“Oh, hi. I’m Alex,” she said sheepishly.
“Hi. Is Alex short for—”
“Alexis, but I go by Alex.”
“Nice to meet you, Alex,” Michael said, extending his hand. Alex shook it, then he looked at Sam. “I better go. I told my parents I would be home right after school. You know, to help them unpack.”
“All right, see you tomorrow,” Sam said.
After Michael walked off, Alex turned to Sam. “Oh my God! Sam, he is so hot.”
“I thought that was what you were thinking.”
“Obviously, and what is with all the politeness?”
“He was home schooled. Besides, he wasn’t too polite. He’s way cooler when you get to know him, I think. He’s just like that when you first meet him. Anyway, are you ready to go?”
“Yeah, I just have to get my books, I'll back in a few minutes,” Alex said.
“Hey!” Phillip said as he walked up to Sam’s locker. “What did Principal Norton want to see you for?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said, a bit startled. What was this? Twice in one day? “Well, he wanted me to show a new guy around.”
“Really, who is he?”
“His name is Michael Richman. I believe he said he was from North Carolina. His dad got transferred out here.”
“Interesting. For once, don’t you just wish something exciting would happen?” Phillip smiled at Sam, causing her heart to flip in her chest. “Listen about earlier—”
“Phillip! There you are. You ran off after the bell rang. I’ve been looking for you. Come on, baby, you promised to take me home,” Tracy whined to Phillip as she raced down the corridor toward them.
Phillip gave Sam a pained look, as though he’d actually wanted to stay and talk to her. “Well, I guess I’ll talk to you later, Sam.”
Tracy didn’t even look at Sam as she pulled her boyfriend toward the front entrance, where Phillip’s best friend, Josh McFadden, waited for them.
Sam stared after them, completely confused. Why did Phillip keep trying to talk to her? She was beyond excited that he had, but she also didn’t know what to make of it.
“Was that Phillip? Was he talking to you?” Alex asked as she rejoined Sam, books in hand.
“Yep.” Sam sighed.
“Wait! Phillip, here? Actually talking to you?”
Sam gave Alex a dirty look, pulling herself from her fixation on the front entrance. “Yes, talking to me.”
“Wow, why? What about?”
Sam retrieved the books she needed for that evening’s homework assignments and closed her locker. “I’ll tell you when we get to your house. Come on, I’m ready.” The last thing she wanted was for someone to hear her and Alex pondering Phillip’s strange behavior.
When they got outside, Sam stopped, just outside the entrance, admiring her lime green VW Beatle, complete with a convertible top. Sam couldn’t have asked her parents for a better car. It had been a birthday present for her seventeenth birthday last month and she still couldn’t believe it was hers.
Sam tore her gaze from her car she had named Freddie and looked pointedly at Alex’s ride. “Tell me again, Alex, why you had to get that thing?”
“Hey, ‘that thing’ does have a name,” Alex said defensively.
“Oh, sorry. Why did you have to get Betsy?”
“She’s a beaut. I mean, come on, she’s a Kawasaki Ninja. Seriously, I can’t imagine myself without her.”
“She’s a motorcycle. Why a motorcycle?”
“I don’t know, maybe because they’re way cooler than any car.”
“Hey, come now. Freddy is a great car.”
“All right, let’s just get out of here, before the afternoon rush,” Alex said as she put her hot pink helmet on, which matched the details on her motorcycle.
In Alex’s one true girly moment, she had asked her parents to get her a black motorcycle with hot pink ascents. Although they were skeptical at first, they complied and bought it for her seventeenth birthday, which was only a few days after Sam’s.
Sam unlocked her car and put her things in the backseat of her Bug. She started up the car and was startled when the radio came blaring through the speakers. She turned it down then looked over at Alex, who was backing up. Sam followed, and made her way through the parking lot toward the exit and on to the main road.
Sam and Alex pulled up to their houses, which were right next door to each other, then both headed toward Alex's front door. They had second floor bedrooms with windows that sat adjacent to one another. Because they lived right next door, it was easy for them to hang out with each other.
Sam knew Alex wouldn’t wait long before grilling her about Phillip, and she was looking forward to their talk. She certainly hadn’t been able to make sense of it herself.
Chapter Two
“So tell me what happened after you left for detention,” Alex said expectantly the moment she closed her bedroom door behind them.
“Nothing, really. I just sat down and began to draw, then—”
“What were you drawing?” Alex asked, always interested in seeing Sam’s drawings.
“That’s just it. I was drawing him!” Sam exclaimed.
Alex gasped. “And he sat down next to you?”
“Yes. He made it sound like he didn’t see anything. He said he walked up and sat down as I was closing the notebook.”
“Give it here,” Alex said, holding out her hand.
Sam handed her the notebook, and Alex began to fumble through the pages.
“Wow, Sam,” Alex said when she found it. “This is so good. It looks just like him.”
“I know! How embarrassing. He probably really did see it.”
“Well, let’s re-enact what happened. Close it, and I’ll see if I can tell who it is as you do it,” Alex suggested as she handed Sam back her notebook.
Sam did the same thing she had done in detention, while Alex walked by and sat down next to her on the bed, pretending to be Phillip.
“Well?” Sam asked.
“Yep, you can tell,” Alex said bluntly.
Sam fell back on the bed. “Aw, man! I can’t believe this!”
“It’s not that bad. He said you were good. At least you didn’t draw an ugly picture of him. Maybe he’s flattered.”
“This is so embarrassing.”
“Enough about your tragic love life,” Alex said abruptly. “Tell me about this new guy, Michael.”
Sam shook her head. She’d never understood Alex’s obsession with the opposite sex. Of course, her obsession with Phillip was pretty much the same thing, but at least hers was limited to only one guy. “Well, I didn’t really get to know too much about him. He’s from North Carolina. His family just moved here because his dad got transferred on business.”
“He’s cute, huh? Not cute—hot ,” Alex said.
“Alex, you say that about every guy you see. You even said it about that guy who worked at the Coffee House for a while.”
“You mean Jake? Yeah, because he was hot,” Alex said dreamily.
“Alex, he was shorter than you! He was skinny like a chopstick.”
“Well, he had those crystal blue eyes, and you can’t say he wasn’t muscular.”
“Whatever.”
“But you have to admit that Michael is some sort of hot,” Alex said.
“Yeah, I guess. I mean he does have nice hair.”
“Hair? That’s all? Did you get a look at his muscles? He must work out. I mean, he doesn’t play on a team, does he? That would just add to the hotness.”
“Calm yourself,” Sam replied with a laugh. “I don’t know if he plays any sports. He didn’t ask about our sports teams though, so I doubt it.”
“Well, that’s okay. He’s still hot.”
“Okay, enough with all this talk about degrees of hotness. What did Ms. Hatchet assign for homework?”
“Ugh, a three page report on DNA vs. RNA.”
“Why does she do this to us?”
“She likes to see us fail, plain and simple. But I better start working on that paper. You know how slow I type.”
“Yeah, I know,” Sam said as she gathered her things. “I better head home and start on it too. It’s going to be hard trying to spread out so little information over three pages,”
“All right, see you tomorrow at school. I can’t wait to see him again.”
“Who? Michael? Man, you’ve got it bad.”
“Look who’s talking, Miss Can’t-Take-My-Eyes-Off-Of-Phillip, Miss Phillip-Said-A-Word-To-Me, Miss—”
“Okay, okay. I’m leaving before we can do anymore damage to each other,” Sam said as she got up from the bed. She put her backpack on her shoulder and walked toward the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”
“Bye, Sam.”
Sam walked across the stone pathway that lay between the two houses. She opened the front door and made her way to the stairs.
“Hi, honey!” Sam’s mom called from the kitchen. “How was your day?”
Since ninth grade, Sam would go to Alex’s house after school for an hour or two, come home and make her way toward the stairs, but before she could go up to her bedroom, her mother would always ask the same question.
Sam always answered the same way. “Fine, Mom, nothing really happened.”
“Well, go upstairs and finish the rest of your homework. I’ll call you when dinner is ready, and don’t forget to check on Benjamin. I just sent him up there, not too long ago.”
Sam made her way up the stairs as usual and dropped her backpack off in her room before going across the hall to check on her younger brother. Benjamin was thirteen years younger than Sam, but looked very much like his older sister with the same blond hair and green eyes. Sam had always wanted a baby brother so when her mother announced she was going to have a baby, Sam had been thrilled.
She tousled his hair as she entered his room. “Hey, Benny. What did you do today?”
His eyes lit up at the sight of her. “Hi, Sammy. We learned our numbers today, one to, um, one hundred.”
“Wow, Benny. That’s so good. You’re so smart. Smarter than Davy,” Sam said, referring to their older brother, causing Benny to give her a big grin. “Are you coloring a picture?” She sat down at Benjamin’s small red table in the middle of his room.
“Yeah, it’s for Davy,” he said, holding up the unfinished picture.
David had just entered his first year of college at Penn State. He chose to stay close to home so he could see his family while boarding for free at the house. David would drop Benjamin off at kindergarten before heading to classes, while their mom went to work. She worked as a nurse administrator at the local hospital.
“Benny, I’m going to be in my room working on homework. If you need me for anything, come get me, okay?”
“Okay, Sammy.”
Sam walked across the upstairs hall into her room. From her desk, she could easily see into Benjamin’s room and keep an eye on him. Sam could usually finish all her homework before dinner. Alex, on the other hand, wasn’t joking when she’d said that she typed slowly. It wasn’t just typing either. It normally took her twice as much time as Sam to finish most pieces of academic work.
Sam logged onto her computer and began flipping through her Pre-calculus book, finally settling on the assigned homework. Not too long after, Sam had finished her Pre-calculus, US History, and English assignments. She had finished everything but Ms. Hatchet’s three-page paper, and she still had an hour before dinner was ready. A chat window popped up on her computer.
AlexisCool: Hey, Sam.
SamIam: Hey. What’s up?
AlexisCool: What did you get for problem 28?
SamIam: Put the basket out, and I’ll send you my homework.
AlexisCool: You finished already???
SamIam: Yeah, but I still have the paper. Besides, you know I work fast.
AlexisCool: Yeah, I know…Okay, sending over the basket.
Sam and Alex had devised a pulley system between their rooms when they were younger. They wanted to be able to send things between their houses easily without having to leave their bedrooms. Sam got up from her desk and placed her Pre-calculus book, her homework stored safely inside the pages, into the basket.
“Thanks, Sam!” Alex called from her window.
When they were younger, the girls wanted to easily go over to each other’s bedrooms, without having to leave the house. They had the brilliant idea to place a ladder between the two windows. It worked successfully for a while, but one night, when Alex was crawling across the ladder to her bedroom, the ladder slipped with Alex on it. She only broke her arm, but that didn’t stop their parents from making them take it down. It was a miracle they even let them keep the basket.
“See you tomorrow, Alex,” Sam called as she closed her window.
Sam sat back down at her desk. Across the hall, Benjamin was playing with his Legos. Sam looked down at her Biology book and realized the extent of their homework assignment. How was she going to stretch a couple of paragraphs on the difference between DNA and RNA into three pages? She was going to do what she normally did when Ms. Hatchet assigned something like this, she’d fudge it a little.
“Samantha! Dinner is ready!” Sam’s mom called up the stairs a short time later. “Don’t forget your brother!”
Sam had just printed her paper. She logged off and headed downstairs with her brother.
“Where’s Davy?” Sam asked.
“He called to say that he picked up an extra shift down at the pizza parlor,” her mom said as she set down the salad bowl on the table. “Now where is your father?”
“Hello, honey,” Sam’s father said as he walked through the front door into the dining room where they were sitting and gave his wife a kiss on the check before sitting down. “Sorry I’m a bit late.” Sam’s father was a lawyer working at one of the nearby firms. “The guys needed me to sign off on some paperwork for this upcoming case.”
“It’s fine, dear. You made it home in time for dinner.”
If there was one thing Sam’s mom was picky about, it was that everyone be home for dinner. If she spent the time to cook something for the family, then the family better respect her labor and be home to eat the meal. Sam’s mother passed the food around the table, looking at everyone’s plate to make sure they didn’t have too much or too little food.
“Samantha, don’t give Benjamin that much mashed potatoes. He won’t be able to finish my meatloaf,” she said, noticing Sam give Benjamin a couple of extra scoops of mashed potatoes.
“Okay,” Sam said as she scooped the excess mashed potatoes her mother deemed ‘too much’ off of Benjamin’s plate. “Even though you don’t even like meatloaf,” Sam whispered to her brother, which caused a fit of giggles.
* * *
The next morning, Sam unlocked her car and flung her backpack and purse on the passenger seat, then climbed into the car and set off for school. On average, it took Sam about ten minutes to get to school, but when she was pressed for time, she could get to school in about half the time, if she caught mostly green lights.
Today, she had no such luck. “What is with all the red lights?” she yelled over her blaring radio. “Come on! I’m going to be late!”
If only she was more organized, she wouldn’t be constantly running around like a chicken with her head cut off. Today, she’d been even more distracted, because she’d still been obsessing over her conversations with Phillip.
Sam finally pulled into the parking lot with a loud screech. She gathered her things quickly and made her way to the front entrance, pondering how she was going to get by the front office without being noticed. She could get another tardy, but that would mean another detention.
“Hey! Sam, wait up!” Phillip called out from behind her as she ran toward the front entrance.
Sam came to a stop and turned around. This couldn’t be happening. She was almost starting to believe he wanted to run into her. “Oh, hey,
Phillip. What are you doing?”
“I’m late, which is something you are obviously familiar with,” Phillip said with a quick grin.
“Well, I, uh, I just overslept.”
“That’s everyone’s excuse,” he joked. “But I don’t really care what you did that made you late. All I know is that if you go in that way, you are definitely going to be caught.”
“Oh, so you’ve done this before?”
“Yes. I guess you could say that I’m sort of a pro. Follow me. I know of a secret entrance.”
“Where are we going?” Sam asked, both thrilled and confused when he guided her to the side of the school, skillfully dodging classroom windows by ducking below them.
“Here,” Phillip said as he reached a door labeled Electrical.
“The utility closet or whatever this thing is supposed to be isn’t an entrance,” she protested.
“Yes, it is. You just have to have the right tools,” Phillip said as he pulled out his keys. He flipped through a couple of them and finally found the one he was looking for, a broad gold key. “Here we go,” he said as he placed it in the keyhole.
“Is that a key to this door?”
“Yes, I have connections.”
“Wow, you never cease to amaze me,” Sam said.
“I amaze you, huh?” Phillip said, hiding a grin as he opened the door.
Sam blushed. “Are we going in?”
“Let me go first. It’s full of obstacles in here,” Phillip said, holding out his hand for Sam to take.
He was correct about the room being full of obstacles. After the outside door shut, it became pitch black. Phillip had to guide her through. It was hard for Sam to concentrate, though. Phillip’s hand was warm in hers. She could hardly believe she was holding hands with Phillip. Granted, they were walking through the utilities room, trying to sneak into class without getting caught, but it still sent chills up and down Sam’s spine. She momentarily lost control of her senses and tripped over a large box, bringing Phillip down with her.
“Are you ok?” Phillip asked, his warm breath tickling her ear.
In Your Arms Page 2
