Hopeless

by Hoover, Colleen

  My own share of rumors? If he thinks he’s going to win points by having something in common with me, he’s dead wrong.

  “So that’s what this is about? You thought the slutty new girl would be sympathetic to the gay-bashing asshole?”

  He groans and runs his hands through his hair, frustrated. “Don’t do that, Sky.”

  “Don’t do what? Call you a gay-bashing asshole? Okay. Let’s practice this honesty policy of yours. Did you or did you not beat up that student last year so badly that you spent a year in juvenile detention?”

  He puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head, then looks at me with what seems like disappointment in his expression.

  “When I said don’t do that, I wasn’t referring to you insulting me. I was referring to you insulting yourself.” He takes a step forward, closing the gap between us. “And yes. I beat his ass to within an inch of his life, and if the bastard was standing in front of me right now, I’d do it again.”

  His eyes are filled with pure anger and I’m too scared to even ask him why or what it’s about. He may have said he’d be honest about it…but his answers terrify me more than asking the questions. I take a step back at the same time he does. We’re both quiet and I’m wondering how we even got to this point.

  “I don’t want to run with you today,” I say.

  “I don’t really feel like running with you, either.”

  With that, we both turn in opposite directions. Him toward his house, me toward my window. I don’t even feel like running alone, today.

  I climb back in my window just as the rain starts pouring from the sky, and for a second, I feel sorry for him that he still has to run home. But only for a second, because Karma’s a bitch, and Holder is definitely who she’s retaliating against right now. I close the window and walk to my bed. My heart is racing as fast as if I had just ran the three miles. Except right now it’s racing because I’m so incredibly pissed.

  I met the guy a couple of days ago, yet I’ve never argued more with anyone in my entire life. I could add up all the arguments Six and I have had over the last four years, and it wouldn’t begin to compare to the last forty-eight hours with Holder. I don’t even know why he even bothers. I guess after this morning, he more than likely won’t.

  I pick the envelope up from my nightstand and tear it open. I pull Six’s letter out and lean back on my pillow and read it, just hoping to escape from the chaos in my head.

  Sky,

  Hopefully by the time you’re reading this (because I know you won’t read it right away) I’ll be madly in love with a hot Italian boyfriend and not thinking about you at all.

  But I know that isn’t the case, because I’ll be thinking about you all the time.

  I’ll be thinking about all the nights we stayed up with our ice cream and our movies and our boys. But mostly, I’ll be thinking about you, and all the reasons why I love you.

  Just to name a few: I love how you suck at goodbyes and feelings and emotions, because I do, too. I love how you always scoop from the strawberry and vanilla side of the ice cream because you know how much I love the chocolate, even though you love it, too. I love how you aren’t weird and awkward, despite the fact that you’ve been severely cut off from socialization to the point where you make the Amish look trendy.

  But most of all, I love that you don’t judge me. I love that in the past four years, you’ve never once questioned me about my choices (as poor as they may be) or the guys I’ve been with or the fact that I don’t believe in commitment. I would say that it’s simple for you not to judge me, because you’re a dirty slut, too. But we both know you’re not. So thank you for being a non-judgmental friend. Thank you for never being condescending or treating me like you’re better than me (even though we both know you are.) As much as I can laugh about the things people say about us behind our backs, it kills me that they say these things about you, too. For that, I’m sorry. But not too sorry, because I know if you were given the choice to either be my slutty best friend or be the girl with the good reputation, you’d screw every guy in the world. Because you love me that much. And I’d let you, because I love you that much.

  And one more thing I love about you, then I’ll shut up because I’m only six feet away writing this letter right now and it’s really hard to not climb out my window and come squeeze you.

  I love your indifference. I love how you really just don’t give a shit what people think. I love how you are focused on your future and everyone else can kiss your ass. I love how, when I told you I was leaving for Italy after talking you into enrolling at my school, you just smiled and shrugged your shoulders even though it would have torn most best friends apart. I left you hanging to follow my dream, and you didn’t let it eat you up. You didn’t even give me crap about it.

  I love how (last one, I swear) when we watched The Forces of Nature and Sandra Bullock walked away in the end and I was screaming at the TV for such an ugly ending, you just shrugged your shoulders and said, “It’s real, Six. You can’t get mad at a real ending. Some of them are ugly. It’s the fake happily ever afters that should piss you off.”

  I’ll never forget that, because you were right. And I know you weren’t trying to teach me a lesson, but you did. Not everything is going to go my way and not everyone gets a happily ever after. Life is real and sometimes it’s ugly and you just have to learn how to cope. I’m going to accept it with a dose of your indifference, and move on.

  So, anyway. Enough about that. I just want you to know that I’ll miss you and this new very best friend ever in the whole wide world at school better back off when I get home in six months. I hope you realize how amazing you are, but in case you don’t, I’m going to text you every single day to remind you. Prepare to be bombarded for the next six months with endless annoying texts of nothing but positive affirmations about Sky.

  I love you,

  6

  I fold the letter up and smile, but I don’t cry. She wouldn’t expect me to cry over it, no matter how much she might have just made me want to. I reach over to the nightstand and take the cell phone she gave me out of the drawer. I already have two missed text messages.

  Have I told you lately how awesome you are? Missing you.

  It’s day two, you better text me back. I need to tell you about Lorenzo. Also, you’re sickeningly smart.

  I smile and text her back. It takes me about five tries before I figure it out. I’m almost eighteen and this is the first text I’ve ever sent? This has to be one for Guinness.

  I can get used to these daily positive affirmations. Make sure to remind me of how beautiful I am, and how I have the most impeccable taste in music, and how I’m the fastest runner in the world. (Just a few ideas to get you started.) I miss you, too. And I can’t wait to hear about Lorenzo, you slut.

  The next few days at school are the same as the first two. Full of drama. My locker seems to have become the hub for sticky notes and nasty letters, none of which I ever see actually being placed on or in my locker. I really don’t get what people gain out of doing things like this if they don’t even own up to it. Like the note that was stuck to my locker this morning. All it said was, “Whore.”

  Really? Where’s the creativity in that? They couldn’t back it up with an interesting story? Maybe a few details of my indiscretion? If I have to read this shit every day, the least they could do is make it interesting. If I was going to stoop so low as to leave an unfounded note on someone’s locker, I’d at least have the courtesy of entertaining whoever reads it in the process. I’d write something interesting like, “I saw you in bed with my boyfriend last night. I really don’t appreciate you getting massage oil on my cucumbers. Whore.”

  I laugh and it feels odd, laughing out loud at my own thoughts. I look around and no one is left in the hallway but me. Rather than rip the sticky notes off of my locker like I probably should, I take out my pen and make them a little more creative. You’re welcome, passersby.

  Breckin sets h
is tray down across from mine. We’ve been getting our own trays now, since he seems to think I want nothing but salad. He smiles at me like he’s got a secret that he knows I want. If it’s another rumor, I’ll pass.

  “How were track tryouts yesterday?” he asks.

  I shrug. “I didn’t go.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  He laughs. “Because I like to clarify things with you before I believe them. Why didn’t you go?”

  I shrug again.

  “What’s with the shoulder shrugs? You have a nervous tic?”

  I shrug. “I just don’t feel like being a part of a team with anyone here. It’s lost its appeal.”

  He frowns. “First of all, track is one of the most individual sports you can join. Second, I thought you said extracurricular activities were the reason you were here.”

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” I say. “Maybe I feel like I need to witness a good dose of human nature at its worst before I enter the real world. It’ll be less of a shock.”

  He points a celery stick at me and cocks his eyebrow. “This is true. A gradual introduction to the perils of society will help cushion the blow. We can’t release you alone into the wild when you’ve been pampered in a zoo your whole life.”

  “Nice analogy.”

  He winks at me and bites his stick of celery. “Speaking of analogies. What’s up with your locker? It was covered in sexual analogies and metaphors today.”

  I laugh. “You like that? Took me a while, but I was feeling creative.”

  He nods. “I especially liked the one that said ‘You’re such a slut, you screwed Breckin the Mormon.’”

  I shake my head. “Now that one I can’t lay claim to. That was an original. But they’re fun, aren’t they? Now that they’ve been dirtied up?”

  “Well,” he says. “They were fun. They aren’t there anymore. I saw Holder ripping them off your locker just now.”

  I snap my gaze back up to his and he’s grinning mischievously again. I guess this is the secret he was having trouble holding in.

  “That’s strange.” I’m curious why Holder would bother to do such a thing. We haven’t been running together since we spoke last. In fact, we don’t even interact at all. He sits across the room now in first period and I don’t see him at all the rest of the day, aside from lunch. Even then, he sits on the other side of the cafeteria with his friends. I thought after coming to an impasse, we’d successfully moved on to mutual avoidance, but I guess I was wrong.

  “Can I ask you something?” Breckin says.

  I shrug again, mostly just to irritate him.

  “Are the rumors about him true? About his temper? And his sister?”

  I try not to appear taken aback by his comment, but it’s the first I’ve heard anything about a sister. “I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve spent enough time with him to know he scares me enough to not want to spend more time with him.”

  I really want to ask him about the sister comment, but I can’t help which situations my stubbornness rears its ugly head in. For some reason, probing for information about Dean Holder is one of those situations.

  “Hey,” a voice from behind me says. I immediately know it isn’t Holder’s, because I’m indifferent to the voice. About the time I turn around, Grayson swings his leg over the seat bench next to me and sits. “You busy after school?”

  I dip my celery stick into a blob of ranch dressing and take a bite. “Probably.”

  Grayson shakes his head. “That’s not a good enough answer. I’ll meet you at your car after last period.”

  He’s up and gone before I can object. Breckin smirks at me.

  I just shrug.

  I have no idea what Grayson wants to talk about, but if he’s thinking he’s coming over tomorrow night, he needs a lobotomy. I’m so ready to just swear off guys for the rest of the year. Especially if it means not having Six to eat ice cream with after they go home. Ice cream was the only appealing part to making out with the guys.

  At least he’s true to form. He’s waiting at my car, leaning up against my driver’s side door when I reach the parking lot. “Hey, Princess,” he says. I don’t know if it’s the sound of his voice or the fact that he just gave me a nickname, but his words make me cringe. I walk up to him and lean against the car next to him.

  “Don’t call me princess again. Ever.”

  He laughs and slides in front of me, gripping my waist in his hands. “Fine. How about beautiful?”

  “How about you just call me Sky?”

  “Why do you have to be so angry all the time?” He reaches up to my face and holds my cheeks in his hands, then kisses me. Sadly, I let him. Mostly because I feel like he’s earned it for putting up with me for an entire month. He doesn’t deserve a whole lot of return favors, though, so I pull my face away after just a few seconds.

  “What do you want?”

  He snakes his arms around my waist and pulls me against him. “You.” He starts kissing my neck, so I push against him and he backs away. “What?”

  “Can you not take a hint? I told you I’m not sleeping with you, Grayson. I’m not trying to play games or get you to chase me like other sick, twisted girls do. You want more and I don’t, so I think we just need to accept that we’re at an impasse and move on.”

  He stares at me, then sighs and pulls me against him, hugging me. “I don’t need more, Sky. It’s fine the way it is. I won’t push it again. I just like coming to your house and I want to come over tomorrow night.” He tries to flash me that panty-dropping grin. “Now stop being mad at me and come here.” He pulls my face to his and kisses me again.

  As irritated and as angry as I am, I can’t help but be relieved that as soon as his lips meet mine, my irritation subsides, thanks to the numbness that takes over. For that reason alone, I continue to let him kiss me. He backs me against the car and runs his hands in my hair, then kisses down my jaw and to my neck. I lean my head against the car and bring my wrist up behind him to check the time on my watch. Karen’s going out of town for work, so I need to go to the grocery store to get enough sugar to last me all weekend. I don’t know how long he plans on feeling me up, but ice cream is really starting to sound tempting right about now. I roll my eyes and drop my arm. All at once, my heart rate triples and my stomach flips and I get all of the feelings a girl is supposed to get when a hot guys lips are all over her. Only I’m not having the reaction to the hot guy whose lips are all over me. I’m having the reaction to the hot guy glaring at me from across the parking lot.

  Holder is standing next to his car with his elbow on the top of his doorframe, watching us. I immediately shove Grayson off of me and turn around to get in my car.

  “So we’re on for tomorrow night?” he asks.

  I climb inside the car and crank it, then look up at him. “No. We’re done.”

  I pull the door shut and back out of the parking lot, not sure if I’m angry, embarrassed or infatuated. How does he do that? How the hell does he incite these kinds of feelings from me from clear across a parking lot? I think I’m in need of an intervention.

  “Is Jack going with you?” I open the car door for Karen so she can throw the last of her luggage into the backseat.

  “Yeah, he’s coming. We’ll be home….I’ll be home on Sunday,” she says, correcting herself. It pains her to count Jack as a “we.” I hate that she feels that way because I really like Jack and I know he loves Karen, so I don’t understand what her hang-up is at all. She’s had a couple of boyfriends in the past twelve years, but as soon as it starts getting serious for the guy, she runs.

  Karen shuts the backdoor and turns to me. “You know I trust you, but please…”

  “Don’t get pregnant,” I interrupt. “I know, I know. You’ve been saying that every time you leave for the past two years. I’m not getting pregnant, Mom. Only terribly high and cracked out.”

  She laughs and hugs me. “Good girl. And wasted. Don�
��t forget to get really wasted.”

  “I won’t forget, I promise. And I’m renting a TV for the weekend so I can sit around and eat ice-cream and watch trash on cable.”

  She pulls back and glares at me. “Now that’s not funny.”

  I laugh and hug her again. “Have fun. I hope you sell lots of herbal thingies and soaps and tinctures and whatever else it is you do at these things.”

  “Love you. If you need me, you know you can use Six’s house phone.”

  I roll my eyes at the same instructions she gives me every time she leaves. “See ya,” I say. She gets in the car and pulls out of the driveway, leaving me parent-free for the weekend. To most teenagers, this would be the point at which they pull out their phones and post an invite to the most kick-ass party of the year. Not me. Nope. Instead, I go inside and decide to bake cookies, because that’s the most rebellious thing I can come up with.

  I love to bake, but I don’t claim to be very good at it. I usually end up with more flour and chocolate on my face and hair than in the actual end product. Tonight’s no exception. I’ve already made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, a batch of brownies and something I’m not sure what it was supposed to be. I’m working on pouring the flour into the mixture for a homemade German chocolate cake when the doorbell rings.

  I’m pretty sure I should know what to do in situations like this. Doorbells ring all the time, right? Not mine. I stare at the door, not sure what I’m expecting it to do. When it rings for a second time, I put down the measuring cup and wipe my hair out of my eyes, then walk to the front door. When I open it, I’m not even surprised to see Holder. Okay, I’m surprised. But not really.