by Sam Mariano
A bit hesitantly, I try to reason with him. “If someone’s hurting you, Hunter, you should tell somebody. They shouldn’t be allowed to do that. They’re not allowed to do that, but if you don’t tell anyone, they can’t be stopped.”
Hunter shakes his head, standing and dropping the bag of frozen corn on the table. “Nope. I’m not a damsel in distress, Riley, I don’t need rescuing.”
I stand, too. “I’m not trying to rescue you, I just don’t want to see you mistreated by the people who are supposed to care for you.”
“You don’t even know who hit me.”
“So tell me,” I challenge, my eyes widening.
He rejects the suggestion immediately. “No. You’re stuck in tattletale mode like we’re little fucking kids.”
I jerk back in surprise. It’s not like I’ve never heard the f-word before, but no one has ever spat it right in my face like that. “That’s not true. I know we’re not little kids. It’s not just little kids who—”
He doesn’t let me finish. “Yes, it is.”
I open my mouth to argue, but then I close it again, unsure how to respond.
“I can take care of myself,” he assures me firmly, holding my gaze. “I don’t need you or anyone else to look after me.”
It goes against my better instincts to relent, but he’s being so stubborn, and I need him to set my mind at ease before he leaves. “Fine. I won’t say anything.”
“Promise?”
I swallow, then force myself to say, “Yeah, I promise.”
He narrows his eyes at me like he’s not sure he can trust me. After a moment, he must decide to, because he says, “It was my stepdad. He and my mom were fighting, I butted in…” He trails off and gestures to his eye.
My stomach drops, but I try to keep cool so he can’t accuse me of overreacting. “Has he done that before?”
“I mean, he’s shoved me around a bit, but he’s never hit me. Like I said, I figure he and my mom are heading for divorce this time.”
“Well, yeah, I would hope so. Is he still living with you, or did she kick him out?”
“She didn’t kick him out yet, but she will,” he assures me. “He was too drunk to drive when it happened.”
That does nothing to ease my discomfort.
I don’t think I should have promised my silence now that I know for sure that’s what happened… but the way he talks, it seems like his mom’s handling it. She has to, right? Protecting him is her job.
“Anyway, I should get back home,” he says.
Doubling back and grabbing the bag of corn, I tell him, “Here, take this with you.”
“Nah, keep it.”
“But your eye,” I insist.
He smiles faintly, glancing at the bag of corn but not taking it. “I think you’re actually supposed to do that when you first get hit, so… it’s not really doing anything at this point.”
“Oh. Right,” I murmur, dropping my gaze.
I guess it should have occurred to me to ask when it happened before trying to nurse him back to health, but I’m unaccustomed to dealing with any kind of violence or its aftermath. The memory of a couple minutes earlier replays, him straddling the chair and thanking me for the cold bag of corn against his face. Was he laughing at me on the inside, or just being nice?
“I feel stupid now. You could have told me that instead of just… letting me put frozen corn on your face.”
Hunter smirks. “Nah. It was sweet. It’s the thought that counts, right?”
My cheeks warm under his gaze, but I can’t quite meet his eyes now. I follow him to the door and lean against the frame to tell him goodbye and watch him leave. When he hits the sidewalk, I close the door and lock it.
Content in the belief that everything is under control and all the wrongs will be righted, I grab my busted backpack and set about doing my homework.
Chapter Two
The weekend flies by. My mom is off Sunday and the weather is still pretty warm for fall, so we grab some chips and sandwiches and head for the park. I get a splinter in my thigh from sitting at the bare picnic table, but getting some fresh air and catching up while we hike is nice.
When we get home, the sun is setting and the sky is a beautiful mix of pink and orange with blue splashes. I sigh contentedly, wishing I had a cell phone so I could snap a picture.
“Wonder what that is,” Mom murmurs as she cuts the wheel and turns into our driveway.
I glance away from the sunset and follow her gaze to the front porch. There’s a box propped up against our front door—a sizeable one. “I dunno.”
I grab the picnic stuff and both our water bottles while Mom walks ahead to retrieve the package. It’s a large box, so I also dig out my house key since she won’t be able to hold it and unlock the door at the same time.
“That’s odd,” she says, frowning as she reads the label on the box. “This is addressed to you.”
“Huh?
She shrugs and carries the box inside. “Were you expecting something from school?”
I shake my head, walking inside and unloading all the stuff I’m carrying. “It’s from Amazon,” I tell her, noting the tape.
“Where are the bomb-sniffing dogs when you need them?” she jokes.
“Sniffing out actual bombs,” I return. “I don’t think you can order those from Amazon.”
Wrinkling up her nose, she says, “What? I thought they carried everything. One star!”
I crack a smile and rip into the mystery box. There’s packing paper on top, so I rip that out to reveal a cute pink and gray backpack.
Grinning, I look back at my mom. “I love it! I didn’t know you ordered me a new—” I stop, because her confusion has deepened.
Seeing it’s a gift for me, I figured she was just toying with me before about not knowing what the box was so I’d be surprised, but she looks genuinely baffled.
“I… didn’t.” She grabs the backpack out of the box and inspects it suspiciously. “Let me look at the packing slip.”
As soon as she pulls the backpack out, I see there’s something else in the bottom of the box. My heart does a funny free-fall as I reach in and carefully draw out a sky blue, hardback copy of Mockingjay—the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy.
My stomach turns into a pit of warm goo, and a helpless smile transforms my face as I run my hand across the smooth cover of the book I’ve been dying to read. Aside from my mom, there’s only one person who knows how badly I wanted this.
“Who’s Venus Keller?” Mom asks, then her eyes widen as she recognizes the name. “Wait, why is Venus Keller sending you school supplies?”
“She’s not, her son is,” I explain, still unable to wipe the helpless smile off my face. I usually tell my mom everything, but because I was afraid I would over share, I did not tell her about my run-in with Hunter Maxwell. “He carried my backpack home Friday when he saw me struggling with it.” I hold up Mockingjay for her to see. “I told him he should start reading this series and that I didn’t have the last book yet.”
Her dark brow is still furrowed with suspicion. “And he just randomly decided to send you presents?”
“It’s kind of a long story. We talked and bonded a little on the way home. This is probably just his way of being nice.”
“Is it being nice, or is it charity?” she questions, still looking uneasy. “If you needed a new backpack, you could have told me, honey. I don’t like you appealing to strangers for things, especially strange boys.”
That finally does the job of getting a smile off my face, and a frown takes its place. “I wasn’t appealing to him for anything. I didn’t ask for a new backpack; I was fine carrying mine. He did this on his own.”
“A boy I didn’t even realize you talked to a couple days ago is so eager to be nice to you that now he’s sending you gifts?”
“Why are you so hung up on this being a gift?” I demand.
“From a boy,” she adds, like that should help me see why this
is so horrible.
My eyes widen. “Stop saying that. Stop saying ‘a gift from a boy.’ My God, what is the big deal?”
She is also frowning. “I don’t know. I feel weird about it. You have never even mentioned this boy before and now all of a sudden he’s buying you presents? That must have been some walk.”
Aggravated, I toss the packing paper back into the box. I tuck Mockingjay under my arm and grab both my new backpack and my old one. Without a word, I storm down the hall toward my bedroom so I can transfer all my stuff to the new one.
“Where are you going?” Mom calls after me.
“To read,” I state, swinging my door open, stepping inside, and then slamming it.
___
I’m tired and grumpy the next day at school.
To start with, I stayed up half the night reading my book, too impatient to read the conclusion of the series to worry about sleeping. Then, the book did not go remotely the way I hoped or thought it would. The main character turned into a hot mess, and the ending was downright depressing. I finished reading around 4am, but I was too angry to fall asleep.
To make matters even worse, things were still leftover weird with my mom this morning. We hardly spoke while we got ready, and although the silence was charged like we both wanted to, we didn’t say a word to each other in the car.
Fighting with my mom always results in a terrible gnawing in my gut, but being confused about why we are even fighting to begin with isn’t helping matters.
School is uneventful until fifth period. It’s the only class I have with Hunter and while normally I don’t pay him any mind, today I find his presence distracting. Today I struggle to drag my gaze away from his desk. I take note of the gray hoodie he’s wearing. It has the school’s wrestling team logo on it—is he on the team? I imagine he is, or he wouldn’t be wearing it.
We lock eyes a couple times in class, but there’s no acknowledgment beyond that.
I’m still distracted.
Lunchtime is next. Hunter leaves with his buddies and I go back to my locker to get the lunch I packed. When I get to the cafeteria, he’s already seated with his friends, talking and laughing like nothing’s wrong.
We never talked before so I guess I shouldn’t have expected us to today, but I want to thank him for my new backpack and the book—even if I nearly threw the book a few times and wanted to set it on fire by the time it finally ended.
I look over at his table more times than I want to admit. After a while, I accept that he’s not going to look my way and I force myself to stop.
I try to catch up to him on the way out to recess, but he’s always surrounded by his friends and I feel too awkward trying to talk to him around them. I’ll feel bad if I don’t find a chance to thank him, but it’s too hard to get him alone.
By the time recess is over, I give up. Maybe I’ll see if I can find his address and send him a nice thank you note instead.
When school lets out, I head home. Mom doesn’t get off for another hour, so I’ll be able to get a head start on my homework before she gets there.
At least, that’s the plan until Hunter catches up to me when I’m heading into the woods toward my usual path home.
“Hey.”
My heart does a weird flail, but I offer a contained smile as I look over at him suddenly walking beside me. “Hey.”
His gaze shifts away from my face as he surveys my sturdy new gear. “Backpack looks good.”
“I’ve been trying all day to find a chance to say thank you. I love it. It was so nice of you to do that.”
Casually ignoring my gratitude, he focuses on the part that interests him. “Trying all day, huh? What stopped you?”
“I couldn’t catch you alone. You have a lot of friends.”
“None of them bite,” he assures me. “Well, Sherlock does sometimes, but not at school and I wouldn’t let him bite you.”
My cheeks start to warm already and we’ve barely started talking. “Well, anyway, it’s a great backpack. You chose well.”
Rather than feign modesty, Hunter nods. “Damn right I did. I read the reviews and everything—found a durable one with strong straps. It shouldn’t be so easy to break this one, no matter how many rocks you lug around.” He tweaks the hanging backpack strap. “Did you start your book yet?”
I sigh heavily, dread washing over me at the mere thought of the book. “I finished it.”
His eyebrows rise. “Already?”
I nod miserably. “I stayed up all night reading.”
“And?”
“It was terrible,” I enthuse. “Nothing went the way it was supposed to. I’m so mad!”
Hunter smirks. “Perfect. Now you won’t try to make me read it.”
“You should still read it, that way you can be mad with me. Right now you don’t understand my anger. You need to experience the story yourself, then you can join me in my suffering.”
“I guarantee I wouldn’t care as much as you do,” he assures me.
Rather than take his word for it, I sling my new backpack off my shoulder and unzip it while I walk. Drawing out my black paperback copy of Hunger Games, I lovingly pass a hand over it, then I offer it to him. “I brought you book one.”
“I never agreed to this,” he reminds me, looking at the book, but not taking it.
“Come on. My best friend doesn’t read and I need someone to talk about it with.”
“Hard pass.” I wrinkle up my nose at him, but before I can further pester him about it, he takes me off guard by asking, “You want to come over?”
I miss a step and nearly trip, but I try to recover as smoothly as possible. “Come over?”
He nods, walking gracefully. “To my house.”
Every thought in my head seems to explode, leaving nothing left but confused thought-shrapnel. I forget how to make sounds. I forget how to do anything but stare at him and blink in a sort of awed confusion.
He wants me to come over to his house?
“I’m gonna take your silence as a yes,” he tells me.
Finally finding my words, I offer, “That’s a dangerous precedent.”
Hunter smirks over at me. “Tell me no, then.”
“Well, I don’t…” I sigh, unsure what to say. I want to say yes, but seeing how weird Mom got over the backpack, I probably shouldn’t. “My mom gets off work in an hour, so I wouldn’t be able to stay long.”
He shrugs. “That’s all right. I’ve got drama homework you can help me with.”
Cocking an eyebrow at him, I ask, “Oh, so you’re just inviting me over to use me for my homework-doing abilities?”
“Obviously,” he says lightly, knocking into me with his shoulder in a teasing gesture. “Why else would I invite you to my house?”
I roll my eyes at him like he’s annoying me, but he’s definitely not. I don’t know why I’m excited to spend time with him or why I’m so preoccupied by him today, but I can’t deny that I am.
When we make it to his place, I see he was definitely underselling the size of his house when he said it was a “little bit” bigger than mine.
Hunter lives in a mansion with a huge back yard. We cut through the woods to get here so I don’t see the view from the road, but four of my house could comfortably fit in his back yard alone.
While I look around in mild awe, Hunter casually fishes his key out of his backpack and leads me up the steps of their back deck. He unlocks a sliding door that opens up right behind their dinner table.
That seems like a good place to do homework, so I stop and start to drop my backpack on top. Hunter keeps going, though, so I follow him instead.
Seeming to remember his manners, he stops before we leave the kitchen and looks back at me. “Want anything to drink?”
I shake my head no.
“You sure?” he asks, walking over and opening the stainless steel refrigerator. “I’m gonna grab water. You want one?”
I shrug. “Okay.”
Hunter grabs two
bottles of water out of the fridge, but keeps his slightly narrowed eyes on me. “Are you getting shy on me?”
My cheeks warm and I drop my gaze, embarrassed that he’s calling me out on it. “No.”
“You sure?” he prods, his tone lightly playful. “You’re starting to turn pink.”
“I’ll leave if you’re just gonna make fun of me,” I inform him, planting a hand on my hip.
“Not until you do my homework, you’re not,” he jokes.
“A minute ago I was helping, now I’m doing the homework?”
“By the time you leave, you’ll be showing up in my place to all my classes. I bet you’re excited.”
“I can’t find the words to adequately express my excitement.”
Handing me a cold bottle of water, he asks, “You know any Greek plays?”
“Greek plays? Sure, I know of a couple. I’ve never actually read any, but... Why?”
“That’s the first part of the assignment. We have to find a Greek play for me to read. It doesn’t sound like a good time.”
“They tend to be tragic,” I agree. “Oedipus Rex is the first one that comes to mind, but it’s probably the first one that comes to everyone’s mind. This isn’t a group project?”
“Nope.”
I give him a perfunctory nod. “We’ll go with something less obvious, then. How about Medea? It’s dark, but there’s probably a decent chance no one else will pick it.”
He leads me toward the staircase at the front of the house, then we head upstairs. “I thought you said you hadn’t read any.”
“I haven’t, but I know what it’s about. It’s a story of vengeance.”
That seems to pique his interest. “Oh, yeah, that sounds good. Why’s this dude want vengeance?”
“It’s actually not the dude who wants vengeance. The main character is this woman who has basically given everything to lift up the dude, Jason. And then the dude decides to leave her for another woman, and boy, does she not appreciate that.”
Hunter cracks a smile. “I bet she doesn’t.”
“Are you acting the play out, or…?”
“Right now we just have to read the play and get a feel for the character we want to make a mask for. We’re making these Greek half-masks though, so I guess we’ll probably have to do some enactment next.”