The Art of Being Indifferent (The Twisted Family Tree Series)

by Brooke Moss

  Mr. Kingston went on for the next few minutes, explaining the sections from our Lit book I needed to catch Drew up in, and the classic novels I would need to read and discuss with him. He outlined the lesson plans Drew had already missed out on, due to his sports schedule. Apparently he was training more than usual and when your dad was the mayor it was okay to skip school and homework to do it.

  Must be nice for Golden Boy.

  I grew hot and the skin under my arms pricked. I didn’t want to work with Drew Baxter. I didn’t want to subject myself to the bullshit that came with hanging out with someone like that. No matter what I did, he would make fun of it later. No matter what I said, it would be picked apart and twisted later. I didn’t want that drama. I couldn’t stand helping a guy like that out.

  “…and you understand that if you don’t do this, you might not have the time to make up the work you’ve already failed?” Mr. Kingston’s voice jerked me back out of my thoughts, and I blinked at him. As usual, he smiled patiently at me. “And a passing grade in my class is necessary for graduation.”

  I pulled the ends of my sleeves over my hands and wrapped my arms around my middle. If I didn’t graduate, I would never get a decent job. And if I didn’t get a decent job, I was never going to be able to afford moving out of the Coulters’ home and live on my own. And living on my own had been the light at the end of the tunnel for longer than I could remember. I wanted it so bad, I could taste it.

  “Posey?”

  I blinked at him. “Y-yeah?”

  Mr. Kingston placed his hands on the desktop. “So, will you do it?”

  A couple of kids filtered into the room and started to take their seats. It was the girls who’d insulted me earlier. Great.

  “Yes,” I said, releasing a long breath. “I’ll do it.”

  Chapter Three

  Him.

  My head pounded. I had no idea if it was because Mr. Kingston had just rambled on about Edgar Allan Poe for forty-five minutes or if it because he’d kept me after class. Either way, he and his douchey-looking elbow patch blazer were getting on my nerves. He was the only teacher in this place who didn’t seem remotely intimidated by my dad.

  Now normally, I would’ve been impressed by that. But since Mr. Kingston had been up my butt about getting better grades and trying to find a “commonality in great literature” since the second day of school. Sure, I had him last year, and had managed to squeak by with a B- after I completed a massive extra credit assignment—which I’d gotten high marks on thanks to Gretchen Jonas.

  But Mr. Kingston seemed hell bent on not letting me fake my way through my senior year, and dropping my last name hadn’t helped my case. At all. A former geek-turned-English teacher, Mr. Kinston thought classic works of literature were close to godliness.

  What a winner.

  Not that I acted like a hack in school. When it came to numbers and facts, my brain worked just fine, thank you very much. Give me some equations to work on, and I owned it. But ask me to read Shakespeare and gain something from it, and I wanted to curl in a ball and cry in the corner. Which probably explained my dismal grades in Lit.

  As soon as the classroom emptied except for the two of us, Mr. Kingston sat on the corner of his desk and smiled at me. “How’s it going, Drew?”

  I shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”

  “How’s swimming going?” he pressed. “Things with your dad? All going all right?”

  I sucked in a pull of air and held it. Great. Time to have that conversation. Mr. Kingston had walked in on an argument between my dad and me in the school parking lot last year and told the school counselor afterward. That had led to two hours of hell in which I sat with the counselor, discussing whether or not my father ever hit me.

  I’d lied. Of course.

  But Mr. Kingston had been looking at me strangely since then. Kind of with a pinched eyebrow sort of concerned expression on his face, waiting for me to start crying like a girl and confess how awful things are at home. He was one of those kinds of teachers. The ones who want to rescue everyone.

  Why he couldn’t leave me alone and go after one of the screwed up kids at TTHS? Beats me. Hell, the Coulter family had half a dozen ex foster kids living with them. Mr. Kingston needed to focus his attention on those people for a while.

  “Yup.” Again I nodded, twisting my pen around in my finger again and again. Come on. Just give me my extra credit assignment and let me go. I don’t have time for this shit.

  “Okay, well, you know you can come talk to me at any time, right? Or someone else on staff here.”

  I clenched my jaw, and felt the muscle flex. “I’m good.”

  He paused. I hated it when Mr. Kingston did that. He did it in class, too. Sometimes people just sat there and stared at him like an idiot. Other times, kids panicked and started spewing nonsense, trying to somehow say the right answer.

  Finally, he cleared his throat. “Listen, Drew, I know you’re busy with practices and your other classes and everything. But your grade in my class is suffering right now.”

  “We’ve only been in school for four weeks.”

  My teacher frowned. “Regardless, your grade is suffering, and you need this class to graduate.”

  “I know.” I nodded, and sat up straighter. It was time to turn on the Baxter charm. I’d been trained well in the art of acting like a responsible young man when the situation called for it. “I’ve been really slammed after school with weight training and physical therapy. But I’ll be cutting back soon, and I’ll make up any missed assignments I have.”

  “No, it’s not missing assignments. You’re caught up.” Mr. Kingston shook his head and turned his computer monitor around on his desk. He pointed to a row of numbers. “It’s your scores. They’re low. Lower than they should be.”

  I squinted my eyes to look at my grades. I’d gotten at least half wrong on every test, and my reports were even worse. “Damn,” I muttered, looking down at the pen in my hands. I felt like snapping it in half and splattering ink all over the desktop. Dad was going to freak when he found out about this. “Shit.” I glanced up at the teacher. “Sorry.”

  He put out a hand. “It’s okay. I know there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on you.”

  He didn’t know the half of it. When I’d turned eighteen over summer break, Dad informed me that I now owed him rent for my bedroom, but he would comp me the money so long as I passed all of my classes. If I didn’t pass Lit, I would owe him money, and owing him money made living with him even worse. Hard to imagine, I know.

  If I didn’t get a good scholarship, I wasn’t going to be able to afford to get the hell out of Twisted Tree. And if I stayed here and wound up going to Island Community College, my father would have his thumb on me for the rest of my life. I couldn’t deal with that. I’d rather throw myself in the Puget Sound with an anchor tied to my neck first.

  “I’ve got it all under control,” I lied.

  “Well, I can help.” He moved to a desk closer to me. “Listen, I’ve arranged for you to have a tutor for an hour every afternoon.”

  “A tutor?” My head jerked backwards like I’d been smacked. Baxter’s didn’t get extra help. “No way. Besides, I have practice after school.”

  “I’ve already talked it over with Coach Bennett,” Mr. Kingston said quickly. “If you and your tutor meet in the library every day at two-fifty-five, you can be to practice before four. Your dad won’t even have to know.”

  I tried to swallow down the shame rising in my throat like bile, and looked down. God, I hated feeling like some sort of charity case. “Can’t I just do extra credit?”

  “I’m afraid not, Drew. You see, my concern is that you’re not retaining any information in this class. You’re simply going through the motions, and doing just enough to eek by, and that’s not good enough in my class. That may cut it for athletes in other classes, but not in mine.”

  I met his gaze with a steely glare. “I’m not stupid.”

  �
�Absolutely not,” Mr. Kingston said. “On the contrary, your grades in your other classes are exemplary. English Literature is clearly not your favorite subject.”

  You can say that again, smart guy.

  “What I want from you is an appreciation for the subject.” He gestured to the posters on the wall, covered in book covers of classics that put me to sleep more often than not. “You don’t have to like it. But you do have to appreciate it. And like I said, your father won’t have to know.”

  My face got hot, and the pen groaned in my hand. “How are you gonna pull that off?”

  “Coach Bennett says that your father usually stops by practice after four-thirty. By that time, you will already be in the pool. Coach says he won’t penalize you for missing part of practice, but only if you commit to achieving a B, or higher, in my class.”

  I thought about this. On one hand, it felt good to know that Coach and Mr. Kingston had my back. But on the other hand, it was humiliating as hell to know that they were both tiptoeing around my dickhead father like he was a ticking time bomb.

  Well, if I was being honest with myself, he was.

  I swallowed, my mouth dry and chalky. If my dad found out, I was going to have hell to pay. And so would Mr. Kingston. “My dad won’t like this,” was all I said.

  The teacher squared his shoulders. “We know that.”

  The words hung in the air between us for a beat. He knew my dad wouldn’t like this, and I got the feeling he didn’t care. Poor schmuck. If Dad found out about this, he’d have Mr. Kingston fired so fast. Principal Parrish and Dad had been on the swim team together a hundred years ago, and Parrish usually jammed himself so far up Dad’s ass, it’d become hard to tell where he began and Dad ended.

  “Okay, then.” I nodded slowly, tucking the pen back into my binder pocket. Maybe this would work. Maybe not. It was worth a try, I supposed. “I’ll do it. You said I have to get a B in this class?”

  “Good deal.” Mr. Kingston tapped his hands on the desktop happily. “Yes. You need at least a B. And I think the tutor I have picked out for you can help you accomplish that. It will be helping her raise her grade as well. So you’ll be helping her as much as she’ll be helping you.”

  My ears perked. A girl? Now it was getting interesting. Maybe I would get some alone time with Maddie Mulcahey again. Except that she wasn’t in Lit. Or very smart, for that matter.

  “Who is it?” I asked, scrolling through the girls in the senior class in my mind. I hoped she was hot.

  “Posey Briggs. Well, Coulter, once the adoption goes through.” He smiled. “She’s got a real passion for Literature.”

  My smile dropped. Of all the girls to get paired with. That chick was weird. From what I’d heard, Paula Coulter had ordered her up like a damned pizza off some website. At least, that’s what I’d heard from Maddie, who was on the cheerleading squad with Posey’s younger foster sister, Jessa, who was a junior.

  Why couldn’t I have been paired with Jessa? At least she was sort of hot and friendly. Posey was… well, Posey. Not a good thing.

  “Come on, Mr. Kingston, don’t pair me with her,” I blurted. Good thing I put away my pen, otherwise I really might have busted it. “She’s not passionate about anything. She’s a freak.”

  He frowned at me. “I think you’ve misjudged her. There’s a lot more to Posey than you kids give her credit for.”

  “Come on.” I drug my hand down the length of my face. “She’s weird. And I heard her grades aren’t even that good. What business does she have teaching me?”

  “Tutoring you,” Mr. Kingston corrected, his mouth pulling into a line. “And her grades are none of your business. The only thing that should matter to you is that I find her more than capable to help you comprehend and appreciate great American literature in time to save your grade.” He paused, I’m assuming for dramatic effect, then added, “If you want to get out of Twisted Tree, Drew, my suggestion is you do this. And make the best of it.”

  I glowered down at my desktop. I wanted to get out of it. Hell, I could threaten him with telling my dad that he got off on yanking me out of half my practice every day, but then we’d all be up the creek. Besides having a tutor didn’t suck that bad. In all honesty, I didn’t like failing classes. It sucked when things didn’t come easily to me. It ticked me off.

  But Posey? She barely talked, and when she did, she usually told someone to go to hell. She shuffled around the school with her head down, hiding behind that mess of black hair like a character in a horror movie. And when all of the other girls are dressed in little skirts and shirts that hug all the right curves in all the right places, she wore torn up jeans and old scuzzy sweaters from the Goodwill store. I didn’t understand her. Nobody did. That was why we avoided her.

  Mr. Kingston tapped his knuckles on my desk softly. “Okay. We’re done here. You’re excused. You’d better head to your next class.”

  I shoved out of my seat. “’Kay.”

  “And Posey will get in touch with you to make arrangements.”

  “Yeah, right,” I mumbled, heading for the door and pushing it open. “Can’t wait.”

  He responded, but the droning sound of the hallway between classes drowned out his voice. Thank God. I made a beeline for my locker and jerked it open, hissing a distasteful sentence about Mr. Kingston’s mother under my breath.

  “What’s wrong, baby?”

  The little girl voice coming from the other side of my locker door sent a shockwave straight through my stomach into my groin. Most people who knew Maddie eventually got annoyed with that voice, but once you’d seen her in just a black lace bra, it was easy to forget how it grated on your brain like sandpaper.

  I closed my locker slowly. There she was, in her tight shirt and miniskirt glory. I wanted to punch my dad in the face for making me dump her. “Maddie,” I said. “I thought you weren’t speaking to me.”

  She tossed her blonde hair, whipping the kid behind her in the face. “I wasn’t. But then I realized it’s not your fault.”

  I raised one eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded and rubbed her lips together. They were caked in shiny lip-gloss. I used to hate it when she got that crap all over me. Now I wasn’t sure I’d mind that much. “I mean, your dad’s a hard ass. I get it. Believe me, we all do.”

  I didn’t have to ask who Maddie was referring to. She traveled in a pack, and until my dad decided to screw with my social life, I’d been a part of that elite posse.

  Thanks, Dad.

  I tucked my Chemistry book under my arm and leaned against the locker close to Maddie. “So you’re not mad?”

  “Oh, I am.” Her green eyes flashed and I caught a brief glimpse of the princess I’d been terrified to tick off just last year. Maddie Mulcahey was at the top of the social food chain, and had been since her older sister, Mollie, graduated and bestowed the title to her two years ago. The final word at TTHS was this: if you ticked off Maddie, or any one of her dingbat friends, you were going to pay through the nose until your name was synonymous with garbage in the eyes of the entire student body. It was brutal.

  “But then I decided I missed you.” Her lips curved into a pretty smile. “And it’s not your fault your dad won’t let you date anymore.”

  I moved closer. Dammit if she didn’t smell incredible. “Glad you feel that way.”

  Maddie giggled. “I do. So… I was just thinking, maybe instead of breaking up, we should just go underground, you know?”

  About six-dozen illicit thoughts popped into my head, drowning out the sound of the warning bell ringing above our heads. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She lowered her eyelids and leaned closer. “Maybe we could talk about this later?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but a torn sheet of notebook paper appeared in front of my face. “I… what the?”

  “Sorry to interrupt.” Posey Coulter, er, Briggs, or whatever the hell it was, held up her number between Maddie and me. She glared at me through h
er hair. “Mr. Kingston said to give you my information so we could get together.”

  “Get together?” Maddie’s hands went to her hips. “Excuse me?”

  Posey didn’t even blink in her direction. “So is tomorrow good?”

  “Tomorrow for what?” Maddie demanded, making a couple of girls passing by stop and stare.

  Shaking my head, I took a step back. “Wait. What?”

  Posey rolled her eyes. Or at least I think she did, I couldn’t see through all of her black hair. “Oh come on. Kingston didn’t talk to you yet?”

  “Oh.” I sneered down at her. “That.”

  Maddie nudged me. “Drew. What?”

  Posey glared at Maddie. “Got him on a short leash, Princess?”

  Maddie took a threatening step towards my new tutor. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  I waited for Posey to charge off in the opposite direction. This was social suicide. Surely she knew that. Instead, Posey snorted. “I think you’re mistaking yourself for someone important. Why don’t you run along to the girls’ room and reapply some of your gloss? You’re looking a bit tired.”

  Maddie’s lips curled back into a sneer. “You ugly little sleaze.”

  I almost laughed. Nobody talked to Maddie that way, least of all someone like Posey. “Listen, I got the message from Kingston.” I said, grabbing the paper out of her hand. “This your phone number?”

  Posey jerked away from my touch and brought her eyes back to mine. They were the iciest shade of blue I’d ever seen. Or maybe that was just because she clearly hated me. “Call me if you’re going to cancel,” she snapped. “Otherwise be in the library by two-fifty-five. If you’re not here by three, I’m leaving. Got it?”

  I blinked a few times. “Uh… I guess.”

  And with that, Posey turned and skulked off down the hall, her head down. I watched her walk away. Seriously. What in the hell was wrong with her?