I put my back to the sliding glass door and dropped to the floor next to them, oddly comfortable being near him when his focus wasn’t on me.
“You know, her name isn’t really Molly.” I watched his hand pet her head, slow, even strokes. “When we got her, Heather was only six and wanted to name her. And, six-year-olds can be really loud. And pushy. So, since her birthday was two weeks after that, my mom called that one of her birthday gifts.”
Chris’s mouth hitched up just a bit on the sides. It dawned on me I’d never heard of any other Kents. He must be an only child. As much as my sisters drove me nuts, I’d never trade them in for anything.
“So?” He looked over at me, so close I could see the flecks in his eyes and the way they crinkled as he grinned. “You going to tell me her real name?”
“I will, but you have to make a promise first.”
My heart stopped when I watched his smile fall away. I hadn’t realized how relaxed we’d both been, how almost synced.
“You have to promise not to tease her. She’s very sensitive, and she’s obviously ready to become part of your non-existent fan club.”
The crinkles were back. Actually, he may have kind-of-almost laughed too.
“Okay. I promise.”
“Princess Awesomesalsa.”
This time he really did laugh. “Princess Awesomesalsa?”
“Yup. You can imagine what a mouthful that is when she’s chewing on a shoe or something.”
I watched his smile grow, proud and annoyed to realize I’d put it there, as he dropped his head back against the glass.
“Ready?”
He stroked Molly’s head a couple more times, gave her a quick scratch behind the ear, and eased out from under her. Giving my project a suspicious look, he settled at the counter and opened his notebook, pen in hand.
I propped the cardboard against the wall and grinned. It wasn’t even ugly. Typically I didn’t do crafts, but once I’d gotten into it, I couldn’t seem to stop. I was so excited I didn’t even mind doing History first again. Hopefully, we’d have some huge final project and I could just hand this puppy in.
“This,” I gave the bright colored chart a Vanna White viola swoop with my hand. “Is History.”
The board held timelines of all the major civilizations we studied. Pushpins highlighted each chart and people’s names lining up next to them. It was a good system. Each chart had a color. Each person and event on those charts had a number. Each number was on a colored index card matching the chart.
I know. I’m a genius.
“What the hell is that?”
Chris stood up to move closer to my masterpiece.
“You said you couldn’t see everything because it jumped around. This is everything through chapter six lining up.”
He leaned closer, checking out the lines and pictures, and flipped through the index cards. Laying them in neat piles on the counter, he stared at the charts a long moment before he asked, his voice lower than normal, “You made this for me?”
It dawned on me just how much work I’d put into this tutoring deal in such a short time. I’d really enjoyed the whole crafty-logic-history-happy-colors thing. Plus, History has always been my nerdy Achilles’ heel.
But now I saw it through his eyes. A girl, one he hadn’t gotten around to hooking up with yet, drags him out to a secluded bridge in the middle of the night and then spends the rest of it making him a weird gift.
Yeah. I was so not that girl. But he didn’t know that. The wall that had shrunk a little went back up. Taller. With reinforcements. And maybe a catapult.
“Well, I figured it would help me tutor you. And, if we have a final project I’d be all set.” Horse. Cart. Feel free to switch places again later.
“Oh. Great idea.” Disappointment? Relief? Who knew.
“You’re probably one of those picture book girls too, huh?” he asked.
Even I couldn’t decipher that.
“Picture books?”
He waved his hand at my craftiness. “You know. Those books with the pictures and paper and stickers and stuff.”
“Do you mean scrapbooks?”
Chris shrugged, probably unsure what he’d meant. “Whatever.”
I looked at my charts, all the pictures and side notes and color-coding, and tried imagining scrapbooking. As soon as I considered it, I pushed the idea away. Pictures equaled cameras, and a girl could only stay on the non-photographed side so long.
“Not really. It was more the History than the crafty. Plus the whole final project thing.”
He did that guy slow head nod thing. “Cool.”
There are certain words I love to use, but hate to hear. Words like “interesting” or “anyway” …or “cool”. They can mean anything.
I threw back at him a, “Yeah, whatever.” And added, “We should get started.”
Between the studying and the study breaks, it was five-thirty before I knew it. Mom came in and started mixing and dicing and cooking. Chris watched her wander the kitchen more than he paid attention to the books. It would have been bad enough while we were working on History, but now we were on to Calc—finally—and he wasn’t even paying attention.
“Are you going to check my answers?”
His attention flashed back to me, a blush tipping those ears again. “Sure. Hand them over.”
I watched him run down the page, my work scribbled in crooked lines instead of the orderly point-by-point proofs on his. He marked the ones that were right then went back and made a note where I’d messed up in the ones I got wrong.
“Closer. You didn’t make the same errors as last time.” He glanced at the page again. “I think you need to slow down a little. It’s like you just want the answer.”
That had to be the stupidest thing I’d heard him say yet.
“I do just want the answer.”
As soon as it left my mouth, he was laughing at me.
“Right. But part of the answer in math is how you get there.”
He wrote out three more questions from our book and handed them to me. I pushed the History graph his way. We may have both rolled our eyes.
After a few minutes, I realized he wasn’t writing anything and glanced toward him. He was watching my mom cook again.
I began to wonder if he had designs on my mom when he asked, “Do you guys eat all your meals together?”
Why was this food thing such an issue with him?
“Yeah. Don’t you?”
He shook his head, his eyes never leaving the chicken my mom shoved into the oven.
“My mom leaves stuff out for me and my dad. You know with that scrunchy silver cover thing wrapped around them for when I get home from practice and he—”
There it was again. That tension. Mom, who had become a pro at reading tension, spoke over her shoulder as she pulled out the mixer to mash potatoes.
“Chris, why don’t you stay for dinner, and then Rachel can drive you home?”
I had never seen such yearning for a meal in my life. You’d think he’d been homeless for weeks and hadn’t eaten anything off a plate in longer.
“That’s okay, Mrs. Wells. You don’t have to feed me every time I walk by the house.”
She turned around, the smile firmly planted. I knew that smile. It was the same one that got me in the car for therapy every time I didn’t want to go.
“Well, Rachel has to clean up and set the table. I’d hate for you to walk home when it would be easier to just feed you and let her drive you.”
Wow, that was some twisted mom-logic, but it was the out he needed. So, great. Another meal with his new junior fan club and then driving him home.
Halfway through the giggle-fest, I earned the glares of the junior high contingency by asking if we had earplugs anywhere. This did not help me make friends and influence people. But they were twelve and thirteen so I wasn’t overly concerned about it.
Oddly, he seemed relaxed, comfortable with my sisters in a way I didn’
t expect. At first I thought it was the whole they’re female thing, but soon it seemed like he just liked kids. I remembered Amy said he coached during the summer. But those were boys. Should I warn him that all those smiles he was dishing out to the younger Wells were going to earn him mini-stalkers?
Mom had no problem getting the girls to clean the kitchen that night since Chris was sitting in it. Maybe I could harness this to get them to do my chores too.
Later, at his driveway, Chris hesitated before hoisting his bag and unfolding himself out of the front seat. Closing the door behind him, he ducked his head and peeked back in.
“Thanks. That was really helpful.” He flashed me that famous Chris Kent grin. “I half hope we have a pop quiz tomorrow.”
“Really?” I couldn’t help laughing. If there was ever a day to get slammed with one, it was tomorrow. “I almost hope so too.”
The sooner his grades were up, the sooner I could stop shuttling him between our houses.
His lips quirked, shifting into an odd little smile. “So, friend…see you tomorrow.”
There was that word again. Both of them. I don’t know which one stressed me out more. Friend or tomorrow.
Chapter 11
Monday was going to be a good day.
I’d laid out clothes the night before. I’d even arranged for a backup outfit. My hair was cooperating. I’d stuck my new Totally Nekkid glossy in my bag. There would not be a repeat of Friday. No matter how many blondes Jared Parker had tucked under his arm before homeroom.
That was the one good thing about the tutoring-the-enemy thing. It kept me so paranoid about lies and half-lies and almost-lies, I had little time left to worry about my ex-boyfriend.
Now all I had to worry about was my best friend’s ex-boyfriend.
It couldn’t be helped. We saw each other coming. The Senior Hall stretched out like a red carpet at a Hollywood event, but couldn’t have been that long. Plus, with Chris’s height it would have been hard not to notice him. The other students did this sad parting-the-Red-Sea thing as he and a couple other soccer gods strolled down the hall. I guess the good old RV was just one stereotype away from becoming the next MTV reality show. I glanced down to make sure an actual red carpet hadn’t magically appeared.
I knew where he was going. The Crossroads. About twenty feet past my locker the Junior and Senior Halls criss-crossed. The seniors joked that each side of the junior hall should have a stop sign to give the seniors right of way. If only we had that much power.
What it did have was a collection of varsity soccer players’ lockers, so they all managed to congregate there before classes.
I had no idea what “friend” meant in school. That was too much stress. I’d let him decide. He deserved the stress more than me at this point.
I turned back to my locker, listening to Amy chatter about the game that night. She had become an even bigger fan since taking on the role of team stats girl. She could ramble off soccer statistics for our players, all the top rival players, and several pro-teams.
But everything always came back to Luke. As it should be.
My ears were listening to her talk, but my heart was skittering a countdown. Three. Two. One.
I turned and glanced up, just enough that our eyes met as he neared.
“Hey.” No smile. No stopping to chat. Just one word. And he kept going.
Somehow that seemed right to me. In the last second before he passed, I bobbed my head back at him.
“What was that?”
I shifted back to look at Amy watching Chris and Mark walk by.
“What?” I squatted to retrieve something from the bottom of my locker. No idea what it was, but I’d know it when I found it. It would take a while. Maybe long enough for Amy to head to class.
“That whole,” she waved a hand toward the soccer players. “Head-nod-hey thing that just happened.”
This is where that lying thing started…if I let it. I wasn’t going to let it.
“We’re working on a project together for History.” See. Not a lie.
She looked from me to where Chris stood with the soccer team and back to me again. She did that Amy-stare where her head tilts to the side and she looks at you kind of not straight on and said, “What are you not telling me?”
We only had about three minutes before homeroom, so I narrowed that question down to: What are you not telling me about you and Chris? For a flash of a second, I wondered why she cared so much.
“Nothing. Just two people stuck together in History trying to play nice.” I went on the defensive, maybe because I was feeling defensive. “You’re the one who said he’s not as bad as I thought.”
The look didn’t waver, but she finally let it slide. “Oh. Okay.”
I hoped it would be.
~*~
“Hey.” The boy hovering behind my locker door was a bit of a surprise. A nice surprise, but still…I hadn’t expected to see Ben drift my way at school.
“Hey, yourself.” I stuffed my books in my locker, switching out for the next period. “How’s your sweet smelling pillow?”
He quirked that grin. Why girls were not clawing each other’s eyes out to get at him was beyond me. Proving we really aren’t always that bright now, were we?
“I had to have it laundered. It smelled all hairspray-icky-girl stuff after you were sniffing on it all day.”
I closed the locker with a loud snick and waited. There had to be some reason he was stopping by besides to complain about the girl-cooties on his pillow.
“So…” Here it comes. “Is there something going on with you and Chris?”
I can honestly admit I didn’t see that coming.
“No!” I looked up at him—and seriously, all these tall soccer players were beginning to give me neck strain—and waited to see where this was going. “No. Why?”
He laughed, his left brow crooking down and in over his eye. “Why? Seriously? Maybe because he stormed into my room and flipped out when he found us in bed together.”
My hand slammed over his mouth so fast I made my own head spin. I could feel him smiling under my palm.
“Do I look like I want to become the next RV rumor?”
He was laughing. Laughing. Where was there a decent pillow when I needed something to shove down his throat?
“I’m going to take my hand away and if you start with any more of the Rachel-was-doing-something-she-really-wasn’t-doing talk, you’re a dead man.”
I eased my hand back and that killer smile cracked those perfect lips I couldn’t care less about.
“Seriously, I just wanted to make sure I didn’t screw something up with us goofing around.”
Oh, no. He was sincere.
“No! Absolutely not. I’m not kidding. We aren’t, haven’t, and won’t be dating. So goof away.” As soon as I spoke the last part, I saw the flaw in the statement. “But! But, not anything so goofy it gets me expelled or written about on the boys’ room wall.”
“What about just in the locker room?”
I grinned up at him, liking this easy friendship, this guy without the guy-stress.
“Maybe. Text me a rough draft before you post anything there.”
~*~
Kent and Wells are nowhere near each other in the alphabet. Obviously. I will always be the girl in the far row near the back. Typically Amy’s behind me, but History was Amy-free.
Thank goodness.
Of course, if Amy was in this class, maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation.
From my place by the windows in the back corner, I could see the back of Chris's head. He'd gotten a haircut sometime between when I'd dropped him off and this morning. The pale line of hair shaved up the back of his neck shown like a crescent moon against the tan he'd earned on the field this summer.
I kind of liked it. That couldn’t be good.
Mr. Reed shut the door and threw the lock the second the bell rang. The handle immediately jiggled as someone tried to get in.
�
�Get a late slip from the office, Mr. Morrison.” Why was he such a jerk? It wasn't as if the kid was strolling in during the second half of the period...or even a minute late.
I couldn't believe it when the groans arose from the A through F row as Mr. Reed passed papers back. That could only mean one thing.
Pop Quiz.
Chris turned in his seat, just enough to catch my eye and grinned. It was a little silly. A look so hopeful even I was rooting for him as I said a prayer the quiz it covered stuff from the first couple chapters and not the ones we didn't get to.
The last piece of paper slipped out of V-for-Vitrano’s hand and onto my desk without the typical hey-how-ya-doing grin accompanying it. Someone wasn't ready for the test. Hopefully that someone wasn't Chris.
Or me.
Also, what kind of teacher considers thirty questions a quiz? Especially when the last two are essay questions. More like pop final exam.
Forty minutes later, the last kid handed in her paper and Mr. Reed started to discuss some history topic my brain was too fried to process. The precious ding of the timer on his desk cut off his rambling and pacing. God forbid he miss the three minute window he gave himself every day to inflict us with homework. He jerked the overhead projector screen and raised it away from the chalkboard so he could point out the reading and writing and memorizing and typical busy work he gave us every day.
I scribbled down the assignment and wondered how I was going to finish mine and catch up on the chart. Time Management was so not my thing. Time Ignorement I was fabulous at. I let everyone trample out of the room ahead of me before stopping at the edge of Mr. Reed's desk.
“Mr. Reed? I was wondering about grades.”
He stared at me over the top rim of his glasses. Did he not realize how old that made him look?
“No excuses for homework not completed. I assure you, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to complete the assignment I've outlined.”
Except for the five other full-year classes I had on my plate.
“No, sir. It isn't about the assignment.” Brown nose, Rachel. You can do it. “I'm enjoying the class. I've always found History interesting. I was thinking more long-term.”
Secret Life (RVHS Secrets) Page 10