He looked over slowly, and nodded. Turning off the screen on his phone, he stowed it in his back pocket. “Hey.”
“So . . . are you mad at me? Because I’m kind of getting that feeling.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Because you ditched me and I had to go look for you?” He paused, and then shot me a small grin. “No, I’m not mad.”
“I didn’t ditch you. The three of you were talking to girls, I didn’t want to butt in like some weirdo.”
He smirked. “Butt in next time. I was just talking to them, waiting for you to be done.”
“All right, now I know.”
He pulled his phone back out of his pocket. “Made me think of something though, I don’t have your number.”
“Oh, I guess you don’t.” For some reason, giving Culter my number gave me a strange fluttering nervousness, which it shouldn’t have.
After I gave it to him, he lifted the phone and said, “Say cheese.”
I crossed my eyes. But when I uncrossed them, he was still holding up the phone and it made a clicking sound.
“Got it.” He looked down at his phone, then smiled over and brought out the first glimpse of his full dimpled smile. “No makeup,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t take it personally. I just did a fitness test. Oh—speaking of which, Zoe and Jasmine are heading to the mall after school and they offered to take me with them, if you don’t want to go.”
He leaned further into the wall, giving me a look that bordered on annoyance. “Cassie, I think that you think I’m a lot nicer than I am.”
“I think you’re being nice.” I almost trusted that he truly was a nice person, I just wasn’t one hundred percent sold on it, yet.
“I’m not being nice.” He shook his head, slowly. “The only reason that I’ll ever offer to do something is if I want to do it. If you don’t want to hang out with me, that’s up to you, just tell me. But, don’t run off and ditch me because you think I’m just being nice when I offer to walk you to class or take you to do stuff with me.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said on an exhale. “I get it. I’ll just take you at your word.”
“Good. Do you want to go to the mall with me?” he asked, bright blue gaze on mine.
After a pause, I said, “If you don’t mind shopping for girlie stuff, then sure.”
“Cool, then let’s stick to our plan. You hungry? The bagel sandwich I made you is probably still good.”
When I thought about it, I realized I was hungry. It was like my hunger had been there; I’d just not noticed it until now. Along with my hunger was another feeling in my gut, the fluttery sort of nervousness that only increased while Culter was talking.
Closing my eyes, I shook my head slightly. It was just weird chemicals firing in me from lack of food and a workout. That was the explanation I was going to go with.
As if he was just waiting for our conversation to be over, Spencer headed over as Culter and I aimed for our lockers. Spencer’s arm immediately went around my shoulders. “Sniff test!” He leaned in, sniffing me. “Woohee,” he waved a hand in front of me. “My God, the smell!”
I smacked his hand, grinning. “I do not. I smell like an angel.”
“Well, I don’t know what an angel smells like but, whoo.” He held his nose.
I grabbed at his hand, completely grinning now. “Shut up, you’re just jealous that when I sweat it smells like fucking flowers.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” He leaned in again, sniffing me again.
“Jesus, if you don’t like how I smell then stop sniffing me.” I laughed. “Let go, you weirdo.”
“Okay. . .” He squeezed me again before finally releasing me. “I’m just playing, Cassie, you smell just fine.”
Still laughing, I turned back to my locker and found Culter leaning against his locker, just watching the Spencer show.
“I don’t smell,” I said, crossing over to my locker. My cheeks heated as I put in the combo for my lock. I felt a fair amount of relief when I opened my locker door between me and Culter.
Culter pushed my locker door all the way open so that he could see me, then he leaned in just a little, and inhaled. “Nope, you smell nice.”
“Jesus,” I said, under my breath. But I laughed, and then realized I’d just been laughing, actually laughing. And I didn’t even feel bad about it. At the same time, that didn’t seem right, and so the guilt crept up on me.
Chapter Eleven
The bell rang, signaling the end of Spanish class. I stood slowly with the rest of the students. One more period to go and it couldn’t be over soon enough.
“You look like you’re ready to pass out,” Culter said as he leaned up next to my desk.
I was ready to pass out. It wasn’t so much that the classes had been exhausting, it had been lunch that exhausted me.
Rolling back my shoulders, I gave Culter what I hoped looked like a grin. “I’m pretty sure that Spencer introduced me to every single person who goes to this school.”
Spencer had taken to the job like he was the one who was my stepbrother. Lunch had passed in a flurry of chaos and I couldn’t remember what anyone looked like, let alone their names.
Bulvin had way more students than I thought it would, probably about five hundred or more had crowded into the cafeteria.
“Adiós a mis estudiantes perfectos del futuro!” called Ms. Delgada, my new Spanish teacher. She waved at us with one stick thin arm.
As Culter and I walked up to the front, I avoided looking directly at her. It wasn’t like I had a problem with rail thin people; it was just how some people turned out. But something about her wrists and arms and chin . . . it just reminded me too much of how my mom’s features had looked in the end. Ms. Delgada looked healthy and not at all emaciated, but I couldn’t shake the images that floated into my head. I was tired and I was letting weird shit affect me too much.
“Adiós, Cassandra,” she said as I passed her on my way out the door.
I swallowed. “Adiós.”
I told myself that tomorrow I’d be prepared and be able to suck it up.
“Auto is on the opposite side of the school, might as well just be late, Coach won’t care.”
“Your coach teaches auto?”
“Yep, he also teaches History for the freshman and sophomores.”
“Wow.”
Culter and I wandered down several halls, neither of us talking, and Culter only giving an occasional nod to a passerby.
When we’d made it across the school, he stopped outside of a doorway. “Looks like you’re not late.”
“Where’s your computer class?” I asked, looking around.
He grinned a little. “Next to Spanish.”
I blew out a laugh. “And you’re not nice?”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t nice. I just said I wanted to hang out with you. Anyway, after Auto, just take this hallway straight down; you’ll get to the gym. I have to change and be out there with the team, so I’ll just have to see you there. Half the school will probably be on the bleachers watching practice. You can sit with Isabella, I already talked to her; she’s a cool chick and she always waits there for Mason.”
It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about, exactly. “Oh, I’m doing something after school,” I said.
He glanced over quickly, looking a fair bit surprised. “Oh.”
“Newspaper. I’m going to join, which will work out well if we keep driving to school together . . . if that’s cool with you.”
“If what’s cool with me? Newspaper?”
“Carpooling.”
The glance he gave me looked a touch exasperated. “Of course it’s cool with me. So, what days do you have to go to newspaper?”
“I have no clue.” I shrugged.
“Well, on the days you don’t have it, you should come hang out during practice. It’s not as boring as you probably think. Like I said, half the school is there hanging out in the bleachers.”
/> I probably made a face that I didn’t realize I was making because he gave me an exasperated look. “Trust me; it’s not as boring as you think it is,” he repeated.
Nodding, I said, “I’ll just have to get back to you on that one.” As in, not in a million years. I’d go to a game, maybe, to be supportive of my stepbro. But watching boys do drills—even a bunch of super hot guys—I’d pass.
“I’m sure you could do both.” He looked like he might say something more, but the second bell rang.
“Looks like we’re both late,” I said.
He took a few steps backward. “Where do you want to meet?”
I grabbed the handle of the door. “Just text me when you’re finished with practice.” I opened the door. “Later.”
“Yeah,” he said, before turning around and leaving.
I entered the classroom to find everyone in the room looking at me, and they were all guys. I looked from face to face and confirmed that not a single one was female. I hesitated, letting the door close behind me.
“Are you Cassie, my new addition?” asked a guy who was at most thirty, maybe younger.
“That’s me.”
“Come on in,” he waved for me to join the twenty or so guys sitting around him. “Pull up a chair. Guys make room.”
Instead of desks, there were four tables all pushed together to form a big table with papers littered haphazardly across it. Three cars in different states of disrepair sat in the room, along with other more complicated looking equipment. A chemical smell tickled my nose, but it was faint, not thick and cloying like the smell at an actual auto shop.
As I crossed over to a chair that waited along one wall, someone said, “Cassie.”
Turning, I found Michael lazily waving at me.
When I pulled up a chair, the other guys in the room scooted kindly to one side.
“Go ahead and grab a syllabus, Cassie. I’m Mr. Johns,” the not-much-older guy said. Though his face looked young and his short black hair had no trace of gray, his voice had the command only a teacher’s could hold. He too sat at the table, a hand on his paper-packet. When I pulled a paper packet in front of me, he continued, “As all of you are at different levels, I’m going to expect some of you to be following my directions while I’ll expect the others to be almost entirely self-directed.” He went over the syllabus, mentioning a few words that I had a vague understanding of and a bunch of words that meant nothing to me.
After quickly reading the packet out, he said, “All right, students that are in their first or second semester in auto tech, please stay, the rest of you are welcome to work on safety systems assessments or the steering system, depending on how far you got last semester.”
In a mass exodus, more than half of the students stood and left, including Michael. When I looked over the space, only six people remained at the table with me; and, to my surprise, I recognized one of them.
Tyler grinned over, waving. “How’s it hanging, step-cousin?” He scooted a couple chairs down, taking the one next to me. “I tried to get your attention, but you were so focused on your syllabus.”
I winced. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so unprepared for a class.”
“You’ll be fine,” the teacher said to me, clearly overhearing. “You two are cousins?”
“Yeah,” Tyler said, though I was about to say “not really.”
“I can see it.” Mr. Johns said, looking between us. He smiled reassuringly to me. “Tyler will help you, Cassie. You’ll do fine.”
Turning to the rest of the group, he continued, “All right, I know most of you have done this before, but I require all first year students to at least do one day of safety review.” He turned back to me. “Cassie, you’ll be doing a full week with me as these guys did last semester. Come on follow me.”
He took us through the shop, showing safety equipment and demonstrating the machines we would be using.
While the teacher demonstrated loose car pieces we’d be taking apart and reassembling, Tyler turned to me and whispered, “Don’t stick your finger in those holes.”
Staring down at the machine parts, my brow furrowed. “Why would I do that?” I whispered back.
He shrugged. “For fun.”
“That doesn’t look like fun to me.”
“Well, obviously we have different ideas of fun, but it hurts like a bitch.”
Biting my lip, I suppressed a laugh. As we continued through the room, Tyler kept making me force down laughter.
Fifteen minutes before the period was over, Mr. Johns said, “All right, that’s it for today. Just wait for the bell to leave.” He walked off toward the other students across the room.
I turned to Tyler. “We’re just . . . free?”
“Yeah, usually he gives us even more time off. Just gives us a task and when you finish it, you can play on your phone, do your homework or whatever.”
“Seriously?” I said. Never had I heard of such a thing.
“Welcome to Bulvin High Auto. You’re just going to have to learn basic stuff anyway first semester, how to switch out your sparkplugs, fix your brakes and stuff like that. First semester is the easiest, and then it gets much harder as you get into the third and fourth, or so I’m told.”
“Well, I am only in it for one.”
As we walked back to the table with a few of the other guys, Tyler said, “I’m supposed to walk you to the gym after school, just in case you feel like getting lost.”
I rolled my eyes. “Jesus,” I muttered.
“No, I’m Tyler. I’m the one without a beard,” he pointed to his chin, “People mistake us all the time.”
“Ha, ha.”
“So . . . Culter driving you insane?”
I held up two fingers, an inch apart.
Tyler sat down and nodded sagely. “He’s a douchebag.”
I gaped at him. “What? I thought you guys were close?”
He offered me a grin. “We are. He’s also been my best friend since, you know, birth; but that doesn’t mean he’s not a douchebag.”
I slouched into my seat, feeling bad about talking shit, especially as it would probably get back to Culter.
At the same time, I found myself just brazening on, “He just thinks I’m incapable of handling coming to a new school without him constantly shepherding me around. Like, he thinks I’m a five-year-old that will wander off and cry in some corner.”
“I doubt it’s that,” Tyler said.
“Oh?”
“Nah, he missed you. He probably just wants you all to himself. He’s possessive of the people he cares about . . . and protective, to the extreme. Like, when I dated this girl for a couple months that he didn’t like, he was downright mean to her, made Marcie cry and shit. As I said, Culter is a douchebag.”
I blinked at Tyler, overwhelmed by how much he got wrong. As it was hard to pick one, I narrowed in on the first thing, “Culter didn’t miss me.”
Tyler’s brows rose. “Yeah, he did.”
I shook my head for emphasis. “No, he didn’t.”
He nodded, slowly. “Yeah, he did. He’ll be the first to tell you that he missed you. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I’m not asking him,” I said, emphatically.
Tyler chuckled. “Okay. Well, I just planned to walk with you to the gym, no shepherding. Unless I find one of those staffs on the way, then I might whap you a couple times and make you run up and down the halls. That’d be funny.”
“I made other plans, sorry.”
He leaned back into his chair, hands going behind his head. “Cool, I’ll just go with you.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, studying him in the bright light of the Auto lab. “You’re going to come with me?”
“Unless I’m not invited?” He gave me an innocent expression, too innocent.
My eyes narrowed at him. “Are you babysitting me?”
“Nope. Anyways, that’s impossible, I’m younger than you. But anything sounds more fun than watching
guys run around in tank tops.”
“I’m going to the club that makes the school paper. They invited me to draw a comic strip for them.”
Between classes, I’d sent a couple of my pieces through text to Zoe. In return, I only got the message “omg” with a ton of exclamation points. Seeing that Tyler seemed unmoved, I continued, “I don’t think it’s a club people just hang out at, I think they’re working and making stuff.”
“I can make stuff. I’ve contributed to the newspaper before. I have secret skills you couldn’t even dream of.”
“Are you always this stubborn and . . . pushy? You’re just like Culter,” I grumbled. Obviously, the family resemblance between them wasn’t solely in their smiles.
A big grin split across Tyler’s face. “It’s the Fuller way,” he said it completely unashamed.
“Full-of-yourself Fullers,” I grumbled.
His eyes twinkled. “Ouch, burn. I’ve never heard that before.” From his tone, obviously he had many times.
I faked a heavy sigh. “Well, I just met you and I already can’t stand you.”
He leaned in. “Sorry to tell you this, Cassie, but I’m probably going to be one of your best friends pretty soon.”
“Are you, Full-of-yourself Fuller?”
“Yep, you’ll get over it through slow, cousinly bonding.”
After Auto, there was nothing I could do short of hobbling my non-cousin to get him to stop following me to the newspaper club. When we arrived at room two eighty-five B, however, to my utter amazement, Zoe was happy to see him. That was an understatement, she was ecstatic.
“So you’re both joining?” she asked for the third time since she met us at the door. We stood just inside a mostly empty computer lab on the second floor. A faint, consistent clicking sound came from several students working at computer terminals. A line of windows high on the wall brought in a distant sunlight, but were too high to provide any view. At the very back of the computer room, a teacher sat at another station, feeding herself cheese puffs as she leaned dangerously close to her monitor.
Still beaming, Zoe pointed between Tyler and me. “And you’re going to be working together on the comic?”
I looked over at Tyler. “I don’t know . . . do you draw, or what?”
Making Bad Choices Page 10