by Anne Hansen
And isn’t.
“Well, whatever you were up to, it’s interfering with your school work,” Mrs. Delani retorts, her voice crisp and business-like again. “When I saw your name on my roster this year, I have to admit I didn’t have high hopes.”
Vin snorts. “Join the club. If there’re any spots left. Membership might be at full capacity.”
“But you proved me wrong. I’ve been teaching for thirty years, Mr. Moretti. A student managing to prove me wrong is quite a coup. Which is why I’m putting your name in for peer tutoring.” I hear her pen scratching on paper.
Vin’s words have a mean edge. “I don’t have time to get tutored by some geek.”
“I already looked up your schedule. You have a ninth period study hall. Which you skip ninety-nine percent of the time.” Her laugh is sardonic, bordering on evil. “I’m sorry to say you’ll have to sit at school rather than going joyriding, but I think you’ll find the benefits far outweigh the negatives when you’re crossing that stage to pick up your diploma.”
“What if I say no?” Vin asks, and I can tell he’s talking through gritted teeth.
“Because of your past performance and the strength of my recommendation, it’s not an option to say ‘no.’ We don’t like to waste our tutors’ time, so candidates for this program have to show incentive to achieve. I think you’ve shown that these past few weeks.” Mrs. Delani doesn’t seem offended or upset by the fact that Vin is clearly fighting her tooth and nail. In fact, it sounds like she came to this battle well prepared. “Wait here.”
I listen to the click of her sensible pumps on the checkered linoleum of her classroom floor. I try hard not to look like a shameless eavesdropper, giving Mrs. Delani my sweetest smile when she comes into the hall. “Keira, could I see you in the classroom?”
“Of course.” I follow her through the doorway and slide into a desk close to hers. Vin is leaned up against the box radiator near the windows, arms crossed, scowl on his handsome face.
“Vin, I know you and Keira know each other from class. Keira, I talked to your counselor when I found out you were in the peer tutoring program. I hate to shake your schedule up like this, but we didn’t have any senior English candidates in ninth period. If you were willing to switch your phys ed and study periods, you’d be doing us a huge favor.” She gives me an expectant smile.
My head snaps up, and I look at Vin, who’s stopped slouching against the wall. All I can think about are the words I hurled at him just before class started:
Too bad there’s only one person I ever wanted looking out for me. And he’s the one I can’t have.
“Mrs. Delani, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Vin blurts out, running a hand through his hair.
“Why not?” she demands, her smile pinching into a frown. “Keira wouldn’t even have to switch phys ed teachers, just times. And we combed through the list of tutors, Vin. There was no other option. The guidance counselors and I are determined to see you graduate on time. Keira is your best chance at pulling through.” She turns to me. “Do you have any problems with this arrangement, Keira?”
Do I have any problems sitting for another forty-five minutes a day in close proximity with Vin Moretti, the former love or my life and current, frustrating bane of my existence?
I clear my throat and try to find a way to say all that in a diplomatic way. But Mrs. Delani looks so eager, and I’ve never been very good at disappointing people, especially my teachers. I offer her a weak smile.
“It wouldn’t be a problem at all, Mrs. Delani. I’d be happy to help.”
“It’s settled then,” she says, signing our passes with a flourish before Vin can jump in and argue again. She narrows her eyes his way. “Mr. Moretti, I do hope you appreciate the fact that Keira is doing this out of a desire to help. She’s a very bright young woman, and I think you two will make an excellent team if you give this a chance.”
Vin snatches the pass off her desk, his jaw locked so tight, I can see the bunched muscles high up on his cheek. He strides out of the classroom without a backward glance.
Mrs. Delani sighs. “If Vin Moretti gives you a single ounce of belligerence, you let me know immediately and we call this whole thing off,” she warns sternly. Then her lips curl into a conspiratorial smile. “Worst case scenario, you’ll be in a ninth period study with a lax teacher. Even the best students need to play hooky now and then. Don’t look so shocked, Keira. Even an old crone like me knows life is bigger than high school.”
She winks, and I take my pass with a strange determination.
“Thank you, Mrs. Delani. I think this will work out just fine.” The words are more than an assurance…they’re a vow I’m making here and now.
Vin may have ripped my heart from my chest and crushed it under his boot heel, but I do believe he was acting as my guardian angel last night when he fixed my truck.
I know things are rocky between us, but I don’t have it in me to turn my back on someone who helped me. This is a way I can repay him for his kindness, no matter how confusing that kindness is.
***
“You’ve been tight-lipped,” David says, handing me his cup of peaches drenched in thick, sweet syrup.
“Your mother packs enough lunch to share with the entire football team,” I say, peeling back the film and inhaling the potent fruity aroma. “Mmm. Thank you for sharing.”
“I wish my lunch would bring the football team over to share,” David sighs, waving to the shy second string quarterback across the lunchroom, who smiles back through his blush. “Or just number twenty-eight. I would love to share with him…”
“We’re not interested in your potential love life,” Lily says, nabbing a celery stick out of my bag. She crunches down on it. “We need to focus on Keira’s. So, spill. What did Delani want? You came awful late to physics, and then you just doodled hearts and stars all over your notebook.”
“She did not!” David laughs, pointing his spork at me. “Girl, you can throw any lie you want at us. You’re hot for Vin Moretti, and not a single soul in this school would blame you for shouting it from the rooftops.”
“I doodled those hearts and stars because, unlike some people, I took the notes the night before. Today was just a review, and I didn’t need to copy it all down.” I ignore the fact that I’ve never once passed up a chance to review if it was handed to me. It’s one of the reasons I’ve done well in school up to this point.
“You’re skirting the real question here,” David says, waggling his fingers at me. “And that question is, ‘How did the stars align to throw you and Vin Moretti at each other?’ We need answers.”
I’ve never brought up this summer, even to Lily and David. First of all, it’s still shocking for me to think about my whirlwind first love and how quickly it ended. Secondly, if I went on and on about the Vin I met this summer and then explained the non-reason he used to dump me, I’d sound like an obsessed, pathetic stalker.
Part of me really wants to tell someone else about it. It hurts. Every day I smile and keep my head up, but I’ve spent so many nights curled in a tight ball, crying my eyes dry. Talking about it to someone, anyone—other than my mother’s picture—might help ease some of the sharp pain that claws at me.
It’s on the tip of my tongue right now, but I chicken out. “You’re going to be very disappointed to learn that it was about tutoring.”
David’s mouth falls open. “Come again? Once more, but slower. I think my ears are broken.”
I nibble on a peach. “Mrs. Delani wants me to tutor Vin.”
“I knew I should have put my name in for peer tutoring,” David laments. He stacks his star-shaped sugar cookies into a little tower. “What did Vin Moretti have to say about that?”
“He said he didn’t need some geek tutor and that he didn’t want to do it,” I say, which is honest. I heard him say that. Of course, I don’t add that he made the geek comment before he realized that it was me he was talking about.
Or tha
t he’d called me a geek once before, and we laughed over it.
Before we kissed over it.
“So?” Lily asks, bouncing in her orange plastic chair. “What did Delani say?”
I can’t help smiling at how ridiculous they’re being. “Delani said he’s not in a position to say no. She asked if I’d switch my gym period with my study hall—”
“Wait!” David knocks over his cookie tower. “You’re leaving me stranded in the middle of volleyball? Who’s going to duck in the corner with me?”
Lily elbows him, purses her lips, and clucks her tongue. “You’re seriously asking Keira to consider giving up one-on-one tutoring with Vin Moretti to fail gym with you?”
“Sorry,” David says, hanging his head. “I’m just bummed to be all alone with those gym warriors. Keira saved me from taking a volleyball to the head more than once.” He adjusts his silver-gray tie. “Enough whining on my part. What’s your plan?”
“My plan?” I repeat, spooning the last bit of syrup onto my spoon. “I plan to help Vin Moretti write a concise, thoughtful essay on The Great Gatsby. That’s it. That’s the plan.”
“I refuse to believe you’d waste an opportunity like this,” David says, eating all the points off one cookie.
“What…what makes you think there’s something so special about Vin anyway?” I try to sound nonchalant, but I can hear the quiver that shakes my own words.
“He’s mysterious,” Lily says, resting her chin on her hands and staring up at the industrial ceiling tiles like they’re a sky full of stars. “Even though everyone knows who he is and he’s dated tons of girls at Eastside, it’s like no one really knows him. Mystery is sexy.”
“And he’s got that badass vibe, but he’s a good guy at heart,” David adds.
Then he clamps his mouth shut. Which is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen my very odd friend do. Even Lily looks intrigued.
“What do you know about him that you aren’t telling?” she demands, tugging on his tie.
He brushes her hand away and smooths the silk down. “It’s none of your beeswax.”
I shrug. “Let him have his secrets,” I say to Lily, then smile around the spoon as I lick off the last bit of sweetness. “But I’ll remember this when I have things about Vin I’m trying to decide if I should tell or not.”
“You wouldn’t,” David says, pressing his hands together, prayer style. I shrug and watch him internally debate, before he rolls his eyes and leans forward. “Fine. You’re stripping the privacy from my one personal Vin Moretti experience, but I’ll go ahead and share.”
He gestures for Lily and me to scoot closer, and we all drag our plastic chairs into a tight circle.
“Tell,” Lily demands. “And fast. The suspense is killing me!”
David presses up his shiny black hair and exposes a long white scar that runs along his forehead, puckered against his olive skin. Lily hisses a breath in and reaches to touch it with gentle fingers.
“Is this why you went through that bandana stage while you grew out your mohawk?” she asks in a whisper.
He nods. His eyes glisten, but he tries to laugh it off. “Good thing I look fine in a do-rag, right?” He turns to me. “That was part two of my short-lived rebel fashion phase. But, back to Vin Moretti,” he says, folding his hands in front of him. “I was coming back from the train station alone one night. I’d been at the most exquisite, intense all-night masquerade party the world has ever seen, and I was covered in a fair amount of glitter. I went as a phoenix. The sequins cost me an entire summer of babysitting money, but it was, without a doubt, the most amazing costume there. Period.” His lips tremble, but he shakes it off and keeps going.
So, there I am, dancing home in the moonlight, and I make an epically stupid choice to go through Grantham Park because I want to see the skyline all lit up. And I run into some…unsavory types. Who proceed to yell at me, follow me, then tear my costume to shreds, getting sequins all over the place. And then…they start tearing me to shreds.”
I can’t help the gasp that comes out. David is telling this the way he tells any other juicy gossip story, like he wants us to lose sight of the fact that it happened to him. That he was viciously attacked like that.
“David,” I murmur, reaching for his arm. “I can’t even imagine…”
“I know,” he says, his eyes twinkling like he’s about to tell the punchline to a joke. “I told them that even if I could repair the sequins, the blood would ruin the outfit for good. I was pretty sure I’d die, and I was pissed I’d look so fucking tragic. Like I couldn’t even imagine the shitty headlines they’d piece together. Just as all these terrible puns were occurring to me and making me want to puke, I heard the roar of an engine and a door slam, and I thought, ‘I hope they didn’t call for backup.’” His eyes go soft and dreamy, and he picks up a star cookie and twirls it between his fingers. “But it wasn’t backup. It was my knight in shining armor. Or, you know, in a really badass leather jacket and combat boots.”
“Vin Moretti?” Lily breathes like she’s saying something sacred, her eyes wide as a little kid’s at story time.
David nods. “I’m not big on violence. I mean, I don’t faint when I see blood or anything, but I would never, like, willingly watch an MMA match or something. That night, though, the violence was kind of viciously beautiful,” he sighs. “He just beat the ever loving shit out of those thugs. Broken noses, broken teeth, blood, screams.” David shivers. “It was also insanely barbaric. I didn’t wind up seeing it all because I was losing a lot of blood myself, and I fainted.
And when I woke up, he was carrying me to his car. Which was a freaking Saab, nice as all hell. He laid me in the back seat, all bloody, and the next thing I knew, I woke up a hospital bed, all stitched up.” He throws his hands in the air. “When I came back to school, I saw him in the halls, but there was zero recognition, ever. I don’t think he ever put together that I was the guy he rescued. To be fair, I did have a metallic mesh mask with feathers and a whole lot of face paint. And blood. Like three or four quarts.”
“Vin never knew it was you?” I ask, poking the straw into my water bottle absently, trying to process all the elements of David’s story: the horror of the attack, the random kindness of Vin’s interference, the strange fact that Vin never acknowledged it to David.
“If he did, he never said a word about it to me or anyone else. My father called the police every day for weeks to see if anyone came forward with information. My parents were hysterical over it. But… nothing.” David bats his lashes. “I never told because I figured he’d let people know if he wanted them to.” His smile drops. “Also, you know, I didn’t want anything bad to come his way over it.”
“What bad could come his way?” Lily cries, her eyes bright with tears I know she’s working hard to hold back.
David stands suddenly, collecting up garbage with rapid grabs. “I don’t know. I mean, what if he didn’t want to be known as some crusader for costumed gay boys bleeding to death? Sometimes I wonder if he was disgusted…if he helped because it was just too pitiful. Like watching someone beat a dog.”
I put my hand on his wrist and say the words I know are true. “Vin Moretti helped you because those assholes attacked you. He helped you because he’s a good person who doesn’t like see good people get abused. That’s all.”
David stares at me, tilting his head to one side. He grabs my empty peach container and shakes his head. “When you say that, it makes me believe you. You, Keira McCabe, are as mysterious as Vin Moretti in your own sweet way. Which is how I know you’ll end up the hottest couple at Eastside by Homecoming.” He points at Lily as he saunters to the garbage can. “Mark my words, Lily. I want a credible witness to my prediction. And I’m designing your dress. No arguments.”
Lily nods, but I notice she wipes a few tears away with her fingers when David heads toward the garbage can.
“I remember that week,” she whispers, her eyes glued to the grimy tabletop. “His
mother called me and said he had pneumonia. And she never lies, so I believed her. He looked awful when he came back. Told me he got the bruising on his face when he tried to sneak out of his bed to catch a Cary Grant marathon in the living room and fell down the stairs. And I believed him.”
“Of course you believed him,” I say, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Why wouldn’t you have?”
“He went through that without me,” she says, tears trekking down her face. “Why?”
“To protect you,” I answer, thinking of Vin mocking me in front of Principal Miller. Thinking about the hurt I saw clear as day in his eyes, even while he was shoving me away.
“How was pushing me away protecting me?” she demands.
“I guess it wasn’t pushing you away exactly,” I say slowly. “Or, that wasn’t the way he saw it. It was shielding you. Keeping you distanced from what might hurt you. That was the only option he had in an impossible situation.”
“Wrong,” Lily says, blinking hard to stop more tears. “He had the option to trust me. He had the option to share that pain with me. I feel like…I feel like I must have let him down. I don’t know what I could have done. How did I ever let him down so badly that he thought I wouldn’t want to be by his side for that?”
My brain is spinning from Lily’s words. Just when I thought I could make peace with the way Vin turned his back on me, she flipped it. Before we can talk more, David walks back, pulling us close to whisper that he just saw Jen Santiago in a tight t-shirt and she definitely got a boob job over summer vacation.
Lily’s enjoyment of the hot gossip is definitely tamped by David’s confession, and I think all three of us are relieved when the ending bell rings, and we head our separate ways.
It feels like I’m holding my breath the entire second half of the day. When I finally plunk my backpack down at an empty table in my new study hall period, I’m fully prepared for Vin to continue his ditching pattern. But he strides in just before the final bell, writes something on the sign-out sheet, and nods for me to follow him.
