Rogue Wave
Cake Series Book Five
J. Bengtsson
Rogue Wave - Cake Series Book Five
Copyright © 2019 by J. Bengtsson
Published & printed in the United States
Edited by Dorothy Zemach
Proofread by Kimberley Weaver
Cover by Steamydesigns
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Prologue: Keith
Five Years Later
1. Samantha: Hey You
2. Keith: Wasted Space
3. Samantha: Spooned
4. Keith: The ‘T’ Word
5. Keith: For Me
6. Samantha: My Loss
7. Keith: Homemade
8. Samantha: My Favorite Word
9. Keith: Trust Me
10. Samantha: Crocodile Tears
11. Keith: The Shakedown
12. Samantha: The Turtle Roll
13. Keith: The Metamorphosis
14. Samantha: I Know Him
15. Keith: Rug Burn
16. Samantha: To a Head
17. Keith: The Debt
18. Samantha: Shoreline
19. Keith: Making Contact
20. Samantha: The Story of the Stone
Five years later
21. Keith: Yogi
22. Samantha: Genetics
23. Keith: Above The Haze
24. Keith: Color-Coded
25. Samantha: Unfinished Business
26. Keith: Reunion
27. Samantha: Rediscovering Us
28. Keith: Enough
29. Samantha: At Long Last
30. Keith: Skimming The Waves
Five Years Later
31. Samantha: The Writing on the Wall
32. Keith: No Easy Fix
33. Samantha: Dead End
34. Keith: Public Enemy #1
35. Keith: Lunch Intervention
36. Samantha: On the Winning Side
37. Samantha: The Imposter
38. Keith: Long Time Coming
Epilogue: Keith
Afterword
About the Author
Also by J. Bengtsson
Award Nominated Audiobooks
Prologue: Keith
My hands jammed safely in my pockets, I kept my head down as I made my way across the quad on legs as spindly as sticks. I could feel the sea of unfamiliar faces sizing me up as I passed. Flinging my hair back, I relocated the unruly strands littering my forehead. Little good it did me, as the fringe tumbled back into my eyes seconds later.
In the combat zone that was middle school, appearances were everything and mine was just shy of embarrassing. At a time when other guys were making gains in both height and body mass, my little boy body was still hopelessly suspended in time. Be patient, my father would say. The later you go into puberty, the taller you’ll be. It was easy for him to say, when he was over six feet tall, but for a thirteen-year-old trapped in a nine-year-old’s body, patience was hard to come by.
And, as if the physique of an elf wasn’t already a huge strike against me, relocating to a new school nearly two months into the semester put the nail in my social coffin. Initially stoked when my parents announced we’d be moving out of our shoebox three-bedroom rental and into a fixer-upper five-bedroom home of our own, I quickly soured on the plan when I discovered the catch – school zoning. As in, we were now in a different one. The move only affected me because my mom worked at the elementary school my siblings all attended. With a few favors called in, the principal signed off on their transfer.
I hadn’t been as lucky, and here I was now slinking around the lunch tables at Barnum Middle School like a jittery rabbit. But now was not the time to waver. I could almost feel the starving wolves licking their chops. If they smelled weakness, I was done for.
Drawing deep gulps of oxygen into my lungs, I lifted my eyes to the challenge, determined to find the group I belonged in. Although not as defined as in high school, cliques were already forming in middle school. It made sense. Like-minded individuals naturally gravitated toward one another, and that was what I was banking on now.
The sporty crowd was the first to catch my eye. Cooler than snot, this pack had always been off-limits to me. On the top of the food chain, these guys would soar in high school and become the jocks we all knew and loved. They were the gravity that drew in the masses, but also the brick wall you ran into trying to get in. I wasn’t big enough, clean-cut enough, or coordinated enough to fit into that select group.
Nor was I going to sit with the Einsteins. Sure, the book jocks would welcome me in with open if undefined arms, but once you went down the nerdy path, there was no turning back. Equally unacceptable were the geeks. Some might lump them together with the nerds, but geeks were an entity all their own. Instead of challenging books, geeks played Pokémon at lunch and carried around pocket-sized light sabers because, you know, you never knew when a last-minute intergalactic duel might break out.
My eyes followed the line of succession until I directed my gaze at the ‘blue hairs.’ These kids would eventually become the artistic, theater-loving crowd in high school. They were talented and quirky enough that social norms didn’t necessarily apply to them. These were the kids who sang a Disney song at the top of their lungs as they spun in circles on the black top, or the thespians who randomly spewed lines of Shakespeare during a math final with no fear of retribution. But despite coming from a musical family, I hadn’t an ounce of talent in my skinny bones.
I moved down the rows with surprising efficiency. The budding hipsters. The blossoming preps. The inevitable goths. They were all represented. And let’s not forget my personal favorites: the outsiders who would someday wear black overcoats and assemble hit lists a mile long. I nervously chewed my fingernails as realization dawned on me: I didn’t fit anywhere. What was I going to do – spend the rest of seventh grade with the loners? No question spots would still be available at their sparse table.
Pushing the panic aside, I continued to wander through the lunch area, sizing up the segregated students until, as if answering a call from the wild, my eyes narrowed in on the prize – my tribe.
The skaters.
It surprised me that I hadn’t pinpointed them earlier, as this was the crowd who were not conventionally sitting on the bench eating their sack lunch. No, these guys were all over the table. Some sat on top of the interwoven metal lattice while others were suspended upside down, their heads resting where their butts should have been. I smiled, feeling even more certain that these eccentric rebels were my future.
Like my group back home, these were the guys who held some stature in the school. While not necessarily part of the popular crowd, skaters tended to have just enough looks, smarts, and athletic abilities to keep them relevant. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and allowed my tangled nerves to unravel.
Thank god for the skaters. I was saved.
Picking up the pace, I made a beeline for the group, confident in my ability to be accepted at face value. After all, I was a skilled skateboarder, and had been dealing with dudes like these my whole life.
“Hey.” I offered my greeting in the least unobtrusive manner possible. Skaters hate posers.
The guys barely acknowledged me. I stayed put – waiting for the invitation I was sure would come. Finally, their leader, a guy with long, shaggy hair, took me in from his upsid
e down position. He looked older, like the guy who’d been held back by well-meaning parents who balked at starting their little precious in kindergarten too early, but the joke was on them when he was held back later in his educational journey for being too dumb for words. Now he was just an acne-pocked smartass with a gaggle of young, impressionable followers at his beck and call.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Keith. I just moved here.”
“New kid, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You got any weed?”
Before I could stop myself, my eyes widened, undoubtedly giving away my position on the subject of pot. At my old school, the skaters and stoners hadn’t yet joined as one. Come to think of it, the only stoner I knew, Brett Valentine, had been suspended long ago.
“Wait a minute.” The dopey giggle came from my left. “I know you.”
And there he was.
“Hey, Valentine. I haven’t seen you for awhile.”
“Well, yeah, you know. I did that stint in juvie.”
No, I didn’t know. This was just great. The one person I knew in this entire shithole school had a record.
Valentine vouched for me. “He’s cool, guys.”
How could it be that Brett Valentine, of all people, was suddenly my lifeline? And did I want in his group badly enough to brush aside the morals my parents had drilled into me since birth? Surely these guys would respect the truth. “No, I don’t have anything.”
“Yeah, you don’t look like you got any edge.”
Or not.
Their talking head continued to diss me. “You probably don’t even get baked, do you?”
Ah, shit. This wasn’t a test. Drug use was apparently a prerequisite for hanging with these dudes. The desire to lie my way in was strong. After all, who would it hurt if I pretended to be a pothead just until they accepted me? I was a fairly funny guy and, once they knew me and saw my skills on a board, I was confident they’d like me enough that it wouldn’t matter if I filled my lungs with poison or not. This was a whole new world, with new rules and requirements. I had to do what I had to do to stay alive.
But even though I was totally prepared to lie, the truth inexplicably tumbled out of my mouth. “No. I don’t smoke.”
“Sucks for you, newbie,” the upside down guy said, before turning his attention away from me.
My fingers clenched into fists. Who said this guy got to decide my fate?
“That’s it?” I challenged. “You have the final say?”
“Nah, brah, the guys can do whatever they want. But this is my spot, so if they decide to hang with you, they’ll have to relocate too. But hey, lucky for you, there’s some room over there at Tweezer’s table.”
My eyes followed his finger until they settled on the lone figure sitting a few tables over with black, dyed bangs hanging down over his face. Tweezer was passing the time by plucking the coarse hairs out of his forearm. I cringed. All it would take was one gust of wind to ruin lunchtime for me forever.
Swiveling my head back, I scanned the group of skaters, hoping some of the others might show their support, but not one of them met my eye. Even Valentine, my damn lifeline, was looking away. Hell, no. That’s not how this would end. These skaters were my group – they had always been my group. I refused to be turned away only to join the ranks of some hairless arm dude. There was no harm in telling a few lies to get me where I needed to be.
My mother’s voice played on repeat in my ear. Keith, you’re stronger than this.
No. No, I wasn’t. Mom didn’t understand. I had to survive. It’s not like I wouldn’t have loved more options to choose from, like my siblings had. A jock? Sure, I’d have loved to be one, but I wasn’t Mitch. Aligning myself with the popular crowd would be awesome too, but I wasn’t Emma. And having the musical abilities of a child prodigy? Hell, yeah! Sign me up! But only Jake wore that crown.
If I wasn’t special in my own family, how could I expect to be distinctive within a group of strangers? Never had I felt more insignificant than I did today – as the scrawny new kid begging for acceptance.
Looking out over the cache of students, I searched for someplace, anyplace, to land, but my feet refused to deliver me to safety. For better or worse, this was my crowd. I belonged with the guys who would never be more than average.
I took a step toward my destiny.
“Dude, I’m totally down to try.”
The leader flipped upright, his eyes scanning me with newfound interest. “Well, okay then, Newbs. Welcome to Barnum.”
Five Years Later
1
Samantha: Hey You
“Did everyone pick a number?”
I glanced down at the slip of paper in my hand and unfolded the parchment. My eyes widened. Number twenty-nine. That couldn’t be good.
“Numbers one and two, you’re at lab table 1. Three and four, lab table 2.” Mrs. Lee flitted around the room, way too excited for such a mundane activity. “You get the idea. Let’s go. Get to know your partners, and be nice. Barring an outbreak of a contagious disease or an explosion that takes out the lab, these will be your partners for the entire semester.”
Obediently, I grabbed my bag and moved all the way to the far back corner of the classroom – lab table 15. I practically needed binoculars to see the whiteboard from there. Nothing good ever happened after midnight, went the wise old saying. That applied to the back of the classroom as well, the favored spot of troublemakers and slackers. In these parts, pant loops were routinely zip-tied to the back of seats, and if there were spitballs to be hurled, they’d originate in this far corner of the world.
Blessed with a top of the alphabet surname, Anderson, I’d spent the majority of my life inches away from the teacher’s desk. And even when seating charts disappeared in high school, I still migrated north. I was just comfortable there – with the smart kids who were as predictable as they were dull. Trust me, I wasn’t dissing the academic overachievers. On the contrary, I was lumping myself in with them. Dull and predictable – yep, that was me. Still, being boring meant there was no need to worry that other front row dwellers would tie my shoelaces together during a pop quiz.
Of course, the fact that I had the eyesight of a cave-dwelling bat also might have contributed to my affinity for the head of the class. Sure, I could wear my particularly unfashionable specs to school every day to correct the problem, but why advertise my super-geek status?
Before moving to this beach town last year, I honestly hadn’t cared what people thought of me. Sweats, ripped tees, no makeup, ponytails – I rocked the ‘no style’ style. I even went so far as to sport highly practical, yet exceedingly dorky, light-adjusting glasses that allowed me to seamlessly move from indoors to out.
Sadly, the ‘anything goes’ approach wasn’t sustainable at Pearl Beach High School, where beauty was the norm, and students would rather not see at all than be caught dead in a pair of spectacles. It went without saying that corrective glasses of any kind were a fashion no-no here – viewed with the same distaste as, say, wearing corduroy pants.
I had contact lenses, of course, but was also blessed with oily skin, which regularly caused an inflammation of the eyelid called Blepharitis. You heard right. In addition to my sight woes, I had the occasional smattering of pimples, too. I was one lucky girl indeed. So, due to my poor eye sight, zits, and vanity, I squinted my way through class most days, struggling to make out the simplest of words on the board; even though, if I wanted to be totally honest with myself, I was such a nobody that expectations of beauty probably weren’t even attached to me.
Sliding onto the stool, I opened my bag and tried to appear busy as I waited for number thirty to arrive. A nervous flutter attached itself to my chest as it always did when I was dropped into a new situation. I’d never been a great communicator, but it had only gotten worse since transferring into a school with working swimsuit models populating every few feet of Main Hall. I didn’t walk like them, I didn’t talk like
them, and I sure as hell didn’t look like them, so I kept my mouth shut as much as possible to limit the possibility of ridicule.
Already uncomfortable, I looked around at the others who’d pulled the short end of the stick and was at least comforted to see fellow front-rower Sanjay Evani over on table thirteen. He caught my eye and we traded similar disgruntled expressions. It was still early in the process, but so far it appeared he had it worse than me. Sanjay had been partnered with Thad, the basketball player who was already high-fiving his buddies over the good fortune of being paired with the supposed class valedictorian. No doubt my acquaintance's presumed intelligence was based solely on the fact that his hair was parted down the middle and he still carried around a lunch pail and a pencil pouch in high school.
But Sanjay was nowhere near valedictorian status, that coveted crown jewel celebrated by nerds the world over. Last I heard, his class rank was somewhere around twenty-six… out of close to five hundred juniors. Respectable, sure, but certainly not superstar level. Of course, I couldn’t talk. My ranking slid in there at a measly number thirty-nine. It was too embarrassing to talk about, so when the other smart kids were swapping their success stories, I kept quiet – just as I did when the ‘pretties’ were discussing their beauty routines.
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