granted, those things were usually at my clique’s expense, but only at school. He, like the others, seemed to be a whole different person at home. Well, not completely different. Gary still did all the same things his brothers did, they just also did different things that he wasn’t involved in.
Nothing could break me out of my preoccupied haze until I reached for my gym clothes and touched nothing but cold steel. Frowning, I got up on my tiptoes and peeked up over the rim. My entire gym locker was empty. My shoes, shorts, tank top, sports bra, underwear and even my tampons were missing.
I went to look for Ms. Roach but before I made it to her office a disruption outside caught my attention. It sounded like a comedy club out there and every time the locker room door opened another voice contributed to the uproarious laughter.
A sick feeling twisted in the pit of my stomach. I told myself it was just a coincidence, but I couldn’t really make myself believe it. Apprehensive, I trudged out the door, quietly and carefully.
As soon as I was out in the open, my annoyance rose.
“Damn it,” I growled between my teeth. “Gotta give them points for creativity, I guess.”
My gym clothes were flying from the flagpole, along with my underwear and a huge poster of my face drenched in red paint. Or at least, I hoped it was just paint. Someone had unwrapped all of my tampons, dipped those in paint too, and tied them like a fringe around the edges of the poster. A gust of wind made my grungy workout panties flap in the breeze and, yep, they’d painted those too.
I backed into the locker room before anybody
noticed me. After three steps in, I collided with Julianne and Macy, dressed to the nines in their tennis outfits, their hairs newly brushed.
“Kennedy! Why aren’t you dressed? You’re going to be late! Come on, I’m sure you can run in those anyway. You lose more points for being late than you do for being out of dress, trust me, I know.”
Before I could object, they had linked elbows with me and were walking me back out the door.
“What’s all this?” Julianne asked loudly.
Some of the crowd turned at the sound of her voice, saw me, and started hollering. My cheeks blazed and my eyes burned.
I didn’t want to struggle to get out of Julianne and Macy’s grip, since I knew any reaction at all would only draw more ridicule. So instead, I stared up at my tank top, flashing its now-permanent sweat stains proudly in the breeze.
“Oh my God, Kennedy!” Macy’s shrill shriek drew the remainder of the attention toward us.
I kept my eyes fixed on the shirt, doing what I could to block out the sounds of their laughter. This was beyond humiliating. I comforted myself with thoughts of wringing Chris’ skinny little neck. It could have been any of the enemies I’d unknowingly racked up in the past few days, but there was no doubt in my mind that he was responsible. Something about this just screamed Chris.
Teachers came to break up the party, dragging reluctant athletes to their various disciplines. Julianne and Macy made sympathetic noises at me before disappearing along with the other white-clad tennis players.
Ms. Roach was still nowhere to be seen, but the runners filed to the track sporadically anyway. Eventually it was just me, Rudy, and the horrible display at the top of the flagpole.
It was too public. I didn’t care.
“Is Gary okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. Just grossed out. Kid’s got no gag control at all. Are you okay?” He did me a favor by looking at me instead of the flagpole and in that moment I thought I might love him for that alone.
“Yeah. Just grossed out,” I said with a self-deprecating little smile. “Looks like the war’s back on, huh?”
Them Seymore Boys: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 1) Page 20
