The room falls silent when the front door slams. I look up to find Molly standing right in front of us. Her strawberry-blond hair brushes my shoulder when she glances from me to Kat, her smile frozen in place.
“Kat, you should share Preston’s scriptures,” she says with fake sweetness. “Or mine. Here, you can share mine.”
She puts her leather-bound scriptures in my physics partner’s lap and drags a chair between Kat and me.
Preston gets up from the piano, hits my shoulder with his fist and takes the seat on the other side of Kat, who whispers something into Molly’s ear. My face heats up. What if my physics partner tells my “almost girlfriend” about the kiss before I do? Molly will feel betrayed, and it will be my fault. I thumb through my book with shaking fingers.
“I missed you,” Molly says, grabbing my hand.
Brother Parker drones on about Preston’s Eagle Scout project, begging us to donate our time to build fences at Bull Run Park.
Molly pushes her leg against mine and runs her fingers up my arm. “Pookie and I will be there,” she says without consulting me.
I cringe at the horrible nickname and pull my arm away, but that turns out to be a bad idea because she moves her free hand to my hair. Biting back unkind words, I try to think of a way to disentangle myself. But before I can do anything, Kat hands Molly her scriptures and heads for the door.
When Kat leaves, the good air in the room leaves with her. My instincts scream that I should chase her down and beg her to stay, but I don’t trust them with Molly by my side.
The next time I see Kat we’re in physics, where she buries her nose in the paper we worked on last week. If she’d tried this hard to ignore me the first week, my wall of books would have been irrelevant.
My eyes move to her fingers as they skim down our supply list, the same fingers that touched my cheek when we kissed.
“What do you think, Quinn?”
I glance up. Molly has turned around and is holding a planner and pen in the palm of her hand, which reminds me how the girl hasn’t left me alone all day. From the moment we got to school until physics class she’s clung to my waist like an over-tightened belt. I’m dying for space.
“I’m sorry, what’s that?” I ask.
“About taking me to breakfast before Preston’s thing on Saturday,” she says, scooting her chair as close to our table as humanly possible.
I feel a current of static when Kat’s fingers land on my knee. For a second I think it’s an accident, but then she squeezes it with the gentlest of pressure.
My face flushes.
“Molly, please, can we talk about this later?” I say, unable to think of anything but my partner’s hand on my knee.
Molly shuts the planner, and faces front.
I look at Kat. Our eyes lock. For a second I think she’s going to say something, but all she does is take her hand off my knee and glance away.
When I spend time with Kat, I feel free, like I can let go. Then there’s Molly, who has the kindest heart and the best intentions, but who clings to me like a drowning person, dragging me down until I can’t breathe. As much as I hate the thought of hurting her, I glance at Molly and know it’s over. What’s sad is the whole thing felt rushed to begin with. Less than a week after I kissed her, she was talking about marriage. A part of me knew we were doomed from the start. Too bad that won’t make telling her any easier.
I take Molly into the empty orchestra room after school. She pulls her long hair out of her Alligator clip and lets it cascade around her shoulders the way I like it. The smile on her face could light up a city.
Quinn, you’re a monster.
“Um … Molly.” I clear my throat. “I need to talk to you.”
“Is it breakfast?” she asks. “Because I love Denny’s, and they have really good biscuits and gravy. We should go before Preston’s thing.”
She’s not going to make this easy. I dig my nails into the straps of my backpack because Molly’s a wonderful girl, and I’m a jerk for breaking her heart. This. Is. Torture.
Think of it as a bandage. The faster you do it, the less it will hurt. “Molly, I feel smothered,” I say.
She blinks. “You don’t like it when I touch you?”
“Our phone calls kind of, um, exhaust me. Which isn’t your fault, it’s just with Elijah and my schedule—”
“You don’t like talking to me?” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
“No, it’s not that,” I say, putting my palms up in defense. “Of course I like talking to you. There are just some things I’d rather not think about yet, like marriage and children. I mean, naming kids seems a tad premature, don’t you think?”
My voice has gone up into that touchy range I use to plead with my mom when she’s upset.
“But Quinn, you’re the one. I know it in here.” Her eyes mist up as she points to her heart. “Why wait when I know? Why wait when I love you?”
No … no … no, no, no! She did not just use the L word.
“Molly.” I sigh, feeling hopeless. My shoulders slump. I must look depressed, because she takes a step forward and puts her arms around my waist.
“It’s okay. I forgive you, Pookie.”
Forgive me? I haven’t even broken up with you yet.
Her fingers make soothing circles on my back. At least, they would be soothing if I weren’t sick and tired of running into her every time I turn around, of feeling her fingers anchored to my belt loops each time I take a step forward, of hearing her call me by the most emasculating pet name ever.
“You don’t have to say it yet,” she purrs. “I know it’s a really big step.”
She doesn’t get it! I shut my eyes and remember how free I felt when I was kissing Kat. How she stood up to her father for me, her bravery in coming to seminary. There’s only one girl I want to be with, and if she can stand up to her Pastor father, I can stand up to Molly.
“This isn’t working,” I say.
Molly pulls back and puts a hand over her mouth. Her face scrunches up, tears gush from the corners of her eyes.
“You’re giving me a breakup speech?” she rasps.
Now I’ve done it. I’ve run over Bambi.
“Please, don’t cry,” I plead, feeling frantic. “There’s nothing wrong with you, I swear. A better man would appreciate the great person you are, how kind and pretty and wonderful and perfect.”
“Another man, not you,” she sobs.
“Please, Molly.”
She reminds me of my mother when she cries. So I reach out to hug her, wanting to ease the pain etched across her face. But my “almost girlfriend,” who used to by my closest pal, doesn’t want anything to do with me now. She recoils and grabs her bag, leaving so fast I’m left to stare at the brown double doors.
30
Katarina
Quinn looped his arm around Molly’s waist as they walked down the hall after school. They went into an empty classroom just before I headed out to the parking lot. And while part of me isn’t surprised he chose her over me, the other part is pissed. Taking the highroad sucks. So what if I wanted him to pick me on his own. I should’ve told him to dump Molly when I had the chance. I didn’t wake up at five in the morning and risk another stupid lecture from my father to watch that redhead mark her territory.
After school, I drive to John’s house to work on my vlog. My hands shake as I set up the tripod and attach the camera. Damn. Since when do I let boys get to me? I pull a satin scarf from my purse and drape it over the back of a chair. John is playing the piano in the other room.
“It’s time,” I call out to him.
The music stops. He comes to lean against the door frame. His tall silhouette takes up the entire entrance.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod.
The thing about vloging is that it has a way of clearing my head. The parent drama and the friend drama and the boy drama take a backseat to talking about which hair products to apply, which straighten
ing irons work and which steps to take in wearing different styles. My friends all know this is my personal time. They’re not to intrude while I work on my vlog. So when the doorbell rings fifteen minutes into my demonstration, I want to rip into whoever’s interrupting us.
But as soon as I fling the door open, I can’t. Tasha’s standing there with her eyes on the ground, a box in her hand and a bandage on her nose. For more than a week she’s been freezing me out.
“Are you here to see John?” I ask.
“No,” she mumbles. “I’ve come to apologize.”
I motion for John to leave. Tasha steps inside.
“If anyone’s sorry, it’s me,” I tell her. “You’re the one with the broken nose.”
“Mike talked to me,” she says, finally looking into my face. Funny, I haven’t seen her eyes in so long I’d forgotten they were blue.
“He told me about the car wreck you almost got into the night you hit me. Honey, you must have been so shaken up. I’m sorry for being a bitch!”
Car wreck. What car wreck? The phone in my pocket vibrates. Speaking of the devil! It doesn’t matter how many times I change my number, Mike always finds a way to track it down.
“Hold on a sec.” I open the front door and throw my phone into the bushes. “You were saying.”
“If I realized you two were still dating, I never would’ve gone after him.”
“We weren’t.”
“But you are now.”
I shake my head. “No, we’re not.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Kat. He used to be my boyfriend, remember? I know how it works. This is part of his cycle. Things get tense, he does something he shouldn’t. Then he reforms and everything goes back to normal.”
“We’re broken up.”
“That’s not what he says. Everyone has arguments. You should give him another chance. Oh, and this is from him.” She hands me the box in her hand. “Whatever he did, you should forgive him.”
I am floored, floored. Tasha is my one true girlfriend and having her back is a dream come true. The lies Mike told her make me feel sick. I open my mouth to tell her there was no “almost” car wreck, but she hugs me until the words disappear. Crap. What can I say now? If I tell her the truth, she’ll get angry again.
“Mike and I aren’t a couple.”
She pulls back and winks. “Sure you’re not. You punched me in the nose for fun. Not because you care about Mike.”
Damn, I’ve gotten myself into a mess. Maybe if I change the subject, she’ll talk about something else. I lower my voice.
“Get ready to lose your laptop.”
“Tsk, tsk … if I do, Mike will kill you.”
My wrist throbs with phantom pain where my ex’s nails cut into it last week. What has he been telling people about his suspension? What lies has he spread to save his reputation? Until last Monday, I thought I could handle him, that no matter how incensed he got, he’d never actually hurt me. Now I’m not so sure.
Tasha laughs at her own joke. “Where’s your sense of humor, Jackson?”
This is the moment when I should tell her that Mike injured me and show her the pink half moons on my wrist. I should make her promise to stay away from him. But I can’t, because if I do, she’ll know I let Mike hurt and insult me.
“Nice scarf,” she teases, touching the satin fabric I’ve tied around my hair. “I don’t think grey is your color, though.”
“I think it suits her,” John says, appearing beside me. I feel his warm arm rest across my shoulders. “Ready to finish your vlog?”
An hour later, after Tasha’s long gone and the vlog is done, John speaks up.
“Mike is bad for you,” he says.
“But I thought you liked him.” I unhook my camera from the computer and start winding the cord around my hand.
“He’s arrogant.”
“At the beginning of the year, you said we should date.” I tuck the chord into the camera case.
“What I meant was that you should go for available guys instead of setting your sights on someone impossible to catch.”
“Quinn Walker,” I say.
My throat goes dry. Even saying his name gives me goose bumps. I drop my eyes to the camera, snap the lenscap on, take out the battery and tuck it into the case.
“You’re not with him, are you?”
“Who, Quinn?” Uh … I wish! I zip up my fully loaded camera case and stuff it into my backpack.
“No, Mike,” he says.
“We’re not together.”
His eyes slide to the unopened box on the desk. “He still buys you presents.”
I snatch it up, open the box and find a velvet one inside, long and thin like the kind you buy at a jewelry stores. Suddenly I have this bizarre image in my head of Mike brushing aside my hair and blowing into my ear as he puts a diamond collar around my neck. When I glance at it in the mirror it says “Property of Mike Duvall,” and when I move away from him, the collar tightens until I’m forced to come back.
The sound of John snapping his fingers pulls me out of my thoughts.
“What is it?” he asks, looking over my shoulder at the gift.
“A bracelet,” I say, holding it up.
Delicate golden catches the light. When I lay it over the skin of my arm, the contrast makes me look exotic. Despite its beauty, the gift feels wrong. There’s a note in the box: I never meant to hurt you, Alley Kat. You know how hard it is for me to apologize. The fact that I’m writing this note is a huge deal. Please forgive me. I need you.
It’s the sorriest excuse for an apology I’ve ever read. And the bracelet, though striking, only disgusts me. The last time I spoke to him, he called me a slut. Now he acts like he can pay for my forgiveness. Guilt jewelry. My first impulse is to throw it out. Except if I do that, I can’t hurl it in his face.
“Are you sure you can handle Mike?” John asks.
The answer is no, but I’m not about to tell that to my friend. Admitting I’m worried won’t solve my problems. If anything, it’ll make me feel like a whining child and make John uncomfortable. Besides, I’m smart enough to figure this out on my own.
“Any hot chicks in your life these days?”I ask, changing the subject.
He shrugs.
“There’s Tasha.”
“I’d rather have a girl who can think for herself,” he says. “Mike treats Tasha like a windup doll. Worse.” He frowns. “She lets him.”
I put my hands on my hips. “So spill. What do you want in this girl?”
“She has to be soft and strong at the same time.”
“Your dream girl is a roll of toilet paper?”
He laughs and hits me with a pillow. “Someone smart who knows what she wants, but isn’t too into herself.”
I sigh. “And of course, she’ll have to be pretty.”
“That goes without saying. I don’t date ugly.”
“Guys are so shallow.”
“You’re one to talk. Mike Duvall was your first. Don’t tell me you were attracted by his warm and caring personality.”
I think back to the first time I really noticed my ex.
My brother and I had gone to a party at one of his friend’s houses. When the two of us arrived, my brother found his girlfriend and left me standing against a wall, sandwiched between a bowl of Doritos and the blaring base of a loud speaker.
Hours passed while I stood there eating chip after chip, watching as his basketball friends talked over and around me. They laughed at inside jokes, talked about Roland’s tag-along sister right where I could hear them and treated me like the invisible girl until I had to look at my orange hands for proof of my existence.
Then it happened. One moment I was licking yellow cheese powder from my fingers and the next my handsome neighbor was standing in front of me.
“You look really pretty tonight, Kat,” he said. “Would you like to dance?”
“Sure,” I said, wiping my hands on a napkin. The thought of him noticing my st
icky fingers was mortifying. Thankfully he didn’t point them out. Instead he took me to the center of the room where I went from invisible to the focal point of the gathering and was showered with compliments for the way I moved.
Mike saved me. He was there when I needed him. Was it so unbelievable that I liked him for more than his looks?
The sound of John tapping his shoe on the floor startles me out of my thoughts.
“Mike can be sweet,” I say.
He snorts. “Yeah, when he wants something.”
Even though John is probably right, I don’t want to admit it yet. Not when admitting it means Mike was only nice to get into my pants. Groaning, I put the bracelet back in the box and snap it shut.
“I should probably go.”
On the way home I drive by Quinn’s house. It may be stalkerish, but I can’t resist. His car is in the driveway and the blinds are open. I know better than to stop and knock.
When I get home, I find a dozen red roses and six white lilies in a vase on the kitchen table. Guilt flowers. I grab them by the stems and throw them in the trash. The note in the roses falls to the floor.
For my Alley Kat. Good lord, I’m going to be sick.
It’s quiet when I climb the stairs to my bedroom. My father has left another book on my bed. The God Makers has a picture of a Mormon temple on the front. Whatever. I put it on my nightstand with five other books my father has left me in the past week. I started reading one of them last night, a novel in verse about a girl who escapes her oppressive Mormon upbringing—where the characters are all non-thinking sheep who act nothing like Molly or Preston or Quinn. Where the seminary teacher won’t answer hard questions and would probably die of shock if he were ever forced to sit in Brother Parker’s class. And where the abuse of the protagonist’s father is condoned by the Mormon community. When I get to that part, I think of Quinn and how he risked expulsion to keep me safe.
My hand goes to the telephone on my nightstand. Would Quinn blow me off if I told him about Mike’s flowers and gifts, the constant phone calls, the visit from Tasha and my inability to handle my ex? Or would he listen and help me come up with a plan? I’m about to call him when I remember how he put his arm around Molly after school. Jealousy twists my stomach.
Chaste Page 16
