Getting Caught (5 page)

But for some reason, even though I’ve managed pretty well, I still can’t stop myself from melting in Dave’s presence. Even though we’re now complete opposites, I’ve always had this vision of him going to extremes out of love for me, like Danny in
Grease
. He could teach me how to catch a football, and I could show him how to resist cultural stereotypes and rage against the machine.

I pick it up and pray to God I can get the thing over the net without looking like a major tool. Instead, when I let it go and swing, the shuttlecock falls at my feet again. I try twice more with the same result, my face growing hotter and hotter. Checking the clock (nine minutes left), I hope he’ll say something, anything, to put me at ease. When I turn back to his face, it’s stony. He’s squinting like he can’t believe someone this pathetic at badminton can exist.

Suddenly I feel someone come up behind me, wrapping large hands around my waist. I stiffen as I hear Ken Greeley whisper in my ear, “I thought you’d be better with that cock. Or are you just a tease?”

I drop the racket and try to push him off, but he still hangs on me, moving his hands up to my chest. As I’m looking around for Miss De Frisco, trying to free my arm and shove my elbow into the jerk’s ribs, I hear Dave’s voice.

“Knock it off, Ken,” he says. He’s standing next to me, his hand on Ken’s shoulder, pulling him off me. I have no idea how he got so close so fast. “Just leave her alone.”

Ken gives Dave an icy glare. “What, are you getting some from her?”

Dave’s voice is soft but confident. “I don’t want you getting expelled. We need you at the next game.”

Ken mutters something and heads off, leaving us alone. I try to thank Dave, but it comes out too soft, as a jumble of words.
Be tough, Jess,
I tell myself.
Remember, it’s all in the reaction.

“You all right?” he asks me, handing me my racket.

I nod, finally getting my voice back. I pretend to wave Ken’s memory off. “Never better.”

I expect him to return to the other side of the net and start lobbing more passes over to me that I can miss. Instead, he pulls my racket up and my hand follows, gripping hard on the handle. Then he touches my hand. Touches me. “You’re too tense. Loosen up.”

I try to, but my hand is coated in perspiration. If I loosen up any more, the racket will slide right out of my palm in a little puddle of sweat.

I see a trace of a smile on the corner of his mouth and he moves closer, so close I can smell him. He smells nice, like soap and peppermint chewing gum. “Do you mind?”

I shake my head slightly, wondering if I’ll wake up from this dream now.

His chest pushes lightly against my back, just like Ken’s did, but he keeps his hands on mine, still on the racket. I’m fully aware that as long as he is this close, breathing is not possible. Actually, anything but sweating and maybe peeing my pants is impossible. Then he lets the shuttlecock fall and follows through a swinging motion with me. The racket makes contact, and the shuttlecock sails over the net. “See? You don’t have to hit it hard. Just concentrate on making contact.”

“Okay,” I say, throwing a smile in his general direction since I’m still unable to meet his eyes. “Thanks.”

He runs over to the other side, picks up the shuttlecock, and gently lobs it over to me. I swing, a little too fervently, and the shuttlecock ends up flying into the court three aisles over. “Whoops.”

He watches it sail over his head. “But at least you hit it.”

I shrug as he runs off to get it, then check the clock again. Six minutes. This is officially the longest gym class of my life, but somehow I know when it’s over, I’ll wish we’d had more time. I’ve been in classes with Dave Ashworth for ten years, and this is the closest he’s ever been and the most he’s ever said to me. The next time the planets align so perfectly, I’ll probably be in dentures.

He lobs another pass over to me, and I hit it back to him. We keep it going back and forth a few times until I remember I’m playing badminton with Dave Ashworth and totally spaz out, dropping my racket on the ground with a clatter. I throw my hands up and let out a little squeak, then kick the racket as if it bit me.

He laughs. “Nice move.”

I find myself thinking that since I’ll probably be ninety before I find this serendipity in my life again, I should use it to my advantage. Say something deep and meaningful to him so that years from now, when he’s on his deathbed, he’ll say, “What is it that girl in senior badminton class said to me? Ah, yes… “

But my mind is completely blank.

I am totally wasting my moment.

We spend another few minutes in silence, batting the shuttlecock to one another. Finally he opens his mouth, and I know for sure he’s going to say something snide and Ken Greely-esque about my fishnets. Instead, he asks, “So, how’s the prank war with Peyton going these days?”

Oh, just great. I would have preferred him saying something about my fishnets. At least maybe then I could have come up with some wry retort. But instead, he picks the one topic Peyton and I are sworn to secrecy on. There’s an unwritten rule that we’re not allowed to talk about the prank war on school grounds, to cut down on the probability of getting in trouble. I mean, basically the whole school has figured it out by now, but as long as we don’t actually admit to the war, no one can say for sure. Since my pool of friends has been rather (actually completely) limited, it hasn’t been a problem. Until now.

“Um, I can’t really talk about that,” I say dumbly, knowing now that I’ve shut him down on the first question he’s ever asked me, our future together is bleaker than ever.

I expect he’ll never talk to me again, but instead, he holds up his hands in surrender. “I hope you don’t think that because I helped her with that last one, I’m on her side.”

“You aren’t?” I ask, trying to raise my eyebrows as sexily as possible. Actually, I
had
thought that at first. But since the day of the prank, I rarely saw them together anymore. In fact, Dave would sometimes walk right past Peyton in the hallway without so much as a hello. And Peyton was too focused on Harvard to care about a guy like Dave. She has a way of charming people, of putting them at her disposal and dumping them after they’ve filled her purpose. It was obvious she’d used Dave and the rest of the team, like she’d used me back when I was young and stupid. And though I would never admit it aloud, since Peyton is probably the prettiest girl in school, everyone—especially the guys—falls over her like the boy-lemmings they are.

Dave grins. “I’m totally Switzerland.”

I try to steady my heart. The smile alone is breathtaking, but he actually seems to care what I think about him! Can this be happening?

I roll my eyes and lob the shuttlecock over to him. “Are you sure nobody overthrew your government while you weren’t looking?”

It takes him by surprise because the shuttlecock hits him square between the eyes. He starts to laugh, and it gets so loud he had to put his hands on his knees. Recovering, he points at his chest. “I’m still the ruler of this country.”

“Oh-kay. Ri-ight,” I say, with another roll of the eyes. I feel a little more normal now and not in danger of peeing my pants. Things are going well. Progress has been made.

He’s about to say something when the bell signaling the end of the period rings. Instead, he drops his racket to the ground and gives me a wave. “See you, Jen,” he calls over his shoulder as he heads to the guys’ locker room.

I spend the next few minutes, while I’m changing out of my shorts, wondering what he was going to say. And wondering, had we had another twelve minutes, if he might have remembered my name.

Chapter Seven

Peyton

I think I might puke.

Actually, I’m not sure I
can
puke, since I already did this morning and now my stomach is completely
vacuous
of contents.

At least, I think it’s vacuous. Vacuous was one of my vocab words, and I think it means empty, but at the moment my brain has nearly ceased functioning all together.

In four minutes I’m going to walk through this door and sit across from a Harvard admissions officer. And he’s going to decide if I’m good enough for them. All based on the words coming out of my mouth. At the rate I’m going, those words will be pure gibberish.

Even as I stand here, I can’t believe I’m about to take the next step toward my dream. I can’t believe it’s mid-January already, and senior year is going so fast, and I’m about to do something so important I can hardly breathe. I know based on countless Google searches they interview way more people than they admit. An interview is, in no way, a shoo-in for admittance.

But I’m still so excited I’m in near meltdown mode. If only my brother were here to calm me down. He’s the only one who can.

Instead, in a moment of insanity, I invited Bryn. She’s pacing the hall like a caged animal and chattering on and on about how I’m about to change my life forever, and how I’d better sound really smart and sophisticated, and don’t forget to thank them profusely. I’m starting to get the whole concept of herd mentality and why stampedes get started, because we’re feeding off each other’s nerves and we’re both about to explode.

The halls are completely empty. Of course, who would be here on a Saturday unless they were either crazy or interviewing for Harvard? Just as I’m contemplating that, I hear a door swing open, and Jess Hill strolls into the hallway. Her combat boot-clad footsteps echo across the emptiness. Speaking of crazy… Her head is down, so she doesn’t see me, but I see the blotchy dye job on her red and blond hair. How did she go from my best friend to most-likely-to-be-an-inmate?

When she looks up, she’s surprised to see me. In fact, I think I scared her. Her eyes get big and her mouth hangs open for a moment.

“Why are you here?” I ask. Surely Harvard is not interviewing
her.
She’d make a mockery of their college.

“Saturday detention,” she says with a scowl. With her lips pouting like they are, I can’t help but notice the too-dark lip liner. It’s like she
wants
to scare people away.

I roll my eyes. “Figures.” Jess probably single-handedly keeps the detention room in use.

“You?” Now she looks intrigued. She knows
I’m
not here for Saturday detention. Until now, I didn’t even know that existed.

“None of your business.” I cross my arms at my chest but then uncross them. The last thing I want to do is wrinkle my freshly starched blue button-up. I’d bought it specifically for this occasion, along with a pair of eighty-dollar gray slacks, complete with the crease down the front. I want to look perfect, not frumpy.

I cross my arms again, even though I know I shouldn’t. Luck is for losers. “A winner makes her own luck,” I say, reciting from one of the Harvard manuals I’ve read.

She shrugs. “You never know.” Then she wanders off, and the echo of her boots disappears just as she does.

“God, she’s such a loser,” Bryn says.

For some reason I have the fleeting urge to defend her. But I brush it off, because Jess
is
a loser. She’d been normal at one point, and then she betrayed my family, and after that she just got progressively weirder. It’s her own fault she has no friends.

I hear the squeaking of rusty hinges as the door behind me opens. It’s a sophomore English classroom, one I haven’t been in for nearly two years. A small man in a dark burgundy blazer with a golden crest on the breast pocket steps out into the hall.

All of a sudden I can’t breathe. The urge to vomit is so intense I think I might run away from him. I can’t even see Bryn standing beside me anymore, just the Harvard emblem on this guy’s chest. It’s burned into my retinas so that I think I might still see it long after I look away.

I’m vaguely aware of the fact he’s talking, and my eyes travel up his red- and blue-striped tie to a pair of thin lips. They’re moving, and I’ve missed most of what he said.

“So if you’re ready, please come in,” he finishes, waving me toward the door.

I nod. He’s younger than I’d expected; Maybe thirty at the oldest. He has dark hair—nearly black—and even with his collar buttoned up, I can tell he probably has a hairy chest. Even his
throat
looks furry. He looks like one of those guys whose beard never stops. It goes down his chin and neck and keeps going.

He escorts me over to an empty table, and I take a seat across from him. He has a big leather portfolio, and as I sit down he opens it and starts writing. Somehow he keeps one eye on me and while he writes, and I get the overwhelming sensation I’m dressed inappropriately. I glance down just to make sure everything is buttoned correctly and then look back up at him. I can feel my face heating up. He’s assessing me as if looks alone will get me in the door.

Some of the tension leaves my body and I feel my back relax a little. I prepared for dozens of questions. This was one of them. “I’ve worked for years to prepare myself for the kind of challenging education Harvard provides. I’ve cultivated leadership qualities while diversifying my interests. I am ready to excel at your school in order to ensure a successful future.”