What? His words sting. I take a giant step back, my cheeks and expression fiery. Behind him, my road stretches like a dirty mark on the ground. All around us, houses crumble. The poorly mowed golf course across the street hasn’t seen good business since I was twelve. If he’s come here to make me feel even more like shit, he’s done it.
I jab a finger at him. “Whatever, Jack. Go back to whatever ultra-landscaped neighborhood you live in. Leave the slums to those of us who’re used to them.”
Jack’s expression turns confused, then, un-fucking-believably, his lips curl up in amusement. What an asshole.
I whirl in the direction of my front door, to get away from him. But his fingers wrap around my arm. “Let me go,” I growl.
“Wait. You don’t understand,” he says through his half smile. “And I still don’t know your name.”
“No.” I wrench my arm free. “You don’t.”
In the distance, headlights flash. Shit! I take off running, knowing if I don’t get inside before my stepdad gets home, tonight will end much worse than it already has.
• • •
Monday morning, I wake thinking for the hundredth time how Jack was like a whacked-out dream. It’s totally strange that he showed up in the middle of the night. In my yard. Next to me. Then he pretends to be all sweet and gentle before he morphs into a dick again.
I’ll just need to stay away from him and remember he’s a walking mug shot. Destined for ten to life in some maximum security prison. And since I have a crap-load to deal with today, and every day, future convicts can’t be on my to-do list.
My stomach churns fiercely. It hasn’t stopped hurting since Saturday night. Sunday was a total wash. I woke up not wanting to deal with anything. Somehow, I hauled myself to work the Sunday brunch shift at the diner and then came home, not getting out of bed for the rest of the day.
I want to hide away today, too, but skipping school is not an option. I’d just get behind on my classwork. So I shower, put on makeup, blow-dry my hair as fast as I can. I want to get to school way early so I won’t have to see anyone—not my parents, not Seth, definitely not Ty Blevens, not even Juliette—before I absolutely have to.
I head to my Civic, keys jangling in my fingers, but stop cold in the driveway. My stepdad is already in his gray work van, his driver-side door open, classic rock belting from the radio. Across his mud-stained jeans rests a dirty metal file box filled with today’s schedule and invoices—a lawn sprinkler installer’s briefcase.
He looks up. Dark circles sit below his eyes. His face sags. “Feeling better?” he asks.
“Yep,” I lie.
He nods. “Busy day for you today?” With all the alcohol out of his system, he’s back to being kinder.
“I’ve been invited to lunch with the principal.” I don’t tell him I’m lunching by proxy with Seth and his teammates.
The trace of a smile flits across his weathered features. “That’s good,” he says. “If he likes you and all, you should let that principal know who your mom is.”
“He knows.”
“Right.” He nods. Sits silent. Classic rock on the radio hovers between us. “So where did you go Saturday night?” He doesn’t sound angry. Just exhausted.
“To visit a friend,” I say.
He casts dark eyes down at his dirty pants. “I yelled after you while you were leaving to find out where you were headed. And then your mom woke up and got worried that you’d left.” He doesn’t look up. “I called your cell, but you didn’t answer, so I went to look for you. Drove around for a long while but couldn’t find you.” He looks up at me.
Is he trying to make me feel guilty? Because it works.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“Me too.” And his tone is so sincere that I stare hard at him, to confirm I’m hearing him right. “I mean it, Tessa.” Beneath the wild beard and mustache, the gruffness of his face softens. And all I want to do is hug him. Or better yet, have him hug me.
Instead, he opens his mouth like he’s going to say more, but just sighs. “We’re out of milk, Tess. Will you get more on your way home from school? I’ll pay you back.”
I nod.
“Thanks.” And he closes the car door between us.
• • •
I’m hypercautious as I walk through school. Avoid the hallways that I know Seth strides through, the ones Juliette takes to class. My eyes dart around.
I don’t know what Ty has told people. If he’s shared my secrets through school. I watch every muscle in every face, try to read lips, wonder what’s been said, who knows what. I try to determine if people are sickened, disgusted, amused, suspicious. It’s hard to tell. All the looks blur together.
But as I walk to third hour, social science, I still haven’t been teased, spit at, or called a whore. The miracle of Ty keeping silent might actually have happened.
At the classroom door, Seth startles me, slipping his hand around my hip and pressing me to the wall with a solid kiss. So he can’t possibly know I’ve cheated.
“I missed you this weekend,” he says with a lusty smile.
I take shallow breaths, marvel at how he’s made of handsomeness, strong muscle, and goodness.
“Ready for the team lunch with the principal today?”
“Should be fun.”
“I’ll come get you and walk you to the lounge where we’re eating.” Before I can respond, he kisses me again, then disappears into the sea of people rushing to class.
My third hour is full of popular kids, including Seth’s ex, Simone. From her seat across the room, she gives me a stony look as I sit down. When Ty walks into class, I avoid eye contact. He takes his usual seat behind me. I don’t turn around, don’t talk to him. All hour, his stare pierces my back like a long, hot needle. I should talk to him, beg him not to say anything. But my shame is too big. The fear of him making a scene and shouting what he knows is crippling.
When the bell rings, I am up and out, shooting into the hallway, heading to my locker. Until Ty’s massive hand clamps over my wrist.
“I need to talk to you.” His breath is sauna-like against my ear.
He drags me through a stream of students. Eyes look. Feet falter as we pass. He turns us down a dead-end hallway, pulls me into the boys’ bathroom. It’s empty, the door shutting us in.
I hate being dragged, but Ty Blevens is to the Pineville basketball team what Seth is to the football team. Popular. Powerful. I wait for him to speak. Take in his small, sunken eyes, his gelled hair cut short on the sides but with scraggled curls dangling against his forehead. He produces a wicked smile, his rubbery-looking lips pushing toward his high cheekbones. He’s thin, athletically gangly, but his front teeth are huge. Like his hands. And feet. And reputation.
“Here’s the deal, Tessa,” he says, all calm. “I don’t think you want people to know what I know about you. Right?”
I nod, tongue frozen, heart slowed to almost stopping.
“Right,” he says. “So I won’t say a thing. But only if you do something very important for me.” He scrounges in his messenger bag. I almost expect him to whip out a condom, and the thought of being forced to have sex with him is sickening. But when he pulls his hand from the bag, he’s holding a plastic baggie.
“I do a little business to make some extra income.” He licks his lips. “But with basketball practice and the part-time job my dad made me get—which, by the way, pays for jack shit—I can’t service my clients as often as I want.”
He grabs my hand, shoves the baggie into my palm. It’s a hodgepodge of drugs—small green pills, weed, jagged white balls. I stare at it like I’m holding a coiled rattlesnake. I’ve never held drugs, never taken them. I’m sure there’s been weed in my house. I’ve smelled it seeping like a clear mist from the garage. But that’s my stepdad. If the cops ever come, they’ll come for hi
m. Not me. But now the drugs are in my hand.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” My voice is shallow and thin.
He points at the bag. “It’s a good amount of Oxycontin. A couple of crack balls, and I’ve slipped in enough weed for a weekend.” He pulls out a pen and a ripped piece of paper from his bag, writes on it against the white tiled wall, then hands me the paper. “Deliver it here. Thursday night.”
I swallow hard. The address is in Hallend, about twenty minutes away, where many of my other secrets lie. It’s not in the worst suburb, but I imagine some window-cracked drug house like the ones in Detroit, the druggies melted into grimy corners and sleeping on trash.
I can’t do this.
I glance at Ty’s face, too close to mine. I consider the alternative. Have to decide which is worse. Ty blabbing about me to everyone or becoming a criminal.
The warning bell for class rings. “Make sure you get an envelope of cash from them. They know how much. Any questions before you head out?” Ty asks with a slight smile. He knows my choice even before I do.
I shake my head. My hands holding the baggie and the address shake just as hard.
Ty winks before he leaves.
• • •
The hallways are clear when I walk out of the bathroom. I’ve tucked the drugs into my sweater pocket, and coupled with being late for class, my heart is racing so hard, it hurts. I’m never late for class. But I’ll tell the teacher I feel nauseated, say I was in the bathroom. That’s all truth.
Heading to my locker so I don’t have to carry illegal substances to algebra, I hear Jack before I actually see him. I’m surprised he’s still in school, that he didn’t get suspended for what he, Sam, and Carver did at the football game.
“Wait until I go long!” His lean body whips around the corner and comes flying at me. “Okay. Throw it!”
I catch a glimpse of Sam chucking something brown just as Jack’s body crashes against me like a cannonball. My butt hits the hard floor as Jack reaches for me. But he’s moving too fast and falls onto me instead, his chest and legs pinning me to the ground.
“Shit,” I mutter, shocked. I open my eyes. Jack presses into me. His cedary-pine scent covers both of us like a tent. I expect him to move off me, but he’s not moving, his warm breath tickling my nose. And I remember quickly that I’ve got drugs in my pocket, that I’m late for class, that this position we’re in looks like dry humping in the middle of the school hallway.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask.
He sucks in a breath, snaps out of whatever daze he’s in, and pulls a pencil and pad of sticky notes from his back jeans pocket. His arms move past my head, his biceps peeking out from his T-shirt sleeves and flexing near my face as he writes something against the floor by my scalp. In this position, I can see the tattoo on his neck, an inch from my lips: MUNDUS VULT DECIPI.
“Um, Jack?” Sam walks toward us. He raises a light brown eyebrow when he sees Jack on top of me.
“Didn’t work, Sammy.” Jack’s deep voice vibrates through me. “Go on back and throw the next one.”
Sam nods, then gives us an amused look before walking away.
Jack peels the sticky note from the pad and presses it gently against my shoulder. I blink at him, confused. He flashes me that same smug, overly confident smile he had at the football game last Friday, then pulls all his warm heaviness off me and stands. He picks up what Sam threw, a paper bag bound at the top by a twist tie, and bolts down the hall.
“All right! Throw it!” he hollers to Sam at the end of the hall.
Sam whips a balloon filled with some kind of liquid. I get ready to move away, but the balloon sails just a few feet before bursting in the air, covering the area with a frothy blue foam.
Jack shakes his head. “Too heavy. Won’t make the distance.” He jots something on his sticky-note pad.
I’m totally bewildered, so I just sit, watching.
Until Jack calls, “All right, do the last one! And make it work, Sammy!”
I scramble up as Sam chucks a ziplock bag filled with the same frothy fluid. But I’m sure I’m still in the blast zone at it comes closer.
Oh, shit! I put my hands over my head. The ziplock detonates on impact. Foamy liquid splashes the lockers, the ceiling, the floor around me, and then I see the drug-filled baggie several feet away from me. It must have slipped from my pocket during the fall. I grab it, shoving it back into my sweater pocket, then look up to see who saw.
But Jack is giving a thumbs-up as Sam runs toward him. “Cheap plastic bag wins,” Jack says to him. “If you ever choose to use it, any neighbor who complains about your loud music or your speeding will never know what hit them.”
Sam laughs while Jack makes more notes, smiling and satisfied.
I take in the pathetic, foamy mess before watching Jack and Sam skirt around the corner and out of sight. Alone again in the hall, I pull the sticky note from my shoulder.
I’m in the middle of an important experiment.
No time now.
I-O-U
One (1) Apology
Jack
And I actually laugh. I can’t help it. It’s the last thing I expected. All I can think is that one thing’s for sure—Jack S. Dalton’s middle initial stands for anything but “sane.”
• • •
Toward the end of my Wednesday-night shift at the family diner, my anxiety over my impending drug deal has skyrocketed. And I’m worried Ty will still break his promise and tell everyone about seeing me with another guy at Coffee Haven.
Monday’s lunch with the principal and team didn’t help my nerves any since team also meant cheerleaders and lots of nasty looks from Simone, who obviously thought I shouldn’t have been invited. So it sucks when she and four of her friends show up at the restaurant, piling into a booth for some fries, gossiping, and, apparently, some swift verbal kicks at me.
“Nice outfit,” Meghan Vallertas says as I bring over menus. I try not to glance down at my faded burgundy dress with the built-in white apron probably worn by five white-trash girls hired and fired before me. I hold a menu out to Simone, sitting in a chair at the head of the booth. She grabs it, her French manicure emphasizing the amazing light brown of her skin.
“Seriously,” Meghan says, “that uniform is very poverty-line chic.”
“Her grandmother owns Leighton Custom Homes,” Simone blurts, opening the menu without looking at me.
The table stills with surprise. But I might be more surprised than any of them. She could only know who my grandmother is because Seth told her, most likely during some private conversation on the team bus.
“Why the hell is she working here, then?” Meghan asks, their gossipy convo rolling as if I’m not even standing there.
Simone shrugs.
Annoyed, I walk away and head to the drink station to get their waters, wishing I could run right the hell out of here. But Christos, my fifty-five-year-old Greek boss, stalks up, his big gut getting to me before the rest of him. He hands me my paycheck and some advice. “You’re a good worker, Tessa. But you need to smile more.” He actually points over at Simone’s table. I get a quick vision of her and all her friends as birds of prey, waiting for the right moment to eat me alive. “No one likes to eat without a smile,” Christos says.
“Yes, sir.” I force a smile, which quickly disappears as I look at what I’ve earned in the past week—$97.02. It’s another reminder that I’ll never be able to pay for college on my own. Not without my grandmother’s help.
By the time I return to Simone’s table, my foul mood is off the charts. I try not to slam the waters on the table as I set them down.
“Where did you say you got that sweater?” Meghan asks Simone, all loud and like she’s reading from a cue card. I can feel the girls’ eyes skirt to me. I pretend not to look at the oversized heather-gray
sweater draping Simone’s small body. Instead, I slip my serving tray under my arm and pull out an order pad and a pen.
A smile flits across Simone’s face. “Seth gave it to me to wear on the last bus trip since I was cold.” She fingers the thick hem. “I’m sure his aunt bought it for him. She’s so sweet. But since he was, like, five, wool like this has made him all red on his arms and chest if he wears it too long.”
I stand frozen for a second, feeling hit in the head and gut. Not because Seth gave Simone this sweater. Seth is so nice, he’d give it to anyone who’s cold. But because Simone knows this little fact about him. It’s nothing and huge at the same time. He might have told her while they were shopping together. Or peeling clothes off together. Or he mentioned it while they were staring eye to eye, talking. I mean, really talking.
I clear my throat, holding my pen over the order pad. “So, what would you all like to order?”
Simone glares at me. “Let me ask you a question first, Tessa,” she says, her tone like ice bullets. “Why you? Why, of all the girls Seth could have at Pineville High, did he choose you? I mean, did your grandma promise him a Ferrari if he dated you? Or maybe”—her head cocks on her long neck—“you just put out really quick?”
I turn rigid. Almost drop my tray. Wonder if Ty told Simone, of all people, what he saw me doing. If he hasn’t, then, really, what Seth and I do is none of her business. So I flip it around and challenge her. “The real question is why isn’t he with you anymore?”
Simone picks up her water, splashing some against the table. “You’ll have to ask your. Boyfriend.”
A wave of emotion rolls through her cheeks, her tiny nose, all the way up to her sleek black curls. She is Hollywood-beautiful and way popular. And clearly, after this exchange, I know she still likes Seth. A lot. So I should find out, the next time we’re actually alone, away from his friends, why he’d walk away from her for someone like me.
• • •
On Thursday morning, I’m a freaking wreck and wondering if maybe I should just turn myself in even before I actually commit a crime.
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