I arched my brow and his words brought a smile to my mouth.
“It’s not like he would tell that to you,” Theo said. “But he was definitely excited. I wanted to tell him to watch out! Poppy is out to murder her.” He laughed and rubbed the back of his neck as he stole a glance at me.
“Ha.” I took another sip and glanced toward Chloe, who was in the midst of a conversation with some other guy I didn’t recognize. Was that her vodka and Snicker-peddling track boy?
Clinton arrived beside Theo and I and whispered something in Theo’s ear. I couldn’t make it out over the pounding music. I stood there beside the two most handsome and richest boys at the school and felt my heart pounding like it might just spring through my chest and shatter my ribs. Clinton’s eyes turned toward me, across the mounds of my breasts beneath the yellow dress.
“I’ve never seen you so dressed up before, Calloway,” he said.
“You sound like you’re accusing me of something,” I shot back.
Clinton’s grin was a weird mix of menacing and playful. “I just didn’t think you had it in you to wear anything that actually reminded us you were a beautiful girl.”
“Huh. Didn’t know you were analyzing my every fashion choice,” I said, my voice sarcastic.
“No. But what I am about to do is analyze that little brain of yours. Theo, I told you I’m the new-Rooney tutor, didn’t I?” Clinton asked as he looked at his friend and then back at me.
My cheeks burned. “The bio teacher is making me. Once I pass the first test, there won’t be any more tutoring.” And I will. I’ll study my ass off to get out from under your talons.
“Aw. How cute of you. What do you think, Theo? She’s got that little—‘can-do’ attitude. Like, she belongs to one of those inspirational posters. ‘I can do anything I put my mind to!’” Clinton said.
I had just finished my beer when Chloe appeared beside me and squeezed my arm, tugging me away. I said a weird, “See you later,” to both of them, both grateful and not to get away from them. Chloe and I marched out onto the balcony, which was mostly empty. The Colorado sky was spread out like a beautiful black blanket, dotted with a million bright stars. I inhaled the chilly air as Chloe grabbed another two beers from the outside cooler.
“Who was that you were talking to?” I asked her.
“That’s the Snickers boy. His name is Max. Max Paulson.”
“He’s cute,” I said.
Chloe giggled. “Not as cute as the two boys you were just with. Clinton and Theo! Whew.”
“They want to just spin me around and make fun of me,” I said. “But Theo did say something kind of kind.”
Inside, someone hollered, “BEER PONG!” I gave Chloe an incredulous look and she laughed and said, “You’ll love it. Come on.”
Theo and Zed grabbed the long dining table and placed it near the bed, with space on either end. Poppy and Ellison set up little red plastic cups in a triangle on both sides, with the points toward each other. I’d maybe half-seen something like this on TV, but I wasn’t sure. Someone popped open a container of fresh ping pong balls, and another yanked a twenty-four-pack of cheap beer. Chloe informed me that you could only really play beer pong with cheap beer. “It’s sacrilegious otherwise.”
“Theo, you want to play with me again? Dream team?” Poppy asked. She sidled toward him. I could feel the kind of camaraderie she thought she had with him, the two best gymnasts, at the best school for gymnastics in the world.
But Theo’s eyes found mine across the crowd. “Actually, I think I want the new girl.”
Poppy’s face grew sour. I wanted to tell Theo no, don’t do this. It was only going to make everything worse. But on the other hand, I was totally drawn to him. Even though I told myself not to go, I felt like I had no control over myself. I had to go to him. I darted through the crowd and appeared on the side of the table beside him, and he beamed down at me drunkenly and said, “There she is. Foster Kid. The new girl.”
Poppy smirked. “Look at you feeling like your important.” She said it just loud enough for only me to hear, and my smile smeared off my face. It felt like a threat and Theo calling me ‘foster kid’ pissed me off even more. But all eyes were on us, and the game chugged forward. I had to play.
Theo and I were teamed up against Poppy and Zed. I remembered that they used to sleep together, and it kind of seemed like Poppy still wanted it. She touched his arm as he adjusted the red cups and she tried to whisper in his ear. Each time, Zed kind of knocked his head away, like she was an annoying bug. He gave Theo a look that I read as, “Get this bitch away from me,” although, who the hell knew what was on everyone’s mind.
I gave Chloe a panicked look as Theo and Zed counted to three and tossed the first ball at the same time. I figured I got the gist. Hit the ball into a cup which was filled with disgusting, bubbly beer and make the other team drink. I’d had little to no experience with sports like this, where hand-eye coordination actually mattered, but I was just drunk enough not to care. Theo hit his cup, which meant we were up first.
“You first, New Girl,” Theo shot out with a grin. He passed me the ping pong ball, and our fingers brushed. My stomach fluttered, but I pushed the thought away and posed the ball up by my eye. I mimed how Theo had done it: three pulses back and forth with the ball, then spring it forward toward the pyramid.
I hit! The ping pong ball knocked against the side of one of the red cups and then splashed into another. Poppy’s jaw dropped, and everyone in the room screamed and cried. Dammit, this felt almost better than landing a wolf jump on the balance beam or hitting that back handspring to layout step-out for the first time. This was proof that I was a normal teenager.
“Drink up, Pop,” Theo ordered. Poppy did as she was told, but scowled the whole time. Zed gave Clinton a high-five behind him and collected the ping pong. He hit his easily, smacked it right at the very top of the pyramid. Theo said, “I figured, Zed-o. You always kill this game.”
“I played basketball for years. You know that,” Zed said.
Theo was up. His sprung off the side of the top red cup and nearly knocked Poppy in the face, and she screeched and swatted it away. My reaction was quick and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I wasn’t the only one who laughed, of course, but I was the only one who shouldn’t have. She shot me a wicked glare and swiped a bit of beer from her cheek. I brought my finger to my chin and felt at the crack, where I’d hit my chin on the rock on that first day. It was mostly healed, but it still flickered with pain.
It was Poppy’s turn. She held the ping pong aloft like we all had, but instead of throwing it delicately, she thrust it toward the backline of red cups. She did it with so much force that the cup actually fell back and spewed beer all over my stomach and thighs, and it splashed a bit across Theo. I cried out and leaped back, but the damage was done. I reeked of beer. I blinked up at her, again humiliated, and she stuck out her bottom lip and said, “Oh, poor baby. It looks like someone has to go home.”
I gave her a mischievous grin. I was drunk and I sizzled with adrenaline. “Is that really the best you got? Spilling beer on me? Come on, Miss Popular!”
Poppy’s cheeks turned bright red. She grabbed another beer and started to charge toward me, ready to throw it. Theo grabbed her arm and cut himself in front and then boomed, “Poppy. Knock it off.” She stopped short and just stared up at him, her fingers bright white from gripping the cup so hard.
“What are you going to do?” she demanded. She was drunk and volatile and I thought she might even toss the beer on him. But he was Theo Everton—and I guess that just wasn’t the kind of thing anyone did. Not even Poppy.
“Don’t make me do anything, Poppy. You know it won’t end well,” Theo threatened and held her stare.
Zed reached forward and grabbed two cups of beer from the beer pong table and drank both. Someone turned up the music again like the whole beer pong experiment had already come to a close. Theo gave Poppy a final look and then he reared around and grabb
ed my hand and led me toward the bathroom. We entered the pristine, white-tiled bathroom with an antique gold mirror reflecting us, and then he kicked the door closed. He smashed his fist against the counter and muttered, “Fucking Poppy. Always stuck up her own ass. I swear she’s ruined every single one of my parties.”
I took a brief glance at us in the mirror. Despite the beer-soaked yellow dress, I looked oddly pretty. My black hair shone and my cleavage popped and my eye makeup was dark and sultry, all thanks to Chloe. Theo also looked terribly handsome. He ran the water in the sink and brought a washrag under it. He then turned toward me and handed the rag over. I took it and swiped it over the beer stain. The silence inside the bathroom was deafening as the party raged on outside.
“Thanks for this,” I said. It wasn’t lost on me that this was my very first time to be alone in a small space with a boy. At sixteen, it wasn’t something I would ever admit to anyone.
“Least I could do,” Theo said. He arched his brow and I wanted to sweep my fingers through his dark blonde hair and wrap my hands around his biceps.
I forced my eyes down and continued to clean myself up. Theo’s large hand reached up to my shoulder and toyed with the little strap of the yellow dress. Every single hair on my body stood on-end. I glanced up at him, frozen like a deer. When I didn’t say anything, his fingers trickled down the strap of my dress. He touched the top of my cleavage and then stepped closer to me. I tilted my head up. His lips were just a few inches from mine, and his body seemed to fit me perfectly. I could feel my body come alive as butterflies swept across my stomach and I could feel the heat between my legs.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “I don’t know how I can resist you like this.”
“Covered in beer?” I whispered, looking up at him.
He grinned. “You’re really different, aren’t you? Not like everyone else at this school. I think it’s why Poppy doesn’t really get to you, although she’s trying. Isn’t she?”
“I’m too focused to let Poppy get to me. I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything. She can’t get in the way.”
“She’s gotten to others before,” he muttered. “Our freshman year. Nobody could ever prove it, but a girl got hurt in the locker room. She cracked her ankle. Nobody else on the team would talk since Poppy is the pride and glory of Denver Athletics, or whatever.”
I swallowed. Could I really believe what this guy said? “Are you just saying this to scare me?”
He shrugged and drew a little strand of black hair behind my ear. “Are you capable of getting scared?”
“I’ve been scared once or twice before,” I said.
“Just once or twice,” he returned. “Of course.”
“But I think that’s my limit. I’ve really seen it all, now,” I said. I let out a little laugh. This was what it was like to flirt. This was what it was like to feel something for someone, even if it was just a little drunken banter in a bathroom when you were covered with beer.
“I have a weird feeling about you, Rooney Calloway,” Theo said, tilting his head to the side and inspecting me further. “My father, Coach Jonathon, everyone. They can’t shut up about you. You’re going places. And I’m going places, too.”
“You really think so?”
Suddenly, the bathroom door sprung open. Zed, Poppy, Clinton, and Ellison sprung up on the other side. Their smiles were horrible as they all screeched in unison, “You really think so?” They mocked me and burst into laughter. One of them had had their ear pressed against the door.
“Look at her. She thinks she’s going to hook up with Theo!” Poppy scoffed and then doubled over with laughter. “Aw, how adorable. I just—it’s too sweet for words.” She stretched her hand over her heart.
My smile fell. Theo joined his friends in laughter and leaned against the sink and crossed his ankles. I glared at him and muttered, “Fuck off,” and then forced myself through the others at the door. When I got out, I spotted Chloe, who nodded and followed me the rest of the way out of the party. She slurred her words in the hallway and said, “Everyone’s talking about how you went into the bathroom with Theo. What happened?”
“Nothing,” I muttered. “Absolutely nothing.”
“I made out with Max,” Chloe said. She stumbled a little at the stairwell and beamed at me. She looked delirious with happiness.
“Snickers guy?”
“Yep. But he doesn’t taste like Snickers. Um. God, I like him! Is that crazy?” Chloe asked.
“No!” I grabbed her hand and forced away my own dark feelings. “That’s beautiful, Chloe. One of us might as well fall in love.”
All things considered, the party hadn’t been a complete and total disaster, although it was clear that Poppy and the Brotherhood would do anything to make me feel two inches tall. I just had to keep my head down, not get distracted by beautiful dark-blonde boys with false promises.
When Chloe and I returned to the room, it was just after 1:15. “Let’s not go to bed yet,” she told me, although I was exhausted. She shuffled around beneath her mattress to find a dark chocolate bar, which she called healthy, with a wink. Then, she clambered into my bed with her laptop and put on a movie I had never seen before, called Clueless. “I cannot believe you haven’t seen this,” she said, incredulous as she drunkenly bit into a piece of chocolate and leaned her head on my shoulder. “It’s like you haven’t lived.”
“You have no idea,” I said, looking at the screen.
But there, beside my new closest friend, I let the emotional panic from the party and the first week of school fade away. I even laughed a few times until I fell asleep. Without practice the next day, we let ourselves sleep until an ungodly hour—ten in the morning! And I felt renewed and ready for whatever would come next.
Chapter Twelve
Chloe was right. It had been good to forget, for a few hours, that we were all there for intense training. When we got to practice on Sunday, you could tell that we were all a bit slower, a bit less stretched-out, and a bit groggy-eyed from Friday’s party. Coach Jonathon alluded to it and rolled his eyes. When I didn’t hit a split jump, he muttered, “Not you, too.” But he grinned and just shook his head.
I doubled down on the next few weeks. I woke up fifteen minutes before Chloe to make sure we both made it to practice on time. I fought to be at the head of the pack during our runs. I tore through every uneven bar, every floor routine, and every balance beam practice. Coach Jonathon took me aside at the end of every week and talked to me in the office. “If you keep going like this, Rooney, nothing will stand in your way. Nothing.”
Poppy hadn’t exactly backed off, but the fact was, she couldn’t keep up with me. Sometimes, Coach Jonathon pitted us against each other at practice, and I always outdid her. She gasped and panted and her eyes went all crossed like she was dizzy when I had only put in seventy-five percent of the effort. She looked at me like she wanted to crush me, if only she had enough energy. In the showers, she stayed away from me—petty things like a switch of my water from warm to piping-hot wasn’t enough anymore. She had tried to brew up more ideas to destroy me, but she wasn’t clever enough to follow through. She would just resort to name-calling and try and throw a jab here and there, but I just ignored it, and now we were full steam ahead, training for the mid-semester performance in the middle of October.
The swimmers and track team raced each other in their particular events; the volleyball players split up into several teams and had a kind of all-day tournament. Of course, the gymnasts competed against each other for points. How we performed on that day, relative to how we had practiced and performed the rest of the semester, gave us our mid-semester grade. I had heard stories of students losing their spots at the school based on their performance. It terrified me, but I was also pretty solid in my standing. Coach Jonathon had hung his Olympic dreams on my shoulders. And I had even read about myself on the internet, which was something we were told not to do. According to several gymnastics blogs, there was a rumor that
a certain gymnast was creeping up on Poppy Binford’s game.
There was one thing that had worried me a little bit and that was that after four weeks at Denver Athletics, I still hadn’t bothered to meet with my science tutor, Clinton. Mr. Collins asked about it days before our first big test of the semester.
“I’ve been so busy. I completely forgot,” I lied, trying to earn his sympathy.
“Right. Well, I need proof from the both of you that you met at least twice before this test,” Mr. Collins said sternly. “Otherwise, I’ll take 10% off your grade.”
It seemed so unfair, but there was nothing I could do. Clinton agreed to meet that evening after both of our second practices wrapped up for the day. Since it was Tuesday, the gymnasts got out of practice about a half-hour before the swimmers. I changed and wandered over to the building that housed our Olympic-sized swimming pool. Once inside, you could stand at these floor to ceiling windows and peer in at the bright blue water and watch the swimmers who traced laps to and fro for hours-on-end. I spotted Chloe on the other side. She did a perfect flip-turn and then trudged on. With her face downturned, she had no idea I had been watching so closely.
Clinton was a few lanes away. I entered and walked toward his lane to watch his full stroke. He was on his back so you could see the full girth of his chest and the way his muscles were threaded and moved as he swept down, and his hands perfectly cupped the water. I was fascinated. As I stood, Chloe yanked up from her lane and popped her goggles off. She always looked hilarious and bug-eyed with her cap on.
“What are you doing here?” she called.
“I love the smell of chlorine,” I joked and shot her a smile.
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. But really... What’s up?”
“Clinton and I have our first tutoring session,” I said.
“Oh, shit. Well.” She hustled over to me and leaned forward to whisper. “I think I’m going to sneak into Max’s to watch a movie.”
I beamed at her. I loved that she took these little risks—the Snickers bars and the vodka and now the sneaking-into-a-boy’s-room. “Have a good time and I’ll cover for you if anyone comes by.”
Out for Blood Page 10
