by Michelle Ray
“Hey, nice,” said Clay grabbing her around the waist.
I did nothing to help as she slapped at his hands and hoisted herself out the window. “Thanks for nothing, Jerk,” she shouted at me before turning to walk down the hill.
Buh-bye.
Beatriz
Ben drove off. Left me on the side of the road. Quite the gentleman. I was left to witness the police pulling up in front of Peter’s house. I ducked behind a car and watched two officers saunter toward the front door. I considered following them in but knew that I might make it worse.
After a few minutes, the officers came out, trailed by Peter. Who had his arm around Hope. I couldn’t imagine that Clay was right about Peter getting together with Hope, but the evidence seemed pretty strong.
I heard Peter explain to the blond female officer, “I told you, no one is left but me and my girlfriend. No one likes a host who insists they can’t drink, so they all took off for another guy’s house.”
“Well,” the officer said, her fingers tracing the flashlight on her belt, “you’d better be telling the truth. Lots of cars still here and empties in the yard. If we come back and the music’s playing, we’ll arrest every last one of you.”
Peter nodded solemnly. Hope waved and Peter kissed her on the cheek. I was ready to slap them both at this point, but knew I should stay quiet until all was clear.
As soon as the officers drove around the corner, Peter dropped his arm and said, “Thanks, Hope. You were right about playing my annoyed girlfriend. I almost died when you said, ‘I told him not to let those soccer guys come over—’”
“‘– but you know boys,’” they finished together laughing.
Peter said, “Let’s let Antonio out of the bathroom before he drowns in the toilet or something.”
I breathed out relief and walked toward them. “Hey,” I called out, scolding myself for thinking Peter would screw over a friend. “Need any help?”
“Where’d you come from?” Peter asked.
“Ben,” I grumbled. “I’m going to get my brother.” Hope followed then a car screeched to a halt. I saw it was Ben, so I kept walking.
Ben
“Let me at him,” shouted Clay, leaning out the window, flailing wildly.
I yanked him back in and rolled up the window, then locked the doors with Clay inside. Clay pounded on the window, but I ignored him.
“What’s his problem?” asked Peter.
“You,” I said. “What’s between you and Hope?”
“Nothing. We were faking for the police.”
“The police? No, Clay was saying this before.” I unlocked the door and opened it. Clay tried to get out but forgot to unbuckle himself and was knocked back against the seat. Trying not to laugh, I explained, “He pounded a few after he saw you with Hope.”
“Talking. On his behalf. What would make you think I was going after Hope?” he asked Clay, who was yanking wildly at the buckle.
“John,” shouted Clay. “John told me he saw you kissing her.”
“F-ing John! Twice in one night.” Peter punched his fists into his pockets. “I swear I’m gonna get that guy. Clay,” he said, stepping safely behind me, “she likes you. And she’s inside waiting. She thought you would come back, which is why she wouldn’t leave with B.”
“Aw shhooot,” Clay spat. “Now I’m drunk. What’s she gonna think?”
“Let her rescue you. Have her make you some coffee,” Peter suggested and, like a puppy, Clay skittered inside. Peter turned to me and smiled mischievously. “B is pissed at you. What’d you do now?”
“Nothing. The girl’s crazy. She can be so . . . If I were dead, she’d make me want to crawl out of my own grave to argue with her.”
Peter raised his eyebrows as he closed the heavy black door behind us but said nothing else.
“You don’t see how annoying she is?”
Peter shrugged and smirked, then started to clean up, amusement lighting up his face.
“I don’t care. I don’t. She’s not worth the effort,” I grumbled. “I don’t want to talk about her anymore.” I reached down to pick up some empty cups strewn around the floor, then I stood quickly, flinging bits of beer across the kitchen tile. “She’s like the devil, but with amazing hair and great teeth. I wish some college guy would just date her already so she’d be out of our way on the weekends.”
“Too bad you don’t care about her at all.” Peter bit back a smile and held out a garbage bag.
I wasn’t in the mood for his sarcasm so I turned to leave the kitchen.
He and I saw B at the same time starting down the stairs, and he whispered, “Here she comes.”
“Peter,” I begged, “tell me what to clean. The toilets? Scrub the driveway with a toothbrush? I’ll go get a toothpick from the bottom of the pool. Just don’t make me speak three words to that lunatic.”
“Nope.” Peter smirked. “Stay right here. You’ll bond.”
“No, thanks,” I said, and walked out of the room.
Beatriz
I saw Ben walk away from Peter and he looked annoyed, but I didn’t say anything. He was the one who kicked me out of his car. If anyone should have been mad, it was me. But it was late and I was tired and I was too happy that Hope and Clay seemed to be okay. I wasn’t always on the attack, no matter what Ben said. And he was wrong about the car thing. I wasn’t being pointlessly hysterical. His driving was scary.
I carried a bunch of cups to the sink and emptied them before tossing them in the trash.
Peter jumped up to sit on the counter. “So B, you and Ben have a fight?”
“What else is new?” I said with a sigh, taking a can and crushing it under my boot.
“You upset and humiliated him, B.”
“He humiliates himself. I just narrate.” I went to empty more cups and stopped to gaze outside. “Looks like Clay and Hope are all right now,” I said, and Peter looked over my shoulder. When Clay took Hope’s hand, I turned away and smiled.
“You’re a romantic after all, B, aren’t you?” Peter asked.
“Sure,” I said briskly.
He drummed the counter with his fingertips. “I should find you a boyfriend.”
“Are you offering yourself?” I teased and stacked more cups.
“Why not?”
I took in his slightly wounded expression and explained, “Donato, you know I love you, but I would hate to ruin our friendship.” I crushed another can and asked, “So am I taking Antonio home or leaving him here?”
Peter leaned back as if he could see my brother through the ceiling. “Might as well leave him here. And Hope, too, if you want.”
“My uncle will kill me if I do. Hope and I will swing by tomorrow morning with bagels. Don’t let Clay go home or Hope’ll have my skin.”
Peter said, “Make it donuts,” and tied up the bag. He whooshed open a new one and went to pick up the trash in the TV room.
* * *
“You say Bryce and John were out to get all of you.”
“I wouldn’t say all of us. Some of us just happened to . . .” Beatriz’s voice trails off. It is the first time she has been in the headmaster’s office for anything negative and she is having a hard time concentrating. Plus, knowing that Ben is in the other room in a lot of trouble and furious with her isn’t helping. If only she could talk to him.
“Some of you happened to what?” presses the headmaster.
“Um, be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Who was their target then?”
“My uncle, I guess.”
Beatriz’s mother gasps.
“Why would that be?” asks the headmaster, cleaning his glasses slower than seems necessary.
“You know my uncle was hired when the last coach was fired for taking bribes from John’s father.”
Mr. Robertson looks up quickly. “These are unrelated events.”
“No, sir, not when John’s dad had paid off the old coach so John could be captain. My uncle
hardly played John.”
“And Ben?” asks Beatriz’s mother, her teeth bared. “Why would he have become involved?”
“I . . .” Beatriz swallows hard. “Wrong place at the wrong time?”
3
Beatriz Garcia Rojas Hate my lab partner. Hate friends who stab me in the back over a guy. Hate Mondays. Ugh.
Beatriz
“The law of inertia states that it is the tendency of an object to resist a change in motion.” I read the words to Ben with no enthusiasm whatsoever, thinking that inertia defined us. Neither backward nor forward in our relationship. Not ready to be truly friends. Not able to let go of the past. I could stare into his gorgeous blue eyes and get a kick in the stomach one second and want to slap him the next. It had been the same for months.
Case in point: Right after I re-read the definition of inertia (a concept we had been studying for days, by the way), I looked up and noticed Ben wasn’t even listening. He was looking over his shoulder at a sophomore girl who was staring back at him. The girl turned away quickly when she saw that I was watching, and appeared to be suddenly engrossed in the biology lecture. Bad enough that Ben and I were redoing yet another physics experiment during sophomore class time and had to miss senior lunch period, but I also had to watch him flirt? It sucked.
“So, you get the definition, right?” I asked Ben, who was still looking over his shoulder.
A wicked smile crept across his face as the girl turned back, blinking coyly at him.
Enough. We had work to do. I whacked Ben’s arm, and he jumped.
“What was that for?” he asked.
I sighed. “Ben, come on. Let’s get this done so we can make it to at least part of lunch.”
Lunch was the only chunk of time that I had to relax. I am aware that the pressures of being the yearbook editor and the president of student council, in addition to working for perfect grades was largely self-inflicted, but each of those activities and goals was important to me. I typically held it together and, if I had to be honest, thrived on being busy. But Ben’s relaxed attitude toward the one time of day I could breathe was stomping on my patience.
As if to prove my point, right at that moment, Ben looked away from our work again. Back at flirty girl. Honestly?
I tossed the wadded up sheet from our first failed lab attempt at Ben’s head. It bounced off and whacked a boy in the last row. I mouthed, “Sorry,” at the kid.
“Ms. Rojas, Mr. Richardson,” Dr. Deutsche called out from in front of the whiteboard, “please focus.”
“You heard the man,” I muttered loud enough for only Ben to hear.
“What’s your problem?” Ben whispered.
Was he kidding? “I am so sick of redoing experiments at lunch because of you.”
“So this is my fault?”
“Yes,” I hissed. “When I didn’t have you as a lab partner, everything was fine.”
He leaned in and screwed up his face, reminding me of a gargoyle. “Maybe your lab partner was carrying you.”
The lab stool wobbled when I leaned in to match his posture. “Jayson Orloff carrying me? You must be kidding. That guy got a D in Earth science and—”
“Ben, Beatriz, please keep it down back there,” admonished Dr. Deutsche, whose bushy eyebrows came low enough that I couldn’t fully see the blue of his eyes.
I wanted to pummel Ben. He was not only messing with my lunch hour (again), but he was making me look bad in front of a teacher. Some kids don’t care about things like that, but I sure did.
I took a deep breath and whispered, “Do you even understand what this experiment is all about?”
“Of course I do. Inertia.”
Another breath. “Which is?”
Ben shrugged like it didn’t matter that he didn’t know.
Cleansed calm gone. Lunatic surfacing. “Which is?” I asked again.
“Who cares?”
Wrong answer. “I care! These labs are a huge part of our final grade and we’ll be tested on the material.” When he didn’t look appropriately concerned, I snapped. “Ben!” I roared, and heads turned. I lowered my voice and my eyes, burning a hole through the textbook with my gaze. “Just read the directions. You can manage that, right? I’ll take down the calculations. I’ll write up the notes. I’ll do everything. Absolutely everything. As usual. Just hand me that egg.”
He saluted me. This did not help my mood.
Ben
B gets crazy when it comes to schoolwork. She may talk about my being a slacker, but my GPA is nearly as good as hers. The difference is I don’t drive myself — or others — insane while trying to do well. And to blame me for things going wrong in our experiments was totally nuts. It takes two partners to mess up a lab. And I was paying attention. Most of the time.
Look, I aced chemistry and bio. (Is this any wonder? I’ve always had an appreciation for good chemistry and fine bodies.) But physics wasn’t my thing. Could I have done better? Sure. Did I care enough to spend a lot of extra time studying a subject that bored the crap out of me? Nope. Not even to please her royal prudeness. And no matter what she implied, it’s not like I wanted to spend my lunches in the lab, even if the sophomore girls taking class at the same time were hot. But somehow B and I kept messing up the experiments, which meant we had to redo them. Fine. Whatever. But it made her so insane. When we were first paired up, I thought it might be a chance for B and me to interact in a new way. But by this point, I was counting the days till we switched again. She exhausted me.
“So we’re done?” I asked, starting to pack up.
“Yes. I finished.”
“Great,” I said, ignoring the bait she was dangling. Yeah, yeah, she did the work. Blah, blah. But she kept making stormy faces at me, whereas the sophomore girl checking me out did not. What would you have done?
I leapt off the stool and headed for the door without cleaning up. I knew B wanted to shout at me to help, but wouldn’t since the entire biology class was already watching us.
Beatriz
He whooped out the door. That’s why they looked up. Dr. Deutsche’s curly salt-and-pepper eyebrows were high on his forehead, telling me that he was annoyed. I plastered a sweet smile on my face, told myself it wasn’t much stuff, and gathered up the materials on my own while swallowing the urge to scream loud enough to break the picture window Ben was running past.
Leonardo Garcia Sometimes I wish I had sons.
Ben
I spotted Peter and Clay walking toward Coach, so I ran to catch up. Clay was pulling the drawstring on a bag of volleyballs, and Coach was holding a stack of scuffed up orange cones, his head cocked at a weird angle that made him look like he was listening hard. Or nervous about something.
I got close enough to hear just as Clay said, “I wanted to . . . uh, see, the thing is . . . I really like Hope.”
I froze at the same time Leonardo dropped the cones. “And?” he asked, voice steady.
“And I-I want to go out with her, but I thought I ought to run it by you.”
If we were in an action movie, this is the moment where I’d launch myself through the air, arms outstretched, and, in slow motion, you’d hear me yell, “Noooo.”
Leonardo’s mouth twitched. I couldn’t tell if he was keeping himself from yelling or laughing. “That’s very respectable of you. How does Hope feel?”
Clay shifted on his feet and I moved close enough to see the back of his neck turning red. “She likes me. We spent the weekend together — uh, I mean, we were hanging out — with other kids and . . .”
Peter stepped in. “All very above board, Coach. Clay here is about the most decent guy you could ask for.”
I would have agreed but I couldn’t stop staring at Clay’s fingers, which were knotted and stuck in the strings of the ball bag. The dude was a mess.
Leonardo crossed his arms across his chest and looked Clay over, as if he hadn’t known the kid for the last year plus. “Here are the rules,” he said, barking the list like a drill
sergeant. “No drinking when you’re with her. Ever. No taking her anywhere I don’t know about. If I call her cell phone and she doesn’t answer within three rings, I’m coming after you. You mind your Ps and Qs and keep your hands to yourself. Last thing I need is my ex finding out that I’m not caring for her baby the way she wants. And I’m not one to suffer alone. I find out you hurt her or do anything that goes against what her mother and I would want, being off the team will be the least of your worries. Are we clear?”
It was clear enough to me that I wouldn’t touch Hope with a ten-foot pole. Or anything else. Made me real glad I wasn’t interested in Coach’s daughter.
Clay’s eyes were wide and he swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Get that equipment on the field and I’ll see you boys after school for practice.” Leonardo did not uncross his arms.
Clay skulked away, leaving Peter and me to pick up the remaining cones and balls.
“All that to get a girl?” I said. “Hope it’s worth it.”
Peter tossed the last cone at me. “He’s happy, Ben.”
“Looks like it.”
“He really likes her. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” We put the equipment in the shed and stopped at Peter’s locker. I looked past him to watch a girls’ PE class warm-up. “I just wonder if I’ll ever act so sentimental over a girl. I doubt it.” Peter shut his locker and we kept walking. “Peter, I’ve been with beautiful girls and I act normal. I’ve been with smart ones and I act normal. I’ve been with sweet ones and I act normal. None of them get to me.”
“Maybe you’ve never been in love.”
I started to argue but stopped myself. “I guess not. But if I’m going to fall in love, she’ll have to be even more than beautiful, intelligent, and sweet. She’ll also have to be fun, or I’d get bored. Not trashy. Pretty, or I wouldn’t want to look at her. Mellow, or else she’d be a pain. She’d have to like music . . . Oh, and love movies. And her hair — well, that can be any color. I’m not picky.”