Making Bad Choices

by Rita Stradling

  “Like cartoons?” she asked, her gaze still intent on mine.

  “Sure, I can do some characters.”

  She leaned in. “What do you do after school? Sports?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing yet.”

  “Join the newspaper. We need an artist, and it would be so cool to have a comic strip in the paper. We’ve been talking about it for months, but the one good artist we have is so shy about sharing her work.” Her golden brown eyes lit with excitement.

  “Um, that sounds pretty cool. Don’t you want to see my stuff first before, though? I mostly do concept art, fantasy video game stuff . . . or, that’s what I’ve been paid for.”

  “Sure, do you have any with you?”

  “On my phone . . . which is in my locker.”

  “Here, write down my number and text me your pics, if you’re cool with that?” She looked up at me with a shit ton of hope in her eyes. “I swear I won’t share them or anything. I hope you join the newspaper.”

  It actually sounded like a lot of fun. And, even though Zoe obviously had a type A personality and all of my besties from home were way more the type B personality type, she weirdly reminded me of them.

  As I was writing her phone number down, Mr. Davis called out, “Five more minutes.”

  “Crap,” I muttered. “Okay, have you ever traveled outside of the States?” I asked her. We rushed through the remainder of the questions, mostly giving one word answers.

  When it came time to do the introductions, Mr. Davis had us go down the rows, so we’d be out of order with our partners. The answers were mostly generic, almost everyone said there favorite food was burgers and Mexico for the country outside of the US they’d been to.

  A girl stood up from the other side of Culter. “I’m introducing Culter Fuller,” her voice was full of giggling as she talked, like either speaking out loud to the class or talking about Culter affected her like laughing gas. “His favorite food is chicken fried steak and eggs. Next year he plans to go to Bulvin University. He’s been to most of Europe, South Africa, most of Central America, Australia and most of South East Asia. And he spent his winter break with his family.” She smiled wide, like she’d won the interview or something then sat back down into her seat.

  When I turned to Culter, he looked over.

  “You’ve traveled all those places?” I whispered.

  He leaned in and whispered back, “With my dad in the summers.”

  My stepmom Jen was officially the understatement master. She’d told me that Culter went on trips with his dad in the summer, but I’d thought it was to the Grand Canyon and stuff. To be fair to Jen, when she talked about Culter, I usually had changed the subject immediately.

  I shook my head and said in an even lower voice, “I am so jealous of you right now.”

  He shrugged before whispering back, “Come next time.”

  Ha. Like that would happen. Culter’s dad would probably rather take Satan along on their trips over the daughter of the man who stole his wife away.

  But I nodded.

  When it came around to Beefy, he stood up. “I’d like to introduce Spencer Shithead, I mean Spencer Shilland.”

  “Jake,” Mr. Davis said in a warning tone as the rest of the class laughed.

  “I’m sorry, sir, it just slipped out,” Beefy also known as Jake said with a grin.

  “Don’t let anything else slip out then, Jake,” Mr. Davis said.

  Spencer, it seemed was also planning to go to Bulvin University, as was eighty percent of the class.

  As the person in front of me finished up, everyone’s attention landed on me, watching me intently. Smiling, I stood, extremely thankful that Zoe and I had stuck to such short answers.

  When we’d made it around to Zoe’s turn and she stood up, people looked between me and her like their eyeballs were balls in a game of ping pong.

  “I’m introducing Cassie Michaels. Her favorite food is fish tacos with mahi-mahi—”

  A guy behind me laughed. “Yeah, I bet she likes fish tacos,” he said it in a way that sounded extremely dirty.

  I turned to see a guy on Beefy’s other side, leaning in toward him, a big grin on his face like he was expecting Beefy to laugh. I figured out what that guy meant by fish tacos as soon as I saw the look on his face and wished I’d said burgers like everyone else.

  At once, Spencer, Beefy and Culter turned to the guy, hard expressions on their faces.

  “Something you want to share, Mr. Smith?” Mr. Davis asked.

  The guy looked more like he wanted to piss his pants. “Uh, no, sorry,” he mumbled. Then he looked over to Culter. “Sorry, man.”

  Culter nodded his head back toward me.

  Smith looked over at me, meeting my gaze. “Sorry,” he whispered, eyes looking like he meant it.

  I shrugged as the comment didn’t bother me too much; it was a pretty typical dumbass boy thing to say.

  “Anyway,” Zoe said, loudly, and then she continued with my interview.

  As I turned back to her, I couldn’t help but be in awe of the power one look from those three guys held and how quickly they’d decided I was theirs to protect. I still wasn’t sure if this was going to be a good or bad thing for me at Bulvin High.

  Chapter Ten

  “Where are you heading?” Zoe asked as we stood to grab our belongings after English.

  “Um . . .” I reached into my back pocket to grab my schedule. After I read it, I couldn’t help but make a face. “P.E.”

  “That’s good, because I’m heading there too.” She grinned. “Where’s your locker?”

  “Just a little ways to the right,” I said, gesturing.

  “I’ll walk with you if you want.”

  “We’ll walk her,” Spencer said as he threw an arm over my shoulders. “We are escorting you to your next class.”

  “Hey,” Culter said, stopping beside me. “Let’s head to our lockers and then we’ll show you where the gym is.”

  “Yeah . . . uh,” I turned back to Zoe, “Where’s your locker?”

  “Just right outside. I’ll just see you at P.E., no problem,” she smiled before just walking away.

  Well, crap.

  Stepping out of Spencer’s arm, I wandered toward the front of the class. “Do any of you have P.E.?” I aimed the question over my shoulder.

  “No.” Spencer leaned in as we walked through the desks, “We’re all excused from P.E., but we could stay and cheer you on from the bleachers. Mustache is probably going to have you doing the fitness test first day, so we could just sit there and yell encouraging statements at you while you run bleachers, no problem.”

  “Thanks, I’ll pass,” I said, dryly.

  He shrugged. “You could be a cheerleader, and then you’d have study-hall instead.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s something you have to try out for in the beginning of the year, or the year before,” I said.

  “Well, damn. Cheer up. It’s just a couple of months of taking orders from a woman with a bigger mustache than my uncle Barry.” He patted me on the back.

  “Oh, that’s mean,” I said, but I couldn’t help but breathe a laugh. When Culter fell in beside me, I said over to him, “You guys don’t actually need to walk me. It’s sweet, but not needed, I’m a big girl. Also, Zoe can show me, she already offered.” That was if she was still offering, but I was sure I could find it all on my own.

  I was getting the distinct feeling that Culter felt some ill-placed need to babysit me, and also that where Culter went, hordes of friends followed. But I had to admit, I might be a little more annoyed at that all if said hordes of friends weren’t so gorgeous and flirty.

  “I’m heading that way, anyway,” Culter said, before he opened the door and grinned down at me in a way that told me he wasn’t actually heading there.

  “Of course you are.” The look I gave him when he joined me in the hall was met with a smirk.

  Zoe wasn’t in the hall and when we walked to the lockers.
As I feared, a cloud of good-looking, well-dressed people clotted the entire area. As we approached, however, people turned toward my companions and a small path cleared to my locker.

  Squeezing through, I opened my locker and shoved my books in, and extracted a check Jen had given me for the P.E. teacher out of my wallet. Turning in place, I found a wall of talking students behind me. Culter stood on the far side of the crowd, talking to a very smiley group of girls.

  Blowing out a breath, I tapped on the shoulder of the guy standing right in front of me. His shoulder was easy to reach because he was a little shorter than me.

  When he glanced back, I said, “Excuse me.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he scooted just far enough that I could squeeze by.

  When I glanced around, all three of my tour guides were very busy flirting with pretty girls. Spencer’s arm draped over one girl and he was whispering into her ear. If I interrupted any of that, I’d likely get the nickname Cock-Block Cassie on my first day, and that shit doesn’t go away. Confident that I was doing a public service, I turned and walked quickly to the next hall where I turned the corner.

  Pulling my schedule from my back pocket, I read the number by the class and found that it only said Gym.

  “You lost?” said a guy’s voice.

  When I looked up, I did a double take. Holy shit. I was standing straight in front of a guy that could be my friend Max’s long lost twin brother. He was just about my height, and even wore a sort of top hat. Exactly like Max usually looked too, this guy’s eyes were heavy lidded and a little bloodshot.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry. You look exactly like my best friend from back home. I just had an alternate universe moment looking at you . . . it probably looked a little weird from your end.”

  He laughed, eyes going even more squinty. “I just thought I had something on my face. Do you need help finding your class? You look lost.”

  “The gym?” I asked, still tripping out on the similarities between him and Max.

  “I’m on my way there,” he said. He nodded further down the way we were going, just as the warning bell rang.

  “Thanks, this is my first day,” I said.

  “You don’t say.” There was a touch of humor in his voice, like it was more than obvious.

  “Hey, Cassie!”

  I looked back as Culter jogged up the hall toward me. “Why’d you leave? I was waiting for you,” he said as he stopped beside me.

  “Sorry. I didn’t want to cramp your style. I found someone who’s heading there anyway,” I nodded to Max’s lookalike, who had very kindly stayed.

  “Oh, how’s it going, Michael?” Culter said to the guy.

  Michael and Max. Even their names were a little similar.

  “Hey, there.” Michael grinned.

  Culter looked back to me. “I’ll be at the lockers after second period, if you want to meet up.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said before I gestured over my shoulder. “We should go, though.”

  Culter nodded and turned away, conspicuously not giving me a smile as he left. It occurred to me that maybe sneaking off wasn’t the nicest thing to do, at least it hadn’t been taken that way.

  I turned back to Michael. “Sorry, thanks for waiting.”

  He looked like he might laugh for some reason, eyes sliding between me and Culter. “Are you his long lost girlfriend, or something?”

  “No,” I said, emphatically. “He’s my stepbrother.”

  “Oh, no shit?” He laughed before turning back the way we had been heading in. “So this friend I look like, he’s what? Handsome, funny, amazing in bed?”

  “Definitely don’t know about the last part. My friend is a poet . . . who’s stoned all the time. Like, all the time,” I said.

  “Whoa.” Michael looked at me, amazed. “Weird. So, who are you anyway? Where you from?”

  “Cassie. And, I am from LA,” I said.

  “Bitchin’. I’ve been there, spring break.” He opened the door to the gymnasium. “You ever go to the Shrine Auditorium?”

  “You two, standing at the door! Come in now, please! You’re late,” called a stern woman’s voice from inside the gym.

  Michael gestured for me to go in past him, and we entered to find a group of students, sitting on the ground and all of them were looking back up at us. I followed Michael, and I was pretty pleased to find that he led me straight over to where Zoe sat with another girl. Zoe smiled over as we took seats beside her. “Hey, Cassie, Michael.”

  “You already know her?” Michael asked.

  “First period,” she whispered.

  “We’re all here?” A woman called from the front of the class, looking over at us as if she was counting heads.

  I didn’t know what I was expecting, but if this was Spencer’s ‘Mustache’, I didn’t see it. She was what my mom would have called solid—petite but muscular and compact. Her brown hair was combed back in a high bun, pulling all the features of her face taut. After she finished looking us over, she called out, “All right guys, first day of a new semester, you know the drill. We’re going to do a fitness test.”

  As a collective groan filled the room, Max’s lookalike leaned in toward Zoe and a girl who wore a steampunk leather vest. “Cassie grew up in L.A.,” he said.

  Steampunk girl turned to me, her black hair sticking out around her face like she just got dosed with static electricity. “That’s cool.”

  Zoe nodded. “Yeah, she’s also an artist. She’s probably going to join the newspaper. I’m trying to convince her.”

  “You should join. We have fun,” Steampunk said.

  “All right, guys,” the P.E. teacher called, and then she clapped. “Head off to change. Anyone who needs a new uniform, see me.”

  As the rest of the class split off, I headed up to the teacher with two other students. Even this close, I couldn’t find any mustache. We all followed her to her office at the side of the gym. I handed her the check and she handed me my brown shorts and a T-Shirt.

  “You have decent shoes?” she nodded down to my feet.

  I peered down at my boots. Well, crap.

  Gritting my teeth, I said, “I moved here yesterday with just a suitcase. I’m going shopping after school.”

  “What size do you wear?”

  “Eight,” I said.

  She crossed to the back of her office and crouched down, grabbing a pair of tennis shoes off the floor. As she brought them closer, their smell grew stronger. “You can wear these for today, but I want them returned after class. They’re lost and found.”

  Oh, gross.

  “Thanks,” I said as I picked up the shoes by the laces, trying to touch them as little as possible. I held them away from me as I crossed into the girls’ locker room.

  “Loaners?” asked Zoe sympathetically, as I stopped beside her. Both she and her friend were already fully dressed for P.E.

  “I think there’s something living in there,” I said as I tossed them onto the ground.

  “You don’t have shoes?” Steampunk asked.

  “I do, but most of my stuff is still in California, and won’t be here until next week. I’m going to the mall after school, though.”

  “So are we,” Zoe said, gesturing between her and her friend, “Right after newspaper. You want to just come with us?”

  “Maybe. . .” I felt kind of bad that Culter was on the hook for taking me shopping. I planned on shopping for a while and for girlie things. I looked back to the girls. “Can I get back to you on that one?”

  I ran the bleachers and passed the fitness test with relative ease. Michael, Zoe, and Steampunk walked the whole thing. As I headed back into the locker room, I added two more items to my shopping list: sports bra, spare makeup bag and deodorant for at school. I didn’t stink, but I was getting there. The makeup on my face was a goner, though; it had lived a short beautiful life, and then I had to scrub it off in the bathroom sink.

  “I forgot how much I hated P.E.
early in the morning,” I grumbled as I patted my face dry with a paper towel.

  “Did you do any sports at your old school?” Steampunk asked as she reapplied her makeup in the mirror.

  “No, but we didn’t have to do P.E. after sophomore year at my school.”

  “Well, you stayed in great shape. I can’t run, I have a medical thing, but you were rocking those stairs.” She moved away from the mirror, sticking her mascara wand back in its tube.

  “I had a gym in my apartment building. I used to go work out at night.” What I didn’t say was that it was nearly every sleepless night in the weeks before my mother died, working out until I was so exhausted my body would collapse into sleep.

  “I should probably go return the loaners,” I said as I turned away. I turned back, “Oh, what’s your name? I keep calling you Steampunk in my head.”

  That made a beautiful dainty smile spread across her face. “I like it. My name’s Jasmine.”

  “Cool, nice to meet you,” I said.

  I returned to the place where I had left the loaners, and found Zoe. “Sorry for leaving these here.” I nodded to the shoes.

  “I survived,” she said.

  “I’ll definitely join you guys after school, at least for the newspaper. And, I’m almost certain that I can join you at the mall too.”

  She looked up from tying some pretty badass shit-kicker boots. “Great. The newspaper is in room two eighty-five B. I have so many ideas I want to tell you about. Send me your drawings. I’m sure they’re good enough, I’m just curious.”

  “Will do,” I said as I picked up the strings of the nasty loaners and held them out in front of me. “These are so disgusting that I felt sorry for my socks.” I had actually thrown my socks out and was now going sock-commando in my boots.

  “Yeah, foul,” Zoe said with a sympathetic grin on her face.

  When I returned my shoes and retraced my steps back to the friend zone lockers, I found Culter leaning up against the wall, his attention on his phone. His friends gathered nearby, but he was clearly separate from them, doing his own thing on his phone.

  Walking over, I leaned up against the wall next to him. “Hey.”