Mrs. Baker kind of half glares at me, like my continued existence is a personal insult, and holds up the answer key to her test. Her neat handwriting fills up the lines on the page. “Where did this come from?”
Whit squints his eyes. “I don’t know.” He side-eyes me. “Why are you asking me?”
“It was found in your locker.” She looks at me again like she knows I put it there.
“Who put it there?” he asks, right on cue. It’s totally what I would have said.
“I’m hoping you can tell me,” says Mrs. Baker, and I swear her eyes flit to me again as if she can see straight into my soul. “So I don’t have to tell anyone else.”
“Who told you it was in there?” I demand, my anti-authority reflexes taking over. “And what right do you have to go through his locker? What are you, like, his girlfriend? That’s illegal.”
Mrs. Baker brushes me off. “Check your amendments, Miss Clayton. They don’t count at school.” To Whit, whom she clearly likes much better than me—if she’s heard the gossip that we’re dating, she must hate me even more—she says, “Elona Mabry said she saw you going through my papers when I left class yesterday. She said you took something.”
“I did not.”
Mrs. Baker shakes her head. “C’mon, Whit. Let’s go talk to Dr. Rickards about this.”
He follows after her, shooting one last angry glance behind him as he goes.
* * *
I’m at one of the cement tables in the quad behind the new building, trying to concentrate on this SAT booklet, my mind everywhere else. I jiggle my leg. Whit still got caught, so Adrienne can’t change her mind.
I glance up, looking for Whit at the thought. Nothing.
I turn back to the question.
IN LINE 5, “SURVEYING” MOST NEARLY MEANS:
I’m such an idiot. If I had just spent any time caring about any of this in the past four years. If I—
“I know you probably think this is going to change my mind, but I’m not going to let her intimidate me, okay? We’re not going to do that.”
I look up from my booklet, surprised. Whit throws his coat and backpack down angrily and falls into the chair across from me. “But first tell me one thing,” he says.
I nod.
“Tell me you had nothing to do with it. That you want nothing more to do with Adrienne and her bullshit. Promise me that. Knowing you two, this could be a setup; I know that. It totally could be. But I believe you hate her and I believe that you don’t want Claire to know what you did, so please.” He looks down. “Just please tell me, okay?”
His eyes have this pleading look in them. He really wants this to be true, and I do, too. We’re in this together and we can beat Adrienne. I run my fingers over the SAT question, watching him watch me. He’s going to introduce me to his parents. He could tell, through it all, that I was miserable. He wants to help me.
No one thinks I’m worthy of help.
“Okay.” I nod. “Yes.” I can undo this. I can make everything I said to him in the car true.
“I’m not going to be a prick anymore about the other stuff. What’s in the past is in the past. If she doesn’t like that we’re together, we’re going to give her the”—his eyes flit around to be sure no one is listening—“best fake relationship anyone has ever seen.”
I smile. “Yeah. Definitely.” I play with the edges of my SAT booklet for a moment before I ask, “But what happened? With the test and Mrs. Baker?”
Whit shrugs nonchalantly, even though I can tell it’s bothering him. “Not that bad. Mrs. Baker loves me, so she helped out. I even think she believed me, but we didn’t have much ground to stand on.”
“I can talk to Elona, if you want,” I tell him. “Assuming Adrienne’s behind it—”
“Oh, she is,” Whit assures me.
“Yeah. Well, I can pull some strings. It’s what I do.”
“So I got detention and a zero on the test, but she’ll let me do some extra credit. Adrienne’s not quite as smooth as she thinks she is.”
“What about your college coaches?” I ask.
He doesn’t meet my eye. “Adrienne can’t hurt me, all right? I promise.” He’s so determined to prove to me that Adrienne is nothing. I can’t let her ruin him. Or me. I’ll have to play her game, but I can be on the right side of it this time.
“So we’re in this thing?” he asks me. “Together?”
I nod. “Together.”
36
The night of the Woodhaven Country Club Charity Ball, Whit picks me up right on time. My mom is so nice to him, it almost physically hurts me—I halfway wish I would have changed at the Gas ’n’ Go and driven to his house like I planned to at first. Later, when we pull up at the country club, he tells me his parents aren’t there yet, so he walks me over to the patio off the ballroom. People sit at the tables, sipping cocktails and laughing. Whit pulls my chair out for me, catching me by surprise.
I look at the people all around us with their nice clothes and expensive drinks. “Do I look okay?” I ask him.
He takes me in. My brown hair braided to the side, my bare shoulders, navy dress that flares out a little at the bottom. “Yeah. Of course,” he says, totally ruining the moment.
I put my face into my hand. “Of course,” I mutter.
“Well, you’re just asking to ask,” he tells me. “You already know you look great.”
I didn’t, actually. I lean back and relax. “So I talked to Elona,” I tell him, shuffling my feet against the cobblestone patio.
He tenses. “What’d she say?”
I gaze up at the clear night sky, purposely avoiding his eyes. “Adrienne put her up to it, obviously. She said she’ll tell Dr. Rickards she didn’t really see anything, if you want.”
“Yeah, that should do a lot of good now that they found the cheat sheet on me,” he bites off. He sighs. “Mrs. Baker was telling me all about how much recruiters would hate me disregarding the honor code, and that she’d tutor me if I need help.” He snorts. “Do you even know who took the test out of her room? I know Adrienne doesn’t do her own dirty work.”
“Anyone could’ve done it,” I say dismissively. It’s so easy for me to lie. I’ve been doing it for years. Stare straight at them, don’t blink, act like it doesn’t matter.
I almost wonder whether I enjoy it. Lying to both Adrienne and Whit makes me feel like my old self again. It makes me forget Ryan for a while.
That doesn’t last, though. When I shut my mouth, I have to remember all over again.
“Luckily, the coach from Duke has known my family forever. He’s diagnosed me with ‘senioritis.’ Like that automatically makes me some kind of idiot.”
“Well, that’s where you’re going anyway, right?” I say as much to reassure myself as him.
He looks across the table at me.
“Like Cason,” I conclude.
“Yeah,” he says after a minute. He glances at his phone. “Just like Cason.” He stands up. “Let’s go. My parents are here.”
I follow him.
The inside of Woodhaven Country Club is all glossy wood. High-vaulted, polished wooden beams make up the ceiling. The hardwood floor’s shine shows our reflections. I keep catching sight of myself and losing it a second later.
“Can you not do that thing with your hair when you see them?” Whit whispers to me as we walk around the room.
I stare at him blankly.
“The hair-flippy thing,” he explains.
“Why?” I shake my head. Braided like this, my hair’s not moving that much, anyway. “Do I look smarter when my hair is still?”
“You look less dangerous.” Well, that explains everything.
“Less like I’m having sex with you?” I suggest.
His eyes travel around the room, scandalized. Someone might have heard. “Please don’t say anything like that when you meet my parents,” he says, as if I had no common sense. “They already think I’m on a tragic downhill trajectory.”
/>
I cross my arms, stuck somewhere between annoyance and guilt. “I won’t.”
All around there are clean people in clean clothes. Which is good. It’s normal. It doesn’t feel like Buckley.
Whit isn’t Buckley.
He’s waving at people and throwing out greetings as we walk by: “Mrs. Clark.” “What’d you shoot yesterday, Tripp?” and “Hope you’re feeling better, Everett.” And all the while, I’m a step behind, nodding politely and giving each of them some kind of half smile as we go.
If I’m going to meet his parents, I have to be this girl who’s acceptable. Worse than that, I have this growing suspicion that I want to please these people. That, if they see me as someone who could be dating Whit DuRant, then they’ll see me as acceptable. They’ll see me as someone.
Something cold and rough hits my fingers and squeezes. With a jolt, I realize Whit has grabbed my hand. Right. Because we’re supposed to be dating.
But I have this dry, sinking feeling in my stomach and a thudding coming from my ribs. I finally recognize it.
He’s making me nervous.
“Are you always this, like, put together?” I finally ask.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “It’s—you’re so natural at this stuff. Impressing people and being friendly and all that. Why are you always so over it at school?”
He quirks an eyebrow at me and glances around to make sure no one else is listening. “I thought you said I was kind of a dick?”
“You are. There. But here you’re, like, the king of country club bullshit.”
“I’m supposed to be,” he says. “It’s how you act. Oh,” he continues, his eyes at a point over my shoulder, “there they are.”
The bottom falls out of the little calm I have left.
“Come on,” he says.
I can’t tell if he’s dreading this as much as I am, but soon we’ve crossed the room and I can’t think about it anymore. “Mom, Dad, this is my girlfriend, Olivia. Clayton.”
Smiling feels like it might actually make my face crack in two, but I do it anyway and hold out my hand to shake like I’m supposed to do. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Whit’s mom has a thinner face than him; crinkly, kind green eyes; and auburn hair. His dad has Whit’s strong jawline. He’s tall but rounder.
“Nice to meet you, Olivia,” Mrs. DuRant says. Her voice is as cautious as the look in her eyes.
Dangerous. Right.
“Wouldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes,” Mr. DuRant chimes in. “Did you get here all right, son?” Mr. DuRant grabs his arm.
“Yes, sir,” Whit says.
“Your brother’s wandered off, of course,” Mrs. DuRant says, giving Whit a conspiratorial smile. “If you two have been looking for him. Have you met Cason yet, Olivia?”
“Briefly,” I say.
“He’s home from Duke this weekend,” she says proudly.
“Probably tired from all of that damage control he’s been doing for you,” Mr. DuRant says to Whit in a way that’s simultaneously light and menacing.
“I thought Marilee would be here tonight.” Mrs. DuRant switches gears again, touching her face thoughtfully.
“Mom,” Whit chides, causing me to turn to him. Who the hell is Marilee?
“Do you come to Woodhaven often?” Mrs. DuRant asks me.
“Just with Whit,” I say, feeling smaller by the second, willing myself to get sucked into a black hole under the floor. I glance out over the room, trying to hide the fact I’m looking for a way out, and I see it.
I see them.
Adrienne and Ethan. Ethan in a light blue button-down that I got him for his birthday last year and Adrienne in black. The color of her fucking soul. Why is he here with her?
Whit’s dad is laughing at a joke he’s just told, so I keep the smile pasted on my face. I wonder if it’s obviously fake, one of those plastic smiles that scares people. “We’ll see you two later,” Mr. DuRant finally says, putting a hand on Whit’s shoulder and waving to catch someone as he walks by.
Mrs. DuRant’s smile is anemic. “You two look lovely,” she says coolly before she exits, and I wish for both of our sakes that I was more impressive. I’m standing there, torn between not watching Adrienne and Ethan and not watching Mrs. DuRant leave, nervous and wrong and totally at odds. There’s no one here I can actually compete with because I don’t belong at all.
I never will.
“Are you okay?” Whit asks me, but his eyes give him away as he steals a glance at Adrienne and Ethan.
I won’t look. My broken heart is beating too hard. It’s one thing for her to show up here to screw with my head, but it’s a whole other thing to see her here with Ethan. I’ll never get used to that sight.
“I’m fine,” I say.
I’m not.
I smile at Whit—a fake smile that gives me away crack by crack. His thumb scrapes over the back of my hand. Back and forth.
Cold comfort. All this nervousness tumbling around is making it worse.
“Let’s go find my brother,” Whit whispers in my ear.
I feel like I might cry. “Where is he?” I hear my voice break, giving me away. Doesn’t he hate his brother?
He sounds worried, softer. “Liv.”
“Are people looking at me?” I answer. Then I shake my head. Flip my hair. Why can’t I disappear?
“Yeah.” He stops, turns me toward him, and puts his hands on my shoulders. “You look amazing, that’s why. Ethan can’t stand it.” He leans toward me intimately. “Now stop. You’re freaking me out.” He kisses the top of my hair, and even though I know it’s for show, my heart goes twice as ballistic.
“Where is he? Your brother?”
Whit gets a wry smile. “You’ll see.”
37
The more time I spend with Cason, the more I realize he is a lot like Whit in all the obvious ways. The self-deprecating smile. The defined jawline. The apparent knack for dipping his tie in whiskey.
“Whit, take your tie off!” I yell. When he turns to face me, I reach up and take his tie out of the loop, grabbing on to an end and pulling it out of his collar. And out of nowhere, he leans forward and kisses me. He tastes like Jack Daniel’s—I hate that taste.
His brother cheers and he pulls back, flushed. He has this guilty look on his face, like he did something he wasn’t supposed to.
An hour ago, Whit led me through the country club kitchen, across the cement surrounding the pool, out to the pool house, where a bunch of Woodhaven employees in colored polos were pouring out shots on a pool table, splashing dark liquor onto the green felt. Laughter bounced off the walls. Cason had his arms wrapped around two girls, grinning, smooth in every way that Whit was not.
Cason might be a pain in the ass, but he knew how to have fun. And fun was the one thing we both desperately needed.
“Girls who drive the beer carts,” Whit whispered to me, the look in his eyes somewhere between distaste and admiration. “Everyone loves Cason.” Almost everyone, I amended in my head.
Cason had started in immediately on Whit’s troubled past two weeks. “It’s a good thing Coach Holt’s seen you play before. What’d the other coaches say?” Cason asked, his expression serious. I didn’t want to hear it. I was so disgustingly responsible.
“Clemson said they’d hold my scholarship for the time being. Florida was annoyed. Said they wanted a commitment by next week or they were gonna offer my scholarship to someone else.”
“Screw ’em!” Cason laughed. “DuRants are Blue Devils.”
Whit rolled his eyes.
Cason clapped Whit on the shoulder. “But for now, let’s drink, little brother.”
So now we are standing around the pool table, pouring shots into our mouths like the whiskey is water, and I’m laughing with one of the beer cart girls, named Sheila, who apparently has math class with me.
Whit’s kissing me was another part of the act, then. Of course.
> We’re still staring at each other when I ask him, “Who’s Marilee?”
Whit rolls his eyes, leaning down to pour himself another shot. “A girl I used to date.” The whiskey fills up the shot glass, slipping down the sides. I already made him promise we would find someone to drive us home before I took a shot. I don’t like shots anymore but tonight—tonight it seemed all right. “A girl I broke up with. Her mom and my mom are best friends.” He tosses the shot back before turning toward me again. “My mom thinks she walks on water.” He laughs to himself about it.
“And that’s funny?”
“Marilee is a very religious girl,” he tells me. “It was a joke.”
Oh, shit. “So that’s why she was looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
I don’t get to reply, because that’s when the door opens.
Adrienne leans back against the door to allow Ethan to follow her in and throws the room a dazzling smile. “We heard this was where we could find the real party!” she announces, instantly taking over. “O, you could’ve texted me.” Ethan at least has the shame to put his head down when he walks in.
“Didn’t want it to be awkward,” I mutter, glancing at Whit.
Adrienne walks right up to the table, takes a full shot glass out of Cason’s hand, and downs it. “Cason DuRant,” she says, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. Whit’s whole face goes dark watching her.
Cason’s eyebrow goes up. “You were JV cheerleading captain my senior year.”
She smiles. “You remember.” She sets her shot glass down. “So what are we doing?”
“Celebrating my little brother’s new relationship,” Cason answers unhelpfully.
Adrienne’s eyes travel between Whit and me, her grin taking on new life. “You know,” she tells Cason, “Ethan here got replaced by your darling little brother, not that he’s mad about it or anything. No one could believe it. They’re the talk of the town. You.” She snaps her fingers in Sheila’s face. “Pour me a shot.”
Whit takes a measured sip of his drink, his eyes glassy. “You hate that, don’t you?” he asks Adrienne.
“Stop it, you two,” I interject between them.
How to Break a Boy Page 14