Tell Me Something Real

  It’s like a vortex of angry people and bad decisions, doing its best each day to suck the rest of us in.

  “Sorry,” I tell Evie. “I got your text as I was getting to school. I’m good,” I tell her before she can ask. “Embarrassed because I knew better, but good.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to have my body give out on me just because, Lincoln, so don’t be embarrassed—not for wanting to do something as normal as compete for something you’ve trained for.”

  Relief blows through me. Evie must see it because she gives me another sympathetic smile. “I take it you’ve had a few people say ‘I told you so’ this morning.”

  “Not so much ‘I told you so’ as ‘I need you to be safer.’”

  She nods. “Colt was pretty upset after he saw you.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  Evie hesitates, and then nods. “He, uh, kinda showed up at my house last night. I was washing my face, getting ready for bed, and my mom came to get me. When I got downstairs, he was standing on my front porch, eyes dark, head hung. He just sort of grabbed onto me,” she says, and my chest tightens a little.

  It’s selfish, but part of me hates that Colt had to go to Evie last night—not because he has her, but because for the first time in our relationship, he didn’t know if it was him I wanted with me.

  And neither do I.

  “I’m glad he went to you.” I clear my throat and smile. “I guess that means you guys are serious, huh?”

  She doesn’t answer right away, only watches me like she knows what’s inside. I wonder if it’s like this with Colt—if that’s the reason he went to her last night, because she understands more than what’s said.

  “Yesterday, I would have said we were nothing more than friends—the kind that you’re comfortable with so you eat lunch together and laugh a lot, but last night…” she trails off, looking down at the table. “Last night when he grabbed me? He held on so tight. Like…he needed me. It felt like if he held me, he would be okay.”

  I reach across the table and put my hand on Evie’s until she looks up. She’s uncomfortable—because of Colt, because she knows he and I are close and this hurts on some elemental level. “I’m glad he went to you,” I repeat. “He needs you, Evie. Colt… he doesn’t have a lot of people in his life that he can go to and know that they’ll be there.”

  “Except you.” She doesn’t need me to answer. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  Her eyes go over my shoulder, and then flick back to me. “Is Ford the reason Colt came to me last night? Is he the reason you’re hiding in here today?”

  I hesitate, and then I turn my head and look over my shoulder. Ford is staring at me from three tables over. He doesn’t look away when we lock eyes, not until Jacqueline plops down at the table next to him.

  Turning back to my own table, I pick up my pencil again and look down at my reading questions.

  “Ford stayed with me when Colt left last night. Probably because Colt threatened his life if he didn’t.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Evie,” I say. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to figure out why Colt left you last night—the first time I know of that he’s ever left when you when you’ve needed anything—and came to me. Why his cousin is now staring at you like he can’t look away but wants to. Why you’re hiding out—without your best friend.”

  “Are you referring to you or Colt?”

  She narrows her eyes.

  “Are you okay, Lincoln? Because Colt… he isn’t okay. And, from where I’m sitting, neither is his cousin.”

  The door to the library opens, and a burst of noise breaks the silence. For once, I’m grateful for loud-ass freshmen. Gathering my things, I shove them into my bag and stand, glancing at Ford who is still talking to Jacqueline while she pets his hand.

  “He looks just fine to me,” I say, when Evie steps up. Me on the other hand… I can’t figure out how I feel. Worried about Colt. Worried that I won’t forget what it felt like to have Ford wrap me up and hold me last night.

  Worried that the life I was so good at managing is suddenly becoming far more complicated, and that it begins and ends with the Slaughter boys.

  Colt is out for blood.

  No one’s in particular—which sounds like a good thing, but actually makes him even more dangerous.

  We’re at midweek practice, one of the last hard ones we have before Friday’s game. I’ve been on offense for the last four plays, and gotten the ball for the last two plays. He’s hit me once, hard enough my teeth rattled and my vision swam. But the hit was sloppy, more about the contact than the play, and I know it hurt him, too.

  After watching his erratic movements on the field, I’m starting to wonder if that’s the point.

  He’s hit three other people, including Grier, who’s still on the ground being looked at by the trainer and several assistant coaches, while Colt stands, helmet in hand, breath heaving, being dressed down by Coach.

  Like the day he was on a tear to avenge Lincoln’s name, Colt doesn’t appear affected by Coach’s wrath. Again, I wonder if he’s somehow glad to feel it.

  “Go.”

  Coach points to the locker room, and for the first time, Colt reacts. “Coach! Don’t send me out—make me run. Make me do drills. Make me work it off.”

  “You don’t need to do drills. You need to cool down and get your head on straight before Friday… or you won’t be playing.”

  The older man goes to walk away, and Colt steps in front of him, his voice desperate now. The sound of it makes my gut clench.

  “You can’t make me walk off this field for playing hard.”

  Coach stops, getting right in Colt’s face. “Slaughter one, I can make you do any damn thing I want. If you don’t get off my field right this minute,” he continues when Colt goes to interrupt. “I will suspend you for an entire week. Now, go.”

  Coach walks away, hollering at Kaz to take Colt’s place. I watch my cousin, noting the heaving shoulders, the red face and sweaty brow. We make eye contact, and then he turns, heaving his helmet at the water table. Coach doesn’t even glance at him.

  “Colt,” I say, taking a step toward him. Coach stops me.

  “Slaughter two, get in here or get to the stairs and start running.”

  I ignore him. “Colt,” I say again.

  “Slaughter two!”

  Colt turns his head to find me still standing there, ignoring Coach while Colt and I have a brief meeting of eyes. His are dark and heavy—like last night when he walked away from Lincoln, or this morning when he walked into her room.

  They are eyes that show me what Lincoln said that night in the field: Colt is having a heavy day, and it’s making him destructive.

  I understand that. It’s crazy how much I understand that.

  Just like I understand what feeling like this can make someone do.

  Colt turns and walks away without a word or acknowledgement, and I know I can’t leave him alone. Not when he’s like this.

  “My head hurts—I’m going to training to get checked out,” I tell Coach. Then I begin my jog toward Colt, calling his name again. Coach yells after both of us, but I ignore him. Something is telling me that whatever Lincoln didn’t say to me that night in the field is right in front of my face. And leaving Colt right now isn’t the right choice, even if it means getting said face bashed in.

  “Colt—wait.”

  “Go back to practice, Rich Boy.”

  “I’d love to, but some dickhead rang my bell on an unnecessary tackle and I can’t see straight.”

  “Pussy.” He throws the word over his shoulder.

  “Nice. Is Grier a pussy because you came in low on a late hit? Or Lyons, because you yanked him around by his facemask before slamming him into the ground after the play was dead?”

  We get to the back entrance of the
locker room, and Colt slams through the door first, me hot on his heels. Our cleats make clacking sounds on the tile, but other than that, the only sound that can be heard in the cavernous, empty space is Colt’s harsh breathing when he whips around to stare at me.

  “Are you defending Grier now? Even after everything he did to Lincoln?”

  “You mean the one thing he said about Lincoln that both you and I already handed him his ass for? Over a month ago?”

  Something snaps in him, and the real explosion comes. I’m braced before he even shoves me. “It’s never enough. One ass kicking is never enough. Don’t you get that?”

  My pads protected me from impact on the locker, and I’m grateful because Colt is the darkness right now, and his looks tells me he hits to harm. Shoving off the locker, I get into his face and meet his wrath. “Is this about Lincoln, then? The late hits, the attitude, the fact that you look like you’re ready to shed blood? Is it about her?”

  “It’s always about her… Jesus, if you don’t know that, you aren’t ready.”

  “For what?” I yell, and now my breath is heaving.

  “For her, you dumbass!” He shoves me again, and this time, I fall back, because more than the hit are the words that slam into me. “If you can’t see that she comes first, always, then you’re not ready for her, and I will kill you before I let you near her.”

  “Try it,” I say, pushing forward.

  We stand, chest to chest in our pads, so close our foreheads could touch, and we stare, waiting for the other to break first.

  “You want to know why I was out for blood today, Rich Boy?”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore.”

  “Too bad,” he spits out, and his voice has gone quiet. “You asked, so you get the answer. Lincoln needed you this morning—and you left. You fucking left her, after she trusted you last night, and then you didn’t go find her all day long. You watched her, but you never went to her. Who the fuck does that?”

  “The same kind of guy who leaves her with a stranger when she’s sick and hurting.”

  He doesn’t react like he did the first time we met and had damn near the same conversation. Instead, he shakes his head, disappointment marring his features when he steps back. I hate that it makes me feel small. “I didn’t leave her with a stranger, Ford. I left her with you.”

  He steps back suddenly, and I’m left reeling. The fight is gone from both of us; I’m still not sure there was a fight, or what it was about.

  “If you don’t want her, stop looking at her. If you do want her, get rid of Jackie, man up, and be there. All there. All the time. Until you figure your shit out, steer clear, because Lincoln doesn’t need another broken Slaughter boy to worry about.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t in love with her.”

  He laughs, a broken sound that warns me whatever was going on with Colt hasn’t been solved, only tamed for another day. “And I thought you asked because you are.”

  Colt bangs around the locker room, taking off his gear and grabbing his stuff before he leaves. I stand where I am, thinking of Lincoln and all of the times I’ve seen her today—how she looked in the library when she walked away from me.

  Colt’s right—I am falling for her, but I’m not like him. I grew up selfish, arrogant, and reckless, so as much as I want to be the one Lincoln turns to, I’m not sure I should be.

  +

  “Ford, don’t.”

  I ignore Alyssa, pressing the accelerator harder, cruising around corners of the narrow island road at just over a hundred and ten miles an hour. My hands are still steady.

  The moon overhead is full, and shadows from the large trees cast odd patterns and blind spots on the road, but I don’t waiver in my quest to feel. I press harder and harder, downshifting the Porsche and speeding into each corner.

  Beside me, I think Alyssa might be crying. I don’t bother to look over and confirm.

  Something inside of me is screaming—pounding and begging to be released, to be freed, to be let out of the darkness and into the light. But no matter how fast I go, no matter how hard I press or how quickly I whip the wheel around the treacherous curves, it doesn’t explode.

  “Oh, God, please. Please, Ford, slow down.”

  Alyssa’s words penetrate beyond my ears this time, and I finally hear her. Shifting my eyes from the road, I glance at her, not shocked by the tears—tears are a female weapon that can be used on a whim—but by the lack of control.

  Alyssa’s mascara is running.

  I stare a second longer, the sight of those black streaks penetrating the buzz in my head and the throb in my veins for detonation quicker than anything else could. Alyssa isn’t just crying; these are not the perfectly manicured tears she lets fall at sad movies, or when she wants to win a fight. No, these tears are raw. Her face… it looks nothing like normal, like the reality of her tears has washed away all the façade and left us both in the here and now.

  Terrified.

  Angry.

  Out of control.

  The bomb inside of me detonates, and it takes me a second to realize the cry of anguish filling the car is mine. Because I’ve done it—gone and become my father, and now someone else is paying for it.

  “Alyssa.” I say her name, but the word is a whisper.

  “Ford…Oh, God, Ford, stop.”

  I nod, ready to listen to her, finally listen and stop, to tell her I’m sorry, but we hit the corner wrong, and I’ve had my eyes off the road too long.

  She screams—and I know it’s hers because it’s my name that echoes throughout the car when we fly off the road and into the guard rail.

  Ford got himself moved into my culinary class.

  I don’t know how, since we’re nearly six weeks into school, but I walked in today and there he was, standing at one of the counters looking annoyingly hot in his jeans and T-shirt that should have been plain, but somehow manage to make him look like royalty.

  I hate that I’m wearing a royal blue smock dress that’s as shapeless as a potato sack, and has a small bleach stain on the hem—probably the reason it was at Goodwill in the first place.

  Class was just beginning when he walked in, and everyone stopped to stare at him. I watched intently from my spot at one of the back counters, my pastry dough long forgotten, while I searched for some sort of reaction or discomfort because this scenario is horrifying on so many levels, no matter who you are. But he gave nothing, simply handed his new schedule to the teacher and waited, hands tucked into his back-pack straps, the angle of his arms highlighting his amazing biceps.

  Mrs. W—the culinary teacher—looked at him over the top of her horn rims, gray hair pulled tightly into a bun, cooking smock already buttoned up and stained with this morning’s ingredients from a previous class.

  “Beauford William Joseph Slaughter.” She repeated all of his name, eyeing him over those glasses, brows raised. “Which do you go by?”

  “Just Ford.”

  “Ford.” Mrs. W rolled the name around, all of us still mesmerized. “You related to Beau and Maggie Slaughter out in Tangent?” He nods. “And Nicholas and Tommy Slaughter?” Another nod, and though he didn’t move, I swear I saw his body tense. Mrs. W might have seen it, too, or just got bored, because she moved on from relationships. “What brings you into my class late, Ford?”

  “Discovered I was repeating a class I took at my last school. Art.”

  Mrs. W looked at him with an expression that definitely called bullshit, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she nodded and pointed him to the adjoining classroom and told him to set his stuff in there. And then she placed him with a group of Jacqueline’s friends, who all cooed his name and petted him like a puppy when he stopped at their counter.

  I stayed in the back at my counter, staring for just a moment, wondering if he was going to look my way. He didn’t, and still hasn’t, even though we’re cleaning up now.

  I hate that I’ve glanced a
t him more than once.

  “Are you supposed to be eating that?” Startled, I look over at my culinary partner for the week, Hayden Cruz—another girl who suffers from the gender-neutral name confusion I often receive—and then down at the blueberry tart I’m two bites into. “It has sugar in it. Won’t that, like, kill you?”

  Ah, yes, another “cure the diabetic with lettuce” believer. Before I can answer, and assure her that if anything is going to kill me, it is the lack of natural insulin my body refuses to produce or the faulty immune system that accompanies diabetes, Ford is there, picking up his backpack and answering for me.

  “Type 1 isn’t about sugar—it’s about carbohydrates. And whether or not Lincoln eats a steady diet of them, or none at all, she’s going to need insulin.”

  I raise my brows at Ford, but he doesn’t react. “Stalking again?”

  “Basic medical knowledge, in case you pass out again.”

  Hayden looks back and forth between us. “My uncle has diabetes; he’s, like, really fat though. My aunt said that if he would just lay off the cookies and tortillas, he’d be fine.” Then she eyes me. “You’re not fat.”

  “Thanks for noticing. I bet your uncle has Type 2,” I say. “It’s brought on later in life, mostly because of lifestyle. I have Type 1; less than five percent of all diabetics have Type 1 because it isn’t about lifestyle, it’s an autoimmune disease that means my body will need help regulating blood sugar no matter what. So this,” I say, popping the rest of the tart into my mouth, “isn’t going to kill me.”

  “Unless you forget to check your levels and inject the proper dosage.” Hayden and I both turn to Ford. He’s now staring at me, hard. “Because then it will kill you—if you’re not careful.”

  We stare at each other, him waiting for me to tell him I checked my levels, or that I’m going to do it now, me trying to figure him out. Hayden is staring back and forth between us. The bell rings, and she clears her throat. “Wow, this was…weird. Uh, I guess I’ll see you next class, Lincoln.”

  I nod, because I like Hayden. She’s a bit dim, more interested in finding a boy than getting a grade, but we partner on a lot of things in this class because she’s another one of the poor kids who knows what’s it like to buy secondhand clothing and be calculated into the free and reduced lunch demographic.