The Holders.
I can feel the blood rushing to my cheeks, but it doesn’t matter. After a middle of the afternoon run in the Texas heat and a limited supply of water, I’m sure my entire body is flush. I try not to glance back at his house, but curiousity is my weakness. It’s a modest house, not too flashy. It fits in well with the mid-income neighborhood we’re in. As does the car that’s in his driveway. I wonder if that’s his car? I can deduct from his conversation with whats-her-face from the grocery store that he’s my age, so I know he must live with his parents. But how have I not seen him before? How could I not know I lived less than three miles from the only boy in existence who can turn me into a ball of frustrated hot-flashes?
I clear my throat. “Well, thanks for the water.” I can think of nothing I want more than to escape this awkwardness. I give him a quick wave and break into a stride.
“Wait a sec,” he yells from behind me. I don’t slow down, so he passes me and turns around, jogging backward against the sun. “Let me refill your water.” He reaches over and grabs my water bottle out of my left hand, brushing his hand against my stomach in the process. I freeze again.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, running off toward his house.
I’m stumped. That is a completely contradictory act of kindness. Another side effect of the split personality disorder, maybe? He’s probably a mutation, like The Hulk. Or Jekyll and Hyde. I wonder if Dean is his nice persona and Holder is his scary one. Holder is definitely the one I saw at the grocery store earlier. I think I like Dean a lot better.
I feel awkward waiting, so I walk back toward his driveway, pausing every few seconds to look at the path that leads back to my home. I have no idea what to do. It feels like any decision I make at this point will be one for the dumb side of the scale.
Should I stay?
Should I run?
Should I hide in the bushes before he comes back outside with handcuffs and a knife?
Before I have a chance to run, his front door swings open and he comes back outside with a full bottle of water. This time the sun is behind me, so I don’t have to struggle so hard to see him. That’s not a good thing, either, since all I want to do is stare at him.
Ugh! I absolutely hate lust.
Hate. It.
Every fiber of my being knows he’s not a good person, yet my body doesn’t seem to give a shit at all.
He hands me the bottle and I quickly down another drink. I hate Texas heat as it is, but coupled with Dean Holder, it feels like I’m standing in the pits of Hell.
“So…earlier? At the store?” he says with a nervous pause. “If I made you uneasy, I’m sorry.”
My lungs are begging me for air, but I somehow find a way to reply. “You didn’t make me uneasy.”
You sort of creeped me out.
Holder narrows his eyes at me for a few seconds, studying me. I’ve discovered today that I don’t like being studied…I like going unnoticed. “I wasn’t trying to hit on you, either,” he says. “I just thought you were someone else.”
“It’s fine.” I force a smile, but it’s not fine. Why am I suddenly consumed with disappointment that he wasn’t trying to hit on me? I should be happy.
“Not that I wouldn’t hit on you,” he adds with a grin. “I just wasn’t doing it at that particular moment.”
Oh, thank you, Jesus. His clarification makes me smile, despite all my efforts not to.
“Want me to run with you?” he asks, nudging his head toward the sidewalk behind me.
Yes, please.
“No, it’s fine.”
He nods. “Well, I was going that way anyway. I run twice a day and I’ve still got a couple…” He stops speaking mid sentence and takes a quick step toward me. He grabs my chin and tilts my head back. “Who did this to you?” The same hardness I saw in his eyes at the grocery store returns behind his scowl. “Your eye wasn’t like this earlier.”
I pull my chin away and laugh it off. “It was an accident. Never interrupt a teenage girl’s nap.”
He doesn’t smile. Instead, he takes a step closer and gives me a hard look, then brushes his thumb underneath my eye. “You would tell someone, right? If someone did this to you?”
I want to respond. Really, I do. I just can’t. He’s touching my face. His hand is on my cheek. I can’t think, I can’t speak, I can’t breathe. The intensity that exudes from his whole existence sucks the air out of my lungs and the strength out of my knees. I nod unconvincingly and he frowns, then pulls his hand away.
“I’m running with you,” he says, without question. He places his hands on my shoulders and turns me in the opposite direction, giving me a slight shove. He falls into stride next to me and we run in silence.
I want to talk to him. I want to ask him about his year in juvi, why he dropped out of school, why he has that tattoo…but I’m too scared to find out the answers. Not to mention I’m completely out of breath. So instead, we run in complete silence the entire way back to my house.
When we close in on my driveway, we both slow down to a walk. I have no idea how to end this. No one ever runs with me, so I’m not sure what the etiquette is when two runners part ways. I turn and give him a quick wave. “I guess I’ll see you later?”
“Absolutely,” he says, staring right at me.
I smile at him uncomfortably and turn away. Absolutely? I flip this word over in my mind as I head back up the driveway. What does he mean by that? He didn’t try to get my number, despite not knowing I don’t have one. He didn’t ask if I wanted to run with him again. But he said absolutely like he was certain; and I sort of hope he is.
“Sky, wait.” The way his voice wraps around my name makes me wish the only word in his entire vocabulary was Sky. I spin around and pray he’s about to come up with another cheesy pick-up line. I would totally fall for it now.
“Do me a favor?”
Anything. I’ll do anything you ask me to, so long as you’re shirtless.
“Yeah?”
He tosses me his bottle of water. I catch it and look down at the empty bottle, feeling guilty that I didn’t think to offer him a refill myself. I shake it in the air and nod, then jog up the steps and into the house. Karen is loading the dishwasher when I run into the kitchen. As soon as the front door closes behind me, I gasp for the air my lungs have been begging for.
“My God, Sky. You look like you’re about to pass out. Sit down.” She takes the bottle from my hands and forces me into a chair. I let her refill it while I breathe in through my nose and out my mouth. She turns around and hands it to me and I put the lid on it, then stand up and run it back outside to him.
“Thanks,” he says. I stand and watch as he presses those same full lips to the opening of the water bottle.
We’re practically kissing again.
I can’t distinguish between the affect my near five-mile run has had on me and the affect Holder is having on me. Both of them make me feel like I’m about to pass out from lack of oxygen. Holder closes the lid on his water bottle and his eyes roam over my body, pausing at my bare midriff for a beat too long before he reaches my eyes. “Do you run track?”
I cover my stomach with my left arm and clasp my hands at my waist. “No. I’m thinking about trying out, though.”
“You should. You’re barely out of breath and you just ran close to five miles,” he says. “Are you a senior?”
He has no idea how much effort it’s taking on my behalf not to fall onto the pavement and wheeze from lack of air. I’ve never ran this far in one shot before, and it’s taking everything I have to come across like it’s not a big deal. Apparently it’s working.
“Shouldn’t you already know if I’m a senior? You’re slacking on your stalking skills.”
When his dimples make a reappearance, I want to high-five myself.
“Well, you make it sort of difficult to stalk you,” he says. “I couldn’t even find you on Facebook.”
He just admitted to looking me up on Facebook. I met him less than two hours ago, so the fact that he went straight home and looked me up on Facebook is a little bit flattering. An involuntary smile breaks out on my face, and I want to punch this pathetic excuse for a girl that has taken over my normally indifferent self.
“I’m not on Facebook. I don’t have internet access,” I explain.
He cuts his eyes to me and smirks like he doesn’t believe a thing I’m saying. He pushes the hair back from his forehead. “What about your phone? You can’t get internet on your phone?”
“No phone. My mother isn’t a fan of modern technology. No TV, either.”
“Shit,” he laughs. “You’re serious? What do you do for fun?”
I smile back at him and shrug. “I run.”
Holder studies me again, dropping his attention briefly to my stomach. I’ll think twice from now on before I decide to wear a sports bra outside.
“Well in that case, you wouldn’t happen to know what time a certain someone gets up for her morning runs, would you?” He looks back up at me and I don’t see the person Six described to me in him at all. The only thing I see is a guy, flirting with a girl, with a semi-nervous, endearing gleam in his eye.
“I don’t know if you’d want to get up that early,” I say. The way he’s looking at me coupled with the Texas heat is suddenly causing my vision to blur, so I inhale a deep breath, wanting to appear anything but exhausted and flustered right now.
He tilts his head toward mine and narrows his eyes. “You have no idea how bad I want to get up that early.” He flashes me his dimple-laden grin, and I faint.
No…literally. I fainted.
And based on the ache in my shoulder and the dirt and gravel embedded in my cheek, it wasn’t a beautiful, graceful fall. I blacked out and smacked the pavement before he even had a chance to catch me. So unlike the heroes in the books.
I’m flat on the couch, presumably where he laid me after carrying me inside. Karen is standing over me with a glass of water and Holder is behind her, watching the aftermath of the most embarrassing moment of my life.
“Sky, drink some water,” Karen says, lifting the back of my neck, pressing me toward the cup. I take a sip, then lean back on the pillow and close my eyes, hoping more than anything that I black out again.
“I’ll get you a cold rag,” Karen says. I open my eyes, hoping Holder decided to sneak out once Karen left the room, but he’s still here. And he’s closer now. He kneels down on the floor beside me and reaches his hand to my hair, pulling out what I assume is either dirt or gravel.
“You sure you’re okay? That was a pretty nasty fall.” His eyes are full of concern and he wipes something from my cheek with his thumb, then rests his hand on the couch beside me.
“Oh, God,” I say, covering my eyes with my arm. “I’m so sorry. This is so embarrassing.”
Holder grabs my wrist and pulls my arm away from my face. “Shh.” The concern in his eyes eases and a playful grin takes over his features. “I’m sort of enjoying it.”
Karen makes her way back into the living room. “Here’s you a rag, sweetie. Do you want something for the pain? Are you nauseous?” Rather than hand the rag to me, she hands it to Holder and walks back to the kitchen. “I might have some Calendula or Burdock root.”
Great. If I wasn’t already embarrassed enough, she’s about to make it even worse by forcing me to down her homemade tinctures right in front of him.
“I’m fine, Mom. Nothing hurts.”
Holder gently places the rag on my cheek and wipes at it. “You might not be sore now, but you will be,” he says, too quiet for Karen to hear him. He looks away from examining my cheek and locks eyes with me. “You should take something, just in case.”
I don’t know why the suggestion sounds more appealing coming out of his mouth than Karen’s, but I nod. And gulp. And hold my breath. And squeeze my thighs together. And attempt to sit up, because me lying on the couch with him hovering over me is about to make me faint again.
When he sees my effort to sit up, he takes my elbow and assists me. Karen walks back into the living room and hands me a small glass of orange juice. Her tinctures are so bitter, I have to down them with juice in order to avoid spitting it back out. I take it from her hand and down it faster than I’ve ever downed one before, then immediately hand her back the glass. I just want her to go back to the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” she says, extending her hand to Holder. “I’m Karen Davis.”
Holder stands up and shakes her hand in return. “Dean Holder. My friends call me Holder.”
I’m jealous she’s getting to touch his hand. I want to take a number and get in line. “
Sky know each other?” she asks.
He looks down at me at the same time I look up at him. His lip barely curls up in a smile, but I notice. “We don’t, actually,” he says, looking back at her. “Just in the right place at the right time, I guess.”
“Well, thank you for helping her. I don’t know why she fainted. She’s never fainted.” She looks down at me. “Did you eat anything today?”
“A bite of chicken for lunch,” I say, not admitting to the Snickers I had before my run. “Cafeteria food sucks ass.”
She rolls her eyes and throws her hands up in the air. “Why were you running without eating first?”
I shrug. “I forgot. I don’t usually run in the evenings.”
She walks back to the kitchen with the glass and sighs heavily. “I don’t want you running anymore, Sky. What would have happened if you would have been by yourself? You run too much, anyway.”
She’s got to be kidding me. There is no way I can stop running.
“Listen,” Holder says, watching as the rest of the color drains from my face. He looks back toward the kitchen at Karen. “I live right over on Ricker and I run by here every day on my afternoon runs.” (He’s lying. I would have noticed.) “If you’d feel more comfortable, I’d be happy to run with her for the next week or so in the mornings. I usually run the track at school, but it’s not a big deal. You know, just to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Ah. Light bulb. No wonder those abs looked familiar.
Karen walks back to the living room and looks at me, then back at him. She knows how much I enjoy my solitary running breaks, but I can see in her eyes that she would feel more comfortable if I had a running partner.
“I’m okay with that,” she says, looking back at me. “If Sky thinks it’s a good idea.”
Yes. Yes, I do. But only if my new running partner is shirtless.
“It’s fine.” I stand up, and when I do, I get light headed again. I guess my face goes pale, because Holder has his hand on my shoulder in less than a second, lowering me back to the couch. “Easy,” he says. He looks up at Karen. “Do you have any crackers she can eat? That might help.”
Karen walks away to the kitchen and Holder looks back down at me, his eyes full of concern again. “You sure you’re okay?” He brushes his thumb across my cheek.
I shiver.
A devilish grin creeps across his face when he sees me attempt to cover the chill bumps on my arms. He glances behind me at Karen in the kitchen, then refocuses his gaze to mine.
“What time should I come stalk you tomorrow?” he whispers.
“Six-thirty?” I breathe, looking up at him helplessly.
“Six-thirty sounds good.”
“Holder, you don’t have to do this.”
His hypnotizing blue eyes study my face for several quiet seconds and I can’t help but stare at his equally hypnotizing mouth while he speaks. “I know I don’t have to do this, Sky. I do what I want.” He leans in toward my ear and lowers his voice to a whisper. “And I want to run with you.” He pulls back and studies me. Due to all the chaos parading through my head and stomach, I fail to muster a reply.
Karen is back with the crackers. “Eat,” she says, placing them in my hand.
Holder stands up and says goodbye to Karen, then turns back to me. “Take care of yourself. I’ll see you in the morning?”
I nod and watch him as he turns to leave. I can’t tear my eyes away from the front door after it shuts behind him. I’m losing it. I’ve completely lost any form of self-control. So this is what Six loves? This is lust?
I hate it. I absolutely, positively hate this beautiful, magical feeling.
“He was so nice,” Karen says. “And handsome.” She turns to face me. “You don’t know him?”
I shrug. “I know of him,” I say. And that’s all I say. If she only knew what kind of hopeless boy she just assigned as my “running partner,” she’d have a conniption. The less she knows about Dean Holder, the better it’ll be for both of us.
Monday, August 27th, 2012 7:10 p.m.
“What the hell happened to your face?” Jack drops my chin and walks past me to the refrigerator.
Jack has been a fixture in Karen’s life for about a year and a half now. He has dinner with us a few nights a week, and since tonight is Six’s going away dinner, he’s gracing us with his presence. As much as he likes to give Six a hard time, I know he’ll miss her, too.
“I kicked the road’s ass today,” I reply.
He laughs. “So that’s what happened to the road.”
Six grabs a slice of bread and opens a jar of Nutella. I grab my plate and fill it with Karen’s latest vegan concoction. Karen’s cooking is an acquired taste, one that Six still hasn’t acquired after four years. Jack, on the other hand, is Karen’s twin incarnate, so he doesn’t mind the cooking. Tonight’s menu consists of something I can’t even pronounce, but it’s completely animal-product free, like it always is. Karen doesn’t force me to eat vegan, so unless I’m home, I usually eat what I want.
Everything Six eats is only eaten to compliment her main course of Nutella. Tonight, she’s having a cheese and Nutella sandwich. I don’t know if I could ever acquire a taste for that.
“So, when are you moving in?” I ask Jack. He and Karen have been discussing the next step, but they can never seem to get past the hump of her strict anti-technology rule. Well, Jack can’t get past it. It’s not a hump that will ever be scaled by Karen.
“Whenever your mom caves and gets ESPN,” Jack says.
They don’t argue about it. I think their arrangement is fine with both of them, so neither of them is in a hurry to sacrifice their opposing views on modern technology.
“Sky passed out in the road today,” Karen says, changing the subject. “Some adorable man-boy carried her inside.”
I laugh. “Guy, Mom. Please just say guy.”
Six glares at me from across the table and it occurs to me that I haven’t filled her in on my afternoon run. I also haven’t filled her in on my first day of school. It’s been an active day today. I wonder who I’m going to fill in after she leaves tomorrow? Just the thought of her being on the other side of the world in two days fills me with dread. I hope Breckin can fill her shoes. Well, he would probably love to fill her shoes. Literally. But I’m hoping he does so in the figurative sense.
“You okay?” Jack asks. “It must have been a pretty good fall to get that shiner.”
I reach up to my eye and grimace. I’d completely forgotten about the black eye. “That’s not from fainting. Six elbowed me. Twice.”
I expect one of them to at least ask Six why she attacked me, but they don’t. This just goes to show how much they love her. They wouldn’t even care if she beat me up, they’d tell me I probably deserved it.
“Doesn’t that annoy you, having a number for a name?” Jack asks her. “I never understood that. It’s like when a parent names their child after one of the days of the week.” He pauses with his fork mid-air and looks at Karen. “When we have a baby, we aren’t doing that to them. Anything you can find on a calendar is off limits.”
Karen stares at him with a stone cold expression. If I had to guess by her reaction, this is the first time Jack has mentioned babies. If I had to guess based on the look on her face, babies aren’t something she’s anticipating in her future. Ever.
Jack refocuses his attention back to Six. “Isn’t your real name like Seven or Thirteen or something like that? I don’t get why you picked Six. It’s possibly the worst number you could pick.”
“I’m going to accept your insults for what they are,” Six says. “Just your way of burying your devastation over my impending absence.”
Jack laughs. “Bury my insults wherever you want. There’ll be more to come when you get back in six months.”
After Jack and Six leave, I help Karen in the kitchen with the dishes. Since the second Jack brought up babies, she’s been unusually quiet.
“Why did that freak you out so bad?” I ask her, handing her the plate to rinse.
“What?”
“His comment about having a baby with you. You’re in your thirties. People have babies at your age all the time.”
“Was it that noticeable?”
“It was to me.”
She grabs another plate from me to rinse, then lets out a sigh. “I love Jack. I just love me and you, too. I like our arrangement and I don’t know if I’m ready to change it, much less bring another baby into the picture. But Jack is so intent on moving forward.”
I turn the water off and wipe my hands on the hand-towel. “I’ll be eighteen in a few weeks, Mom. As much as you want our arrangement to stay the same…it won’t. I’ll be off at college after next semester and you’ll be living here alone. It might not hurt to entertain the idea of at least letting him move in.”
She smiles at me, but it’s a pained smile just like it always is when I bring up college. “I have been entertaining the idea, Sky. Believe me. It’s just a huge step that can’t be undone once it’s taken.”
“What if it’s a step you don’t want undone, though? What if it’s a step that just makes you want to take another step, and another step, until you’re full-on sprinting?”
She laughs. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
I wipe off the counter and rinse the rag off in the sink. “I don’t understand you, sometimes.”
“And I don’t understand you, either,” she says, nudging my shoulder. “I’ll never for the life of me understand why you wanted to go to public school so bad. I know you said it was fun, but tell me how you really feel.”
I shrug. “It was good,” I lie. My stubbornness wins every time. There’s no way I’m telling her how much I hated school today, despite the fact that she would never say, “I told you so.”
She dries her hands and smiles at me. “Happy to hear it. Now maybe when I ask you again tomorrow, you’ll tell me the truth.”
I grab the book Breckin gave me out of my backpack and plop down on my bed. I get through all of two pages when Six crawls through my window.
“School first, then present,” she says. She scoots in on the bed next to me and I put the book down on my nightstand.
“School sucked ass. Thanks to you and your inability to just say no to guys, I’ve inherited your terrible reputation. But by divine intervention, I was rescued by Breckin, the adopted gay Mormon who can’t sing or act but loves to read and is my new very bestest friend ever in the whole wide world.”
Six pouts. “I’m not even out the door yet and you’ve already replaced me? Vicious. And for the record, I don’t have an inability to say no to guys. I have an inability to grasp the moral ramifications of premarital sex. Lots and lots of premarital sex.”
She places a box in my lap. An unwrapped box.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says. “And you should know by now that my lack of wrapping doesn’t reflect how I feel about you. I’m just lazy.”
I pick the box up and shake it. “You’re the one leaving, you know. I should be the one getting you a gift.”
“Yes, you should be. But you suck at gift giving and I don’t expect you to change on my account.”
She’s right. I’m a horrible gift giver, but mostly because I hate receiving gifts so much. It’s almost as awkward as people crying. I turn the box and find the flap, then untuck it and open it. I pull out the tissue paper and a cell phone drops into my hand.
“Six,” I say. “You know I can’t…”
“Shut up. There is no way I’m going halfway across the world without a way to communicate with you. You don’t even have an email address.”
“I know, but I can’t…I don’t have a job. I can’t pay for this. And Karen…”
“Relax. It’s a prepaid phone. I put just enough minutes on it to where we can text each other once a day while I’m gone. I can’t afford international phone calls, so you’re out of luck there. And just to keep with your mother’s cruel, twisted parental values, there isn’t even internet on the damn thing. Just texting.”
She grabs the phone and turns it on, then enters her contact info. “If you end up getting a hot boyfriend while I’m away, you can always add extra minutes. But if he uses up any of mine I’m cutting his balls off.”
She hands me back the phone and I press the home button. Her contact information pulls up as Your very, VERY bestest friend ever in the whole wide world.
I suck at receiving gifts and I really suck at goodbyes. I set the phone back in the box and bend over to pick my backpack up. I pull the books out and set them on the floor, then turn around and dump my backpack over her and watch all the dollar bills fall in her lap.
“There’s thirty-seven dollars here,” I say. “It should hold you over until you get back. Happy foreign exchange day.”
She picks up a handful of dollars and throws them up in the air, then falls back on the bed. “Only one day at public school and the bitches already made your locker rain?” she laughs. “Impressive.”
I lay the goodbye card on her chest that I wrote to her, then lean my head into her shoulder. “You think that’s impressive? You should have seen me work the pole in the cafeteria.”
She picks the card up and brushes her fingers over it, smiling. She doesn’t open it because she knows I don’t like it when things get uncomfortably emotional. She tucks the card back to her chest and leans her head on my shoulder.
“You’re such a slut,” she says quietly, attempting to hold back tears that we’re both too stubborn to cry.
“So I’ve heard.”
Tuesday, August 28th, 2012 6:15 a.m.
The alarm sounds and I instantly debate skipping today’s run until I remember who’s waiting for me outside. I get dressed faster than I’ve ever dressed since the first day I started getting dressed, then head to the window. There’s a card taped to the inside of my window with the word “slut” written on it in Six’s handwriting. I smile and pull the card off the window, then throw it on my bed before heading outside.
He’s sitting on the curb stretching his legs. His back is to me, which is good. Otherwise he would have caught my frown as soon as I noticed he was wearing a shirt. He hears me approaching and spins around to face me.
“Hey, you.” He smiles and stands up. I notice when he does, that his shirt is already soaked. He ran here. He ran over two miles here, he’s about to run three more miles with me, then he’ll be running over two miles home. I seriously don’t understand why he’s going through all this trouble. Or why I’m allowing it. “You need to stretch first?” he asks.
“Already did.”
He reaches out and touches my cheek with his thumb. “Doesn’t look so bad,” he says. “You sore?”
I shake my head. Does he really expect me to vocalize a response when his fingers are touching my face? It’s pretty hard to speak and hold your breath at the same time.
He pulls his hand back and smiles. “Good. You ready?”
I let out a breath. “Yeah.”
And we run. We run side by side for a while until the path narrows, then he falls into step behind me, which makes me incredibly self-conscious. I normally lose myself when I run, but this time I’m acutely aware of every single thing, from my hair, to the length of my shorts, to each drop of sweat that trails down my back. I’m relieved once the path widens and he falls back into step beside me.
“You better try out for track.” His voice is steady and it doesn’t sound anything like he’s already ran four miles this morning. “You’ve got more stamina than most of the guys from the team last year.”
“I don’t know if I want to,” I say, unattractively breathless. “I don’t really know anyone at school. I planned on trying out, but so far most of the people at school are sort of…mean. I don’t really want to be subjected to them for longer periods of time under the guise of a team.”
“You’ve only been in public school for a day. Give it time. You can’t expect to be homeschooled your whole life, then walk in the first day with a ton of new friends.”
I stop dead in my tracks. He takes a few more steps before he notices I’m no longer beside him. When he turns around and sees me standing still on the pavement, he rushes toward me and grabs my shoulders. “Are you okay? Are you dizzy?”
I shake my head and push his arms off my shoulders. “I’m fine,” I say with a very audible amount of annoyance in my response.
He cocks his head. “Did I say something wrong?”
I start walking in the direction of my house, so he follows suit. “A little,” I say, cutting my eyes toward him. “I was halfway joking about the stalking yesterday, but you admitted to looking me up on Facebook right after meeting me. Then you insist on running with me, even though it’s out of your way. Now you somehow know how long I’ve been in public school? And that I was homeschooled? I’m not gonna lie, it’s a little unnerving.”
I wait for the explanation, but instead he just narrows his eyes and watches me. We’re both still walking forward, but he just silently watches me until we round the next corner. When he does finally speak, his words are preempted with a heavy sigh. “I asked around,” he finally says. “I’ve lived here since I was ten, so I have a lot of friends. I was curious about you.”
I eye him for a few steps, then drop my gaze down to the sidewalk. I suddenly can’t look at him, wondering what else his “friends” have told him about me. I know the rumors have been going around since Six and I became best friends, but this is the first time I’ve ever felt remotely defensive or embarrassed by them. The fact that he’s going out of his way to run with me can only mean one thing. He’s heard the rumors, and he’s probably hoping they’re true.
He can tell I’m uncomfortable, so he grabs my elbow and stops me. “Sky.” We turn and face each other, but I keep my eyes trained on the concrete. I’m actually wearing more than just a sports bra today but I fold my arms across my t-shirt anyway and hug myself. There’s nothing showing that needs covering up, but I somehow feel really naked right now.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot at the store yesterday,” he says. “And the talk about stalking, I swear, it was a joke. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me. Would it make you feel better if you knew more about me? Ask me something and I’ll tell you. Anything.”
I’m really hoping he’s being genuine because I can already tell he isn’t the kind of guy a girl gets a simple crush on. He’s the kind of guy you fall hard for, and the thought of that terrifies me. I don’t really want to fall hard for anyone at all, especially someone who’s only making an effort because he thinks I’m easy. I also don’t want to fall for someone who has already branded himself hopeless. But I’m curious. So curious.
“If I ask you something, will you be honest?”
He tilts his head toward me. “That’s all I’ll ever be.”
The way he lowers his voice when he speaks makes my head spin and for a second, I’m afraid if he keeps talking like that, I’ll pass out again. Luckily, he takes a step back and waits on my response. I want to ask him about his past. I want to know why he was sent away and why he did what he did and why Six doesn’t trust him. But again, I’m not sure I want to know the truth yet.
“Why did you drop out of school?”
He sighs like that’s one of the questions he was hoping to be able to dodge. He begins walking forward again and I’m the one following him this time.
“Technically, I haven’t dropped out yet.”
“Well you obviously haven’t been in over a year. I’d say that’s dropping out.”
He turns back to me and looks torn, like he wants to tell me something. He opens his mouth, then shuts it again after hesitating. I hate that I can’t read him. Most people are easy to read. They’re simple. Holder is all kinds of confusing and complicated.
“I just moved back home a few days ago,” he says. “My mother and I had a pretty shitty year last year, so I moved in with my Dad in Austin for a while. I’ve been going to school there, but felt like it was time to come back home. So here I am.”
The fact that he failed to mention his stint in juvi makes me question his ability to be forthcoming. I understand it’s probably not something he wants to talk about, but he shouldn’t claim that he’ll only ever be honest when he’s being anything but.
“None of that explains why you decided to drop out, rather than just transfer back.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know. To be honest, I’m still trying to decide what I want to do. It’s been a pretty f*cked up year. Not to mention I hate this school. I’m tired of the bullshit and sometimes I think it would be easier to just test out.”
I stop walking and turn to face him. “That’s a crap excuse.”
He cocks an eyebrow at me. “It’s crap that I hate high school?”
“No. It’s crap that you’re letting one bad year determine your fate for the rest of your life. You’re nine months away from graduation, so you drop out? It’s just…it’s stupid.”
He laughs. “Well, when you put it so eloquently.”
“Laugh all you want. You quitting school is just giving in. You’re proving everyone that’s ever doubted you right.” I look down and eye the tattoo on his arm. “You’re gonna drop out and show the world just how hopeless you really are? Way to stick it to ‘em.”
He follows my gaze down to his tattoo and he stares at it for a moment, working his jaw back and forth. I really didn’t mean to go off on a tangent, but skimping on an education is a touchy subject with me. I blame Karen for all those years of drilling it in my head that I’m the only one that can be held accountable for the way my life turns out.
Holder shifts his eyes away from the tattoo that we’re both staring at, and he looks back up and nudges his head toward my house. “You’re here,” he says matter-of-factly. He turns away from me without so much as a smile or a wave goodbye.
I stand on the sidewalk and watch him as he disappears around the corner without once looking back in my direction.
And here I was, thinking I would actually have a conversation with just one of his personalities today. So much for that.
Tuesday, August 28th, 2012 7:55 a.m.
I walk into first period and Breckin is seated in the back of the room in all of his hot pink glory. How I didn’t notice those hot pink shoes and the boy they’re attached to before lunch yesterday boggles my mind.
“Hey, gorgeous,” I say as I slide into an empty seat next to him. I take the cup of coffee out of his hands and take a sip. He lets me, because he doesn’t know me well enough yet to object. Or maybe he lets me because he knows the ramifications of intercepting a self-proclaimed caffeine addict.
“I learned a lot about you last night,” he says. “It’s too bad your mother won’t let you have internet. It’s an amazing place to discover facts about yourself that you never even knew.”
I laugh. “Do I even want to know?” I tilt my head back and finish off his coffee, then hand him back the cup. He looks down at the empty cup and places it back on my desk.
“Well,” he says. “According to some probing on Facebook, you had someone named Daniel Wesley over on Friday night and that resulted in a pregnancy scare. Saturday you had sex with someone named Grayson and then kicked him out. Yesterday…” he drums his fingers on his chin. “Yesterday you were seen running with a guy named Dean Holder after school. That concerns me a bit because, rumor has it…he doesn’t like Mormons.”
Sometimes I’m thankful I don’t have access to the internet like everyone else.
“Let’s see,” I say, running through the list of rumors. “I don’t even know who Daniel Wesley is. Saturday, Grayson did come over, but he barely got to cop a feel before I kicked his drunk ass out. And yes, I was running with a guy named Holder yesterday, but I have no idea who he is. We just happened to be running at the same time and he doesn’t live far from me, so…”
I immediately feel guilty for downplaying the run with Holder. I just haven’t figured him out and I’m not sure I’m ready for someone to infiltrate mine and Breckin’s twenty-hour old alliance just yet.
“If it makes you feel better, I found out from some chick named Shayna that I’m a product of old money and I’m filthy rich,” he says.
I laugh. “Good. Then you won’t have a problem bringing me coffee every morning.”
The classroom door opens and we both look up, just as Holder walks in dressed in a casual white t-shirt and dark denim jeans, his hair freshly washed since our run this morning. As soon as I see him, the stomach virus/hot flashes/butterflies return.
“Shit,” I mutter. Holder walks to Mr. Mulligan’s desk and lays a form on it, then walks toward the back of the room fiddling with his phone the whole time. He takes a seat in the desk directly in front of Breckin and never even notices me. He turns the volume down on his phone, then puts it in his pocket.
I’m too in shock that he showed up to even speak to him. Did I somehow change his mind about re-enrolling? Am I happy about the fact that I may have changed his mind? Because I sort of feel nothing but regret.
Mr. Mulligan walks in and sets his things on the desk, then turns toward the blackboard and writes his name, followed by the date. I’m not sure if he honestly thinks we forgot who he was since yesterday, or if he just wants to remind us that he thinks we’re ignorant.
“Dean,” he says, still facing the blackboard. He spins around and eyes Holder. “Welcome back, albeit a day late. I take it you won’t be giving us any trouble this semester?”
My mouth drops at his condescending remark right off the bat. If this is the kind of shit Holder has to put up with when he’s here, no wonder he didn’t want to come back. At least I just get shit from other students. I don’t care who the student is, teachers should never be condescending. That should be the first rule in the teacher handbook. The second rule should be that teachers aren’t allowed to write their names on blackboards beyond third grade.
Holder shifts in his seat and replies to Mr. Mulligan’s comment with just as much bite. “I take it you won’t be saying anything that will incite me to give you trouble this semester, Mr. Mulligan?”
Okay, the “shit giving” is obviously a two-way street. Maybe my next lesson, beyond talking him into coming back to school, should be to teach him the meaning of respecting authority.
Mr. Mulligan tucks his chin in and glares at Holder over the rims of his glasses.
“Dean. Why don’t you come to the front of the room and introduce yourself to your classmates. I’m sure there are some new faces since you left us last year.”
Holder doesn’t object, which I’m sure is exactly what Mr. Mulligan expected him to do. Instead, he practically leaps from his chair and walks swiftly to the front of the room. His sudden burst of energy causes Mr. Mulligan to take a quick step back. Holder spins around to face the class, not an ounce of self-doubt or insecurity about him.
“Gladly,” Holder says, cutting his eyes toward Mr. Mulligan. “I’m Dean Holder. People call me Holder.” He looks away from Mr. Mulligan and back toward the class. “I’ve been a student here since freshmen year with the exception of a one and a half semester sabbatical. And according to Mr. Mulligan, I like to incite trouble, so this class should be fun.”
Several of the students laugh at this comment, but I fail to find the humor in it. I’ve already been doubting him based on everything I’ve heard, now he’s showing his true colors by the way he’s acting. Holder opens his mouth to continue with his introduction, but breaks out into a smile as soon as he spots me in the back of the room. He winks at me and I immediately want to crawl under my desk and hide. I give him a quick, tight-lipped smile, then look down at my desk as soon as other students begin turning around in their seats to see who he’s staring at.
An hour and a half ago, he walked away from me in a pissy mood. Now he’s smiling at me like he’s just seen his best friend for the first time in years.
Yep. He’s got issues.
Breckin leans across his desk. “What the hell was that?” he whispers.
“I’ll tell you at lunch,” I say.
“Is that all the wisdom you wish to impart on us today?” Mr. Mulligan asks Holder.
Holder nods, then walks back to his seat, never pulling his gaze from mine. He sits and cranes his neck, facing me. Mr. Mulligan begins his lecture and everyone’s focus returns to the front of the room. Everyone but Holder’s. I glance down to my book and flip it open to the current chapter, hoping he’ll do the same. When I glance back up, he’s still staring at me.
“What?” I mouth, tossing my palms up in the air.
He narrows his eyes and watches me silently for a moment. “Nothing,” he finally says. He turns around in his seat and opens the book in front of him.
Breckin taps his pencil on my knuckles and looks at me inquisitively, then returns his attention back to his book. If he’s expecting an explanation over what just happened, he’ll be disappointed when I’m unable to give him one. I don’t even know what just happened.
I steal several glances in Holder’s direction during the lecture, but he doesn’t turn around again for the entire period. When the bell rings, Breckin jumps out of his seat and drums his fingers on my desk.
“Me. You. Lunch,” he says, raising his eyebrow at me. He walks out of the classroom and I turn my gaze to Holder. He’s watching the classroom door that Breckin just walked out of with a hard look in his eyes.
I grab my things and head out the door before Holder has a chance to strike up a conversation. I really am glad he decided to re-enroll, but I’m disturbed at the way he looked at me like we were best friends. I really don’t want Breckin, or anyone else for that matter, thinking I’m okay with the things Holder does. I’d rather just not associate myself with him, but I have a feeling that’s going to be an issue for him.
I go to my locker and switch books, grabbing my English text. I wonder if Shayna/Shayla will actually acknowledge me in class today. Probably not, that was twenty-four hours ago. I doubt she has enough brain cells to recall information from that long ago.
“Hey, you.”