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by Patty Blount

  She looked up at me like she was trying to calculate the distance from Earth to the moon, the line on her forehead in full sight. “You may as well sit,” she finally said.

  Like an idiot, I did. “What flavor is that?” I sat opposite her at the table.

  Julie shrugged. “Something red. Cherry, strawberry, doesn’t matter.” She took a lick, and my stomach coiled.

  “Why not?”

  She looked blank for a second, then nodded when something occurred to her. “Sorry. I forgot you’re not a girl—”

  “You forgot?” I battled to ignore Kenny belly-laughing deep inside my brain.

  “Well, when I was little, my sister and I only ate red Italian ices because it made our lips look so good, see?” She puckered her lips at me.

  Yeah. They did look good. Bet they tasted pretty good too. God! I quickly thought of Jeff, the scars on my body, anything else horrible that would take my mind off Julie’s luscious berry lips.

  Julie turned to me, her face confused.

  I stared back at her for a moment. “What?” I demanded when I couldn’t take her scrutiny a second longer.

  She grinned and shook her head. “Nothing. You just looked different when you were fussing over that baby.”

  “Different,” I echoed. I didn’t hold babies at school, so, yeah, I guess I would look different holding one.

  Julie huffed out an impatient breath. “Yeah, different. You were like a big teddy bear instead of a big scary—”

  “A big scary what?” I didn’t like where this was going.

  Julie’s expression changed, softened. I watched her stand, deposit her trash in the can, and walk back to my side of the table. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. You just looked…I don’t know…very sweet and gentle taking care of a baby.”

  “And you liked that?”

  She took my hand, leaned closer, and kissed my cheek. “Yes,” she murmured in my ear.

  Oh. My. God.

  ————

  The weekend couldn’t end fast enough. Friday night, I couldn’t focus. Saturday, I mowed the same patch of lawn twice. By Sunday, I was sure my mother would schedule extra Dr. P. sessions if I didn’t get my feet back on the ground.

  Julie Murphy kissed me.

  Kenny was worse than I was. Every time I looked for him, I found him in the room he’d set up deep in a dark corner of my mind, lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  What did it mean? Were we friends now? Were the icy glares and cold shoulders over?

  By Sunday afternoon, my euphoria had given way to paranoia. She didn’t like me. She liked the big goofy guy holding the adorable baby. I knew girls dug sensitivity in men. I peeked at my mother’s Cosmo.

  It didn’t mean anything.

  Familiar melancholy crept back into my chest, and Kenny found his voice.

  Talk to her. Go find her right now and talk to her.

  That was a very good idea.

  I grabbed my keys and drove to her place, next door to Brandon’s, parked, and then sat in my car for the next ten minutes, paralyzed with my fingers white on the steering wheel.

  What the hell was I doing? I couldn’t be friends with this girl. It was entirely too dangerous. If she found out, if anybody found out, we’d have to move so fast I probably wouldn’t even get the chance to say good-bye.

  A tap on my window made me jerk around, which made me hit the horn, which made me jump again.

  Julie stood beside me at the passenger window, the line between her eyes in full view.

  I hit the power door lock button, and she practically leaped inside. Her hair was scooped back in a plastic band. Her glasses were blue. Just smelling her made me incredibly happy.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” She didn’t look at me. Instead, her eyes swept up and down the street.

  “Need to talk to you.”

  “You could have called. You didn’t have to come all the way here.”

  “Um. Yeah. Sorry about that. What’s wrong?”

  She whipped her head around, pinned her eyes to mine. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. So, what do you want to talk about?”

  Crap. My knees bounced, hitting the keys dangling from the steering column. “Um. Yeah. I guess I wanted to, um, you know, talk about what happened Friday.”

  “What happened Friday?”

  My chest constricted. Okay. It was nothing. I knew it. “Forget it. Doesn’t matter. Sorry I bothered you.” I leaned forward, shifted into drive, the signal she should get the hell out now.

  She peered at me through narrowed eyes. “You have any money?”

  My eyebrows shot up. Was she going to mug me now?

  “I don’t have my bag. I feel naked without it, but there’s no sense going inside to grab it if you’ve got enough money for food.”

  Food. What?

  Kenny smacked my head. Food, genius! You know, the stuff you buy and then put in your mouth? Tastes good and all that? She’s asking you out!

  Right. My face burned. I drove down the street. “Where do you want to go?”

  She shrugged. “That depends on how much you can spend.”

  I envisioned the contents of my wallet, mentally counted the money that should still be inside it. “Snack or meal?”

  Julie patted her stomach and smiled. “I could eat.”

  I wasn’t sure I could eat, but a meal it would be. I hit the Long Island Expressway, headed east, and got off an exit near school where I knew there was a strip of chain restaurants. She was quiet the whole drive. I pulled into an Applebee’s. “How’s this?”

  “Great.” She jumped from the car and jogged inside without waiting for me.

  I locked the car, hurried after her. The hostess seated us near a window, but Julie shook her head. “Could we sit back there maybe?” She pointed with her chin toward the back wall, behind the bar.

  Whoa. Dude. She, like, wants to be alone with us.

  I couldn’t deny it. My heart clenched in my chest at Kenny’s assessment of the situation, but I tried to be cool as I slid into the chair opposite Julie. “I don’t know what to get?” she said like she needed my permission. And I realized that she did.

  “Get what you want. I can cover it.”

  She gave me one of those tight-lipped smiles and nodded. When the server arrived to take the drink orders, Julie closed her menu.

  “Hi. I’m Paige. What can I get you to drink?”

  Julie ordered fajitas and a Coke. I ordered the same. My stomach was knotted, so no use pretending to examine the menu. My knees continued their twitching under the table, making the flatware dance.

  “Dan, you can relax. It’s not like this is a date or anything.”

  Oh.

  I lowered my eyes before she could see the disappointment that filled my eyes. It wasn’t a date. It didn’t mean anything. Just like the kiss at the Italian Ice store probably didn’t mean anything. I wanted to bolt. I wanted to run, put as much distance between Julie and me as I could. But I couldn’t just leave her stranded here.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me,” Julie prompted after the Cokes were brought out. She leaned forward and suddenly grinned, jerking her head after the waitress. “I sure hope her last name isn’t Turner.”

  I didn’t get it but laughed like I did, a short huff of nervousness. I sipped, coughed.

  Julie waited and finally waved her hand. I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

  “You drove all the way to my place for nothing?”

  “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  We fell into another uncomfortable silence. Neither of us ordered an appetizer, so I just sipped until I’d drained my Coke because I had no idea what to say to her. A safe topic, I thought. That’s what I needed. “So, did you do any
thing exciting today?”

  Blue eyes widened, darted to mine for one brief, surprised moment before they took interest in the flatware she was passing from hand to hand. And then it hit me. She was nervous. The thought made me pretty damn happy.

  “No, not really. Just usual Sunday stuff. Chores, homework, studying, reading.”

  I nodded, uninterested in anything else but the answer to the question that had burned in my brain since Friday, and I blurted it out before I could stop myself. “Why did you kiss me?”

  The hand lifting the Coke to her mouth froze. She looked at me over the rim of the glass, frown line visible. “Is that what this is about?” She didn’t wait for me to answer, just leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “I don’t know. I guess I got caught up in the moment. Seeing you with that baby totally contradicted your rep.”

  “What rep?” My hands tightened on my glass. We were barely into the school year, and I had a reputation already?

  She watched me like I was a meter that could tell her at a glance how close I was to some red-line limit. “You know. The big bad new guy brave enough to face Jeff Dean.”

  I gulped air.

  “It’s all over the school. You’re, like, famous, I guess.”

  I exhaled slowly just as the food arrived. The sizzling skillets provided a convenient cover for my silence. Famous. That was just awesome. I watched her blow on a forkful of food, the pucker of her lips doing interesting things to my body. “Julie, you can’t talk about this. Please. It’s—”

  “Oh. Right. No problem. I’m not much of a gossip anyway.”

  Good. This was going well. I scooped some chicken and peppers onto a tortilla and folded it up. I bit through half of it and chewed, my eyes closing while my stomach did a happy dance.

  When I opened my eyes, I found her regarding me with a strange, almost comical look on her face.

  “What?”

  She laughed and looked away, embarrassed that I’d caught her staring. “I’m jealous. I want hair like yours.”

  A happy laugh escaped from me. I leaned back to look at her sideways. “What? Beige?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s light brown and could go blond if you sit in the sun long enough. But I meant the texture. Thick, full, and wavy. Instead, I got fine and straight. I always hated it.”

  My smile faded, and I shook my head. I’d wanted to run my hands through her hair, feel all that silky, spun gold since the day I saw her. “No, yours is perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing.” My voice sounded weird. Deep and raspy like I just woke up.

  Julie’s smile faded. She ate her fajita with a fork and knife in dainty little bites. I’d eaten three to her one.

  “Tell me something true about you.” She dropped her utensils and patted the table with both hands.

  Oh, crap. “Um.”

  Dr. Philips’s homework assignment flitted across my mind. With a deep breath, I figured now would be a good time to start it. “Okay. What do you mean ‘true’?”

  “Jeez, Dan, relax. I’m not interrogating you, so stop trying to swallow your Adam’s apple, okay? I just want to hear something about you that isn’t through the Gossip Girl channels, you know?”

  Sure. Fine. I could do that. “Sorry. Go ahead. Ask me a question.” I responded in what I hoped was a cool voice because inside, I was saying, “Jesus! What if she asks if I’ve ever killed somebody?”

  You know, it’s a good thing you’re already under psychiatric care or I’d worry about you.

  Kenny, go away.

  “Okay, let’s see.” Julie nibbled a nail and pretended to think really hard. “What about books? Do you like to read?”

  Inside, I was breathing a very loud sigh of relief. Outside, I said, “Yeah, I love books. Promise not to laugh?”

  When she nodded, I continued, “I loved Harry Potter. I read a lot of fantasy. Lord of the Rings, Eragon. I love the classics too. Did you read Where the Red Fern Grows?”

  She pressed her hands to her mouth. “Oh God! I cried and cried at the end of that book.”

  Me too, though I did not admit that out loud. Eighteen-year-old men did not cry or admit to having cried. Ever.

  “And I love Harry Potter too. I named my dog after it.”

  “You have a dog?”

  “Yeah, he’s a black lab.”

  After an awkward silence, she changed the subject. “Do you work after school?”

  I shook my head. “No, not a real job, but I help my dad with the family business.”

  “Which is—” she prompted me with a curl of her fingers.

  “Retail. He’s got an online store.” Which used to be a real store with employees and customers and a parking lot.

  “What do you sell?”

  “Um, wedding and party stuff. Favors, custom imprinted, that kind of thing.”

  She nodded. “Cool.”

  Not really, but okay.

  “So, what do you for fun?”

  “Uh—” Fun. What did I do for fun? “I like the beach. I go almost every day.”

  “Even now? With school and the cold weather?”

  “Yeah, I go after. I like to run on the sand. Cushions the knees. Plus, it’s a tougher workout.”

  “That’s it? The beach? What else do you do when you’re not baby-sitting Brandon Dellerman?”

  “Julie, I’m not baby-sitting anybody. We hang out. He’s a cool kid.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Right. Dan, he’s such a douche. Aren’t you afraid of what people will say about you for being his friend?”

  “I don’t give a crap what people say about me.” It couldn’t possibly be worse than the truth. “Brandon’s got a lot of problems, Julie. I’m hoping maybe I can help.”

  Julie stirred the straw in her Coke. “Good luck with that.”

  “Brandon told me Jeff blames him for his mother’s death, but I figure there’s more to the story.”

  She stiffened. “And you think I know the rest of it, right?”

  I shrugged. “If you do, will you help me?”

  “Help you do what exactly?” She pushed back from the table, looked at me sideways.

  “Help me end it.” I waited for her to say something, but she just pushed the food around on her plate. “Julie, Brandon is relentlessly targeted by just about the entire student body. Doesn’t that bug you? He’s not a bad guy. You think he deserves to be ostracized like this?”

  Julie looked at me like I’d just announced an alien invasion. “Doesn’t matter. You can’t control it, and you sure can’t change it.”

  “And that’s it? You can’t control it, you can’t change it, so that means you sit back and just accept it?” I couldn’t keep the sneer from my voice. “Julie, I’ve been watching him since the first day of school. Do you know Brandon won’t use the bathrooms at school, no matter how bad he needs to go?”

  She remained silent.

  “Bathrooms, he told me, are where sixty-five percent of high school crimes take place. He’s been pushed. Robbed. Threatened. He’s had his stuff destroyed. His head shoved into toilet bowls. He’s even been followed home.” I paused, waited for her to express some opinion on the matter that wasn’t a simple shrug.

  “Yeah, and?”

  “And why doesn’t this make you mad?”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  I blinked at her for a full minute. “What is it you think I’m doing?”

  She stood up, dragged the napkin across her mouth. “Judging me. You can take me home now.” She whirled, stalked out of the restaurant.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I threw some cash on the table and followed.

  In bed that night, I tossed and turned for what felt like hours, replaying the evening. I didn’t judge her.

  Sure you do. Y
ou think she should speak up for Brandon like you are. You think she should have reported the fight like you did.

  I sighed. Okay. I admit I do think she should have done something.

  We were having a great time until you pissed her off, Kenny noted. She’s funny.

  I shrugged. I guess she was funny when she wasn’t hating me. Something she’d said tonight suddenly clicked in my brain. The server’s name. Paige. Turner. I rolled over and giggled into my pillow.

  What’s Not to Like?

  By Halloween, the summer weather had turned crisp. Paul and I hung out at his place, watching horror movies and handing out candy. We ate more than we gave away. I’d taken the SATs last week, so it was great to get some time back in my schedule. No more prep classes, no more practice exams on the computer. I thought I did well but tried not to get too pumped about that. Odds were no schools would accept me with my record. My father was spending most evenings hip-deep in the court-required paperwork necessary to start the expungement process for just this reason. If the request gets court approval, I would be legally permitted to answer no on any form that asks if I’ve ever been convicted of a crime…except for law school. Lawyers had to disclose everything, even if their records were expunged.

  No matter how cold it got, I still needed my beach time. Early Saturday morning, I grabbed my iPod and drove the thirty-minute ride to Smith Point, not surprised to see few other cars in the lot. I stuffed buds in my ears, pulled up my hood, and started to run, feet smacking the sand to Metallica’s “Frayed Ends of Sanity.”

  The irony was not lost on me.

  As long as the music was jacked up, I couldn’t hear Kenny haunting me to get me Julie like a Happy Meal from the drive-through, so running with music had become my new favorite pastime. In the time that had passed since our not-really-a-date date, Julie and I had said maybe two or three words to each other.

  I ran, my breath coming in pants that pulled the salty air into my lungs, reminding me of Julie. Stone Sour played next. I slowed to a walk, singing quietly along. The sun hanging low over the water was the same color as Julie’s hair. I tried looking at the sky instead of the sun. It was the color of her eyes.

  Damn it. I stopped and flopped down to the sand, ripped the buds out of my ears. I’d hated her indifference, her icy streak. I couldn’t make sense out of her refusal to care about Brandon’s problem, but damn it, I liked her anyway.