Christian anymore, but my heart doesn’t seem to have gotten that message. Crap.
Crap. Crap.
Some things change. Some things don’t, I guess.
Everybody notices my hair. Of course. I was hoping that they’d notice in a quiet way, a few whispers, some gossip for a couple days, then it’d blow over. But I’m two minutes into first-period French when the teacher makes me take off the hat, and then it’s like a nuclear blast.
“So pretty, so pretty,” Miss Colbert keeps saying, an eyelash away from coming right up and stroking my head. I stick with the story that Mom and I came up with earlier about Mom finding an amazing colorist in California this summer and paying some astronomical fee for her to transform me from orange nightmare to strawberry fabulous. Saying all that in high school — level French while pretending I don’t speak the language perfectly is an especially fun part of the morning. I’m ready to go home before nine a.m. Then I duck into AP Calculus, the bell rings, and it’s like the whole fiasco starts all over again.
And fourth period, AP Government, is worse. Christian is there.
“Hi again,” he says as I stand in the doorway gawking at him.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. There are only around six hundred students at Jackson Hole High School, so the odds are in favor of us having a class together. Tucker’s supposed to be in this class too, last time I checked.
Where the—
“You going to come in?” Christian asks.
I slide into the seat next to him and rummage around in my bag for my notebook and a pen. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, roll my head from one side to the other to try to release some of the tension in my neck.
“Long day already?” he asks.
“You have no idea.”
Right then, Tucker breezes in.
“I’ve been looking for you all day,” I say as he claims the desk on the other side of me.
“Did you just get to school?”
“Yeah. Car trouble,” he says. “We have this old crap car that we use around the ranch, and it wouldn’t start this morning. If you thought my truck was junk, you should see this thing.”
“I never thought Bluebell was junk,” I tell him.
He clears his throat, smiles. “How about that? We’re in a class together, you and I, and I didn’t even have to bribe anybody this year.”
I laugh. “You bribed somebody last year?”
“Not officially,” Tucker admits. “I asked Mrs. Lowell, the lady in the office in charge of scheduling, real nice if she could get me into Brit. History. At the last minute, too, I mean like ten minutes before class started. I’m friends with her daughter, which helped.”
“But why. .?”
He laughs. “You’re cute when you’re slow.”
“Because of me? No way. You hated me. I was that yuppie California chick who insulted your truck.”
He grins. I shake my head in bewilderment.
“You’re crazy, you know that.”
“Aw, and here I thought I was being sweet and romantic and stuff.”
“Right. So, you’re friends with Mrs. Lowell’s daughter? What’s her name?” I ask with mock jealousy.
“Allison. She’s a nice girl. She was one of the girls I took to prom last year.”
“Pretty?”
“Well, she’s got red hair. I kind of have a thing for red hair,” he says. I punch him lightly on the arm. “Hey. I kind of have a thing for tough girls, too.” I laugh again. That’s when I feel the surge of frustration, so strong it wipes the smile right off my face.
Christian.
This kind of thing’s been happening lately. Sometimes, usually when I least expect it, it’s as if I’m allowed access into other people’s heads. Like now, for instance, I can perceive Christian’s presence on the other side of me so keenly that it’s like he’s boring holes into me with his eyes. I don’t get what he’s thinking in words so much as what he feels — he notices how natural it is for me to fall into this easy conversation with Tucker. He wishes that I would joke around with him that way, that we could finally speak to each other, finally connect. He wants to make me laugh like that.
Knowing this, by the way, totally sucks. Mom calls it empathy, says that it’s a rare gift among angel-bloods. Rare gift, ha. I wonder if there’s a return policy.
Tucker looks over my shoulder and seems to notice Christian for the first time.
“How you doing, Chris? Have a nice summer?” he asks.
“Yeah, fantastic,” answers Christian, and his mind suddenly retreats from mine into a wave of forced indifference. “How about you?”
They stare at each other, one of those high-testosterone stares. “Amazing,” Tucker says.
There’s a challenge in his voice. “Best summer of my life.” I wonder if it’s too late to get out of this
