High School Hero (Forest Ridge High Book 1)

by Sherri Renee

  “That’s irrelevant. All that matters is you,” she pointed at me, “need to keep George in line until after state.” She nodded to herself. “After that, everything should be fine.”

  “Keep him in line how? What does that even mean?” I started pacing as nerves pricked at me. I looked around for something I could clean. Unfortunately, the locker room had just been cleaned. There wasn’t even any trash on the floor.

  Laurie grabbed my arm and glared into my eyes. “It means that he needs to care about you so much that he’ll do whatever it takes to keep you from getting hurt.”

  I stopped pacing and stared at her.

  The door opened and I heard a familiar voice float towards us before Jules appeared around the corner with a couple of the other cheerleaders. She took us in with a look of surprise before a smile covered her face. “Hey! Look who’s here. We’re going to work on the routine for the pep rally. We want to be sure it goes smoother than the last one.”

  Kara groaned behind her, but she was smiling. “Want to join us?” she asked. “With the four of us and you three, we have over half the squad. I can call the rest of the girls and see if they want to come. The extra practice won’t hurt us a bit.”

  No one said anything. I felt as cheer captain I should jump right in on an extra practice, but I felt sick and so confused. George borrowed money from, what, a loan shark? Now if he didn’t pay them back they planned to hurt me? Excuse me if cheerleading was the last thing on my mind.

  Laurie nudged me in the side. “That sounds great. We were getting ready to do a run through ourselves.”

  I raised my brows in surprise.

  “How else are you going to explain why we’re here?” Laurie whispered to me before she walked over to talk to Jules while she hung her coat in a locker.

  Michelle gave me a worried look. “We can get out of here if you want to,” she said quietly. “I’ll make up an excuse.”

  I considered it. I really did. I wanted to talk to George or Matt or just go hide under my covers and pray this was all a bad dream. Instead, I turned on my cheer smile. “Let’s stick around for a while. Maybe we can get Laurie alone again later. I have more questions for her.”

  “Where are your shoes?” Kara asked with a pointed look at our feet.

  I looked down at the boots Michelle, and I both wore. “Well,” I started, “We were dress shopping.” I frowned at my boots as if they would come up with the rest of the excuse I needed.

  They didn’t offer any help but Michelle did. “Yeah, we figured we’d be shopping all day but Kristen found a dress at the first store so we decided to catch a little practice time.”

  “You found a dress?” Jules let out a high squeal and started peppering me with questions about it. Thankfully it worked to divert everyone’s attention from the question of why we’d come to practice cheers without a pair of sneakers between us.

  I caught Michelle giving me worried glances throughout practice. And when she wasn’t, Laurie was. Between nerves and socks on the slippery gym floor, I wasn’t impressing anyone with my cheerleading skills.

  I ran over to check my phone in between cheers and saw I finally had a text from George. It was a relief to hear from him, but I knew his reply that he’d been at Tony’s all day was a lie. He asked if I wanted to go to a movie tonight. I threw my phone down without answering.

  No, I didn’t want to go to a movie with him, but I knew I would. I was getting the message from all corners that I needed to keep him happy so that’s what I’d do. Within reason. That didn’t mean I couldn’t let him sweat my answer for a little bit though.

  Chapter 27

  I avoided Matt completely for the next week to the point that if I saw him walking toward me down the hall I’d turn and go the opposite direction. Even though that meant I was tardy to a couple of classes.

  Maybe I should have told him what Laurie’d shared with me, but I couldn’t. It hurt to be close to him and know there couldn’t be anything between us. And according to Laurie, there couldn’t be. Not anytime in the near future at least.

  I tried to get more information out of her for the first few days after I’d seen her at the mall, but it was like talking to a wall. A nervous, twitchy wall, but a wall just the same. She knew much more than she’d told me and Michelle, but her lips were pinched tight now. From the way she acted, I was pretty sure she was in just as much danger as I was. I just hadn’t figured out her connection yet.

  George had been on my case to step up my game for prom. I’d almost exploded at him and told him it was his fault I was a nervous wreck and couldn’t focus on prom court elections, but I bit my tongue. I had alternating visions of him. One, Matt’s perspective, had George holding a gun. The other, Laurie’s perspective, had George being held at gunpoint. I wasn’t interested in seeing either of those visions come true so I did what I’d been instructed to do and kept George calm and happy.

  I brought up drugs and even steroid use specifically a couple of times, but he showed no signs of guilt. He simply seemed appalled by the idea. It didn’t matter, whatever he was into with the loan shark guys was bad enough.

  His mood swung violently the closer we got to game day. Even though he never lifted a finger to me or anyone else that I’d heard about, I was scared of him. I was thankful the game was just days away because the one thing Laurie would tell me was that this whole problem would go away after the game.

  I wondered if maybe George was betting on the game and planned to use his winnings to pay off his loan. I knew that was illegal, but I was pretty sure whatever dealings he had with the loan shark weren’t exactly above the table either. I was exhausted from stress and just wanted the week to be over.

  I wasn’t even too sure I wanted to go to prom Saturday. I hadn’t been able to eat or sleep much all week, and so on top of everything else I was having to avoid my parent’s worried looks as I pushed food around my plate at dinner each night.

  Once I knew George’s ordeal was over and no one was going to come after him or me I might simply lock myself in my room for a while. For now, I kept my fake smile in place as I worked my way down the hall. I called hello to some freshmen and encouraged a sad sophomore to ask the boy she liked to prom even though it was only days away. She caught up with me later, ecstatic because he’d said yes.

  “I can’t wait to vote for you and George for the royal court.” She’d looked at me like I really was royalty, and I felt a pinch of guilt. I told myself I would have offered her the suggestion to ask someone to prom even if I wasn’t fishing for votes, but since I was, my good deed felt tarnished.

  I forced a smile and thanked her before she ran off to join her friends. Focused on her I wasn’t watching where I was going until I bumped into someone. “Sorry,” I said before turning around. When I did I almost choked on the word. It was Matt.

  “So we run into each other again,” Matt’s words were teasing, but he wore a sad smile that made my heart ache.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I looked down, unable to meet the hurt in his deep brown eyes.

  He tilted my chin back with a gentle finger. “Why are you avoiding me?”

  Now that I was looking into his eyes I couldn’t look away. I felt myself drowning in them. I wanted to throw myself into his arms and tell him everything. But even more, I wanted him safe. If nothing else, Laurie had convinced me we were dealing with dangerous people. Talking to Matt would only put a target on him too.

  I firmed my lip and did what I usually did with Matt. I told him the truth. “I’ve been avoiding you because it hurts too much to see you.”

  We stood in the center of the hall and students flowed around us like water around an island. For just a second I felt we were an island. Isolated and safe from prying eyes.

  Before Matt could reply someone grabbed my arm. At first I thought it was George and my heart stopped. I couldn’t mess things up with just a couple of days left to go. Thankfully it was Laurie.

  She gave Matt a way too chip
per smile. “You won’t mind if I steal our cheer captain. We’ve got important things to discuss before the pep rally Friday.”

  Matt held my eyes. I could feel him asking me to stay with his look. To explain what was going on. That was something Laurie had convinced me I couldn’t do.

  I dipped my head and mumbled goodbye as Laurie chatted in my ear about dance steps and timing as she firmly led me down the hall. I knew she didn’t really have a question so I wasn’t even listening. I looked back and found Matt still standing in the middle of the hall watching me.

  “Stop it!” Laurie hissed in my ear. “You think word of you and Matt won’t get back to George? Well, it will. There are little birdie’s up and down these halls that would be only too happy to run to him with the gossip.”

  I nodded and stared straight ahead.

  “Three more days, Kristen. That’s nothing, okay? I’ve been dealing with this for months.”

  With a glance at her, I wondered again what her part in all this really was. I’d asked but she’d shut my questions down real fast.

  “Look,” she stopped and faced me, “after Friday I’ll talk to Matt for you. I’ll come up with some kind of excuse for the way you’ve been acting.”

  I shook my head. The last thing I wanted after Friday was to have any dealings with Laurie at all. That wasn’t totally fair. I believed she was trying to protect me and George, but somehow she was behind all of this to start with. She wasn’t exactly the kind of person I wanted to be friends with.

  The halls quieted as students went to their classes. Laurie snapped her fingers in front of my face to get my attention as my mind wandered. “This isn’t easy for me either. You have no idea how much pressure I’m under right now.”

  “Maybe not,” I exploded. My voice was low, but my words were tiny bombs. “But you chose to get involved in this. I did not.” I glared at her and balled my fists by my sides.

  Her expression darkened. “You think I chose this?” Her voice held a note of hysteria. “You have no idea what’s going on.”

  I grabbed her arm. “Tell me then,” I pleaded, more than ready to have everything out in the open. “Tell me what’s really going on and maybe we can help each other out of it. We could go to the police. They’d do something to protect us.”

  She laughed. “You’re so naive. The cops have their hands tied for the most part. If they did try to help they’d only get me killed.”

  “Killed?” My mouth dropped open. “They would kill you? I thought you worked with them.”

  Laurie shut her eyes. When she opened them again the rising hysteria was gone and her voice was calm. “My problems aren’t yours but yours will become mine. Got it? Be sweet to your boyfriend and stay away from Matt.”

  She walked away and left me standing in the hall. I was so shook up I couldn’t even remember which class I had next. I had to look at the books I held to remind me.

  I couldn’t figure out how Laurie was involved in all of this. Michelle and I had finally come to the conclusion she must work for the loan shark people but maybe not.

  Chapter 28

  My afternoons were filled with cheer practice. There would be a lot of people at the state championship game and we all wanted to look our best. My evenings after dinner were spent with Michelle. We talked through hundreds of scenarios and ways to get George out from the loan sharks’ grasp, but in the end, we didn’t have any answers.

  I’d mentioned paying off George’s loan to Laurie one time and she’d only laughed. I wasn’t sure if it was because the loan was for so much money she knew I could never come up with it or if it was because her people wanted something from George besides money. Since paying off the loan had been our best answer, Michelle and I were both stumped.

  We sat cross-legged on my bed Thursday night. “One more day,” she said.

  “Yeah.” I looked down at my fingernails. The pink polish was chipped in spots. Any other time I’d be having them redone before prom, but now I couldn’t make myself care about something as minor as chipped nail polish.

  “Matt asked about you today.”

  “He did?” My heart did a pitiful leap to my throat. I searched her face. “What’d he say?”

  “He just wanted to be sure you’re okay. He’s worried about you.”

  Yep, he was far from the jerk I’d originally pegged him as. “What’d you tell him?” I asked eagerly, desperate to hear anything about him.

  She shrugged. “That you’d be better after we got through the game Friday.”

  “Isn’t that the truth.” I only had to get through one more day, but it felt like forever.

  “What do you think is magically going to change after the game Friday that’s going to let George walk away scot-free?”

  “You ask me that question every day.” I gave her a tired smile to let her know I wasn’t as annoyed as I sounded. “I still don’t know. I just hope Laurie’s right about it. I can’t handle this stress much longer.”

  She patted my thigh. “I know. I can’t either, and I’m on the outside looking in. I know it’s even harder for you.”

  “And for George,” I said. “He’s been a bear lately. I try to let his moods slide, because what choice do I have? But he’s going crazy too. I wish he’d open up to me. If he’d tell me what was going on maybe we could work something out together.”

  My phone buzzed with a text. I checked it and frowned at the screen. “It’s from Laurie.”

  Michelle hopped off the bed and read over my shoulder. “Don’t leave your house. You’re in danger.” She read out loud. “What the heck?”

  A chill raced down my spine. “Why would I be in danger?” I felt panic bubbling up in me. “I’ve done what she said.” The phone shook in my hands, and I set it down. I needed to clean. I grabbed an old cloth I kept just for dusting. Swishing the material over the already dust free desk—I’d been cleaning a lot lately—felt foolish but at the same time, it calmed my nerves enough so I could think.

  Michelle stood watching me, twisting the bracelet on her wrist.

  I walked back to the phone when I thought hit me. Is George OK? I texted and hit send.

  Yes, was the only reply I got. It did make me feel a little better though. For a second I thought maybe something had happened to him and those goons were coming for me next. But if nothing had happened to George, why was I in danger?

  “Maybe it’s time to tell your parents,” Michelle said. It was an option we’d brought up and shot down repeatedly. I remembered my fear that they’d want to homeschool me if they found out George was being mean. I think I’d welcome homeschooling right now if it meant all these other problems would go poof and disappear.

  My new fear was of Mom or Dad getting involved and being hurt. Laurie said the police couldn’t even help. What could my parents do?

  I shook my head. “I don’t think they’ll be able to help.” I think I grew up a little in that instant. Although I didn’t consciously think it, somewhere deep inside me I’d always believed my parents could fix all my troubles. From sewing up my teddy bear when it lost an arm to holding me while I cried over Jammies’ death. It hit me hard to realize this was the first of many things in my life that they weren’t going to be able to magically make all better.

  “I need to talk to George.” I dialed his number. His phone went to voicemail.

  “Practice,” Michelle and I said at the same time. Of course, they’d be at practice with the big game only a day away. I clutched the phone to my chest and tried to figure out what to do. I was fine with not leaving my house like Laurie said, but for how long? What about school tomorrow?

  Michelle’s phone let out a trill, and I jumped. “Sorry.” She looked down and read her text. “Mom wants me to stop by the store for butter. She volunteered to bake cookies for the pep rally tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow was a huge day for our school. The cheerleaders had hung banners on every hall and decorated all of the football players’ lockers with balloons and ribbo
ns. Parents were bringing snacks and drinks. The whole day was going to be a big party. At least for those who weren’t terrified a creepy loan shark might be swimming the halls looking for them.

  Michelle glanced at the window then at me. “Will you be okay if I go? I can tell Mom I can’t get away right now if you want me to stay.”

  “No.” I figured if someone came after me it would be safer if Michelle wasn’t here anyway. “Go get your groceries.” I tried to smile, but my whole face felt too tight to move.

  Michelle wrapped me in a fierce hug. “One more day and this is over. You’re going to be fine.”

  I squeezed her back and nodded firmly. “Yep, now get out of here. Maybe you can catch Danny after practice.”

  An automatic smile replaced her worried look at the thought of her boyfriend. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded hard. “Um-hm. I’ll see you at school. Like you said. One more day.”

  As soon as Michelle left I started to shake. I texted Laurie again with trembling fingers, trying to get more information, but so far she hadn’t replied. I sat on the floor and went over the little I knew. George owed people something and they wanted it back tomorrow. I still thought he must be betting on the game because why else would tomorrow be a big deal if it didn’t involve the game? I was still more than confused about why I was involved in this at all.

  Something knocked against my window, and I shrieked. My eyes darted to the blackened surface and I’m pretty sure my heart stopped when I saw a figure appear in front of it until I recognized him.

  “Open up,” Matt said, gently tapping the glass again.

  My heart sprang back to life, racing in my chest. I jumped up and ran to the window, unlatching it and pushing it up. It groaned and caught. I didn’t open it often and certainly not during the freezing winter temperatures. I jerked up on it but it wasn’t budging.

  Matt put his hands underneath and pushed hard. It finally broke loose and slid the rest of the way up. I stood back so Matt could crawl through. Then poked my head outside trying to find out how he climbed up, but there wasn’t a ladder or anything that would have made his climb easy.