“Mr. Parish,” he said, opening the back door of the sedan for me. “Are you ready, sir?”
“Do I have a choice?” I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. “Another day at the circus.”
My first class of the day was AP English. Ms. Watkins, a thin, mousy-looking woman with puffy brown hair and glasses welcomed us in by reading a passage from Naked by David Sedaris that had the class howling with laughter.
“For this unit,” Ms. Watkins said, “we will be studying the craft of memoir. You will be reading some of the great memoirists—Sedaris, James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, Maya Angelou, Joan Didion—and we will be synthesizing the mechanics of writing with the particular artform of the autobiography.”
I sat up a little straighter.
Fine. So there’s one class I might actually survive without gouging out my eyes with a pencil for boredom.
“Your writing assignments will be a mix of essays on the writers we will be studying, and you will have the chance to tell some of your own stories.” Ms. Watkins had a warm smile. “There is no such thing as an ordinary life.”
No matter how much we may want one.
After a promising start with English, it was downhill from there, with the classes being ungodly simple and pointless. I made it through the day without burning the school down—a minor victory. But as I approached my last class—Calculus—my stomach twisted with an unfamiliar sensation.
I am not nervous over a guy. Not me. Not ever.
After all we’d been through together, I couldn’t allow my heart even the slightest injury. That it was still pumping was asking enough. But goddamn, the second I laid eyes on River Whitmore, my pulse kicked up a notch and a little thrill zipped down my spine. Like a tiny reminder of what it meant to be alive.
I took the empty seat beside him again, keeping my bandaged hand in my coat pocket. He refused to talk to me or even look my way, yet I felt his attention on me; his tapping pencil and jouncing leg like Morse code that I was getting under his skin.
I behaved myself for forty-five torturous minutes, basking in River’s nearness. His scent. A woodsy cologne underscored by eau d’gasoline. The combination was a potent, heady mixture that gave me inappropriate thoughts.
More than usual.
Do one good thing. Just one. And maybe the nightmares will leave you alone.
I tossed a small, perfectly geometrically folded piece of paper onto River’s desk.
“What the hell is this?” he whispered.
“Pop quiz,” I said. “Do you like me? Check yes or no.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Relax. It’s my phone number.”
River did not, in fact, relax. His eyes widened and an actual blush crept up his muscled neck.
“What the hell for?” he demanded, though his voice sounded thicker than it had a moment before.
“In case you need tutoring. Say your grades start slipping and you’re in danger of being cut from the team. You call the hot new guy to help you ace the test, just in time for the big game.”
River crunched the paper in a fist, and I thought he might throw it back at me.
“Nice stereotyping. Do you actively try to piss people off or does it come naturally?”
“I’m naturally gifted. Endowed, some might say.”
River was not amused.
I huffed a breath. “Look, I’m obviously bad at this. I want to talk to you. Apologize. But I’m leaving it up to you,” I said quickly when he started to protest. “You have my number so you can call if you feel like hearing what I have to say. Or if you want to…talk. About anything.”
River turned the folded paper over and over in his fingers, his expression stormy.
“Or you can throw it away,” I said. “Or burn it. Or write it on the boys’ bathroom wall under: For a good time, call… Advertising is everything these days.”
River stared at me as if I’d grown a second head, then laughed. “You’re crazy.”
“That’s the word on the street,” I said, his smile making me smile.
The bell rang, clanging through the moment. The class began gathering their things while Mr. Reynolds droned about upcoming homework. River collected his stuff. He didn’t say another word but put on his letterman jacket.
My phone number went into the pocket.
Miller watched me wedge a wing-back chair into the Shack’s doorway with a frown.
“It’ll never fit.”
“That’s what he said,” I replied and angled the huge, white chair until it slipped through the small door. I sat down, beaming at my friends. “Perfect, right?”
Ronan and Miller exchanged looks, both of them sandy and sweaty from spending the better part of that afternoon helping me carry the chair from a side street nearest the beach to the Shack.
“What do you need a chair for anyway?” Ronan asked. “We have the bench.”
“I’m not sitting on a splintered slab of wood that some pirate probably pissed on a hundred years ago.”
Miller rolled his eyes. “Can’t argue with that logic.”
The three of us sized up our little haven. The chair took up quite a lot of real estate in the Shack, but there was still plenty of room, even with the rest of the upgrades I’d been making over the last few days: a heavy-duty camping lantern, a mini-fridge with a generator for booze and the snacks Miller needed to keep his blood sugars even, and an old trunk with a padlock.
Miller’s gaze lingered on the trunk the longest. His mom’s new boyfriend was a douchebag with a capital douche, and he feared for his guitar’s safety after he caught Chet messing with it
