“I don’t belong,” I said, blushing.
“I can get you a guest pass. You in?”
“Sure, why not?”
The next morning, as I got ready for class, I realized I had no idea what you wore to play tennis at an actual tennis court. My friends and I played on a cement slab in the park, and we wore shorts and T-shirts, unless we were too lazy to shave our legs, then it was sweatpants.
During class, Mrs. Rae called on several people to read their rough drafts out loud. I saw this girl Rory slide down in her seat when Mrs. Rae called on her partner, Kirk. It was pretty obvious Rory had written most of it since Kirk read it like he had never seen the paper before. The air conditioning wasn’t working, so we had all the windows open, and there were three fans running. With all the noise, I could barely hear anyone who was reading, so I started daydreaming about a story I was working on about three sisters. Being an only child made me obsessed with writing stories with siblings.
“Emme, do you have any suggestions for Kirk?” Mrs. Rae asked, breaking me out of my trance.
I shook my head, and she asked me to read my rough draft next. Crap, I hadn’t blinked once since I went off to la-la land, and my tinted green contacts were off-center so I couldn’t see my paper, much less read it. I tried blinking hard to get my contacts to move, but it felt like I had tiny pieces of sandpaper inserted into each eye. Blinking hard, I opened my mouth to begin, when the bell rang. Whew.
Brendon waited for me outside the classroom. He had shown up looking cuter in shorts and a T-shirt than most guys look in a tux. Meanwhile, I was in yoga pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, which hid the fact I had zero muscle tone. I started to walk out to his car when he pointed out I had forgotten my racket in the classroom.
“Oh right, hold on.”
I came back out, and he asked where my sports bottle was. I didn’t own any sort of bottle with the word “sports” on it, so I said I’d grab a bottle of water from the vending machine on the way out. Now I had to hope its un-uniform appearance wouldn’t sicken him. I had put a rose quartz crystal in my pocket, hoping to “draw love” to me, but I should have checked to see if there was a don’t-make-a-fool-of-yourself-on-the-tennis-court crystal.
Brendon unzipped an expensive-looking racket bag and slid my old, naked racket in next to his pro racket. Next to the bag sat six containers of tennis balls. How long did he think we were going to play? Kylie and I would play until one of us neared breaking a sweat, and then we’d quit and go for ice cream to cool off. I had never played longer than twenty minutes and never used more than one can of tennis balls in my life.
“Um, you do know I don’t play like, competitively, right? My friends and I try to see how long we can hit the ball without missing a shot,” I said.
“One way to play. How many shots until one of you misses?” he asked.
“Four, possibly five.”
“See? I knew you’d make it hard to return.”
Actually, that was when we were trying to hit to each other. I began feeling self-conscious about my serve. I knew it wasn’t great, but I couldn’t change it now because I had been doing it like this since I was eight. Normally, I informed people about my “tennis rules” before I played with them. My rules were little things like the fact that I wouldn’t run after balls too far out of my reach, and how I refused to share a court with little kids who were better players or any jerk who found it funny when he had to hit my balls back to me because my swing was off. I decided not to share those rules with Brendon, though.
We pulled into the parking lot, and the butterflies hit full force. What was I thinking going to a place where actual tennis players hit? What if people made fun of me? What if I passed out, and the only person who knew CPR was some nasty, oiled-up jock? We signed in and walked to the indoor courts. I was happy to see that each court was partitioned so no one could watch us. Brendon opened a can of tennis balls and a familiar rubber scent filled the air.
“Seriously, I just want to play for fun. No competitive stuff, okay?” I said.
“But that’s half the fun. C’mon, you serve,” he said, throwing me a ball. I hadn’t played in a while, but it started to come back to me.
“Hey, Miss I-Just-Want-To-Play-For-Fun, I need to get something to drink,” he said, panting after about ten minutes of play.
His shirt was damp around the neck from sweat. I kept wiping my face so he wouldn’t see how greasy I was getting. I took a drink of water, and it dribbled down my chin. Lovely—I was sure all the girls at the country club drooled openly. Brendon walked over to my side of the court and asked if he could have some of my water because he had finished his sports drink. I never share drinks since I saw a story on the news about how meningitis was spread through stuff like that, but I handed him the bottle. I was surprised he’d want to drink after me, but maybe he was a step away from dehydrating, and it was between sharing my spit or death.
“Wanna quit?” he asked. I nodded and went to change.
There was only one other girl in the locker room as I washed up and pulled my hair up. I went out to meet Brendon, and he asked if I wanted to get some frozen yogurt. I started to answer when the girl in the locker room came out behind me.
“Hey, stranger. Haven’t seen you around lately,” she said, putting her hand on Brendon’s arm.
“Hey, Cassie,” he said.
“What have you been up to?” she asked.
I’ve seen dogs chase the mail carrier with more dignity. Brendon shrugged and said he had been busy. He introduced me, and her eyes darted over to me just long enough to size me up. I hated girls who acted like having another female in the room was competition.
“Well, give me a call sometime,” she said, walking away.
What was her problem? She didn’t know whether or not we were dating. It was like it didn’t matter if I was his girlfriend or not because I wasn’t “good enough.” We headed over to the yogurt place, and he asked if I wanted to get together tomorrow. Did he mean he wanted to work on our project some more or he couldn’t go a day without seeing me because I was so irresistible? Naturally, my intuition was no help when I needed it the most.
“We could grab lunch, too. So, are we on for tomorrow?” he asked.
Don’t look too eager. Don’t look too eager.
“Yeah, okay.”
He picked me up the next day, and we went to a deli. We both ordered subs, except he had a turkey and ham sub on white bread, and I had a veggie sub on whole grain. My sub kept falling apart, and I had bits of sprouts everywhere. I must have wiped my mouth fifty times, while he stayed neat. Did they put glue in his sub?
He told me about a student council project he was working on, while I wiped shredded lettuce off my pants. He was always working on committees, and he told me his dad said it was important to build up your resume. His dad would cry if he saw my resume because I had to put selling cookies and babysitting on it to plump it up.
“We’re also sponsoring a student artist this month,” he said.
“Oh, the watercolor guy? I saw his stuff in the cafeteria. He’s pretty good,” I said. Ask me out. Ask me out. Ask me out now.
“I don’t know anything about art, but there’s an art fair in Royal Oak next weekend. Do you want to check it out after we work on our project?” he asked.
He wasn’t into art, so I knew he wasn’t dying to go, but did it mean he liked me? I said it sounded like fun, and he asked if I wanted to stop at the used bookstore on the corner.
“Someday I’d like to be able to collect first editions,” he said as we walked through the bookstore. “I want to have a huge library and to have actually read the books in there, you know? Not like when you see some celebrity’s library, and you know they haven’t opened any of them. Or like my dad’s office where most of the books were from the previous senator, and I doubt even that person read them. I hate when things are just for show, you know?”
I nodded. We browsed for a while, and I found a biograp
hy, which was only three dollars, and a book on numerology. He found two mysteries and a big book on Scotland.
“I like to collect books on different countries,” he said as I flipped through it. “I have Italy, Jordan, Germany, France, Lebanon, and Ireland so far.”
“Do you travel a lot?” I asked.
“Not out of the country. I did go to Italy when I was five, but I don’t remember it. Hey, have you ever been to the big store in Detroit—it’s near the old baseball stadium? It’s like a big factory full of books. It’s not too far, if you’re interested.”
I like to read, but I would have spent the whole afternoon at an actual factory if it meant spending more time with him. As we walked through the bookstore, I saw they had a young adult section. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the series I had been obsessed with and my mom sold at a garage sale after she wrongly assumed I was “done with the Allington Heights books, seeing as you read them all.” Hello, I reread all my books, and those Allington Heights books got me through my breakup with John. I escaped into their world and forgot about my own crappy one for a little while.
“Check out these classics,” Brendon said. “Look at the covers. Aren’t they amazing? Are you into Dickens?”
My only knowledge of Dickens were the cartoons made of his A Christmas Carol story, but I decided it counted, so I nodded.
“I’m super into him right now. It’s like I go on these kicks where I’m into one writer and want to know everything about their work and then, boom—I’m over it and onto someone new,” he said.
Did that apply to his dating life, too?
“Yeah, when I get into a writer, I want to know all about them—like how they work and what inspires them.”
Brendon cocked his head to the side and stared at me. “Oh, wow. Well, yeah, as a writer I can see how you would.”
He didn’t say anything bad, but I got the feeling he thought it was different. It wasn’t like he was judging me, but I could tell it wasn’t what he expected me to say.
Afterwards, we stopped at a café, and he ordered something like a coffee slushy so I got one, too, even though I normally don’t drink coffee. I was trying to think of an excuse to ask him when his birthday was so I could use the numerology book on him. I decided to bring the book out to see what he’d say about it. He picked it up and started flipping through it.
“You’re into this stuff?” he asked.
“My grandma got me into it. She told me about this actress whose mother was into numerology and how the mother told her they shouldn’t get on this plane because of the flight number and her age—just all these numbers seemed unlucky and then the plane ended up crashing,” I said.
“Wow, pretty hardcore and creepy. Hey, it says you can find your destiny,” he said. “How do you do it?”
“There are different ways to figure stuff out, but the easiest one is to add up your month, birth date, and the whole year to figure out your birth number,” I said.
He pulled out a pen and started adding it up on his napkin. I saw his birth date and realized he was a Cancer—just like I suspected. Thankfully, he wasn’t a Sagittarius like John. I was convinced all Sags couldn’t settle down.
“Do I add the one and nine from the year, too?” he asked. I nodded. “Okay, I’m a three, so what does that mean?”
I flipped to the page on threes. I was more interested in knowing how threes and fives (my number) matched up, compatibility-wise, but I didn’t want to freak him out with that.
“Okay, it says you’re intelligent and used to getting your way. You have a great need to be loved and for emotional attachment,” I said, leaving out the part where it said you could wind up jumping from relationship to relationship if you didn’t find the right person. “It also says that you are energetic and you don’t worry about the future.”
“Well, that part’s not true. I’m panicking over college applications and where I’m going to end up next year. What does yours say?” he asked.
Mine stressed how important freedom and ambition was, but I decided not to share that since he was a Cancer and stability and loyalty were important to them. There was a huge paragraph about number fives, but I just read him the good parts about my “sparkling personality,” “generous nature,” and “warm sense of humor.” Next, we did the personal year ones where we added up the birth month and date with the current year. My birthday was in August, so mine was about to change, but Brendon had just had his birthday, and he was in his number two year.
“Let me read it,” he said, pulling the book away from me. In a perfect world, it would say we were soul mates, and he’d fall madly in love with me.
“Emme, listen to this, ‘This could be the year you find the right person. Love could be right around the corner, so take a chance. All your relationships will strengthen now, so go out and meet new people because the number two year is a partnership year,’” he said, as my heart shot up like it was on an elevator. “Hmmm…nothing about colleges, though.”
Thank you, Mr. Romance. Didn’t he see how fate was practically giving him a neon sign saying I was the one? Okay, maybe not neon, but pretty close. He asked what year I was in, and I explained I was in my number five year, but it would change in August.
“It says, ‘A number five year often involves you meeting your soul mate. Sometimes these romances hit rough waters, but this will clear up by the time your sixth year rolls around. Five is a symbol of chance, so something could catch you off-guard, but it will be a turning point in your life,’” he said as he lowered the book. “So did you meet your soul mate this year?”
“Working on it,” I said.
When he got up to get a bottle of water, I flipped to the section on compatibility and checked how threes and fives matched up.
“Number eight couples: You are both intrigued by each other’s intellectual side—” Boring. “It’s as if you’ve met your match and you feel as if someone ‘gets you’ for the first time.” Here we go! “You’ll see excitement in new things and feel like the universe is opening to you. It’s like walking on air, and nothing seems out of reach. Everything is flowing for you—” Perfect. “—just don’t sabotage it with negativity, jealousy, or low self-esteem.” Crap. “Work problems out instead of running from them. Patience, compromise, and understanding your partner’s core beliefs are important. People may question if it’ll last, but if you hang in there, you can discover a close bond.”
Well, the last part wasn’t the sunshine and rainbows I had hoped for, but things were looking up. I wish I could tell if he was into me. If only I could get a straightforward sign or something. Anything. I mean, in my perfect world, he’d be holding my hand and writing me poetry, but he didn’t seem like a poem-writing, touchy-feely kind of guy. However, minutes later, when we were leaving and walking out, Brendon saw his friend Sam. He went to cross the street and grabbed my hand—just like I had visualized a zillion times. My heart jumped. I mean, he only held it for a second, and it was just to lead me across the street, but it was still Brendon holding my hand.
“Sam, wait up!” he yelled. Sam jogged over to where we were. He was dressed in a pink golf shirt with light-colored shorts on and his overly gelled hair styled to perfection. He seemed more like a cover model than a regular guy.
“Sup,” he said, nodding at Brendon.
“This is Emme,” Brendon said. Sam nodded at me, and they started talking about tee times. Although I couldn’t see Sam’s eyes through his super-expensive sunglasses, I had the feeling he wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to me. I could have been a stranger waiting for a bus next to him.
“Oh, my phone,” Brendon said pulling it out. “Just a sec—”
Sam, obviously bored by the idea of waiting five seconds for Brendon to take a call, said he’d see him later and walked off without acknowledging me. Brendon put down the phone.
“Gotta go pick up something for my mom. I’ll drop you off on the way.”
I had been hoping
to spend a little more time with him, but pretty soon I was back in front of my house, and he was driving off. Then I realized we hadn’t even talked about the papers.
“Hi, Grandpa,” I said as I walked into the family room where my grandfather was watching TV.
“Hi, sweetie. Do you know where Mom is?” he asked.
“She’s in the kitchen,” I said, thinking it was weird, since he could see into the kitchen.
“No, I mean our mom,” he said.
“Who? You mean Grandma?” I asked. He didn’t say anything. “Grandma Frances?”
“Yeah, where’s Frances?” he asked. I stared at him, and then got up to find my mother.
“Mom, did they move Grandma to a new room or something?” I asked. She shook her head, and I told her Grandpa was asking where she was.
Mom sighed. “He was asking me earlier. I think he’s just confused because there’s so much going on. We’re going to have him stay with us for a little while. I don’t think he should be alone right now.”
I went back to the family room, and Grandpa was looking up at me expectantly. I didn’t say anything, and I hoped he wouldn’t ask me about Grandma again, but he did.
“Remember, she’s back at the assisted living place.”
“Oh, that’s right,” he said.
I got out a deck of cards, and we played war until Dad called us for dinner. Grandpa didn’t ask any more questions about Grandma, but I had a strong feeling he wasn’t just “a little confused” and this was only going to get worse.
Chapter 4
Brendon wasn’t in class when I got there on Monday. Mrs. Rae put on a film about stereotypes, and most of the back row dozed off during it. Brendon came in late and sat by the door. Great, now I seemed desperate and pathetic sitting by myself like I was waiting for him, which I totally was. When the movie ended, Mrs. Rae passed out worksheets and told us to work with the person to our right. Normally, Brendon sat on my right, but today I had an empty chair. I saw this girl, Rory, sitting by herself and asked her to be my partner. We started filling out the questions when I heard somebody laughing. I glanced over and saw Lauren walk in late and then start laughing at something Brendon said. Why did his ex-girlfriend have to be in this class? I went back to Rory, who was peeling the price tag off her notebook.
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