Altered

by Kimberly Montague

  He stared me down appraisingly before leaning even closer to me. "You don’t believe me?" His eyes narrowed, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a cocky grin.

  "No, I don’t," I admitted, mimicking his position.

  After a short staring contest, he laughed and reached into his backpack. I was surprised to see him take out a neat folder with some football player on the cover. He pulled out a hand-written essay on several pages of lined paper and tossed it in front of me. He leaned forward until his face was inches from mine. "Checkmate," he said before smiling and leaning back in his seat.

  I raised an eyebrow at him before turning my complete attention to his essay. Several sentences in, I realized the guy could write. He had some grammatical errors and some sentences that he must have rushed through, but it was good. When I was done reading it, I reluctantly admitted to myself that it wasn’t just good, it was really good.

  "I can edit this for you," I offered. "So you can just start typing it. It’ll go faster for you."

  "I’m not going to type it." He stared out the window.

  "But—" I stared down at the essay and at how much work he had already put into it. It seemed such a shame. "You automatically drop to a 'C' if you don’t type it."

  "I don’t have time, Evie." He wasn’t whining or complaining, he was matter-of-fact in his acceptance that this was the best he could get done in the time he had. "It’s that or sleep. I like sleep. I like sleep more than I like A’s."

  "What if I type it for you?"

  He shook his head with a small smile perched on his perfect lips. "I wouldn’t ask you to do that."

  "I know." I took his papers and tapped them against the table straightening the pile. "You didn’t ask. I offered."

  "No." His voice was firm, and his eyes were a steely blue. "It wouldn’t be right."

  "Why not? I’m your tutor. I’m supposed to help you. You clearly don’t need help writing it, so I can at least help by typing it. I type pretty fast, it won’t take me long." I pulled a folder out of my backpack and slid the papers into it.

  "No, it feels like I’m taking advantage of you."

  I put the folder into my backpack before he could stop me. "Now you have no choice." He stared me down for a minute or two before realizing I could stare back.

  He chuckled drawing my attention to his Adam's apple. "You’re stubborn."

  I grinned at him. "You have no idea."

  "What can I do to repay you?" His eyes were back to sparkling at me. "How about a movie this weekend?"

  "Yeah, that would go over real well." I could just see Jay’s angry red face as I told him I was going to the movies with Devlin.

  "Tell Jay you’re tutoring," he suggested.

  "I can’t. You know I can’t."

  "I know." His voice was so small and pitiful as he leaned back in his chair and gazed out the window again. He was squinting even though the light filtering in wasn't bright. "Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?"

  Dropping my eyes back to the table, I twirled my pencil between my fingers—a nervous habit I picked up from Sonya. "It’s just complicated."

  The giggles from the table of girls drew my attention as they flipped through a magazine. It was probably some teen magazine with Justin Bieber on the cover or something silly like that. The contrast between their giggles and my life seemed so severe at that moment. I couldn’t help but wonder what I would be doing if everything weighing down on my shoulders disappeared. I couldn’t help but wonder what I would be able to do if I could be some carefree teen thinking about celebrity crushes and giggling superficially over a smile from the captain of the football team.

  I thought about his question and gave him the most honest answer I could. "Everyone makes it worse. I can’t wait to hear what the gossipers have to say about us being here together—alone."

  He threw his arm over the back of his chair. "Who cares what they say? You’re with Jay, and you’re friends with me. There’s nothing wrong with being friends, is there?"

  The way my heart jumped around over his cocked eyebrow, intense blue eyes, and crooked grin told me "friends" was a bad idea. I sighed. "Devlin—"

  "What? We can’t be friends? Just friends, I swear." He crossed his heart and stuck two fingers up in the air before leaning forward on the table again. "Come on. Please? Pretty please? Pretty, pretty please?" With his head tilted, he batted his eyelashes and stuck out his full bottom lip in a completely pathetic face that would have been really immature if it wasn’t so freaking cute.

  "Okay, okay." Maybe I could have said no if I’d been able to keep my mind on Jay, but he was too cute and sweet, and I couldn’t stop myself from admitting how much I wanted to be around this craziness he set off in me. "You’ve really perfected the pouty face."

  "That’s what momma always says." He grinned widely, scrunching his eyes like a complete dork.

  I reached into my backpack to dig out my cell phone. "I have to call Jay and let him know I’m done."

  "I can give you a ride," he volunteered quickly. At my raised eyebrows he added, "I mean, we’re friends right? A friend can give you a ride home, right?"

  "I don’t know." Jay was expecting me to call him for a ride. What kind of reaction would I get when I walked through the door and told him Devlin gave me a ride, and Devlin was who I was tutoring? I groaned loudly, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand.

  "Come on? Let me do something for you." He was back to looking pathetic with that pouty face again.

  I rolled my eyes in defeat. "Okay, you can give me a ride."

  He quickly jumped up, grabbing his bag, and started walking toward the door. "You coming slow poke? It’s a good thing you don’t run sprints for our track team."

  "Hey," I said a little too loudly as I grabbed my bag and followed him. Outside the library, I hit him in the shoulder. "How would you know what I run during practice, you’re never there? You don’t have the time, remember?’

  "Don’t I know." He surprised me with the seriousness of his response before returning to his teasing manner. "Coach complains to me all the time about how slow you are and lazy."

  I shoved him this time, well, I tried to shove him. He was far too solid for me to succeed, but at least he noticed I tried.

  He glanced down at me. "Did you just feel that breeze come by? It touched my shoulder right there." He pointed to where I had shoved him, the sarcastic brat. "So light, such a soft breeze, did you feel it?"

  "I’ll show you soft breeze," I challenged as I put my other arm through the strap on my backpack, securing it in place. With both hands, both arms, and my hips, I tried my best to push him… I didn’t succeed. His booming laughter could, I’m sure, be heard across the entire campus.

  "Sweetie, I’m on the wrestling team, you really think you’re gonna catch me by surprise and throw me off balance?"

  The only response I had was to stare daggers at him and rethink my approach. When we reached his car, an idea came to me. It was a bad idea, a very bad idea, but the good angel on my shoulder had clearly had her mouth duct-taped shut preventing sanity from creeping in.

  "Devlin," I began as he opened the passenger door for me. I tossed my backpack inside and turned around. "I just—" I paused for effect. "I wanted to say that if you need anything. I mean… If I can help you with things like typing or whatever, so that…" Oh, I was good at the dramatic pause. "You have more time to, um—" I stared up into his eyes to see if I had his complete and total attention, and I certainly did. His intent gaze made the blood rush to my face. I had to really concentrate to follow through with my plan. "So you can do the things you really want to do…" He stepped closer to me, placing one arm up on the car next to me, brushing my shoulder and sending my heart up out of my chest. I cleared my throat and couldn’t remember what else I was going to say.

  He leaned in, our noses just inches from touching. He spoke slowly and quietly as if he was concentrating on every word. "I always—make time—for what I really—r
eally—want."

  His nearness washed over me as thoroughly as the force behind his words. Could he be talking about me? His eyes were searching my face, but stopped at my lips. The good angel on my shoulder screamed in my head, forcing the hamsters in my brain to start running on their wheels again. My plan to catch Devlin off guard came back to me, and I pushed against his chest with all my power. He stumbled back several steps, and I laughed loudly. Seriously proud of myself and completely cocky, my personal inability to stand and laugh at the same time kicked in. As he stumbled backward, I fell forward, laughing as the ground came closer to my face. Fortunately, Devlin had really quick reflexes and grabbed me by my waist, preventing me from my constant desire to kiss the cement.

  He was laughing heartily now. "Okay, you win. You caught me off-guard." He let go of me as soon as I was standing straight again and guided my hysterically laughing self into the car. Before closing the door, he leaned in and said, "Just don’t tell Coach Garner or he might have you come in every day to demonstrate how to bring me down." He winked again. "Not that I'd mind."

  The ride to Jay’s house was actually fun. I argued with Devlin about listening to country music, which only made him turn it up as loud as it would go and sing horribly at the top of his lungs. He drove fast just to scare me although, by the way he handled the car at high speeds, it was clear he had driven that fast on several occasions.

  I had been laughing nearly nonstop. "You’re a maniac, you know that."

  We pulled up to a light where an old man in a Buick was at the front of the light sitting next to us. He was clearly oblivious to everything around him.

  "Oh." He lightly smacked my arm. "This gangster over here totally wants to race, just look at him."

  "What, he’s like ninety, Devlin! I bet he can hardly see to drive!"

  "Oh no, he’s got you fooled. He’s giving me that look out of the corner of his eye. He thinks he can take me in that land yacht."

  I was laughing so hard at the furtive glances he was sending the old man’s way, pretending to seriously get ready to race him. "You’re such a dork!"

  "Here we go, Evie. Light’s gonna change, and then we’ll show him. Tighten your seatbelt." He reached over fumbling to get my seatbelt and tickling me in the process. "Okay, here it comes. You better hold on, I’m gonna smoke him."

  The light changed, and he started screaming as he put the car in reverse, laughing his head off. I had tears coming down my cheeks. His overly dramatic acting made my stomach hurt.

  Several minutes later, our laughter finally died down, and I could breathe again.

  He surprised me with his seriousness as he said, "I’ve never seen you laugh like that." His lips spread in a small, kind smile making him look very content.

  "I don’t think I’ve laughed like that since Harm went back to the base." I stared out the window thinking it was really the first time I had talked about Harm to anyone here, beyond Gary and Sonya that is.

  "Who’s Harm?"

  "My brother." I couldn't keep the pride from my voice. "He’s finishing up his training to be Special Forces."

  "Wow. So I shouldn’t piss him off?"

  "No." I lowered my voice in an attempt to sound mean. "You shouldn’t piss me off. He’s ridiculously protective."

  He bobbed his head up and down slowly. "But he makes you laugh?"

  "Oh yeah," I said warmly. "He’s the best big brother. He gave up his dream to take care of me after our parents died, but I made him go back."

  "You must miss him a lot."

  "I really do." I wasn’t sure how he managed to do it, but here we were talking about me missing my brother, and I wasn’t sad. I mean, I was sad about not seeing Harm, but I felt warm about it, like it didn’t matter because I wasn’t lonely and we were doing what we both needed to be doing. "He’s in North Carolina for final training. Then I’ll get to go live on-base with him." I don’t know what made me admit it, but I added, "He’s goofy like you are."

  "Is Jay goofy?"

  My stomach knotted up at the mention of Jay. I’d really forgotten about him and that only made me feel guiltier. "Umm, no, not really."

  "Does he make you laugh?"

  "Sure, of course," I said, trying to put some truth behind the words. "He’s a nice guy. He makes me smile a lot."

  "But he doesn’t make you laugh?"

  "Well, he’s not really like that," I clarified. "He’s more serious."

  "Do you prefer being serious all the time?" He wasn’t being argumentative; he seemed to genuinely want to know my answer.

  "I don’t know." My life had been so serious for so many years without anyone giving me an option of whether I wanted it to be that way. I thought back to the girls in the library giggling over the teen magazine. I wouldn’t change my time with my family, but I couldn’t deny that it would have been nice to be goofy more often.

  Harm’s words shot through my brain like a rocket, and I found myself saying them out loud. "I skipped right over my childhood and went right into being a middle-aged adult. That’s what Harm has always said about me. I’ve always helped take care of my sick family members. I’m not complaining, I just—it’s been hard not to be serious." He nodded solemnly, and I watched him as he stared at the road in front of him. "But my parents were funny," I defended, "and Harm; we laughed a lot."

  He rearranged his hands on the steering wheel, moving them lower to grip the bottom. "But it’s hard to be goofy when you have so much weighing you down."

  I turned to him. He understood me. It was exactly what I had felt for years.

  He glanced at my reaction. "My little brother was sick all his life. He passed away several years ago, but I get it. I made him laugh all the time. Laughter heals everything. You have to laugh or life’s not worth living anymore, and who better to laugh at than yourself?"

  I thought about that for a moment before smiling at him. "Are you tutoring me now?" It was so odd, but for the first time in years, I felt that I was sitting next to someone who had some idea of what I was going through, what I had been going through nearly my whole life.

  "You sound like you might need it." He took his hand off the gearshift and placed it over mine; squeezing lightly.

  The second his hand touched mine, I stopped breathing. What was it about this guy that sent my senses through the roof? He pulled his hand from mine to shift gears and I watched his hand shift from second to third

  He thought I needed his advice. Was I unhappy? Did I need his help? "Maybe I do," I said out loud.

  "So you won’t ignore me tomorrow?"

  "No." I vowed seriously. I thought about his hilarious acting just minutes earlier and smiled. "I don’t know if I can look at you without laughing about how you smoked that old man."

  "Ah, I gave him a beatin’ he won’t soon forget," he said in fake seriousness, tossing his left arm across the steering wheel and nodding his head like some kind of gangster. We laughed for a moment as he pulled up in front of Jay’s house.

  He stopped the car and stared nervously into my eyes. "But you won’t ignore me?"

  I had the most ridiculous urge to reach out and lay my palm against his cheek. Thank goodness, I was able to resist it. "No, I won’t ignore you."

  His smile was stunning, making it hard to push the door open and leave the cocoon of his caring and fun-loving spirit. "Good, then I’ll see you tomorrow, Evie."

  That name on his lips was nerve-wracking. His deep voice was so full of I don’t know, something deeper than just the word itself. I couldn’t justify it, not even to myself, but his use of that name made warmth melt into me. I think I managed to wave, but that was all I could do other than carry my feet toward the front door and away from Devlin.

  Memorial

  Dinner that night at Jay's house was so emotionally awful and uncomfortable that I made myself nauseous and had to excuse myself early. Jay's mom checked up on me, but I blamed it on eating the school lunch food. She left me to curl into a ball on my bed all night a
fter forcing me to take some Pepto Bismol. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was giving myself an ulcer over the guilt I was inflicting upon my own stomach.

  I really just wanted to crawl underneath the bed and fade into the carpet. I was hurting Jay. He didn't know it yet, but I knew it enough for both of us, and clearly my stomach knew it enough for ten of us.

  The next day, I felt like a zombie in the apocalypse as I tried to make my way through the day. I'd only been off crutches for three days, but it felt like I was still moving with crutches attached to my legs. I was so tired and out of it.

  As I slowly picked my way over to our table to eat lunch, I looked briefly for Jay before remembering that he was finishing his AP Physics test. Just as Sonya and I got settled, Gary walked slowly and heavily to our table. His oddly somber appearance confused me and finally made me see the people around us. Nearly all the tables of seniors housed serious-faced, quiet students. It didn't take a genius to know something was up.

  Gary straddled the bench-seat next to Sonya, sitting closer to her than he usually did. Sonya hadn't seemed to notice the mood around us or the tone of Gary's movements.

  She smiled over at him. "If you think I'm sharing my nuggets with you today, you're dead wrong."

  When Gary's eyes widened at the word "dead," I knew something major was wrong.

  I elbowed Sonya and jerked my head in Gary's direction before asking, "What is it, Gary?"

  "It's—it's Jeremy."

  Sonya turned her whole body to him and took his hand. I could practically feel the fear rolling off her.

  Gary stared into her eyes. "He—" He looked down at his hands, which were wrapped tightly around Sonya's. "They found his body yesterday. He ran way from rehab and—"

  Sonya was shaking her head, but I just sat there with Jeremy's smile burning in my mind. He had one of those warm smiles that made you feel like you'd known him for years and made you feel instantly comfortable. In that way, he had reminded me of my dad, which made his death hit me all the more strongly. Seeing Sonya though, my own associated pain was placed on the back burner.