by Amy Sparling
Something flashes in Mr. Brown’s eyes. A recognition of some sort that makes me a little embarrassed. Maybe he remembers me from when I was a kid, and maybe he’s thinking about how dorky I became and how cool his son is now. Although I’m sure business people don’t think of stuff like that.
“He’s doing very well,” he says. “Caleb’s been training for football next year. He made it into the college team for Houston. Did you hear about that?”
“Yes,” I say, trying not to roll my eyes. How could I not hear it? The whole school was excited when he was drafted to play college ball. “That’s very exciting for him.”
“I’ll tell him you said hello,” Mr. Brown says as he turns to leave.
“Oh…no, that’s okay,” I say quickly as I walk with him to the door, resisting the urge to shove him out of it as fast as possible. “He probably doesn’t even remember who I am.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Mr. Brown says, giving me another one of his charming smiles. “I look forward to hearing from your mother.”
By some miracle, my mother walks into The Magpie fifteen minutes late. I feel like spending the rest of the day dancing around and praising whatever gods have listened to my prayers. Another Jack Brown meeting has been thwarted, but how long can I keep him away from my mom? Hopefully she’ll tell him to go pound sand, to shove his buyout offer up his ass. But I can’t be sure of anything, especially now that the store is doing so poorly. I can’t let her sell it though, so I have to keep him away from her.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” Mom says. She’s carrying two Starbucks mocha fraps, and I’m grateful and gleefully excited when she hands me one, but I can’t stop thinking that we can’t afford fancy coffee. Still, I don’t say anything because she seems to be in a great mood.
“Your newsletter looked wonderful,” she says, settling next to me behind the counter. We’ve been open fifteen minutes and no customers have come in yet.
Technically we’ve been open even longer than that since I got here early, but I try not to let that fact get me down.
“What’s this?” Mom says, picking up the folder I’d left on the counter.
My heart leaps into my throat. “Sorry!” I say sheepishly as I yank the file from her hand. “Schoolwork. I didn’t mean to leave it out like this.”
Mom shrugs and checks the store’s email on our computer. I breathe a sigh of relief as I shove the file into my purse under the counter. Now I can’t throw it away until she’s not looking.
Jack Brown’s offer has increased to ten thousand dollars, which is still a huge insult if you ask me. The rest of the papers are some long contract about buying out someone’s store for the purpose of selling off the inventory to the lowest bidder and turning the shop into something else. I only skimmed over it, knowing full well that we won’t take ten grand for the shop where my mom has spent almost twenty years of her life.
***
By Sunday, my sales efforts have proven to be unsuccessful. We’ve only had a handful of customers this weekend, and most of them are old ladies on a fixed income who can’t spend very much. A grand total of zero people have mentioned the newsletter for a discount, so I’m guessing no one actually read it.
Depression seeps into my bones by the time I start closing up shop. If good intentions could sell trinkets, we’d be millionaires.
And that’s the sad thing here. I don’t even want to be a millionaire. I want to be normal people with enough money to pay the bills and not stress about it. I want Mom to be happy every day, working the job she loves. I’m not asking for much here, and I don’t know why I can’t save the store even with all of my hard work.
It isn’t until I’m sitting in the passenger seat of Mom’s car, listening to her sing along to Gwen Stefani on the radio when I realize that day it is.
Sunday.
Sunday night.
Tomorrow is the start of another week of school, of which I can’t miss any days. Where I’m going to be thrown into classes I don’t understand because I’m behind on the work. I didn’t even touch my stack of makeup worksheets this weekend because I was too busy at the store.
Dread seeps into my bones, rising up until I feel suffocated by the mere thought of how much school work I’ll have to do in the next two months.
I close my eyes and exhale. Deep down, I know this is a good thing because I want to go to college. I know we can’t afford it and I know my grades suck and I know it might not happen, but I do want to go. I want an education in business and I’d love to open a coffee shop one day. I want to be successful enough to take care of my mom if she needs me when she gets older.
So I have to try, even if the amount of work ahead of me feels impossible.
When we get home, I get online and search for tutors in my town. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to get a tutor on such short notice, since technically I’m supposed to start it on Tuesday after school. Will the school pay for it? Do I have to?
The tutoring options I find online are all pretty expensive and there’s no way we can spare that kind of cash right now. Surely the school will provide someone.
Actually, who am I kidding? It’s probably the teachers who do the tutoring. I’ll be stuck meeting with Mrs. Hardy in the library so she can lecture me in her high pitched voice about all the things she lectures in class.
As if school wasn’t already bad enough, now I’ll have to do more school outside of school.
I take one look at the stack of worksheets and wish I could disappear.
Chapter 6
April pulls her hair over her shoulder, inspecting the tips for split ends while we walk to school on Monday. I’ve been telling her about my ridiculous meeting with the assistant principal (or should I say my dad’s new wife, ugh) and how I now have to take tutoring. It feels good telling someone about this hell I’ve been placed into. I can’t tell my mom. She’ll either be pissed or stressed out or both. Probably both.
“So now I have to be tutored by God-knows-who,” I say with a groan. “If it’s Mrs. Lapin I’m going to drop out of high school and become a loser for the rest of my life, I swear.”
April laughs, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. “I don’t think Mrs. Lapin would stay after school even if they paid her. She’s always rushing out the door right after the bell rings.”
“This sucks so freaking bad,” I mutter. We stop at an intersection and I turn to face her, putting my hands on both of her shoulders. “Don’t ever fail your classes,” I tell her, looking her in the eyes. “It is not worth it.”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t skip school unlike someone I know…”
There’s a quick honk of a car horn, which gets both of our attention. At the intersection, which is a four way stop sign, a red Dodge truck rolls down the passenger window.
“Is he honking at us?” April whispers as she goes very still at my side, then slides her purse around her shoulder. She keeps pepper spray in her purse, so she’s probably reaching for it right now.
“Hi,” some guy calls out from the driver’s side of the truck. I glance around, but no one else is out here. He has to be talking to us.
“Are you talking to us?” I say because he still hasn’t driven forward and this is just weird.
“Yes,” he calls back, leaning over so I can see him through the window. “You’re Natalie, right?”
All the air rushes out of my lungs. I don’t know if I’m relieved that the car honking guy isn’t some creeper asking for directions, or if I’m suddenly very nervous because I know him.
Well I used to know him.
“Yeah, that’s me,” I say. Beside me, April whispers, “You know him?”
Caleb Brown motions for me to walk closer. I’m still a little surprised and confused, but my legs comply without my permission and the next thing I know I’m standing next to his truck, peering into the window.
Caleb Brown is tall like his dad, with black hair cropped short. In junior h
igh, he kept it long and shaggy, always in his eyes. Now he’s going for a more professional mature vibe, I guess. The sprinkling of freckles across his cheeks that I remember so well from when we were kids has faded into a dark tan. But his blue eyes are just as blue as I remember them.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“You own the store, right?” His brows pull together while he thinks. “The one on the boardwalk with the gifts and stuff inside?”
“The Magpie?” I offer, and he nods.
“Yeah, that one. That’s yours, right? Well, your mom’s?”
I nod, wondering why the hell he cares about that. “Cool,” he says, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “Well, um, you probably don’t remember me—”
“I remember you,” I say, cutting him off. “We were friends as kids.”
He smiles, his lips curving into that boyish look I remember so well. “Yeah, we were. It’s cool that you remember.”
My insides turn to mush at that smile. I mean. Whoa. I’d had the biggest crush on Caleb Brown as a kid, but I’m not an idiot as a teenager. I know he’s out of my league and way too cool and rich and popular for me to lust over now, but damn.
He’s crazy hot.
So hot it should be illegal.
“So…you want a ride?” he says, patting the seat next to him. “Your friend can come too.”
“No, thanks,” April says quickly. Her soft voice makes me startle because I’d totally forgotten she was even here. She tugs on my arm. “We like walking.”
I look at her like she’s crazy because why wouldn’t we want a ride? It’s humid as hell out here. But there’s a look in her eyes that I can’t ignore. She’s uncomfortable with this whole thing. I can’t do that to her, so I turn back to Caleb.
“We like walking, but thanks anyway.” He looks a little disappointed, and I feel guilty at how much I enjoy knowing I disappointed a guy like Caleb Brown.
“It’s cool,” he says, recovering his features into an impassive grin. “I’ll see you around.”
I nod and he drives off, and I keep replaying those words in my head. I’ll see you around. Had he said them with a little inflection at the end, like it was a question? It certainly sounded like it. Or was he just throwing out the words with no regard to their meaning, the way someone says what’s up and you say fine?
I have no idea. It all happened so fast. Now I can’t stop wondering what had actually happened verses what my lovesick brain wishes had happened.
“What was that?” April says beside me as we start walking again.
“I have no idea,” I say, sounding breathless.
“You knew him?”
“Kind of,” I say with a nod.
She stares at me in disbelief. “Isn’t he like some popular jock?”
“He used to be just a normal kid, and that’s when we were friends.” I’m so lost in my old world of daydreaming about the past that I step on a rock and nearly trip over it. April jumps out of the way as I flail and then regain my balance.
“So are you friends now? Sorry for so many questions, but you’ve never talked about having popular jocks on your list of friends.”
I laugh and shake my head. “We’re totally not friends. That was weird.” I glance around. “Do we look like we need a ride or something? Like, are we looking extra pathetic today?”
“No more pathetic than usual,” April says with a shrug. “Sorry I told him no, I just didn’t feel comfortable at all. You can’t trust jocks. They’re probably terrible drivers.”
I stare at the road ahead of us as we walk. “Don’t worry about it. I would have said no anyway. I mean can you imagine how awkward the ride would have been?”
She inhales a deep breath. “Exactly.”
***
School is just as foreign to me today. The teachers all move on with their lessons while I’m still trying to catch up. I try to focus and take notes, hoping that magically the knowledge will appear in my brain as if I’ve known it all along.
It doesn’t.
And that’s the thing with education. The harder it is to learn something, the more frustrated I get, and I just want to quit. When the chemistry lesson is so freaking confusing I don’t understand a word of it, it’s easy to just lay my head down and look out the window and daydream about something else. (Like how cute Caleb Brown is, for example.)
But I tell myself to try. It’s senior year, I’m failing this class, and I need to get my shit together.
So instead of letting my thoughts float to Caleb’s sparkling blue eyes, I study the periodic table of elements. Instead of wondering why he suddenly remembered my name this morning and not last month when he’d come into the store to buy a gift for his mom, I practice listing chemical reactions.
I’m fighting a losing battle though, because by seventh period I’ve become totally obsessed with thinking about Caleb Brown. I’ve looked for him in the hallways between every class, and analyzed that quick conversation we had about eighty thousand times. What was the meaning behind asking if I wanted a ride? Did he actually remember me when he visited The Magpie that time?
Was he suddenly thrown back to his childhood when we were friends and I’d had a huge crush on him and he didn’t know about it? Could he not get my face out of his mind until he remembered who I was?
I wanted to see him again, to run into him between classes and say hello and hope he’d tell me more of what was going on in his mind. Unfortunately, I didn’t see him at all except for during lunch. He sits at the longest table in the center of the cafeteria, surrounded by other jocks and cheerleaders and essentially every student at Sterling High who is so popular that everyone knows their names.
There was no way I was approaching him there. It didn’t stop me from sneaking glances at him, though. He didn’t seem to have a girlfriend, even though a girl sat next to him at lunch, stealing fries off his plate. She seemed more interested in the guy across from her, which made my heart beat a little faster. I don’t even know why I care—he’s not into me. There’s just no way.
But I’m a stupid teenager with stupid teenage hormones that won’t allow me to just live my life normally. No, I have to obsess over this gorgeous guy and the weirdly random event that happened this morning.
I’m still thinking about him when the final bell rings after school. I’m wondering if I should walk through the student parking lot instead of around it on the sidewalk. If I happen to pass by the red truck and Caleb is there, he might offer me a ride again. I’ll say no out of respect for April, but still – maybe it’ll give me the chance to talk to him.
I’m chewing on my lip and standing near the cypress tree where I meet April each day, still debating if I should try to find him or not when someone walks up to me.
“Hi there,” the guy says. He then promptly shoves his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants.
“Hello?” I say, lifting an eyebrow. He’s standing right in front of me so there’s no assuming he’s talking to someone else, and that’s why I’m confused. Why is this guy I don’t know talking to me?
Maybe he wants to recruit me into the Nerds of America club, I think, mentally rolling my eyes. He’s carrying a messenger bag instead of a backpack, and wearing leather shoes with his khakis and maroon polo shirt. He’s a few inches taller than me, with darker skin and shiny black hair that’s gelled over to the side as if his mom fixed his hair this morning. He’s like a hipster nerd—with more emphasis on the nerd part and less on the hipster part. In fact, I’m pretty sure hipsters would be embarrassed to hang out with him.
“Are you Natalie Reese?” he asks. He gives me what looks like a smile, but I can tell he’s a little nervous. Why any guy would be nervous around me, I don’t know. Maybe he’s going to try to sell me something.
But he knows my name, and that’s weird. What’s weirder is that now two guys have asked me the same question today. Two guys on total opposite ends of the popularity scale.
“Yes…” I s
ay, gripping the straps of my backpack. “I am Natalie Reese, last time I checked. Why do you ask?”
His shoulders relax a little and he gives me a smile, revealing perfectly white and very straight teeth. “Awesome. Mrs. Reese showed me your picture in the yearbook but it’s really hard finding someone in a crowd based on a picture from last year.”
“My mom?” I say, taken aback by the use of her being called a Mrs. when most people call her Marlene.
He looks confused. “Your mom is the assistant principal?”
“Oh my God, no,” I say with more venom than necessary. “Definitely not. Ew.”
“That’s who I was talking about,” he says, giving me a small smile. He rocks back on his heels a little. “It’s coincidental that you have the same last name.”
“I’d use a word more vulgar than coincidental,” I say with a sigh. Behind him, I see April walk through the doors. I’m ready to go home and work at the store, so I need to wrap up this bizarre conversation. “So why did the AP give you my picture?” I ask.
“I wanted to introduce myself to you. I’m Jonah,” he says, standing a little straighter. “I’m your tutor.”
Chapter 7
I go so still for so long, I must look like I’ve malfunctioned. April waves at me from where she’s standing a few feet away. Concern is stitched all over her face and she’s got this questioning look like she’s wondering if she should walk home without me or maybe tell a teacher that I need help. I shake my head at her and hold up a finger, signaling for her to wait.
“You’re my tutor?” I ask, giving the guy a look over. “But…you go to this school?”
He stares at me like I might not be quite right in the head and then nods. “I’m Jonah Garza…I think we had a class together in junior high. Your name seems familiar.”