Saxon looked up when I walked into government and stared me down as I came to our seats. We were setting up a polling survey we would later have to actually call on. “You all have cell phones!” Sanotoni barked. “We’ll call on Friday. The team with the most responses wins.”
“What do we win?” asked shrew-faced Lynn.
“A trip to the polling booth next week,” Sanotoni answered. “All day pass out of class.”
I was going to raise my hand and ask about my schedule. I didn’t want to win if it meant missing Tech. It would also be a day alone with Saxon, which was a bad idea no matter what I might secretly want. In the end, I decided the simplest thing was to make sure I didn’t win. It would be easy enough; I just wouldn’t be that good a caller.
“Hey, buddy.” Saxon looked me up and down.
“What are you looking at?” I snapped.
He smiled, a slow, coiling smile. “You look hot when you’re a little riled, Blix. Come. Sit. Learn.”
He was writing! He actually had a pen in his hand and was working.
“What are you doing?” I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the pen clasped in his hands. Had I ever seen Saxon willingly hold a pen during class? I couldn’t recall a single instance.
His black eyes danced with evil mischief when he looked my way. “I’m winning a date with you. Granted, it’s the frigging lamest date on earth, but I’m winning it anyway.”
“The poll?” I asked dumbly.
“I saw your face when Sanotoni announced it. You’re going to throw our chances,” he guessed. “But I’m going to use my many, many skills to win.”
“We’re only a two person group,” I pointed out. “You drove Lynn off the first day.”
“That nag will have the most hang ups in the class,” he said with absolute conviction. He looked over at her and shook his head. “She would have brought us down. Of course, I might not be right about you.” He looked up at me again and smiled, a gleaming, wolfy grin.
“What do you mean?” I asked narrowly, clicking my pen so fast it was like my finger was having a spasm.
“You’re a sneaky one, Blix.” He put one hand over my clicking finger and squeezed. I stopped clicking and the void left by the lack of that frantic metallic staccato was deafening. “I can’t wrap my head around you. Even if you want to throw this, you might not. A date with me might be more than you can resist.”
“Saxon, first of all it wouldn’t be a date.” I tried to pull my hand out of his grasp, but he held tight. I relaxed my hand and he released his hold, finger by finger. I shook my hand out and glared at him. “Secondly, I don’t have time to screw around at the polling booth. Third, I have no interest in sharing any more time with you than I have to.”
“Liar,” he muttered under his breath.
I gritted my teeth and went to work. The thing was, I was so busy being mad at Jake that I wasn’t sharp enough to deal with Saxon. By the end of the period, Saxon and I had completed writing out our polling survey and got Sanotoni’s stamp of approval.
He clapped us both on the back. “Look at these mighty brains!” he said, his rough laughter punctuating his words. “Rule change. Any team finished by tomorrow gets Thursday and Friday to call.”
Our AP Government classmates looked around with steely glares. I felt like I should keep a solid eye over my shoulder. Every single hair on my neck prickled in anticipation. This was war.
“Great,” I said under my breath to Saxon. “Now you have an entire battalion of brilliant geeks out for our blood.”
“They have drive, but they have no charisma.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned on the back two legs of his chair. “We’ll take this by a landslide.” Then he let the chair drop hard.
The bell rang, we filed into the hall, and Saxon threw an arm around my shoulder. It was the kind of simple, friendly gesture that people exchange all of the time. When they’re friends. But Saxon and I weren’t. My blood ran hot feeling the long length of his body against mine. I could smell the musky clean scent of his deodorant, my face bumped against his solid shoulder. Something in me prickled and squirmed.
He looked down at me, nestled in the crook of his arm and pulled me closer against him with one rough jerk, turning my body so we were face to face. Now both of his arms were linked around my shoulders. His mouth was a few inches away from mine. I could smell him; cigarettes and orange Tic Tacs.
“I have to go.” I tried to scuttle back out of his embrace. He held me closer, and I could feel the lean muscles of his arms at my back.
“Don’t.” His voice was velvety and rich in my ears. It was an invitation I almost wanted to accept. Almost.
“I have to.” My eyes met his, and I could see his pupils dilate, making his eyes look completely, endlessly black. “Let me go.”
“Skip art.” His eyes smoldered like hot coals. He pulled me a little closer.
“No.” I snapped out of his spell. I pushed at him with both hands, and his body was solid muscle under my palms. “No, Saxon. Go.”
He shrugged, but there was a gleam of anger that flashed in his eyes. “Fine, Blix. I’m gone.”
I saw him stalk down the hall and grab the arm of a Karen Tanner, cheerleading captain. He smiled and whispered something to her. She smiled back and practically rubbed herself against him. He didn’t even check the hallways before he went out the side doors, dragging Karen behind him as she hurried to catch up.
I went into the art class and sat by Kelsie and Chris. My head spun, and I was glad they were so wrapped up in each other, because it meant they wouldn’t notice if I sat quietly, lost in my own thoughts.
“Brenna! Brenna!” Kelsie waved her hand in front of my face. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I fished for some semblance of a smile that would convince them. “I think the snow day just threw my sleep off.”
“Are you sure that’s it?” She leaned away from Chris to give us a chance for private confession. I nodded. She gave me a long look, then reached into her school bag. “Well, I have something that might wake you up. We just got the Folly tshirts this morning!” She shook on out so I could see it.
“Wow,” I breathed. It was very cool to see my design on a t-shirt and to know that, soon, a whole lot of people would be wearing it. My final design was a silhouette of all four band members surrounding an exploding “Folly.” I had outlined each figure in neon colors, and the entire effect was bright but also edgy. “It’s cool, right?” I asked.
Kelsie nodded, opened her mouth, closed it, and waved to the shirt as if to say, ‘See for yourself!’.
“Oh.” I leaned over, excited. “I forgot. I made you a special one at home.”
I pulled it out of my bag. It was Kelsie and Chris in profile with an exploding heart behind them and tiny “Follys” with hearts instead of o’s.
“Oh my God.” Kelsie squealed and did a quick, energetic dance. “This is so cool! Chris, look at this!”
“Bren, that’s rad,” Chris said. “Seriously. Do you have the design lying around? This would be an awesome shirt for the Folly fans who are a little…softer.”
Kelsie glared a little, but Chris kissed her forehead quickly, and she smiled at him.
“Yeah, I have it saved on my jump drive.” I fished around in my bag and handed it to him. “It’s under ‘Folly Hearts.’”
“Love it.” Chris jumped up to go to an open lab computer in the corner of the room. “Thanks, Bren.” He ruffled my hair as he walked by.
“Chris is so nice.” I watched Kelsie watch Chris walk across the room, and I knew that look of love on her face. It was the exact look I saw in the mirror when I was thinking about Jake.
“Yeah.” Kelsie sighed. “He asked me out last year, but I turned him down.”
“Really?” They seemed so well-suited, it was odd to think Kelsie ever had a reason to say no to him.
“I just didn’t want to date right then.” She shrugged, her dozens of silver bracelets clattering together
when she threw her hands up. “And he seemed really intense, like he’d want to be boyfriend and girlfriend right away. I thought it would be more fun to date around.”
“Was it?” ‘Dating around’ was what Mom always encouraged.
“Yes and no.” Kelsie wound her dark hair in a makeshift bun and stuck two colored pencils in it. “It was fun to go on dates, but the guys who want to date around aren’t usually interested in conversation and art and music, if you know what I mean.” She raised her eyebrows and opened her eyes wide.
“I hear you.” Kelsie went back to her pottery project and I tangled with my sad macramé mess for a few minutes. “Kelsie?”
“Yeah?” She was concentrating on her clay.
“How much do you and Chris, um, fool around?” I closed my eyes a little as I prepared for the impact of asking such a brazen question.
Kelsie put her tool down, but she didn’t look like she was going to faint or anything. “We haven’t had sex.”
“Oh.” I bit my lip.
“We’ve done other stuff.” Kelsie wiped some clay off of her hands with a rag and folded them in front of her.
“Is there…do you guys ever disagree about how far is too far?” I looked down at my cream-colored, stiff string, which was badly knotted and very ugly. It felt a little like I was looking at the mess Jake and I had made of our relationship.
“Chris has already had sex, so there’s that. He’s not pressuring. Not now anyway. But sometimes I want to go farther because I’m curious. It’s just a big step, and I want to make sure I’m doing it with someone I really care about, not just out of curiosity.” She bit her bottom lip thoughtfully. “Why is Ms. Sexy Mama Blixen asking these questions?”
“Jake and I fooled around yesterday. And I felt really good about it. Then we talked on the phone, and he basically said he didn’t feel comfortable with it because he didn’t want it to end up like all the other times.” I shoved the knotted strings across the table and rubbed my temples in an attempt to squash the headache that was slowly throbbing to life.
“What did you say?” Kelsie leaned towards me, her eyes shiny with interest.
“I told him he had no right to tell me how far to go with my body and that he didn’t run the relationship. Then I hung up on him.” I offered her a sheepish half-smile.
Kelsie crowed, obviously delighted with me. “Holy crap! Bren, you are so awesome! That’s exactly what I would have said if I had half your guts. Good for you! The fact that Jake has all of this baggage sucks, but he has to deal with it. Not dump it on you.”
“He never called back.” I bit my lips and tried not to think about the fact that our little fight might have tangled into a knot that would be impossible to undo.
“Jake seems really nervous with you, Brenna.” Kelsie rubbed a piece of clay between her fingertips slowly. “You know his mom died when he was really young?”
“Yeah. How did you know?” My senses prickled.
“Jake used to be…with one of Chris’s cousins. She said he was always super emotional about his mom, and the big fight he had with Saxon was over her.”
“What happened?” I believed Jake when he told me his version of the night, and it made sense that if he had been as drunk as he said, he wouldn’t have remembered many details.
“She didn’t say. Just that it was about Jake’s mom. Anyway, he’s probably got issues. Like with women.” I looked at her curiously. “With women leaving him.” She gave me a look and nodded her head.
“Oh.” I felt deflated, like all the strength suddenly seeped out of me. “So I was probably overly harsh to him?”
“No. Just because he has stuff he’s dealing with doesn’t mean you should become some kind of doormat. I’m proud you spoke up for yourself.” She put one clay-crusted hand on mine and patted. “If Jake really cares about you as much as he says he does, he’ll think about what you had to say.”
I nodded. Before I knew it, class was over and I was headed for gym. I was surprised to see Saxon on the soccer field after his abrupt departure with Karen Tanner, but there he was, hooting and calling whenever I finished a lap like all was fine between us. Coach Dunn tried to corner me to ask about track, but I wiggled away from her. I sat quietly through half of lunch, brooding.
“What’s up Blix?” Saxon threw a fry at me. “There’s still food on your plate. What’s wrong with you?”
I had been thinking, mulling over everything that happened since Jake first told me about his big breakdown. I looked at Saxon, his black eyes laughing, his mouth twisted in a self-confident smile, and I felt a burning hatred for him.
“What did you say to Jake the last night you hung out?” I asked suddenly.
The entire table went dead quiet. Saxon stood and grabbed me under the elbow, then marched me out of the lunchroom, past the teachers on duty.
“She said she feels like she’s going to puke!” he called, and we were given a wide berth. He brought me outside, next to the bike rack. It was warmer than it had been, but still too cold to stand outside without a jacket on. “What the hell was that about?” he shouted in my face.
I shivered, but I didn’t want him to see me shake, so I clenched my teeth and held my body rigid. “I just want to know what you said to Jake. The night you broke his tooth.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I didn’t say a thing!” he yelled, then ran a hand through his hair. Saxon had lost all cool. He wasn’t even trying to act like he was keeping it together.
“Liar!” I yelled back at him, my lips trembling in the cold, and my voice echoed in the chilly air. “You’re a liar,” I repeated, more calmly.
He looked at me and licked his lips, opened his mouth and closed it. “I didn’t say a thing Jake didn’t already know. I was just warning him.” His eyes begged me to believe him.
“About what?” The wind whipped my hair across my face and threw me off balance closer to Saxon than I wanted to be.
“About ending up like his dad.” Saxon gritted his teeth.
“You mean the drinking?” I remembered Jake telling me about his father’s drinking and how it didn’t stop him from getting into it. But I thought Saxon was the one who got him started?
“That,” he growled. “And the stupid girls.” He fisted both hands in his hair and let go with a grunt. He looked completely wild and predatory, different than I’d ever seen him.
“What do you mean?” Stupid girls. There must have been a lot of them. Jake had been with so many other girls. My face got hot just thinking about it.
“I told you, Jake slept with every girl who looked at him and smiled. That kid seriously couldn’t keep it in his pants. And he was drinking all of the time. Sleeping with girls who were looking for someone just like him.” He looked at me coldly, searching my face to see if I was going to respond to what he said.
“I know this stuff.” I was glad I had the cold to blame all my shaking on. “Jake told me everything he remembers.”
Saxon snorted. “Well, that’s not everything, trust me, Blix. That night, there was a girl there. No good. She was looking to get pregnant. She wanted to hook Jake.”
“How do you know?” I tried hard not to look too shocked. Pregnant? Who would want to get pregnant in high school? Had it happened?
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t get it. You come from a whole different world. She wanted to make sure Jake stuck around. He’d slept with her before, but didn’t even remember her name. She was talking about it. How she’d tried poking holes in the condom with another guy. Whatever, she was a skank.” Saxon’s eyebrows were pushed low over his eyes.
“What does this have to do with Jake’s mom?” My head spun so hard I wanted to sit down or lean against something. But there was nothing near me except for Saxon, and I wasn’t about to lean on him.
“His mom was the worst mom imaginable.” Saxon practically spit. “She was more interested in who she could get in the sack than taking care of Jake. Once, she got drunk and told Jake’s
dad that she didn’t even know if Jake was his.”
“Oh my God.” Was that why Jake and his dad had such a tense relationship?
“Anyway, her dying was the best thing that could have happened to Jake. And it was like, as soon as she was gone, he started to put the worst elements of her back into his life. Like some kind of miserable-ass tribute to the worst mother on earth.” Saxon shook his head and ground his teeth. “I told Jake he was about to sleep with a no good whore like his mother.”
“Saxon!” I cried. It didn’t matter what your background or how cool you might be, no one could cross the mother line. I could only imagine Jake’s fury when Saxon said that about him mother. His mother who had died so young. “It doesn’t matter what his mom did. She’s still his mom, and you had no right saying anything about her.”
“Bullshit!” Saxon yelled, pointing a finger so close to my face I backed up. His breathing was heavy and his eyes were bright and furious. “No one cared about that kid the way I did! No one! He was like a brother to me, and I wasn’t about to watch him ruin his life!”
“What did you do?” I closed my eyes against his answer, waiting for the events of the night to be revealed by the only person who really knew. And I had the distinct feeling I wouldn’t like what I heard.
“I punched him in the face, tried to knock his ass out.” Saxon’s voice was rough. “But he’s tougher than he looks. I just wound up chipping his tooth. So I stole his shoes so he couldn’t leave on foot and told one of my friends to let him sleep with her.” He looked at my face. “Not like that, Blix. He was out of it anyway. When he woke up, I let him blame it all on me, the whole night, the drinking, his whorishness. I’m glad I did, too. He stopped hanging out with those losers, me included. He hasn’t had a drink since, he got a job, stopped screwing up in school. It’s everything I ever wanted for him.” Saxon hung his head. “It’s the best thing for him.”
“But you had to give him up.” I felt tremors that had nothing at all to do with the temperature. I wanted to wrap my arms around Saxon, because I knew the pain and loss that overwhelmed him was completely real. And no one understood better than I did what it was like to care about Jake and worry that he might be gone.
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