Why Me? : A Possessive High School Romance (Young Adult Version)

by Silva Hart

  “Where am I going?” I ask.

  “Seventeen Sinclair.”

  “You got it.” She rolls the window down, and I’m jealous of the breeze that gets to tousle that silky hair. Glancing out of the corner of my eye, I can see the current is pressing the soft t-shirt against her skin. I don’t know if it’s how easy-going she seems or if yesterday afternoon with Lexi has awakened something primal within me, but I can honestly say that a girl has never had this much of an instant impact on me before. “So, where are you coming from?”

  She sighs. “California.”

  I whistle low. “You traded that for Pennsylvania?”

  “Not by choice. I love California. That’s where I’m living someday.”

  “Why didn’t you just stay there?”

  “I tried. I was going to move in with my boyfriend, but the asshole decided to cheat on me. So here I am.”

  His loss. My win.

  My phone chimes a text from where it sits on the center console, and we both reflexively turn to the sound. Dammit, Lexi. Why did you have to put a picture of your face in my phone?

  Sexi Lexi: Good luck tonight.

  Seriously? That’s how she entered her name into my phone? The black letters stand out unmistakably in the white box. Anna looks away quickly, but I know she’s read it.

  “That’s not my girlfriend,” I say, then kick myself. After the kiss in the hallway and now this, it sure looks like I’m a lying scumbag. And Anna just left one of those.

  She shrugs as if it doesn’t matter to her. I have to admit that stings a little.

  We pull up to a standard brick ranch. Stacks of empty boxes line the curb. She presses into the seat. “I seriously do not want to go in there. My mom has turned into such a freak during this whole move.” She leans her head back and stares up at the ceiling. “I just want my old mom back. I want my old house back. I want my old life back.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” I say in an attempt to comfort. But the truth is, I’ve lived in the same shitty row-house all my life. Tony moved in shortly after my dad left when I was a toddler. My life has never really changed all that much. “You want to go grab some ice cream or something?”

  She rolls her head toward me and smiles. “That sounds fantastic.” Before she can change her mind, I hit the gas and we zoom off to Freddie’s.

  She orders a strawberry sundae (whipped cream, no cherry, no nuts), and I get a chocolate milkshake. We sit at a picnic table, facing out with our backs against the wooden edge. I stay quiet hoping she’ll tell me more about herself. But she only leans back next to me, content to savor her sweet treat.

  “What are you doing tonight?” she asks.

  “I have a fight.”

  Her eyes widen like everyone else’s do when they hear those words. “A fight? What kind of fight?”

  “Bare-knuckle betting match.” When the hell did I get so damn proud of that? One-Eyed Mike would knock me out if he found out how much I’ve been blabbing about his little invitation-only, basement betting ring.

  She cocks her head, and her gaze travels across my black, leather jacket and down my long, outstretched legs as if she’s seeing me for the first time. “Can I come?”

  “Sure, why not?” I say without even thinking about it. It’s not like it’s totally taboo. Some of the guys bring chicks. Lexi wouldn’t fit in, but Anna … she could fit in quite comfortably. “It’s a little rough.”

  “That’s okay.”

  And I know it is.

  “When does it start?”

  “Around nine.”

  “Looks like we have some time to kill.”

  “What did you have in mind?” I know what I’m hoping she’ll say.

  “I don’t know. What do kids do for fun around here?”

  She has me there. My family is anything but the Brady Bunch, so we never checked out the local attractions. I’m sure there are the standard things like bowling and the movies, but they’re not right for now. I shrug. “We could go for a drive. I could show you the area.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “Do you need to swing by your house? Let your mom know?”

  “Nah.”

  We throw our trash away and get back in the Mustang. She’s quiet while I show her the sites, so I don’t really learn more about her like I’d wanted to. There’ll be plenty of time for that.

  And when I say sites, it’s more just a lay of the land. Not a whole lot to see in our part of Philly where chain link lines the yards rather than white picket fences. What am I supposed to say? Oh look, there’s the Wawa, and the Post Office is right over there next to the Pawn Shop.

  Boarded-up buildings sit among the thrift stores and Quickie Marts. Fast food bags scatter in the wake of passing cars. Empty cans and bottles line the gutters. I guess I could take her to the ritzy areas, but who wants to gawk at a bunch of oversized houses and watch botoxed women prance from their Audis into overpriced stores?

  My phone chimes again. Lexi’s face, once again, peers up at us.

  Sexi Lexi: 1467 Stenworth Avenue. I promise I’ll make it worth your while.

  “She’s really not my girlfriend,” I say. “She literally just started talking to me yesterday.”

  It sounds lame even to me, and Anna gazes out her window without responding. This simple gesture from her makes me feel small and sheepish in a way no one has made me feel in a long, long time. I give up trying to explain.

  I wind up the hillside to The Overlook and park. She opens the door and gets out, which I wasn’t expecting. I follow her. She stands on the edge of the drop-off so close it makes me nervous and opens her arms wide.

  It’s warm for a late September evening, and the wind flows through her hair making her appear as if she stepped out of a movie poster. Then she crumples to the ground, still on her feet but curled into a ball with her head buried between her knees and her arms wrapped around herself.

  I kneel next to her and rub her back. “Hey, you okay?”

  She takes a deep breath and rises. I stand next to her, my hand still on her back. The heat from her skin radiates through the thin fabric of her shirt. She turns to me, and I can see she’s crying. Not dramatic sobs but soft, silent tears roll down those flawless cheeks, and I want to punch whoever is responsible.

  She presses her face against my chest and wraps her arms around me. I wrap my arms around her, and we stand there like that for a long time. She fits naturally against me, like a puzzle piece that’s been missing.

  I can’t tell what it is about this girl that hits my core with such force. She has an aloof, cat-like vibe about her as if she could take or leave everything. It’s as if she’s an angel sent here from heaven against her will and is only biding her time until she can return.

  Anna and I are at The Overlook. She’s holding me. I’m holding her. And the sun is setting. I never want the moment to end, but it looks like it’s getting late and I’ve got a fight to get to.

  I bend down and breathe in the scent of her hair. It smells like summer rain. “Hey,” I say.

  She stirs.

  “I have to get to the fight.”

  She nods against my chest, releases me, and heads back to the car. We drive in silence to the gym. I want to reach over and hold her hand, but I’m not sure how she’ll react and don’t want to ruin whatever that was.

  I have to park down the street from One-Eyed Mike’s. It looks like a good turnout tonight, and that means good cash. Anna follows me around to the back door and down the musty steps illuminated by a single, bare bulb. We walk down a narrow hall, stepping around puddles that have formed from drips overhead. I knock on a rusty, metal door at the end of the hallway.

  A six-inch window opens, and One-Eyed Mike looks at me with his one, watery eye. His glance shifts to Anna, and I give him the nod that tells him she’s with me. I’ve never brought a girl here before, but he doesn’t act surprised to see her. The door creaks open like something out of a horror movie. A clamor of voices
cascade around us.

  One-Eyed Mike looks at a clipboard. “You’re up second.”

  He’s being good to me tonight.

  Anna steps in, hands in pockets, and nonchalantly takes in the motley mob of characters who are shouting over one another. The men range from looking like homeless who wandered in to cigar chompers in three-piece business suits. The cigars aren’t lit. One-Eyed Mike has a strict no-smoking policy.

  There are only about a dozen women who range from coarse, flannel-shirted bikers to polished model wannabes in skimpy dresses. There’s no platform or ropes, no ring except the one made by the crowd around the chipped concrete floor.

  “I’ve never been to anything like this before. How does it work?” Anna asks.

  “One-Eyed Mike has a list of the guys who want in. He’s the one who says who fights when. There are ten rounds. The winner of the first fight stays in for the second one. A new guy replaces whoever gets beat. The winner always moves to the next round. A guy who starts early and passes through several rounds can clean up good.”

  “Are there any rules?”

  “Can’t use anything but fists.”

  “What’s the most rounds you’ve gotten through?”

  “Four.” It’s the most anyone here has ever won in a row since One-Eyed Mike started this whole thing.

  Her eyebrow raise turns me into Superman. “Staying in the ring like that, fighting fresh guy after fresh guy, must get exhausting.”

  She gets it.

  I steer her to a spot where she can see everything, but I won’t have to worry about her getting crushed by some dickwad. “I need to warm-up.”

  She nods.

  I glance back at her over my shoulder as I walk away. She looks like she’s been coming here for years. Just as I knew she would.

  Chapter 6

  Taking off my shirt, sneakers, and socks, I start with stretches and warm-up with a series of jumping jacks, jump-rope, push-ups, and sit-ups. The bell rings, and I go to where I can keep moving but still see the action in the ring.

  One guy is a familiar face, but I’ve never seen the other. The regular is wiry and shrewd. His name is Mac, and I’ve never liked fighting him. The new guy looks German or Scandinavian and like he could rip a Volkswagen Bug in half. That kind can be easy.

  They start and, as I had suspected, Mac wins in short order. Shit. I jump up and down and roll my head from side to side. I can’t lose in front of Anna. Why did I bring her here?

  Heading to the ring, I catch her eye. Her face is flushed, her nostrils flared, and her chest visibly heaves. But it’s her eyes that really tell me she’s totally turned on by all of this. They smolder. “Get him,” she mouths. And I know I will do exactly that. For her.

  Entering the ring, I strike my stance and wait. The bell rings, and Mac charges. I step to the side and catch him in the kidneys as he passes. Knowing Anna is watching, is cheering for me to win, I’m invincible.

  Mac grunts and whirls. The first guy landed some punches, and Mac’s face is bleeding in places. He swipes at the blood and sweat dripping into his eyes and dances back at me, circling more cautiously this time. I’m fresh. He’s not. I have Anna. He doesn’t.

  I charge him with a flurry of punches. A lot of them land, but the guy is like fighting a Slinky. He rebounds from everything. He catches me in the stomach. I used to hate gut punches, but One-Eyed Mike taught me how to breathe through them so it doesn’t bother me anymore.

  My fist connects with Mac’s temple so solidly that the impact travels all the way to my shoulder. He finally falters and I throw myself on him, punching him in the side of the head until he falls. One-Eyed Mike blows the whistle.

  I stand and hold my hand out to Mac who swats it aside. He jumps up and glares at me before pushing into the surrounding crowd.

  One down. My knuckles sting, but I feel good. Next is some kid I’ve never seen before. He might even be younger than me. He swings wildly as soon as the bell sounds. Is this his first fight? It’s almost as if he’s closing his eyes while lashing out. He couldn’t hit a cow that was standing in the middle of the ring chewing its cud.

  I catch him under the ribs. He grunts and his arms flail. I sidestep him and give him an almost gentle pop in the nose. I don’t want to kill the kid. He falls to the floor, cradling the gusher, and doesn’t make a move to get back up. I kind of feel bad dropping him inside ninety seconds.

  Catching Anna’s eye, I can tell she feels fully alive. She’s positively vibrating. I hold her gaze, drinking in her intensity much like Popeye inhales spinach.

  My next opponent is Ivan, a hulking Swede who’s built like a Viking. Outside the ring, he’s good-natured and laughs a lot, but inside, I’ve seen men not get up after fighting him. Fortunately, he let me in on what his weak spot is.

  One night, it was just him and me in the gym. One-Eyed Mike had gone to run an errand, leaving us to hold down the fort. Ivan had pulled out a bottle of rye–a risky thing given One-Eyed Mike’s heavily enforced rules–and we passed it back and forth.

  The drunker he got, the more he talked, until he revealed that he’d been in a car accident as a kid and has a metal pin in the left side of his jaw. He said it still bothers him.

  The bell rings, and we spring into action. Ivan comes at me. I duck under his swinging arm, whirl, and land a solid punch right where he told me the pin is. He staggers as he rotates back around, working his jaw as if testing to make sure it still works.

  He comes at me again, but this time when I duck under his charge, he’s ready for me. His meaty fist connects squarely with my right eye. Stars and comets kaleidoscope across my vision. I shake it off, but my eye starts to swell shut.

  I go at him and get him in the gut and ribs a few times. By now, my right eye is completely closed, so I don’t see his fist coming until it lands with the weight of a cast iron frying pan on my right cheekbone. My vision swims, and I drop. The ring of the bell echoes in the distance to blackness.

  The sting of a thousand yellow jackets brings me around. I try to sit up, but everything wavers and I collapse back.

  “Stay still and let me clean this,” Anna says.

  My eyes strain to focus. Soft fingers smooth my damp hair from my sweaty face. Cool ointment shoos away the bees before a gentle touch applies a bandage. I can’t see out of the golf ball that used to be my right eye. Reaching up to touch it, I wince at the slight pressure. A cool, wet washcloth moves over my face, down my neck, and over my torso. It’s refreshing and clears my head.

  The washcloth stops, and downy hair brushes my face. I open my good eye to find Anna bending over me. Her eyes are all desire. “That was hot,” she says in a breathy whisper. I think she wants to kiss me. I want her to kiss me. But she straightens and starts putting the first aid stuff away.

  After a few minutes, I sit up. She hands me my shirt. I put it on followed by my socks and sneakers.

  “Oh, that black guy stopped by and left this for you.” She tosses me a roll of bills secured with a rubber band. It has a nice heft to it. This should last me for a bit.

  Sitting up, I shake my head to clear it. Anna wraps her arm around my waist and helps me to stand. I put my arm around her shoulder, and we leave the cacophony of the basement. Outside the metal door, the dim hall is cool and quiet.

  When we get to the car, I like that she doesn’t ask if I’m okay to drive. We’re silent during the trip to her house. After we roll to a stop, she reaches for the door handle and hesitates. I will her to turn back and finally kiss me, but she pulls the handle and gets out.

  After she closes the door, she leans in through the window, giving me a view of her lemon-yellow bralette. It’s pretty, and I try not to stare.

  “How often do you do that?” she asks.

  “Once or twice a month. Whenever I need the cash, really.”

  She nods and looks down at where she was sitting. It seems as if we now have an agreement that I’ll take her with me the next time. She turns, walks to the door,
and gives a brief wave before disappearing inside the house.

  I light a cigarette and inhale deeply. Spending time with her was like smelling pure peppermint oil. I feel good.

  My phone chimes a text. I pick it up and see that I’ve missed fourteen texts from Lexi and one call. Jesus H. Christ. I wouldn’t have done anything with her, if I’d known she would try to take over my life. The messages start out playful but turn more urgent. The phone rings as I’m reading through them. I debate on answering but ultimately do.

  “Jett?” Lexi’s voice is thick with alcohol.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are you, babe?”

  “In my car.”

  “You on your way here?”

  “No.”

  “Please? I need you.”

  Yeah, I heard that before. You can’t catch this mouse with the same cheese twice.

  “Jett, you there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I came with some girls, but they’re in the hot tub now and don’t wanna leave. I needa get outta here. Can you come get me?”

  “Why can’t you just wait for them?”

  “I drank too much and now my head feels weird and I just needa get outta here.”

  I sigh. Classic Lexi. And I haven’t even known her that long.

  “Please, Jett? You’re the only one I know who isn’t here, and everyone is too drunk to drive.”

  I roll my eyes to the ceiling.

  “Jett?” she asks, her voice lost, pleading.

  It’s not like I have anything better to do so sure, why not? “Yeah, I’ll be there in a few. Wait outside.” The last thing I want to do is try to find her inside a McMansion swarming with drunk kids.

  She exhales into the phone. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  I hang up and put the car in gear. It’s only been maybe twenty minutes, but when I turn onto the street where she is, I see multiple cop cars in front of the house with lights swirling. They must have just arrived because kids are streaming out of the house and running in every direction. Paunchy cops are flailing about trying to grab anyone they can. It looks like the entire local police force is here for this.