Cold Hard Truth

by Anne Greenwood Brown

  This was one of those moments. Just as eternal, just as breathless, and just as damning.

  A few of the gnat-girls noticed that Max had stopped talking and looked to see what had his attention. Emmie whipped around, bending her head over her tray. With shaking hands, she opened her milk carton. Idiot, she thought, cursing herself. Idiot.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  RALLY

  The bleachers in the school gymnasium were filling quickly as Emmie, Marissa, and Sarah found seats at the end of a row near the stairs that descended to center court. Emmie sat on the edge so she could set her backpack on the stairs. She would rather have gone to the library to work ahead on some English assignments. She seriously doubted her pep needed to be rallied, but Marissa had insisted.

  Down on the floor, most of the hockey team was already sitting on a row of blue metal folding chairs. At center court, there was a microphone on a stand. Emmie glanced to her left and found Marissa staring up at something over Emmie’s shoulder. Marissa’s mouth was in the shape of a little o.

  “What’s wrong?” Emmie asked with a laugh. “Are you having a stroke or something?”

  “Mind if I sit here for a sec?” asked a deep voice just as a warm body dropped onto the few empty inches at the end of the bleacher. Emmie caught the spicy scent of cloves.

  Marissa shifted to her left to make more room for Max, but Emmie didn’t budge. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Emmie could already feel a large number of eyes on her, wondering why Max Shepherd was practically sitting in the new girl’s lap instead of being down on the floor with the rest of the team. Max turned his body in to her, and their knees bumped as Emmie felt his hand, shaky on her hip. Her back stiffened. “Wha—?”

  Max caught her eye, holding her gaze as he slipped her phone out of her pocket. Then, before Emmie understood what was happening, he was tapping at the keyboard with both thumbs.

  “Give that back,” she said. She reached for her phone but he turned toward the aisle, blocking her like she was one of his opponents on the ice. Emmie groaned. She definitely needed to put a password on that thing. “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t get weird. I’m just giving you my number,” he said, making a few more passes with his thumbs. She heard a soft buzz from his own back pocket. “And now I’ve got yours.”

  “You can’t do that,” she said, then dropped her voice low. “My number is private.”

  “Why?” Max asked.

  Why? Emmie couldn’t exactly get into an explanation of that now, here. Not with him and not with Marissa sitting so close. She needed to put an end to whatever ridiculous attraction was going on between them, nip it in the bud. But when she still didn’t respond in any way to Max’s question, he pressed on.

  “I thought we could carpool to the crew on Saturday. Call me.” He slipped her phone slowly back into her pocket, sending shivers up her spine. “I gotta go sit with the team now.”

  Max laid his palm on Emmie’s shoulder and pushed himself to standing. His hand, the pressure, the warmth, all felt the same as outside Mr. Beck’s classroom, except that this time she knew it wasn’t a joke.

  He meant for her to notice his physicality. The heat of his body, his hand on her hip, the brush of his knees against her thigh, the toe-curling view of his jeans riding low on his hips as he walked away from her, joining his teammates on the gym floor…He meant for her to react. And boy, did she. Emmie’s heart was pounding in her ears.

  She might have gotten mad at herself, or at him, but she didn’t. Mainly because Max didn’t look nearly as confident as he was trying to act. There’d been nervousness around his eyes, and if Emmie had to guess, he looked a little sick. As he slowly descended the stairs, head bowed, the fingers on his left hand were twitching.

  Marissa bumped her shoulder against Emmie’s and shook her head. “The world is a weird and wonderful place, my friend.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Emmie asked, conscious of the fact that a few people were still turning their heads to look at her.

  Marissa’s eyes lingered on Max as he dropped onto his folding chair, then settled her gaze on Emmie. “Just when I think I’ve got it figured out, I run into an evolutionary wonder like the singing snail.”

  “The singing snail? Is that a real thing?” Sarah asked.

  “It’s a metaphor,” Marissa said with a grin.

  “A metaphor for what?” Emmie asked. Her gut was a tumble of trouble.

  “For you. It’s not natural for something so teeny and quiet to cause such a commotion, but you, my friend, you are definitely on the path toward causing a commotion. You are an evolutionary wonder.”

  Emmie groaned again. Half the time she had no idea what Marissa was talking about. “I didn’t cause a commotion.”

  “Not yet, but it’s coming,” she said. “You wait. It’s the year of the singing snail.”

  Emmie rolled her eyes, and Marissa laughed. The sound of it made Emmie happy, and that right there was a welcomed thing.

  This is it, Max thought. He hated these pep rallies more than anything else on the planet. He particularly hated them when his team was the focus. Who would have thought a bruiser on the ice would suffer from such intense stage fright? It was embarrassing.

  This was his school. This was nothing more than a gym full of kids. The same people who came to watch him play every Saturday night. But at least then he could wear his helmet. Shoulder pads and gloves. On the ice he was armored. Here? On the gym floor in regular clothes, he felt naked. He didn’t know how the basketball team played in just shorts and a T-shirt. God help the swim team.

  And now…with what Coach was having them do…Max wondered if he could will himself into an epileptic seizure. Maybe he could get wheeled out of here and miss the whole thing.

  “It’ll be special,” Coach had said at their last practice. “It’ll show the school that they are as much a part of this team as you are.”

  It was total bullshit, but here they were, lining up at center court. Vice Principal Zenner handed Coach the microphone, which squealed through the loudspeakers for a second before Coach tapped it two times with his index finger.

  “Good afternooooooooon, White Prairie!” Coach said, and the crowd stomped its feet.

  Max and the rest of the team stood shoulder to shoulder in a long line behind Coach, facing the bleachers, feet shuffling, heads raised to the crowd, mouths smirking, index fingers lifted in the air. All except one. Max thought he was going to throw up.

  “The boys’ varsity hockey team is close to wrapping up its regular season. Looks like we’re going to be either the number one or number two seed in the tournament again this year.”

  More cheering. More chins lifted. Max’s stomach turned. It was unreasonable to think that the whole gym was looking only at him, but he didn’t dare raise his head to find out if he was wrong.

  “Every game, the guys play for themselves, for their own personal goals, and certainly for the school as a whole. But I asked them to think about what that means. When we think about playing for the school, that’s a big concept. A little abstract maybe. So I asked the guys to think about your actual faces. We want to think of you when we’re playing. We’re playing for you.”

  Coach paused, but there was no immediate reaction from the crowd.

  “So, I asked each of the guys to pick some smaller aspect of the school that they could dedicate Saturday’s game to. In a second, I’m going to call each player forward. Each player is going to announce who he’s dedicating his game to: someone or to some group in particular. He will be thinking of you when he hits the ice. When that player scores, he’s scoring for you. If he calls on you, I want you to come down and join us on the floor.”

  The band struck up the school song, and everybody was on their feet. Max kept his head down and wondered if Emmie was standing too. Somehow he doubted it. At least, standing and cheering wouldn’t have been her first choice. Maybe her friends would have dragged he
r to her feet.

  When the band stopped, Coach called out Chris’s name. Max watched Chris’s worn Nikes swagger forward.

  “Chris Daniels. Lucky number seven. And this Saturday night I’ll be playing for the Drama Club. Come on down, thespians!” He mispronounced it so it rhymed with lesbians. He could be such a tool.

  Some clapping. Some nervous laughter from the crowd, which wasn’t sure if this was for real. Was the drama club really supposed to go down onto the gym floor? Chris raised his arm and repeated, “I said, ‘Come on down!’” like this was The Price Is Right game show or something.

  Slowly a small group of kids joined Chris on the floor, looking like deer in the proverbial headlights.

  Jordy stepped out of the back line next and joined Chris. “Jordy Keller. Number three. Saturday, I’ll be playing for the FFA.”

  Cowboy boots stomped on the bleachers, and a few girls went “Woooooooo!” before running down onto the floor. Okay. So the school was getting the hang of it.

  Brady was next. He was playing for his personal math tutor and Mrs. Peck in the lunch room. Only his tutor, a senior girl with spiky blond hair and hipster glasses, joined him on the floor. Tack was playing for the Mathletes. Brock dedicated his game to the Concert Choir. By now, there were about a hundred kids on the gym floor.

  The juniors stepped forward and did their thing, but Max wasn’t listening. And then it was his turn. If all eyes hadn’t been on him before, they were now. He felt the weight of them like a concrete slab lying on his back. Coach handed Max the microphone, and he nearly dropped it.

  Max cleared his throat. “Max. Um…Max Shepherd. Number eleven. I’m playing for…” He took a deep breath and let it out. “Emmie O’Brien and all of the other new students at White Prairie High School this year.”

  There was a moment of complete silence in the gym. Or maybe Max imagined it. When he looked up, Emmie’s friend was pushing her off the bench and toward the stairs. The next thing Max knew, he was surrounded by three strangers, and then…finally…Emmie.

  She looked confused, like she couldn’t believe what he’d done. Well, that made two of them, but she was there. She’d come. She didn’t run out the back like he was afraid she might, but none of that changed the fact Max’s heart was still pounding against his sternum. Ah, hell. Was he going to throw up right here in front of Emmie and the whole damn school?

  Max reached out and touched Emmie’s shoulder. He didn’t mean to do it—it was merely instinct, to steady himself—but the sudden wave of calm that washed over him about knocked him over nonetheless. It was the weirdest thing.

  The feel of Emmie’s shoulder under his fingers grounded him, stilling his heart, and the whole cacophony of the gym faded away.

  He barely heard the band strike up a rousing rendition of “We Are Family,” but when everyone on the floor gathered into one big huddle, index fingers raised in the air, all Max could think was damn! Was it possible for a single person, someone he barely knew, to be the one to pull him out of his headspace?

  After all his joking around with Chris and Jordy, was she really his lucky M&M?

  Emmie’s side was pressed up against Max in the huddle, and when the crowd started to jump to the beat of the music, forcing Emmie to do the same, the warmth of her body flooded through him.

  In that moment, Max Shepherd felt like a giant. Better, he felt like himself. Like his old self. He was ready to take on the world.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BLUNT

  FRIDAY NIGHT

  Max hated going to the Happy Gopher because it was where Jade used to work, and there was no escaping her memory among the ketchup bottles and red-checked curtains. The thing was, there were half-priced appetizers on Friday nights, so his friends always insisted they come. Old habits were hard to break.

  As they found their regular seats, Chris sloughed off his letter jacket revealing his I Hot Moms T-shirt. Lindsey groaned and dragged Jordy to the opposite side of the table. Jordy was blinking hard, wearing contacts for the first time.

  Lauren, Elizabeth, Brock, and Quinn piled their jackets in the corner. Max could tell Katie was waiting to see where he was going to sit before she chose her chair.

  When their waitress came around, the guys got Cokes, while the girls ordered diets and raspberry lemonades, then their usual sampler platters and an extra basket of onion rings.

  Besides the continued comments on the success of yesterday’s pep rally, the conversation was on repeat from last Friday night: their chances in the tournament, how plastered so-and-so got the weekend before, and the new stereo equipment Chris was (six months later) still planning to buy for his Subaru.

  The whole conversation was so familiar that Max could predict each joke, each laugh, each friendly shoulder punch. Sometimes he got bored, but tonight it was a good thing. His friends’ predictability made it easy for his mind to wander: to falling refrigerators, to the shiver that ran down Emmie’s arms when he slipped her phone into her pocket, then later to the heat of her body pressed against him in the huddle.

  He still couldn’t believe he’d done it. Actually called her out by name. And then the way her own natural calm split off and seeped into his body. Is that what it was between them? Like some emotional mitosis? He wasn’t a big science guy, and it wasn’t like he believed in magic. There was only one thing he knew for sure. Emmie O’Brien made him feel like everything was going to be all right.

  Max drifted back to his friends’ conversation and was gratified that he still knew what they were talking about, which had now changed to the subject of the upcoming dance and who’d be on this year’s winter court. Great.

  Max shifted uncomfortably. He’d taken Jade to White Prairie’s winter dance the last two years. Chris and Jordy shot him a questioning glance, Jordy blinking like an owl. Max gave them a small nod. Yeah, I got it, guys. It sucks to remember, but I can deal.

  The front door opened, and a cold wind blew in. Max hunched his shoulders, turned to look, and for a second had this crazy feeling that his thoughts were so intensely powerful that they could summon a person just by thinking about them. It wasn’t a completely whacked-out idea. He’d never seen Emmie at the Happy Gopher before, but there she was with her lunch table friend, heading toward a corner booth on the other side of the room.

  Max watched as she shucked off her coat and hung it on the hook beside the booth. He wondered what it would feel like to get his fingers caught in all those crazy curls, then thought about how soft her body looked in that fuzzy blue sweater. How soft it probably felt too. The idea caught him off guard.

  Max wasn’t sure when or why, but somewhere along the line he’d become seriously attracted. Emmie O’Brien didn’t have any of Jade’s polish—like he doubted Emmie ever spent over an hour on her makeup. In fact, he wasn’t even sure she wore any.

  No, Emmie was nothing like Jade. She was wild-haired and smart-mouthed and even a little scary. But now that he thought about it, scary-beautiful in a way he wanted to capture and keep all to himself, and it pissed him off to notice a couple guys on the other side of the restaurant turn to check her out. Soccer players.

  As usual, Emmie held her body in a completely unaware way. Max didn’t think she understood how beautiful she was, or how enticing. That was probably a good thing, because even as tiny as she was, she’d crush him if she had even the vaguest idea of her power.

  Emmie set her phone on the table and leaned in toward her friend, who was already in the midst of what was apparently—judging by the wide eyes—an extremely intense story. Max pulled out his phone and texted: Hi, Emmie.

  He watched, holding his breath, as she picked up her phone, looked at it, then put it down on the table without responding.

  What the hell? She couldn’t even say hi? He’d put his name in her phone. She knew it was him. Sorry, he texted. Just trying to be friendly.

  Jordy got up and said, “I hate these things.” He pulled a contacts case out of his pocket and headed for the b
athroom.

  Lauren tucked her glossy black hair behind her ears, then ripped the tops off a bunch of sugar packets and filled one of them with salt for the salt-and-sugar game.

  “Who are you texting?” Chris asked.

  “No one,” Max said without taking his eyes off Emmie, who looked down at her phone, her eyebrows drawing together. She glanced around the restaurant but didn’t see him.

  This time, Emmie picked up her phone and texted back: Please don’t bother me. You shouldn’t have my number.

  Max pinched back a smile so his friends wouldn’t ask any more questions. He was glad she’d responded, despite the response itself. Sorry again. I didn’t realize saying Hi was a bother.

  There was no more response. Max watched. Waiting. Emmie’s friend seemed to be wrapping up her story. She sat back against their booth, seemingly ecstatic when Emmie threw her head back and laughed. God, she looked great doing that. He’d never seen Emmie laugh before, and by Marissa’s reaction, he wasn’t the only one she’d been holding out on.

  Around Max’s table, everyone besides him had tossed back a sugar packet, and they all were holding their faces as blank as they could, their eyes darting around the table to try to detect the unfortunate person to have gulped back the mouthful of salt.

  Max excused himself just as Brock yelled, “Chris!” and Chris lunged for a glass of water.

  Katie turned her head when Max stood up, and he felt her eyes on his back as he crossed the restaurant to Emmie’s table, slipping into her booth beside her. Emmie jumped to her left, making a little squeak, and he was pretty sure he saw her friend mouth, Oh my God.

  “Hey,” Max said.

  “What are you doing here?” Emmie asked. She didn’t look happy to see him.

  Max shrugged. “I’m here most Fridays, but I’m here here in this booth because I figured you weren’t into texting and liked the more direct approach. I can be direct.”