All of that would have to wait. He needed to ask Delilah if she could help him study for his history class. If he didn’t pass the first test it would be nearly impossible to rebound. He needed to keep his grades up so it wouldn’t endanger his chances of making the baseball team.
“I can’t tonight,” David said to the person standing behind him. He was mildly annoyed at her interruption as he tried to find his World History notes in his locker. For the millionth time since the semester started he wished that Delilah wasn’t so distracted; she would have helped him organize his locker weeks ago.
"But David," the undisputed prettiest freshmen girl whined, "I thought we were going to hang out tonight." Aimee Kirkland flattered herself into thinking that she could convince him to give her what she wanted. She was using the tactics her sister and mother had drilled her over.
"I have a history test to study for," he answered her absently, giving up on his notes and grabbing the textbook out of his locker. "I asked my neighbor to help me study and everything. I can't fail this test."
Aimee pouted, wondering how she was supposed to hook the guy with plenty of potential if all he saw was his ugly next door neighbor and her baggy clothes. She knew exactly what her sister would suggest doing, but Aimee wasn’t certain if she was ready to take that step with somebody she barely knew.
All she really thought was that if she went along with her sister’s plans then she could bargain for the softball team. She never really thought about what Amanda’s plans would entail. Or that Amanda was always around watching and instructing her about what to do. Or how to do it. What to wear it. The best way to flirt and keep a guy’s attention.
With all that information Aimee couldn’t figure out why it was nearly impossible to get David’s attention.
"I thought you wanted to be my boyfriend," she used her last resort and pouted, thinking it could work. "I thought you wanted to hang out with me and my friends. I know Will was thinking it would be great to be friends with you." And then finally, her Ace, "My parents aren't home tonight."
Her parents were never home. Her father was normally…actually Aimee didn’t know where her father went, and her mother normally went out looking for him, she assumed.
Closing her eyes, Delilah laid back against the wooden planks of the treehouse while she waited. It had been David’s idea to meet in the treehouse and she knew how badly he needed to pass this test. He’d been talking about the baseball team ever since he’d run into Brady, a former travel baseball teammate.
What was keeping him?
Climbing down the ladder, she went to the Carver’s back door and knocked. It wasn’t the first time that a Davis girl had knocked on the back door of the neighbor’s house. “Hello, Mrs. Rebecca. Have you seen David? We were supposed to meet to study for his history test.”
Gulping, Mrs. Carver looked in the house behind her, “Umm… David is…” For a moment she felt ashamed for her son standing up Delilah and leaving his mother to explain things.
Peter, the middle Carver brother and a senior at James Madison High School, peeped around the corner from where he was raiding the fridge. “David went to study with Aimee Kirkland.” Looking at his mother, “I thought he told you that.”
Shrugging her shoulders, “I guess I forgot,” Mrs. Carver weakly replied, not meeting Delilah’s gaze. She refused to see the disappointment that would definitely be on the girl’s face.
Looking over towards where Delilah was clutching her worn copy of Emma, David glanced back at Will Cooper. The differences between them were apparent. Delilah's red hair was pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. She wore glasses that were just a tad too large for her face, threatened to fall off her nose, and hid eyes that darted between the two boys and the floor. Her baggy jeans and a size too large t-shirt emphasized the lack of curves that some of the other girls had been developing for years. Will had a pulled together look: his button up shirt was perfect, his hair was artfully arranged to look as if he had just gotten out of bed. But David also knew that Will had spent ten minutes perfecting the mess and that he was standing over there brimming with fake confidence.
"Where were you last night?" Delilah's blue eyes locked onto David's brown. "We were supposed to study for our history test together."
The short laugh, more like a snort, coming from Will communicated to David what he should say. Delilah ignored it, not caring an ounce for the wannabe playboy that David had taken to hanging out with at school. Instead she tugged her books to her invisible chest and stared blankly at her best friend. It was the same look Delilah would give him whenever she thought that he was being stupid. Or an idiot. Or both. She had begun to present him with that particular expression at least twice a day. Sometimes trice.
"What are you talking about? I never said I would meet you last night. I had better things to do, much better things to do, than study for a stupid test." David smirked, accidently creating the signature look that carried him throughout the next couple of years. Internally he was slapping himself while hoping that Delilah would understand when he explained things later.
"But you said that you needed to study and asked me for help yesterday after school when Peter took us home." Delilah was trying her best to ignore Will’s existence.
Will started laughing harder. Out of the corner of his eyes, David saw Peter standing behind Will. Suddenly he was torn between saying what was right and saying what would make him accepted. "And you thought I was serious? Geez, I only said that for Peter’s benefit. He doesn’t have to know exactly what I was doing last night."
The pain in Delilah's eyes and the disappointment in Peter’s expression troubled him briefly, but the approval in Will's eyes countered everything else. Fitting in was all that mattered. Delilah would understand, hopefully, when he explained it to her.
“David, I need to talk to you,” Kyle stated, pulling him into the nearest restroom. After checking that the stalls were empty, “I need to warn you about Aimee and Will.”
“What is there to warn me about? Aimee is hot and Will seems like a good guy.”
Taking a deep breath, Kyle started in on the spiel he had briefly practiced. “Aimee is just like her older sister, a bitch, and Will is a social climber. They need you in order to get what they see as the top of the social ladder. People genuinely like you and they can see this. Without you they won’t be feared or remembered.”
David looked at Kyle before asking, “Why are you telling me this?”
Shaking his head, Kyle explained further. “I’ve seen it happen with some of the guys on the football team. Aimee is going to follow her sister’s example and will do whatever it takes to keep her claws into you. Will is gullible enough to fall for every single word that witch utters.”
“That’s still my girlfriend you are talking about.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Knocking on the back door of the Davis house, David waited for somebody to answer. It took five minutes and fifteen knocks for Mr. Davis to answer.
“Oh, hello, David,” he responded, looking down at the stack of mail in his hands. “Delilah’s in her room. Leave the door open.” Without a second thought towards sending a boy to his daughter’s bedroom, he went back to staring at the giant envelope with the lawyer’s return address stamped on the corner.
Climbing the stairs three at a time, David hurried to Delilah’s room only to see her huddled on her bed with textbooks and notes scattered around her.
“What are you doing?” he asked, leaning against the doorframe.
“Studying,” she answered him without looking up. “Some of us have tests to study for.”
“I want to explain.”
Looking up at him for the first time since he’d entered the room. “It is fine,” was all she said before dismissing him and going back towards her physical science notes.
“I don’t want you to think..,” he stopped, uncertain on how he was supposed to finish that sentence.
She sto
od up, anger flashing in her eyes, “You don’t want me to think what? That you decided to blow me off for your new pretty and petty girlfriend and new asshole best friend? Is that supposed to make me feel better?” She started to poke him in the chest, “I’m your oldest friend! We’ve been through so much for years and you blow me off! For what? A bitch and a round of sweaty sex!”
“Hey!” David interrupted. “I haven’t had sex with Aimee.”
Delilah snorted, “Not far from it if Aimee takes after her sister.”
“Look! You’re the one who pushed me away in favor of a stupid book!” he flung his arm in the direction of her bookcase. “You can’t obsess over those books just because your mother left. You can’t abandon everybody to mope in your own little world filled with fictional characters!”
“Don’t tell me what to do and how to react!”
“Don’t be such a bitch!”
They stood nose to nose and he couldn’t resist kissing her. It only lasted a few seconds before she pushed him away.
“Don’t,” was all she said before backing away. “Just leave me alone.”
Chapter Five
Looking around the cafeteria, Delilah wondered, not for the first time, where to sit in the crowded cafeteria. David had taken to eating with his new girlfriend and Will. She doubted that he’d even noticed that most days she was eating alone. Delilah spent that time reading a book or studying. Algebra One was kicking her butt despite all her extra study time.
The books were easy to pick out. While Pride and Prejudice would always hold a special place in her heart – she hoped one day she’d have a love like Darcy and Elizabeth – there was still other books written by Austen for her to try out. While her mother tended to read the books to her daughters at least once a year, Delilah had never taken the time to actually read them. Sense and Sensibility was a struggle, but she was making progress on the book along with working on her classes.
That day, one of those days that would forever change things, Delilah had her math notes spread out around her as she struggled with that day’s homework assignment. If she was going to spend time alone at lunch she might as well make those lonely twenty-five minutes productive.
With her head buried in a book she barely noticed the tray being set down next to her. “Hey,” a slightly familiar voice said. “I’m Jennifer Matheson.”
Looking up, “I know,” she smiled. “Delilah Davis.”
“I know,” Jennifer repeated. “I’m in your Algebra class. You look like you are struggling.”
Shrugging her shoulders, Delilah took a moment before responding. “A little. I’m not good at math like you are.”
“I’m not that great,” Jennifer downplayed, mentally comparing herself to one of her older brothers.
Looking shocked, Delilah took a minute to decide what her response was going to be. “In the sixth grade,” she finally settled on saying, “we had a math test. Mrs. Hunter had gotten the sixth grade and eight grade tests mixed up and unknowingly had given us the wrong test. You were the only person who passed that test over material we had never seen before.”
Shaking her head, “That C still taunts me.”
“It’s not like it counted against us.”
Drawing out her response, Jennifer looked at Delilah, “That’s true.” Taking a bite from her burger, then talking with her mouth full – a habit she’d picked up from her brothers, among others, much to her mother’s disappointment – she made an offer, “So, do you need help or not?”
Looking over at her new ‘friend’, Delilah nodded her head and started asking questions about what she couldn’t understand from class. After a few minutes algebraic formulas were starting to make better sense thanks to Jennifer’s explanations.
“Where were you sitting before?” Delilah asked when the lunch bell rang.
Pointing to a corner near where David and his new friends were sitting, “With my brother, Drew, and some of his band friends.” Making a face, “It was horrible. You’re actually doing me a favor. Just,” Jennifer paused, “one thing. I have a bad habit of repeating certain words my mother would rather I didn’t know. I blame my brothers.”
Laughing, “It doesn’t matter as long as I don’t have to sit alone and suffer through this stuff anymore,” Delilah pointed at the textbook before grabbing it.
Slowly, “You have been warned.” Jennifer wondered if her new friend knew what she was getting into, but she also recognized that Delilah needed a new friend. She had witnessed David’s public desertion the day before.
Chapter Six
On the rare occasion David would look over at Delilah's lunch table he would notice that she looked happy - if her smiles at Grace Chandler were any indication. He wondered about how they met.
He’d witnessed Jennifer marching over there a few weeks before. Aimee had been annoyed that David had been paying more attention to the tomboy who had the habit of cussing like a sailor when teachers weren’t around. He only knew that the girl could run, if her consistently placing in the Top Ten at the Cross-Country meets was any indication. Some of the Juniors haven’t even placed in the Top Ten during three years of running!
But Grace Chandler…sweet and shy Grace Chandler. That was a mystery.
They had English I together, but he didn’t know if the girl had ever spoken a word other than, “Here,” during attendance. He did know that she was the oldest of...actually he didn’t know how many she was the oldest of. Every time he saw a Chandler sibling, the next oldest being two years younger than Grace, it appeared to be a different sibling with the exception of the one set of twins he’d seen Grace herding into the playground one afternoon. He knew she had a backbone – he’d witnessed it with her siblings – but couldn’t figure out why she shied away at school.
He had tried to remember Grace from middle school or elementary school, but was entirely possible that Grace had gone to the local Catholic school that hosted kindergarten through the eighth grade.
“Why are you looking at Grace Chandler?” Aimee asked him, snarling Grace’s name. “What’s so important about that klutz?”
“I have a class with her. That’s all,” David answered. Pausing, “What’s wrong with her?”
“What isn’t?” Aimee murmured. “How about how she tripped over her own two feet during our first day and dumped her lunch tray all over a Junior?” She left out the part where the Junior in question had been her sister and that Amanda had chewed Grace out. Now whenever Grace saw Amanda she’d hurry off in another direction in hopes of avoiding the upper classman.
Will Cooper, not knowing when to shut up, finished the story. “Didn’t she accidently dump her tray on your sister? Amanda crewed that girl a new one. After a few minutes Grace was sobbing after some of the things that Amanda had said.” He looked over at where Grace was sitting. “I felt sorry for her, but some of Amanda’s friends held me back from going over there.”
“She’s a nobody,” Aimee dismissed Will’s concern. It was a direct parrot of something her older sister had said. “Somebody has to be held up as an example.”
Those words troubled David. Why would somebody need to be held up as an example? “What did she do to deserve it?”
“Did you see her clothes?” Aimee waved her hand as she made her point. Part of her worried about how she was sounding; she didn’t sound at all like the old Aimee but like something her sister had sculpted. Most of the time her words mimicked something her sister would say. It bothered her.
Last year she would have been wearing the exact same thing. Clothes didn’t matter to her. They still didn’t except as a means of keeping Amanda off her back and keeping David’s interest.
Amanda had pointed out that Aimee needed to get herself in position to become the leader of her class before somebody else had taken the job. Somebody needed to be the prettiest and most popular female. And she needed a male counterpart.
Looking over at Kyle Goldman’s table, with the other freshman football players,
she briefly wondered if she should have focused on the golden boy instead of the dark headed one sitting right next to her. “Will, why aren’t you sitting with the other football players?”
“The table is already full,” he answered, shoveling the rest of his burger into his mouth. Aimee was not the same Aimee as she had been last year and it worried him. He didn’t understand her chase for popularity or why she kept using him in that pursuit. Making the decision to watch after her was a no brainer.
David looked at everybody else sitting around them. A few of the freshmen cheerleaders were busy chatting about their cheer routine. A few other freshmen football players were on the other side of Will, so neither boy could figure out why it mattered which table Will was sitting at during lunch. The freshmen football players frequently rotated where they sat.
He’d preferred sitting next to Will anyway. While he didn’t know what Aimee was like in middle school, he did know that Will couldn’t have changed too much from the eighth grade to now. David had encountered Will during travel ball and while the guy was rough around the edges and a bit liable towards suggestion, he knew that Will wasn’t all bad.
A muffled scream caught his attention. Grace was standing up, covered in something – probably lemonade – and crying. Jennifer was getting up and into the Junior’s face. “Why the hell would you dump a drink on somebody’s head? What did she do to you?” She didn’t notice that a few of the Junior’s friends were moving closer to the bully.
“Oh, you made me miss it,” Aimee whispered, standing up along with the other cheerleaders at the table. “Amanda told me she was going to do that.”
Will and David turned and looked at the girl. “Your sister purposely poured that drink on Grace’s head?” one of them unbelievingly asked.
“What’s wrong? Sometimes somebody has to learn her place.” Aimee repeated her sister’s words from when Aimee had asked Amanda what the purpose of bullying Grace was.
The Bookworm Next Door: The Expanded and Revised Edition Page 2