“This purple strapless one is great for minimal tan lines. Do you wear much with décolletage?” When I looked blank, she laughed. “Never mind, take it. And here’s a red string type that’ll be a great color on you and will show off your rack.”
I murmured thanks, waiting for her to leave so I could put them on, but she stood there looking at me expectantly.
“You want me to put one on now?”
“That’s the idea, isn’t it? Wear the purple one.”
I pulled the tank top off while she moved around the room impatiently, and grabbing the purple strapless top I attached it around my waist, twisted it to the back, and then pulled the top up over my boobs. Next I slipped the tankini bottom off and pulled on the purple one, which had about half as much fabric. Looking in the full length mirrors lining the closet, I had to admit the suit was flattering, even if it showed a lot of skin. Lacey was taller and had a super model’s body. Technically we wore the same size but things looked completely different on us because I was shorter and curvier. My boobs were falling out of this swimsuit top now. Luckily I had shaved my bikini line the night before.
Nonetheless, Lacey commented, “You are so coming with me to the spa for a Brazilian next week.”
Back out by the pool, I was greeted with wolf whistles from the girls.
“Much better,” Lacey declared, satisfied.
I finally got my swim in and then lay on my stomach on the hard concrete of the patio. Ever since I was a kid I’d liked the feel of the hot concrete through a wet towel after a swim, burning if it weren’t for that damp towel.
As I got comfortable, Alex commented, “I trust that Dylan won’t be ogling us through the window like last time, Lacey.”
Lacey rolled her eyes. “No. I’ve banished him from the house until 6, the little horn dog.” Her voice was acerbic but laced with affection. Lacey’s little brother Dylan was a sophomore who was already building a wild reputation. He achieved a surfer look with long white blond hair that perpetually fell in his eyes. He had a slim boyish build that recalled Lacey’s own slender frame. The siblings rarely interacted at school but Dylan had been known to attend Lacey’s crowd’s parties on occasion.
As the other girls were dozing or reading magazines, once I was dry enough I brought out my history book to start on the homework for tomorrow, propping on my elbows to read it.
“Are you seriously doing homework while sunbathing?” Chloe protested. “How lame is that?” She looked around to see if her comment was well received by the others.
I was trying to compose a suitable retort, one that put her in her place without destroying a clearly fragile ego, when Lacey intervened. “Leave her be. A smarty in our camp is a good thing.”
Alex threw out, “Will she be doing our homework too, then?”
“No, just my own.” I shot back.
I was about to resume reading but Lacey moved over next to me and started chatting, so I closed my history book.
“So, did you find out who you’ll be tutoring?” Her feet dangled languidly in the pool. She sipped her Diet Dr. Pepper.
“Yes, get this, Callum Caldwell,” I said, rolling my eyes.
I had expected her to laugh but her eyes narrowed. “That guy is a real shit.”
“He does seem pretty arrogant. Obviously has no use for cheerleaders.”
Lacey shook her head in disgust. “I know you need him to do well to get the letter of rec from Ferguson but if it weren’t for that I would love it if he failed the class.”
I was surprised by her hostility and was going to ask her about it when Chloe joined in the conversation. “He might be a shit, but he’s sex on a stick. Apparently he’s very talented with the lip ring.”
She giggled until she saw Lacey’s look.
“Jenny can do way better than that shithead.” She turned to me pointedly. “Just tutor him and keep away.” From someone else I might not have taken that command but I was eager to please, and just nodded.
I was putting my nose back in my history book when Lacey spoke to me again.
“Soooo… Bryce likes you.”
I looked over at her, astonished.
“Likes me like, thinks I’m a nice person, or likes likes me?”
“Likes likes you.”
Wow. This was something. One of the most popular boys in the school. Varsity football player, Abercrombie looks, blond haired and blue eyed, great body. I’d noticed how cute he was but he was way out of my league and last year he never so much as looked my way. But I had been sitting with the other cheerleaders at lunch the previous week when some football players came by, Bryce among them. There had been multiple conversations going on but at one point he had smiled and said hi to me. That had kind of blown me away and I’d analyzed it with Tina for a good half hour that evening, but it was difficult to make the leap to thinking he was into me. Especially as I had been so tongue-tied I’d just nodded at him.
“What do you think about that?” Lacey asked, her eyes on her pedicured toes.
“Pretty cool,” I said. “But I guess I’d like to hear it from him. The sum total of our interaction has been one ‘Hi’.”
“Well, he’s having a party Friday after the game and we’re going, so expect more interaction.”
Bryce Avery. Wait till I tell Tina!
I left Lacey’s a little while later, needing to get to my homework in earnest. It was hard to concentrate on the social toll of WWI while lying in the hot sun. After changing I had tried to give the bathing suit back to Lacey but she waved me off with her hand.
“No way, keep it. I never wear it. Take the red one too.” I resisted but we ended up compromising: I took the purple one and left the red one with her. She was very difficult to say no to.
Chapter 3
As I walked up my driveway a little while later my phone rang. My mother. This was a surprise.
“Hi Freya! How are you?” I never called my parents Mom or Dad. They’d never encouraged it, always calling each other by their first names in front of me even as a toddler: ‘Jenny I’m busy. Ask Ian to tie your shoes.’ ‘You’re not going to eat the squid ink pasta, sweet pea? Freya made it especially for you.’ By the time I was old enough to realize my use of their first names was a little strange, the habit had stuck.
“Jenny darling I’m splendid. Today I gave my presentation in the seminar series and it was very warmly received.”
My mother was never one to hide her light under a bushel. She was a History professor at Arizona State University, as was my father. She’d been my dad’s grad student and twenty years his junior. Ian had left his first wife for Freya, and the divorce had been bitter. However, my mother was highly competitive and my father enough of an egotist that they’d weathered the fall-out. When they’d met, my father had been a hot shot, with several important books on the French Revolution under his belt. Now twenty years on my mother was the academic star, while my dad’s career had slowed down. For the Fall my mother was in the Bay Area on a research fellowship at Berkeley. I wasn’t too devastated by this as we weren’t that close. My dad was here nominally keeping an eye on me but the reality was that he was out at talks and work dinners several nights a week, or working late at his office on his latest book, so I was pretty much on my own. When we did have a conversation he usually talked at me about some obscure bit of knowledge or idea that had caught his fancy. I knew he loved me in his own way but any discussion of my personal life, if I’d bothered to bring it up with him, would have bored him to tears.
I did have a half-brother, Ben, from my dad’s first marriage, but he was ten years older than me and we had not spent a lot of time together. He was now on Wall Street, perhaps in an act of rebellion against my ultra-liberal parents. Freya had always been territorial of Ian and had driven a wedge between him and Ben for years. Of late Ben and Ian had managed to grow closer even so, and Ben and I had an amicable, even affectionate relationship. One thing Ben and I both liked was music. That doesn’t sound like m
uch of a bond, but it was ours, and when I say we liked music, well, we really loved it. The way Ben and I communicated was via Spotify: he would share his playlists with me, and even build playlists he thought I’d like, and I’d do the same for him. I knew he was jealous of my having grown up with our dad, but I felt he’d gotten the best years with him, when Ian was younger and more energetic.
But my main emotional support these days boiled down to my friend Tina, and it was proving to be tough to adjust to life without her. Her parents were also professors and we’d grown up together. Now that her family had moved to San Diego, we facetimed almost every night and that helped but I still missed her.
In conversations with my mother, an underlying theme of her own greatness prevailed. The dialogue I was currently having with her was a case in point. “The Q and A session after my lecture was challenging, with some hostile questions from arrogant grad students” (my mother had long forgotten that she herself had been one such arrogant grad student) “but I nailed each response.”
“Good for you!” I was pleased for her as, after all, she was my mother.
“Darling I must go- but you: all is well with you, I take it?”
“Yup. All good. Nothing new.”
“Darling did you get my birthday voicemail? Sorry I couldn’t reach you but that was my one moment to call in the middle of a busy day.”
“I did get it, thank you Mom.” I’d turned 18 two weeks before. I’d celebrated in San Diego with Tina and so the minimal acknowledgement of the day by my mother hadn’t been a big deal.
“Ok darling, ciao. Kisses to you.”
By the time I was off the phone it was after 5 o’clock and the house was empty, as expected. My dad was at a lecture. I made a stir fry and steamed some rice, leaving my dad’s portion on the stove. I worked on my Physics homework while I ate it, and then took a break to talk to Tina.
“Hey Ti-Ti, how’s locker boy?” Tina had a crush on the boy whose locker was next to hers.
“Terrific! Today I dropped my pen and he swooped down and picked it up. Which was already a cute gesture. But then he didn’t hand it back to me right away, he held it and read the business name on it, and it was from Frenchies.” Frenchies Diner was where Tina worked. “And then he said, ‘Frenchie’s Diner? I love that place,’ and I was like, ‘no kidding, I work there!’ and he goes, ‘cool, when’s your shift? I’ll come by sometime.’ Can you believe it?” She was bouncing in her seat, and I was too at this story.
“Holy cow, he’s so into you!!” I made her go back over the entire exchange, this time with more details about facial expressions and body language. When we’d exhausted that topic, I gave her the blow-by-blow of my time by the pool at Lacey’s.
“Were the girls super bitchy? Alex and Chloe will eat you alive if you’re not careful.”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“That’s my girl, tough as nails!”
I told her what Lacey had said about Bryce.
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “This is huge!! Mr. Popular not only likes you but he’s making his feelings public. Let me say this clearly: one of the most popular guys in the school, who you yourself ogled on multiple occasions last year, LIKES you. I’m reeling. So, what are you going to do?”
“I guess just go to his party and take it from there. It’s up to him to talk to me. I won’t believe it till I hear it from him. It just seems too preposterous.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re super cute with a body that brings guys to their knees. The only reason the boys weren’t all over you last year was because you were like a recluse. In the fall you spent too much time hung up on Dickwad, and then you did nothing but study after that.”
In a rather crude way Tina had summed up last year correctly. I’d arrived at Scottsdale High a year ago still pining for a boy at my old school, a boy who had been the main reason I’d switched schools. Sebastian had been a nerd but he had been my nerd, running the Math and Science Clubs, scoring in the 99th percentile on every standardized test he ever took. My parents had approved of him because he was smart and his parents were physicists. They didn’t seem to care that he was also a tool, but then I hadn’t minded for a while either. We were each other’s first, and to date, my only. I helped him build a new, hip wardrobe, watched him get buffed as we went to the gym together, found him a decent barber and stylish glasses. Once Seb was settled into his new look, he’d dumped me three days before Prom, and taken another girl. A girl he was already sleeping with.
I’d spent prom night curled up in a ball on my bed, crying my heart out. The next day I found some data online to demonstrate to my parents that my private high school’s average test scores were lower than those at the public school Tina attended. That was all it took to get them to agree to the transfer for junior year. I got to Scottsdale High that fall, still gun shy of boys and licking my wounds. After a few months my hurt turned to anger and I decided to throw myself into getting into a better college than Sebastian. I took as many AP classes as they offered, studied my ass off for the SATs, and was too busy to attend any school functions. I even skipped lunch daily to study in the library. The need for revenge on Seb finally passed, but I still wanted to get into a good college. I was hardwired that way because of my parents. Now here I was, a senior, trying to have a social life for the first time in a while.
While Tina was still hyperventilating over Bryce, I revealed my other news. “You are going to freak when I tell you who I’ll be tutoring.”
Tina started squealing when I told her the story, going almost batshit crazy when I repeated what Callum had said about me in his Algebra class last year. “This is like a freaking romance novel! Good girl tames the bad boy… sooo hot.”
“Yeh, hot like a train wreck. The guy insulted me multiple times. I think he despises me.”
“Come on,you don’t believe that. No one pays so much attention to someone they despise. The guy had clearly spent all last year checking you out in class. And he made a point of telling you.”
“He’s so arrogant and judgmental.”
“He was trying to throw you off guard, that’s all. And you may recall that we used to have some choice words for the cheerleaders, too, until you became one.”
“At your urging! But anyway, back to Callum. I’m telling you he was hostile, and I don’t like him. And his group and my group do not mix.”
“It’s me you’re talking to, and I call bullshit on that. You can tell Lacey and the others what a prick he is but admit to me at least that you’re excited at the thought of tutoring him.”
“’I got a friend, chews me up and spits me out, then walks my ass home…’”
“I take it those are song lyrics rather than stream of consciousness musings.”
“You get one point for recognizing them as lyrics. Now name the song and band.”
“I haven’t a clue and you’re getting off topic here.”
“It’s Kings of Leon! Your favorite band! Mi Amigo is the song. Some fan you are, Tina.”
Tina was completely unperturbed by my scolding. “OK whatever. Can we get back to the part where you admit you’re psyched to be tutoring Callum Caldwell?”
“Fine, yes, he’s so gorgeous my body is in heat around him. You should see this new fauxhawk he’s got going: smoking. But my brain is not happy about this. And he IS arrogant.”
“Ooh this tutoring is going to be soo fun to hear about!! And then there’s Bryce. Did anyone say love triangle? Your senior year is going to be so freaking stellar!!”
Chapter 4
Wednesday, 3:42pm. I was seething, standing in the sweltering school parking lot waiting for Callum to show up. The temperature was in the triple digits. We had agreed to meet up right after school, and school got out at 3:30, so where the hell was he? He’d been in class earlier. I felt like an idiot because at Tina’s urging I’d worn a cute spaghetti strap sundress to school today to look my best for this guy. What a fucking joke. Looking my best? S
weating here in the sun I’d be happy just to smell my best at this point.
I texted him. Where are you? Waiting
Callum wrote back promptly. There in 5
Seven minutes later, no sign of him. I had better things to do than wait for this jerk. I was striding to my car when I caught sight of him sauntering across the lot towards me, in a Spoon t-shirt and his trademark jeans. He wasn’t alone. A wan girl with spiky white blond hair was clinging to his arm with both hands, her gait made awkward by her insistence on walking facing him. She had copious tattoos on her twiglike arms and a black mini skirt with small skulls on it. It was artfully ripped, revealing plenty of thin white thigh. With the odd sideways walking and the pale limbs she reminded me of one of those deep sea crabs scientists have discovered recently, all white and scuttling around thermal vents. Before me was an example of the skanky subset of the species. I was sweltering here because of her? The fact that Callum was pretty much ignoring her didn’t make me any less annoyed. By the time they were next to me I was so livid I could have bitten their heads off. I glared at Callum, my hands clenched into fists. Albino Crab Girl was eyeing me with open hostility. Bring it on, sister.
“You’re twenty. Minutes. Late.” I bit out through gritted teeth. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s a little warm out here.”
Callum opened his mouth to say something but Albino Crab Girl spoke first. “Wow does she ever have a stick up her ass.”
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