Saving Face (a young adult romance) (13 page)

“Six hundred twelve!”

Alyssa turned away from the closet
to see Brent filling the door frame.  “Six hundred twelve what?”  She rushed
over to give him a kiss.

“Steps from my dorm room to yours.” 
Brent was grinning at her.  “And since I have two roommates and you only have
one… we’ll be spending a lot of our time here.”  Brent swept her up and they
landed together on her tiny twin bed.  The aforementioned roommate was at the
campus bookstore.  “I have something for you.”  Brent pulled a small black ring
box from his pocket.

Alyssa lost her ability to
breathe.  Her panic must have shown on her face, because Brent rolled his eyes
at her.  This didn’t bother her nearly as much these days. 

“Don’t have a heart attack Chere.” 
He lifted the lid to reveal a ring with two silver hands clasping a heart.  “I
bought it last year actually.  I meant you to have it for Christmas but…”  He
let the sentence trail off.  They’d rehashed those lost months enough over the
summer.  “Worn this way it is a friendship ring.”  He lifted it from its box. 
“and this way”  he turned the ring so the heart pointed inward “means you
belong to someone.  You belong to me.”

“I love it.”  Alyssa let him slip
the ring onto her finger.  “I bought you a tripod.  Pretty lame huh?”

“No way!  Is it here?” 

“Nah, it’s at home.  You can have
it next weekend.”

Brent pulled her close to him. 
“That’s cool.  I’m not thinking about cameras right now anyway.”  When he’d
finished kissing her senseless he had another question for her.  “Are going to
react that way when it’s the real thing?”

“What?”  He was confusing her.

“The next time I give you a ring
box, Lyssa.  I’d like to know if you are going to have another deer in the
headlights moment.”

“You mean if we… I thought it was a
…”

“Duh, Lyssa.  I mean
when
I
propose.  Don’t get me wrong—we should probably get through college first.  But
I think that’s where this is headed.  I’ve been in love with you forever.  It
just took me 18 years to notice.”

“I love you too.  I promise—no deer
in the headlights.”  Alyssa kissed him again.

“When’s your roommate coming
back?”  Brent wanted to know.

“She’s going to dinner after the
bookstore.”  Alyssa whispered. 

Keep Reading for a Sneak Peak
at

The
Last Place You Look

Vanilla. 
That’s what Mr. P’s office smelled like.
  Not even real vanilla or
expensive fake vanilla.  His office smelled like cheap store brand vanilla
scented air freshener and cigarette smoke.  The window behind his desk was
cracked open an inch, despite the wet morning chill that was to be expected in
April.  Marilyn smirked.  He wasn’t fooling anybody.  Just last week, he’d
busted her friend Heather for smoking behind the bleachers on the football
field—what a hypocrite.

Mr. P was her class councilor.  No
one liked him.  Not that Marilyn had been in his office all that often over the
past four years.  And she supposed most students didn’t like school authority
figures as a matter of principle, but Mr. P was the worst.  Calling him ‘mister
p’ sounded all friendly, but the real reason students shortened his name was
because no one was able to call him Mister Prick to his face without laughing. 
Who in their right mind takes a job in a high school with a last name like
Prick? 

He lived for getting kids into
trouble.  Last year, Heather’s tardies had been just the teensiest bit high and
Mr. P took away her parking permit!  They had to ride the bus for an entire
week!  And okay it probably wasn’t Mr. P’s fault, the school did have a policy
about tardies, but he certainly hadn’t looked the other way, either!

“Miss Danning?  Do you understand
what this means?  Marilyn?”

Oops!  Marilyn felt a little
sheepish about ignoring him.  Her college applications were already in
though—what could he possibly want with her?  She pulled the yellow slip of
paper he’d given her closer and read it over.

Oh. My. God.

“I’m not going to graduate?” 
Marilyn felt an instant need to vomit.  His stupid stinky air freshener wasn’t
exactly helping, either.

“So it is safe to assume that you
haven’t been listening to me?”  Mr. P sighed and slumped backward in his chair.

Marilyn ignored his question. 
“This is completely unfair!  I am a good student!  Mythology shouldn’t even
count as a real class!  I have to graduate!”

“Maybe you should have thought
about that before skipping fifth period seventeen times.”  Mr. P sighed again
and waved her towards the door.  “Take that home and read it over.  I’ll need
one of your parents to sign it and you must return it to me by next week.” 

That was it?  He wasn’t even going to
talk to her about this?  What a jerk!  Marilyn was shaking with equal amounts
of fear and anger as she left his office.  This was Heather’s fault.  Heather
always wanted to skip fifth period and go get frozen coffees down the street. 
Nothing bad ever happened to Heather.  Oh no, whenever she had a problem, she
would just bat her eyes and flash some skin at the nearest boy.  Bam—problem
solved.

Marilyn stood in front of the
office door for several moments wallowing in her despair before she noticed she
had an audience.  Benjamin Farther was watching her from a short, battered
wooden desk across the hall.  He must be the first period office aid.  Dorks
like Benjamin Farther were always office aids, or IT aids—it probably looked
good on college applications.  Not that she needed to be thinking about
colleges right now.  Since she wouldn’t be attending one next semester.  A
fresh wave of nausea rolled through her nervous system.

Marilyn could only think of one
thing to do.  So she gave the hem of her sweater tug, revealing a bit more of
her cleavage, put on her best pouty face, and walked over to Benjamin’s crappy
little desk.  “You wouldn’t believe what
that man
just told me!”  She
lowered herself into the chair across from him.

It
took a moment for Benjamin to realize Marilyn was talking to him
. 
Marilyn Danning and Benjamin Farther had been in the same schools together all
their lives and, save for the time she borrowed a periwinkle crayon from him in
the second grade, she never talked to him.  “What did he say?”

Of course Benjamin could have
guessed—he probably could’ve gotten it in one.  Marilyn was holding a bright
yellow slip of paper.  Yellow means you’re in danger of being ineligible for
graduation.  She would need to have it signed by a parent and then turn it in
to the office where he would be in charge of filing it.

“I have to pass Mythology!  He
isn’t going to let me graduate otherwise.  Did you know I need a senior English
credit to graduate?” 

Of course he knew.  Everyone knew. 
There were class meetings every year and then there was that stupid chart you
had to fill out when you chose your electives.  Anyone who’d paid attention
even a little bit over the last three and half years would have known she
needed a senior English credit.

“Um, well, I think it’s on the
elective form.”  Why was she sitting there?  She was supposed to go straight
back to class—her hall pass had a time stamp.

“What can I do?”  She folded her
arms on the desktop in front of her and dropped her head down.  Blond hair fell
across his Calculus book.  That was probably the end of any work he was going
to get done.

Sometimes her hair was curly, but
today it was straight.  Marilyn Danning was the single most beautiful girl
Benjamin had ever seen in person.  She was kind of short, but when she walked
down the halls she sort of bounced.  That made short look really cute.  He
liked her hair best curly, but even when it was straight, she looked good
enough to sell shampoo.  When they were ten, he’d actually told his mother he
was going to marry Marilyn when they grew up.  Of course that was a long time
ago.  They didn’t exactly travel in the same social circles.

It was pretty clear she wasn’t
going anywhere, so he reached over and took the yellow slip of paper from her. 
“This isn’t all that bad, Marilyn.”  He said after reading it over.  “You still
have the final, and they are offering you an extra credit paper…”  Marilyn
looked up at him and for a second he forgot what he was saying.  Damn, she was
pretty.  “Anyway—you could still work this out.”  He slid the paper back to
her.  That was sort of his polite way of saying
Okay, off you go.
 

She didn’t go anywhere.  She just
looked at him and pushed the paper back in his direction.  “Maybe you could…
work it out for me?  I’d be so grateful.”  Was he in the middle of some crappy
prime time teen soap?  She was actually batting her eyelashes at him, and since
when did she have green eyes?  He could have sworn they were blue.

“What exactly would you suggest?” 
He leaned back in his chair and completely gave up on his Calculus homework. 
This was crazy—but more interesting than math.  And it wasn’t everyday that
someone like Marilyn struck up a conversation with someone like him. 

“Well maybe, if you just
lost
this…”  Marilyn twirled the paper in circles on the table top, and she was
leaning over much more than was actually necessary.  Benjamin used all of his
self control to avoid taking advantage of what was probably an awesome view.

“If I
lost
it, Marilyn, they
would just print a new one.  Everything’s on the computers.”  He nodded in the
direction of the bigger desk complete with computer screens.

For a second she looked defeated,
but then she rallied.  “Well, you’re smart—right?  Maybe you could just take a
look on the computer for me?”  Her smile widened.

 He burst out laughing.  Laughter
was the nicest of all the reactions his brain had considered.  Still chuckling,
he pulled his Calculus book a little closer and started working on his homework
again.  Hopefully she would take the hint.

“Well if you don’t want to be
helpful!”  She dropped the fake smile and crossed her arms over her chest.  At
least she had the decency to blush slightly.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to be
helpful, but even if I were willing to risk expulsion—which I’m not—you are
grossly overestimating my authority.  You see that filing cabinet?”  He pointed
to the heavy steel cabinet behind him that was probably left over from the
sixties.  “That is the extent of my administrative power.  At most, I could
misfile the hardcopy of a piece of paperwork that has already been entered into
the computer.”

“I don’t want you to get
expelled.”  She seemed to grudgingly accept that her half baked plan of conning
the office geek into helping was a bad one.  “But what am I going to do?”

“Here’s a thought.  You could write
the paper… and study for your final.”

“I knew you weren’t going to be
helpful, Benjamin.”  And she got up and stalked out of the office leaving him
staring after her— completely shocked. 

He wasn’t particularly shocked that
she got up and left when he proved to be of no use to her.  No, he was shocked
because she knew his name.  Despite the insane and insulting nature of their
conversation, he couldn’t help feeling a little flattered as he turned his
concentration back to his homework.

***

By the end of the day, Benjamin had
mostly put his run in with Marilyn out of his mind.  Mostly—Marilyn was the
kind of person that stayed with you.  It also didn’t help that he’d told Alec
about the whole thing.  Alec O’Connell and Benjamin had been best friends since
back when Pokémon was cool, so basically forever.  They sat down in their usual
seat on the school bus and Alec demanded more details.

“Dude, tell me again—what exactly
did she say?”

“Come on, I already went through
this a dozen times!  It wasn’t that big of a deal.  She came and went in under
five minutes.”

“That is five more minutes than
she’s ever spent with me.  You should have gone for it!”

“Gone for what?  She wanted me to
fix her grades.  Even if I had any idea of how to do that, it would be crazy. 
She’s not worth ruining my chances at a good college.”

“Are you blind?  She is worth
skipping college and working at a falafel stand for the rest of your life.”

Benjamin didn’t comment on the
falafel stand as a career path.  Alec could be very dramatic at times and his
policy on those occasions was to ignore him.  “I doubt she would have agreed to
go out with me even if I had been able to fix her grades.  Which I wouldn’t
have done.  Are we still on for tonight?”  He tried for the tenth time to
change the subject. 

“Sure.  Nine o’clock.” 

“Okay, talk to you then.”  Relief
washed over him as he climbed off the bus in front of his drive way.  The whole
Marilyn Danning incident had taken up enough of his day.   Hopefully by the
time he talked to Alec and the guys later, Alec would have forgotten about it,
too.

He needed to hurry if he was going
to make it to work on time.  Quickly, he pulled on an old pair of jeans and his
uniform shirt before heading back out the door.  It was a short ride to his
Uncle Mike’s bike shop (where he worked part time), and lucky for Benjamin,
when he got there they were busy. 
Busy
meant concentrating on the work
in front of him and not dwelling on Marilyn, or on why he couldn’t stop
dwelling on Marilyn.

***

“Hey, Ben!  Quitting time.  You can
finish that up tomorrow—get home before your mom kicks my ass.”

 He barely avoided banging his head
on the heavy bike frame when his Uncle Mike snuck up behind him.  A glance at
the clock on the wall made him cringe.  He’d been too busy concentrating and
now it was after eight.  Crap.  He had to get home quick if he was going to be
able to shower and eat something before nine.  “Alright,” he answered his
Uncle.  “Don’t let anybody touch this one—I’m in the middle of something.” 
Benjamin hated to come in after school and find out one of the full time guys
had messed with something he’d been working on.  Life would be easier if he
could just work full time—then he wouldn’t have to bother worrying about
Marilyn Danning anymore.  He figured it was highly unlikely that he’d ever run
into her at the shop.

It was nearly eight thirty when he
walked through the front door.  Benjamin headed straight for the kitchen where
his mom usually left a plate for him in the oven when he missed dinner. 
“Benjamin!” his mom shouted as he dashed around the corner into the kitchen. 
She was probably mad that he’d worked so late again.  It was never intentional,
but time had a habit of flying by when he was working.

“Sorry Mom!”  He hollered just as
he took a big bite of the cold burrito before putting it and the rest of his
plate into the microwave.  He loved burrito night.  “I’ll make it back for
dinner tomorrow.”  He was mumbling around his food and some rice and sauce
dribbled out of his mouth and down the front of his work shirt.  Oh well it was
covered in grease anyway. 

When Benjamin turned around, he
found his mom standing in the kitchen doorway… and then Marilyn Danning walked
up behind her.  Benjamin hated burrito night.

Grabbing a napkin he wiped his
mouth and tried (and failed) to clean the mess off the front of his shirt. 
“Marilyn.  Umm… hi.”  What in the world was she doing here?  The most plausible
explanation he could come up with was that he actually had cracked his skull on
that bike back at the shop, and was right now lying in a pool of his own blood
having strange coma dreams.

“Hey, Benjamin.   I just stopped by
to thank you for helping me earlier… your mom said I could wait until you got
home from work.”  Oh—well that might be it… she still thought he could fix her
grade.  At least he wasn’t in a coma.  His Batman boxer shorts might have been
embarrassing if he’d ended up in the emergency room.

“Well, I’ll just leave you two
alone then.”  His mom basically skipped out of the kitchen.  Benjamin was
worried that she sounded
this
close to humming the wedding march.  Girls
were so weird—even grown up ones.