Apokalypsis Book Three
Page 7
“But hey, don’t wear out that arm helping us do our jobs!” the other one said as the principal approached from the right. Wren had seen him coming. She was used to keeping her peripheral vision alert at all times. “We need you in top shape Friday night.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Principal Dickhead was closing in on them, and that was enough to spur her past them. Irritated with Golden Boy, she snorted through her nose at the cops’ total adoration of him and stormed off, hitting the boy with her messenger bag as she went. Oh well. He should’ve moved.
“Watch out for that one, Elijah,” the cop was saying, which she overheard. “She’s nothin’ but trouble.”
“Assholes,” she swore under her breath as she rushed to her locker.
She dumped her bag and loaded it with what she needed. Then it was more hurrying up a flight of stairs to her class. It was a good thing she ran a lot, or she’d be out of breath. She wasn’t familiar with the workout equipment in the huge gym they built for the stupid football players, but she did like running. It was important to keep up on her cardio just in case. And if she didn’t report in each week to Uncle Jamie, then he took her on one of his runs, which were usually uphill the whole way somehow. He worked out a lot harder than her, too. He was always pumping out the push-ups or going on two-hour runs. Of course, being in top shape was part of his job.
She remembered those social media pictures of Golden Boy from his fangirls. Most of the photos were taken secretly by admirers from afar. Some were labeled ‘at the water park.’ Those were the ones in his swim trunks and weren’t up close. There was apparently a pretty good-sized water park at a nearby lake that the local kids went to with tall, winding slides, water trampolines, challenge apparatuses like zip lines and other complicated structures. Other pictures were taken of him in his workout gear, sometimes tank tops, sometimes no shirt. He must’ve run a lot, too, because a few pictures were of him on a running track that surrounded the football field without his shirt doing laps with his friends, probably from the team. She hadn’t worshipped his photos like the hundreds of commenters. The comments even got pretty crude, too, about what they’d like to do with that ‘six-pack’ or what they’d like him to do to them. It was disgusting. Wren was disappointed in her fellow female sex. She positively was not lusting after him. She was just curious because he annoyed her.
Golden Boy had beat her to class, of course, and was sitting at the back where they both normally sat. She took her seat next to him and ignored the ‘ooh’s’ for being late coming from the ingrates in the class, namely the jersey chasers, as she now knew they were nicknamed. Apparently, this wasn’t senior year but second grade. They acted like she was in serious trouble for being late. They were really mature. The teacher didn’t say a word at her tardiness. Good. At least one of them got the memo. It was always harder when she had dumb, snooping faculty to deal with.
Their teacher took a second to lay out their assignment for tonight and told them what would be covered on next week’s exam. Kids groaned and complained. A few minutes later, as the teacher put on a movie, a remake of Hamlet, she switched off the lights and left the room. The class immediately started talking and taking out their phones. So much for discipline. It was always like that, though, no matter where she went to school.
One of the girls a few desks in front of hers turned around and talked to the girl in front of Wren. She could just make out a part of their conversation.
“Did you hear about Tori?”
“Yeah, my mom’s a nurse at the hospital,” the one in front of Wren said. She didn’t know her name. She gave up memorizing names a long time ago. There was no point. Most of the time, she barely caught on to her teachers’ names before they were moving again.
“She’s like so sick. It’s weird.”
“Hope I don’t get it. Homecoming’s in two weeks. I don’t even have a dress yet.”
“I do. My mom took me to the mall in Columbus like at the beginning of the school year. I didn’t want to miss out.”
Their conversation made Wren feel distressed, so she tuned them back out.
“Hey,” he whispered.
Wren felt his foot bump hers in the dark room. She turned and tried to shrivel his bravado with an icy glare. He didn’t back down, though. She ground through her teeth with less patience, “What?”
“What did you think about that?”
She knew what he meant but didn’t want to engage him in conversation. He’d gotten rude with her. He’d called her out. He’d called her a bitch. She ignored him and turned forward again.
It didn’t seem to do much because he just kept talking, “What do you think was wrong with that woman?”
“Other than you tackling her and then punching and assaulting her?”
“What?” he whispered in a high pitch as if that were even possible. “I didn’t… hey, she was trying to kill that poor guy. I was only trying to help.”
He pouted. He actually got pissed and crossed his arms over his chest. It caused her mouth to twitch with a gleeful grin. Then the memory of that woman filtered back into her mind, and Wren grimaced. She knew he was trying to help. He did. He was the only one who did anything, actually. But she wanted him to leave her alone, not talk to her anymore.
Pouty Boy must’ve recovered because he touched her elbow, causing her to jump. She shot him another look. It didn’t stop him. His brown eyes looked almost black in the darkened room.
“That was weird, though, right? I mean, it’s not just me. She was…she was…”
He didn’t finish. Wren knew why. It was difficult finding the right words to describe what they’d seen. She shrugged.
“I don’t know…”
“I do,” he interrupted. “That was some total sci-fi crap if you ask me. That wasn’t normal.”
“She was probably huffing paint thinner or t.v. tuner or something,” she told him dismissively.
“What the hell’s t.v. tuner?” he asked as if he didn’t know people did that. “Whatever. No, no, that’s not it. I don’t think she was on drugs. I saw her eyes. They were…”
Wren knew what he meant. She’d seen it, too. When she’d retreated back out of the pharmacy, she’d jogged over to the cruiser where the cops had the woman detained and got a firsthand look for herself. It was only a split-second glance before they sped away with her. She was kicking the backseat windows in the cop car. She sat up long enough to see Wren, though. Then she’d lost her mind again and began slamming her forehead against the window. It was as if she had changed from wanting to kill the pharmacist to wanting to kill Golden Boy to then having issues with her. It was strange. She’d never seen her before in her life, not in the few short weeks since she’d moved here. She didn’t really know anyone. So, why had the woman growled and snarled with malicious intent at her?
“I don’t know,” she blurted. “Just drop it. Chalk it up to tackling practice. Or future spousal abuse practice, Golden Boy.”
“What? Why would you…” he stated with shock and sat back into his seat again. Then he mumbled something. It didn’t sound flattering to Wren’s character.
Good. She didn’t want a new friend. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t allowed to have them anyway. That was always a big no-no. Limited interaction with people was expected, especially kids at school because they were generally gossips and couldn’t handle the truth if they knew it. Hell, most adults couldn’t. Lila was the first pseudo-friend she’d made in years, and she still knew nothing about them.
Her rude tactic, something she’d perfected so well that she didn’t know if it was really an act anymore, worked the way it always did. He left her alone the rest of the class and tore out of there at the bell. Her next two classes were peaceful, and she didn’t have to dwell on that crazy woman in the pharmacy. Or her lack of friends or a social life or even conversation with someone other than Jamie. Hope didn’t count. She was only four and barely formed coherent thoughts most of the time.
During lunch, she ate in the library as usual and nearly jumped out of her skin when Golden Boy plopped down in a chair across the small table from her. She’d carefully chosen this spot on the second floor in the back of the entire room in a corner near reference books. Nobody ever came to this section.
“Can I help you?” she asked drolly and took a bite of her sandwich, PB&J.
“Going old school, huh?” he joked, indicating her sandwich. He had three sub sandwiches with meat stacked high.
“Going for mass quantity, huh?” she returned.
He chuckled and said, “I have a certain calorie limit I need to hit each day to maintain.”
“Maintain what? Your first scheduled heart attack by age twenty?”
He laughed. “No, maintain my weight.”
Wren frowned. “I thought only wrestlers had to do that.”
“Yeah, they do, but I don’t want to lose weight or muscle mass. I’m at my ideal for now until I get older. They want me maxed out. I don’t know. It’s just a thing. It’s a science.”
“What do you weigh?”
“Two-forty, well, about two-thirty-eight technically,” he joked.
She almost spit her drink.
“How much do you weigh?” he asked.
“That’s not something you should ask a girl. I would think a Golden Boy player like yourself would know that.”
He smiled, exposing white teeth that damn near sparkled against his dark tan. “It can’t be much. You’re pretty…slight.”
His turn of phrase was funny.
“One-eighteen technically.”
This made him grin, her mocking use of his own phrase. Why didn’t he run away like all the other kids at all the other schools?
“How do you know how to do that? Count all the calories and figure it all out.”
“I don’t,” he said as he unloaded his lunch bag, which was almost the same size as her messenger bag. “Well, I sort of do. It’s just that my trainers have me on a diet to maintain and not lose muscle and stuff. My brother’s got it down to a science, too. He worked with them to make sure everyone was on board with the plan and the meal types and all that. The trainers also work with our nutritionist.”
“Sounds like you have a lot of handlers,” she commented, noting that his eyes narrowed as if he were thinking about that. “Do they also tell you what to say and what to think?”
He laughed, “Ha, they’d like to.”
She just grimaced and stared at her half-eaten sandwich before looking up again.
He smiled, and for the first time, Wren understood what the jersey chasers and pretty much every other girl in their school with functioning ovaries saw. He was handsome. Golden Boy was also charming, disarmingly so when he smiled crookedly like that. His brown eyes were clear, the whites so bright just like his teeth. His blonde hair was streaked with sun highlights. A lot of those pictures she’d seen online were him doing sports outdoors all summer long, all without a shirt. He couldn’t possibly love the sun more than she did, though. She cleared her voice with annoyance.
“Do you always eat in here? Kind of tomb-like.”
“It’s a library,” she said, being sarcastic, and talking like she did to Hope when the toddler didn’t understand something. “See those things on the shelves? Books. They’re books.”
He rolled his eyes as if she were silly. “Duh. I maintain my 3.8 all by myself. I don’t have tutors, and I don’t cheat.”
“Even though I’m sure they’d let you, Golden Boy.”
His eyes narrowed at the nickname. “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. I never asked.”
His expression morphed into one of disappointment, which was odd since he lived a very charmed life, or so it seemed.
“Hey, did you say you came here with your uncle?”
This caused her heart to speed up immediately. Questions. He was always full of questions. Deep breath.
“Yeah, so?” she asked defensively, hoping to scare him off again like she had earlier. Or perhaps she hadn’t. He was sitting with her again, after all. She felt her accent slip slightly and mentally made a note to stiffen up on the American accent and be more careful. This boy could cause them trouble.
“I think he might be working with my brother,” he remarked and finished his first sub, turkey on wheat.
His comment was so casual, like something in a movie where two people were eating lunch and conversing like normal people. This was anything but. He just didn’t know that. He just kept on eating and waiting for her to answer.
Finally, Wren said, “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, Alex said he was working with a new guy from California. I figured it’s not that big of a town. We rarely get people who actually want to move here. Well, unless their kid’s gonna play football, of course.”
“Good Lord,” she said and rolled her eyes impatiently.
“What?”
She looked at him with shock as he opened the second sandwich bag and tore into that one next. Wren shook her head with disbelief.
“One, this town is friggin’ obsessed with football. Two, how the hell’d you eat that sandwich so fast?”
He laughed, this time throatily and then guzzled down nearly a whole sixteen-ounce bottle of orange juice.
This time, he mimicked her, “One, this is a football town. Two, I only get so much time to consume this much food. Sometimes I have to take it to class with me.”
“And sometimes you work out during your lunch,” she said and instantly regretted it. This caught his attention. Neither of them spoke. She’d just revealed that she knew he went to the gym sometimes. It was only because she’d had to call Jamie the other day during her lunch period and saw him jogging on the treadmill in there through the tall, tinted windows as she walked past. When things didn’t seem to be working, she had to call Jamie so he could handle the situation. She’d had to call him about that annoying prick of a principal. Again. Going down by the gym gave her total privacy to speak to him without lying or speaking in code. Plus, she’d gone there a few other times just to hide out and get outdoors for a few minutes during lunch.
“Yeah, sometimes. Do you like working out?”
Wren wrinkled her brow and shook her head. “No.”
“You look pretty fit,” he said. “You aren’t one of those high metabolism people who can eat anything they want, are you?”
She shrugged, having never thought about it. “I like running, but I don’t know anything about that equipment you guys use.”
“I could show you sometime if you want,” he offered as he took out a pre-made carton of protein shake.
“No, thanks,” she remarked, not wanting to be near him in a gym. Or near him anywhere else for that matter. The idea of learning those machines was kind of enticing, but it was never going to happen. No school sports. No school activities or clubs. No friends. She started shoving her leftovers into her bag. This was over. She couldn’t sit here and have a conversation with the most high-profile person in the school. It could lead to things, mistakes.
“Hey, where are you going?” he asked and half rose out of his seat.
“I’m done. I need to get caught up on some work,” she lied. She was usually a lot smoother at covering up better than that. Tonight, she’d practice some. She used to have to do that. Practice fake conversations, memorize lies, work on being a cold, unlikeable bitch. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever lead a normal life again where she didn’t always have to push people away.
“Actually, we need to work on the Chem paper,” he reminded her.
“I think we should just do our own,” she argued and closed her English workbook.
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��We can’t. You’re supposed to do it with your lab partner. It’s a fifty-fifty thing, remember?”
“No need.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, right. I caught that mistake, or are you forgetting that, too?”
Her toes curled in her boots. He was a pompous ass. It was one mistake, not something she usually made.
“Oh, I remember quite a bit from the other night,” she said through gritted teeth.
He frowned and said, “Yeah, I…”
Wren cut him off because he looked like he was about to say something kind or filled with regret, “I’ve gotta go.”
“I’ll come to your place tonight. That way you don’t have to do all the driving.”
“No!”
“Why? I don’t mind…”
“I’ll come to your place,” she said. More regrets, mistakes. Damn him. Backed into a corner again! Now she’d agreed to go to his damn house again. Plus, she had to babysit Hope until Lila got off late. It was going to be one of those nights when she kept Hope overnight until morning. How the hell was she supposed to go over to his house, too? “Wait. I forgot. I’ve gotta work.”