That Witch!

by Zoe Lynne

  Those moments made sitting at the front of the class completely worth it. Like a dork, Cassidy would smile in return each time she caught Brynn’s eyes. Instead of smiling, Brynn looked like a mouse who’d been caught stealing cheese and would sink down into her seat again, only to casually glance her way a few minutes later. They played that game of smiling and ducking until the bell mercifully rang.

  Chapter 13

  FOR some stupid reason, Brynn had it in her mind that Cassidy would follow her out to the parking lot, where they would talk about things and maybe come to some sort of… well, something about Brynn’s feelings. Maybe that was too much to hope for, because the moment the bell rang, one of Cassidy’s vapid, narcissistic, bottle-blonde friends grabbed Cassidy and dragged her out of the classroom, going on about cheerleading practice.

  An intense wave of disappointment rolled over Brynn. She honestly wanted to have that conversation with Cassidy, though why, she didn’t know. Surely Cassidy would belittle her and make fun of her, probably call her names and laugh in her face, because that’s what Cassidy and all her A-list friends did.

  Maybe this is a mistake.

  Cassidy and her friends headed in one direction; Brynn headed in the other. She was almost to her locker when she felt someone run up beside her. Reluctantly, Brynn turned her head and she found her bestie glaring at her.

  “I didn’t ask her to sit there,” Brynn said, before Laura had a chance to tear into her about Cassidy stealing the spot Laura sat in all year.

  “You didn’t tell her to move either,” Laura quickly retorted, which stopped Brynn dead in her tracks.

  “You’re the one who said we didn’t need to make waves! What? Did you expect me to argue with her over your seat? Why didn’t you argue with her?”

  “Excuse me for expecting my best friend to take up for me!”

  Just as Brynn opened her mouth to respond, Laura spun on her heels and stalked away. Twice that had happened to her today, and frankly, it was getting old.

  “Ugh!” Brynn growled, stomping her Converse against the linoleum. She shook her head and continued toward her locker, mind going right back to Cassidy and the mounting disappointment of not being able to talk about things or, at the very least, see the cheerleader again.

  She spun the lock around and around, not really paying attention to the numbers. And when the locker didn’t immediately open, her anger grew ten times more intense. She almost wanted to put her fist straight through the metal door, but Brynn didn’t have that type of temper. She was a pacifist.

  Shoulders rounded, she sighed and took a step back. This was getting her absolutely nowhere fast.

  One last try got her into her locker. She switched out the books in her backpack for the ones she needed to do her homework tonight, then closed the door and spun the lock again. She hefted her backpack up to her shoulders, took a deep breath and slowly let it go, then headed toward the stairwell and out of the school.

  The moment she reached the chain-link fencing, she spotted Cassidy in front of the line, commanding the cheerleaders as they did their routines. She’d changed into these spandex-looking red pants and a white Majestic Hills High T-shirt, and she still looked as beautiful as she had in her regular clothes. Even from beyond the fence, Brynn could see the outline of the muscles in Cassidy’s legs, and the T-shirt caressed her slender body in such a way it accented her breasts.

  Jeez, to have boobs like that, Brynn thought as she frowned down at her hidden cleavage.

  Brynn curled her fingers in the fencing and pressed her face to the chain-link. She was staring, completely mesmerized, and watching the cheerleader in an almost stalkerish fashion. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to leave, even when Cassidy spotted her.

  Her body tensed when Cassidy turned to the rest of the girls and shook her head. She then went over to the bleachers and grabbed a red MHHS duffle bag. But when Cassidy pushed through the gate and headed Brynn’s way, Brynn stopped breathing… if only for a moment.

  “Hey,” Cassidy called from a few feet away.

  Brynn stepped back from the fence, fighting to avert her stare. “I didn’t mean to stare, I… I just….”

  “It’s okay. I like you watching me.”

  “You do?” Brynn frowned. Her feet immediately stopped shuffling.

  “Yeah, I do….”

  “I, um… that talk. Did you…? I mean, we could go somewhere where your friends won’t see us.”

  “If you want to. I’m okay with sitting on the bleachers, but if you prefer somewhere else, lead the way.” Cassidy waved one arm in one direction and the other toward the bleachers.

  “Maybe we could go back to our cars. I don’t want any trouble started for you, and if they see you talking to me….”

  Cassidy shrugged indifferently. “Meh, they’re already drilling me about my seating change in last period, but okay, let’s head back to the cars.”

  Brynn wrapped both hands around the straps of her backpack, white-knuckling them as she walked beside the one person she couldn’t seem to get out of her head. She kept her eyes trained on the green grass beneath their feet. They walked over the yard and down the hill in the direction of the high school parking lot, keeping completely quiet until Brynn said in a low, barely audible, trembling voice, “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I left your house.”

  “Now, is that because you left me sitting there”—Cassidy stopped walking for a moment before continuing—“or because of something else about me?”

  Brynn’s feet abruptly halted. She chewed the inside of her cheek for a long while, considering whether it was safe to tell Cassidy how she really felt, or if she needed to keep it a dark and dirty secret.

  “Cassidy,” she said, slowly turning her head. “I thought about you because… because I feel these things I don’t understand. Those feelings, they… they scare me.”

  IF EVER anyone was the poster child for realization, Cassidy Rivers was at that moment the very embodiment. She hadn’t even realized Brynn had stopped walking until she herself came to a halt. She blinked a few times, as if her eyelids had any connection to her brain’s function. When she opened her mouth to speak, Brynn interrupted the thousands of possible things she was prepared to say by whispering a sad, pleading, “Please don’t make fun of me.”

  Make fun of her? Was she kidding? That was the last thing on Cassidy’s mind. She smiled crookedly, almost sinisterly if it were to be labeled at all. Her intention, however, was nowhere near malicious. “That’s why you left? ’Cause you like me? Like, like me, like me?”

  “I guess. I don’t know. I… I….” Brynn exhaled raggedly and dropped her stare to the ground again. “I’m confused. I mean… I like you, but I….”

  “But you’re confused about the capacity in which you like me,” Cassidy finished for her, forming more of a statement than a question.

  “I suppose. I’ve never imagined kissing anyone before, then… that movie, and… and you, and… I pictured…. It freaked me out, so I ran away.” Brynn’s head bolted straight up, and she locked eyes with Cassidy. She had that kill-me-now look on her face. “Oh my God, please don’t tell anyone about this. I totally don’t even know why I told you. I mean, you asked. I didn’t want you mad at me. If your friends find out…,” she urgently rambled.

  Cassidy stood in place, probably seeming absolutely mad, and not in the angry sense. Her face hurt from smiling. The heavens opened. Angels sang and she all but dropped to her knees to thank everything holy for the fact that not only was she not crazy, but she’d been right.

  “Chillax. I like you too,” she said softly, still smiling at poor Brynn, who looked like she wanted the earth to swallow her whole. “I wanted you to stay because I like you. I wanted you to hang out, ’cause I like you, and it hurt when you left… ’cause I like you. Get it now?”

  “Like… like me, like me? Seriously?”

  “Is there an echo in this parking lot?” Cassidy laughed. “Yes, like like you, l
ike you.”

  “So you’re not going to gossip about me to your skeevy friends?”

  “Nope. I won’t even gossip about you to the non-skeevy ones.”

  They both laughed, and finally, Brynn seemed to relax. Her pink lips curled into a genuine smile, one that made those adorable dimples appear in her rosy cheeks. She licked those totally kissable lips, then said, “I still don’t know what I’m doing or what I’m feeling. I just know I wanted to kiss you, and I swear to God, I didn’t want to leave your house, but I was so freaked out, I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Cassidy glanced in the direction of the field a ways away, where every cheerleader on the squad had stopped their practice and now stood facing her and Brynn. Oh, she could hear them talking now. Thing was, though, somewhere along the line, Cassidy stopped giving a crap about what anyone else had to say about her. The only opinion that mattered was that of the girl who stood in front of her. So, to really give the “prep” squad something to talk about, she draped one arm around Brynn’s shoulders and led her toward their cars, turning their backs on the cheerleaders, whom Cassidy could swear she heard gasp collectively.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing either, but I know I like you and I know you like me. We’ll figure it out, right?”

  “I would like that.”

  “Good, ’cause you’ve got about four months of being stuck with me.”

  “‘Stuck’ isn’t exactly the word I would use. You’re only ‘stuck’ when you’re somewhere you don’t want to be.”

  As they neared their side-by-side cars, Cassidy stopped at the rear of her Scion and turned Brynn to face her. Cassidy bit her own lip, fighting off the urge to kiss Brynn. The only reason she didn’t was because Brynn had probably been through enough emotional ups and downs through the day to last her two lifetimes. Instead of pressing her mouth to Brynn’s and sampling whatever nuance of Brynn Michaels she could, Cassidy offered her one last, brilliant smile. “So call me, maybe?”

  Brynn rolled her eyes. “Really? I mean, of all songs under the sun….”

  Cassidy laughed and shrugged. “What? I am a cheerleader. It’s, like, standard for us.”

  “I won’t hold that against you.”

  “Feel free to hold anything else against me,” Cassidy replied with a salacious smirk before clicking the little alarm on her keys and sliding in behind the wheel.

  Chapter 14

  IT DIDN’T take a whole lot of self-convincing to make Brynn pick up the phone and call Cassidy later that night. They spent hours talking, and honestly, it felt like a few precious minutes. They mostly laughed and talked about things they both liked to do. They talked about school and how everyone had their little secrets. In fact, it seemed like everyone at that school had a deep, dark, dirty little secret.

  Brynn suggested, and Cassidy reluctantly agreed, that keeping their friendship on the down-low wasn’t a bad idea for right now, at least until Brynn felt a little more comfortable with what was going on inside her and where her life was so obviously heading. No need to make matters worse when things were already so weird for her.

  They talked until Brynn’s father tapped his meaty knuckle against her bedroom door and ordered in his best captain’s voice, “Lights out, kiddo.”

  Brynn and Cassidy said their good-byes. They promised to talk tomorrow, which they did through fun little texts sent on the sly, or those few and far between moments when they managed to sneak away from their normal crowds.

  That became their routine over the course of the week. They both stuck to their own friends, casually stealing quick glances of each other whenever they could, careful so no one would see them. Then, the moment they got home at night, one called the other, or Brynn walked down to Cassidy’s house just to hang out on the old tree swing from Cassidy’s youth. They wasted a few nights watching movies, but never once did they kiss, despite Brynn’s constant urges to lean in and steal a quick taste.

  The more Brynn hung out with Cassidy, the more she wanted to be around her. Cassidy’s laughter was contagious. Her smile was intoxicating. Her sense of humor made everything wrong in the world go away, and Brynn couldn’t get enough of it, even to the point of neglecting her best friend, Laura, who grew more and more distant as the week wore on.

  The two times Laura had called, Brynn told her she couldn’t talk right now, that she had homework or things to do with her mother—little white lies, only because she didn’t feel like she could tell Laura the truth. The truth. Very simply put, she was starting to fall hard for someone she never thought she could even like.

  Friday night came, and Cassidy had some sort of game she had to cheer for. They wouldn’t be able to see each other until Cassidy got home, which was well after Brynn’s curfew. It was Laura and Brynn’s normal movie night anyway, and cancelling on her BFF probably wouldn’t have been a good idea at that point. When Laura got angry, truly angry, she got pretty vicious, and the last thing Brynn needed was someone she’d once trusted with every secret she ever had hating her.

  After supper was finished, Brynn went straight up to her room. The only window she had overlooked the driveway, and had she somehow managed to miss the sound of blaring music and squealing tires, she would’ve seen Laura’s little import whipping into the driveway. A minute later, she heard the car door slam and the pounding of tiny feet jogging up the stairs.

  “Totally thought you would bail on me,” Laura said as she closed the bedroom door behind her. There was a teasing lilt to her voice, playful, though Brynn knew Laura meant no humor in what she’d said.

  “Why? We’ve always hung out on Fridays.”

  “I know. You just haven’t really been around lately.”

  “Yes I have.”

  “Well, physically”—Laura plopped down on the bed and began untying her black combat boots—“but not mentally.”

  What could Brynn say? It was true. She hadn’t been there much because her mind and heart seemed to be following Cassidy around. Not that she could tell Laura any of that. She quickly searched for a comeback, and the best excuse she could think of was, “It’s school. I’m just trying to focus so I can make a good grade.”

  “I understand.”

  No, Laura really didn’t.

  Brynn grabbed a movie from the stack Laura had left last week. They hadn’t made it through all of them, and there were still a few Brynn really wanted to see—one being Girl, Interrupted. She’d only seen bits and pieces of it in the past, but she’d read the book and knew the story well.

  As the opening credits began to roll, she settled into the beanbag, foregoing the normal popcorn and sodas. Laura didn’t mention it. Brynn kept her phone right beside her, set on silent, just in case Cassidy decided to text. She really hoped Cassidy would send her a text. That was all she could think about, even as a movie she’d been dying to see played right in front of her face.

  The screen on her phone lit up and immediately caught Brynn’s attention. When she looked down, she saw a new message from Cassidy. It said I would soooo rather be with you right now. The message made her smile. It made that warm little rush she got every time she talked to Cassidy blossom in her chest.

  The message she sent back read I wish you were here too.

  After she responded, she tucked her phone against her chest—screen down so the light wouldn’t interrupt the movie and she could feel the vibration if Cassidy chose to respond. It took a few minutes, but Cassidy eventually came back. What’cha doin’? I’m in a locker room full of sweaty, stinky cheerleaders. Ick. >.<

  The silly face Cassidy sent back with her text made Brynn laugh, and apparently the sound pulled Laura’s attention away from the movie. She turned a questioning eye at Brynn.

  “Sorry,” Brynn mouthed as she responded to Cassidy’s text. Thought that was your kinda thing. LOL!!!

  As if! Halftime means I get to sit and bask in their ickiness. Sooooo not hot at ALL!

  I’ll bet you’re sexy when you’re all hot and sweaty. Brynn
blushed and immediately hit the send button before she lost the courage to go through with the message. The moment the bar across the screen read “sent,” she wished she could take it back. It was meant to be nothing but playful, only it sounded so very bad.

  It took a while to receive Cassidy’s reply, but when she did, there wasn’t just a message, but a picture as well. The image depicted Cassidy, crimson MHHS cheer uniform top visibly drenched in sweat and her pulled-back hair flying out from the sides as if she’d been in a wind tunnel. The text said, Yeah, about as sexy as Princess Fiona when she’s in ogre mode.

  You’re still beautiful.

  You need your eyes examined, but thank you. <3

  <3 Can we hang out tomorrow? I really want to see you.

  For sure. Bank on it. What are you finally doing tonight? Is Wednesday Addams at your place?

  Laura? Yes. I think she’s glaring at me. Hard to tell in the dark.

  Uh-oh. Be careful. She might get pissy and decide to sacrifice you to Satan.

  Brynn was just about to respond when she heard the remote control hit the floor right beside her. The bed springs squeaked, and the lights came on. Laura had her arms crossed over her chest, and her glare focused on Brynn.

  “Who the hell are you talking to?” she said, voice angry and demanding.

  “No one.”

  “You sure are texting a lot for someone who isn’t talking to anyone. Now what’s going on that you can’t even watch one movie with me?”

  “Nothing. I’ll stop, I swear.” Brynn pushed up from the beanbag, dropping her phone in the process. Laura managed to swoop down and grab it before Brynn could hide what she’d been doing. “Give me my phone,” she said, holding out her hand.