Biggest Flirts (19 page)

I knew Will was still missing a lot of what he’d had back home. But at least he’d taken this first step toward finding what he needed here in town. I watched him and the dog for a while, playing together in the long shadows of the trees.

***

By the time I made it to the hospital that night, everybody else had cleared out. Sawyer was alone in a room for two patients. The other guy must have died. Sawyer was curled into the fetal position with an IV tube snaking to his hand. He faced away from the door, and his hospital gown fell open to reveal his butt crack, because Sawyer did not care.

“Nice ass,” I said from the doorway.

“Thanks,” he said without moving.

I walked to the other side of the bed. “Are you hungry at all? I thought you might be, since you lost your lunch. I brought you something.” I peeled the aluminum foil off the plate of amarillos, beans, and an empanada. “Violet made it vegan for you.”

He sat up, took the plate and fork I handed him, and shoveled in a mouthful. He swallowed and rolled his eyes. “Oh. My. God. They don’t do vegan at this hospital. I was starving. This is so good.” After a few more bites, he held the plate out to me, offering me some.

“I ate already,” I said.

“Good, because I didn’t really want to give you any.” He ate another mouthful. “Violet should be cooking at the Crab Lab.”

“Nah. She’d rather explain to two old men where their antiques are.”

He swallowed. “It’s been forever since I had Puerto Rican food. I forget y’all are half Puerto Rican.”

“Me too,” I said. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Yeah, a Sprite. My eleventh Sprite. Down the hall in the fridge.”

Wandering back in with the can, I asked him, “When are they letting you out?”

“They would have let me out already, but someone is supposed to watch me. They need somebody to release me to. My dad isn’t coming home, and my brother won’t get off work until after visiting hours are over. He said he’ll come buy me out tomorrow morning.”

I flopped down in the chair beside the bed. “Will they release you to me?”

“No. I took the liberty of asking, but when I said your name, the nurse looked all outraged and hollered, ‘That girl who—’ Well, never mind what she said.”

I knew which nurse he was talking about. I’d seen DeMarcus’s mom on my way in. DeMarcus had thrown a big Halloween party in seventh grade, and his mom had walked in on me teaching him to French kiss. I guess I didn’t have a reputation for being nursing material.

“I can get somebody down here to spring you,” I said. “Harper’s mom, or—you know who would be perfect? Kaye’s mom.” She was the president of a bank and looked it. Nobody messed with her.

“I don’t want to do that to anybody who isn’t you,” Sawyer said.

“Aw. Hugs.” I stood up and wrapped my arms around him, careful to keep my dress out of the amarillos.

“I’m swearing it all off,” he said into my hair. “Alcohol and weed. All mind-altering substances.”

I sat back down, shocked. “You are?”

“Yes.”

“Working in a bar?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re a vegan working in a restaurant that serves primarily seafood and meat,” I said. “If anybody could swear off alcohol working in a bar, it would be you. And I think that would be great. It’s not good for you, or me either. But if you’re doing it because you had heatstroke . . . I do think being dehydrated the day after drinking didn’t help you, but you had heatstroke because you were dressed up in a pelican costume at two p.m. on the hottest day of the year in Florida.”

“I know.”

“Does it have something to do with your mystery girl?”

“I’m never getting Kaye,” he said. “And I wouldn’t change my life for her. I’ve learned that from you. I’m not changing for somebody else, because that person could disappear. The only person to change for is yourself.”

I was astounded. I’d thought I had him figured out. It never occurred to me that
he
had
me
figured out in return. And when he took my thoughts and put them in his own words, I sounded halfway noble.

“But like you said,” he went on, “alcohol was a contributing factor to my mortifying collapse. I shouldn’t be giving in to contributing factors when I already have an asshole brother and a jailbird dad. You know, for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m really good at something. I was a mediocre athlete. I’m an indifferent student. But I’m an excellent pelican. I support the school and I make people laugh.”

“You do. You’re a great symbol for the school.”

“Being an excellent pelican is pretty sad, as career skills go. It isn’t everything. But it’s not nothing.” He set his clean plate on the bedside table. “What I feel worst about is Minnesota coming around the corner after I’d handed you that joint. I mean, nice guy. I heard he hauled me up the stairs at the stadium.”

“He did,” I said.

“And he stayed with me here until Harper and Kaye and DeMarcus and everybody showed up. He was as nice as he could be after all the shit I’ve given him during the past couple of weeks. I ruined everything between you two.”

“You didn’t,” I said sadly. “I did that all by myself.”

“Obviously not, or he wouldn’t have come looking for you last night.”

I stayed with Sawyer, even doing my English homework there while he made fun of me and called me a sellout. When visiting hours were over, DeMarcus’s mom kicked me out of the room. But all the while, in the back of my mind, I was formulating a plan for how I could put my stress-induced organizational skills to good use.

***

The next day, at the beginning of band, I waited until Ms. Nakamoto turned on her microphone and started explaining what we would do that period. Then I set my drum on the grass—Will watched me curiously but didn’t ask what I was doing—and I walked through the band and up the stadium steps. Ms. Nakamoto didn’t seem to notice Harper walking down the steps in another part of the stadium. She’d gotten out of last period to take pictures and document the coming event for the yearbook.

Ms. Nakamoto kept talking to the band until I stopped right beside her. “Yes, Ms. Cruz?” she asked.

“May I borrow that?” I asked, reaching for the microphone. “Just for a sec.”

Surprised, she handed it to me.

I cleared my throat and read from my notes. “We—” My voice boomed around the stadium. The band yelped a protest, and the cheerleaders slapped their hands over their ears. I backed the microphone away from my mouth. “Sorry. We the students present to you, Ms. Nakamoto, the Sawyer De Luca/Will Matthews Heat Relief Proposal. We understand that dress codes are necessary for schools to function in what the faculty thinks is an appropriate manner. However, our school, in allowing students to disrobe partially during summer practices on school grounds, has already acknowledged that its dress code is not always comfortable for its students, or even safe. We would like that exception to be extended to practices outdoors year-round. We would like you, Ms. Nakamoto, to be our advocate in presenting this proposal to Principal Chen. In the interim, while the proposal is being considered, we respectfully request that you stop enforcing the dress code during afternoon practices on the field.” I pulled off my shirt.

That was the cue. With a prolonged whoop, all the cheerleaders and the entire band took off their shirts—the girls were wearing bikini tops underneath—and threw the shirts up in the air. The cheerleaders unfurled a long paper banner they’d made like their spirit signs for football games. It said
REMEMBER THE FALLEN PELICAN
.

When the rainstorm of shirts cleared, Harper still stood on one of the benches along the sidelines, snapping pictures. Besides her, only Will was still fully dressed, because he was left out of Kaye’s student council call tree. He looked around at the half-naked band, bewildered.

Ms. Nakamoto glared at my bikini top, then at me. “I told you I wanted you to take on more responsibility, and this is your first foray?”

I put the microphone down where it wouldn’t pick up what I said. “Yes ma’am,” I told her. “You weren’t here when Sawyer fainted yesterday.”

She nodded and seemed to search my face for a moment. “Okay,” she finally said.

I put the microphone to my lips again. “Mr. Matthews,” I said in Ms. Nakamoto’s voice, “you may take off your shirt.”

The band whooped again, the cheerleaders clapped, and the drums yelled “Take it off!” through cupped hands. Will shrugged off his harness, slowly and sexily pulled off his shirt, balled it up, and hurled it toward the goalpost, just like he’d thrown his phone on the first day of practice.

Ms. Nakamoto was glaring at me again. Hastily I handed her the microphone, dashed down the stairs and across the field, and loaded my drum harness onto my shoulders.

As she resumed her announcements, Will leaned over. “Did you do this for me?”

“I felt really bad about Sunday,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have broken up with you that way.” I looked into his eyes, as best as I could guess through both our sunglasses. “I shouldn’t have broken up with you at all. And I honestly wasn’t doing what you thought I was doing with Sawyer. But as you said about putting your hand on Angelica at the beach, you and I aren’t together, so it doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. I just wish you did.”

He put his drumstick on my drum and circled it slowly. “What if we went back to hooking up, like you wanted at first? We tried it my way, and now we’ll do it your way. You can be with other people, and I won’t get jealous.”

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Okay, I will,” he acknowledged, “but I won’t make a stink. I feel like we’re meant to be together. We just haven’t figured out how. And I would really like to get in trouble for touching you right now.”

I crossed my hand over his to place my drumstick on his drum. “What if we tried it your way again? I’ll give it more than twelve hours this time.”

He grinned. “What are we talking? Eighteen? Twenty-four?”

“Three days,” I suggested. “Until the first football game, and then we can decide whether we want to renew our contract.”

“Why don’t we wait until
after
the first football game to talk about it?” he suggested. “At whatever party we go to. Or at the beach, in my car.” Ever so slowly, watching Ms. Nakamoto, he edged toward me. His earring glinted in the light. He turned and kissed the corner of my mouth while I giggled.

Ms. Nakamoto called through the microphone, “Mr. Matthews, get off Ms. Cruz. I’m starting to sound like a broken record.”

Down the line of snare drums, Jimmy tapped his watch and said, “Seven minutes.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Heartfelt thanks to my brilliant editor, Annette Pollert; my tireless agent, Laura Bradford; my hilarious critique partner, Victoria Dahl; and the readers who have enjoyed my books, told a friend about them, and made my dream career a reality. I appreciate you.

Don’t miss Jennifer Echols’s

FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHS WALLPAPERED MR. OAKLEY’S
journalism classroom. Behind his desk, Martin Luther King Jr. waved to thousands who’d crowded the National Mall to hear his “I Have a Dream” speech, with the Washington Monument towering in the distance. Over by the windows, a lone man stood defiant in front of four Chinese tanks in protest of the Tiananmen Square massacre. On the wall directly above my computer screen, a World War II sailor impulsively kissed a nurse in Times Square on the day Japan surrendered.

Mr. Oakley had told us a picture was worth a thousand words, and these posters were his proof. He was right. Descriptions in my history textbook read like old news, but these photos made me want to stand up for people, like Dr. King did, and protest injustice, like Tank Man did.

And be swept away by romance, like that nurse.

My gaze fell from the poster to my computer display, which was full of my pictures of Brody Larson. A couple of weeks ago, on the first day of school, our senior class had elected the Superlatives—like Most Academic, Most Courteous, and Least Likely to Leave the Tampa/St. Petersburg Metropolitan Area. Brody and I had been voted Perfect Couple That Never Was. Brody had dated Grace Swearingen the whole summer, and I’d been with the yearbook editor, Kennedy Glass, for a little over a month. Being named part of a perfect couple when Brody and I were dating other people was embarrassing. Disorienting. Anything but perfect.

And
me
being named one half of a perfect couple with
Brody
made as much sense as predicting Labor Day snow for next Monday in our beachside town. He was the popular, impulsive quarterback for our football team. Sure, through twelve years of school, I’d liked him. He was friendly and
so
handsome. He also scared the hell out of me. I couldn’t date someone who’d nearly lost his license speeding, was forever in the principal’s office for playing pranks, and had a daily drama with one girl or another on a long list of exes. And he would never fall for law-abiding, curfew-obeying, glasses-wearing me.

So I hadn’t gone after him as my friend Tia had urged me to. I only found excuses to snap photos of him for the yearbook. For the football section, I’d taken a shot of him at practice in his helmet and pads. Exasperated with his teammates, he’d held up his hands like he needed help from heaven.

For the candid section, I planned to use a picture from my friend Kaye’s party last Saturday. Brody grinned devilishly as he leaned into his truck cab to grab something. I’d cropped out the beer.

For the full-color opening page, I’d taken a close-up of him yesterday in study hall. His brown hair fell long across his forehead. He wore a green T-shirt that made his green eyes seem to glow. Girls all over school would thank me for this when they received their yearbooks next May. In fact, Brody had implied as much when I snapped the picture. He made me promise I wouldn’t sell it to “a porn site for ladies,” which was why he was grinning.

In short, he was the sailor in the poster: the kind of guy to come home from overseas, celebrate the end of the war in Times Square, and sweep a strange girl off her feet.

I only wished I was that girl.

“Harper, you’ve been staring at Brody for a quarter of an hour.” Kennedy rolled his chair down the row of computers to knock against mine. I spun for a few feet before I caught the desktop and stopped myself.

Busted!

“You’re not taking that Perfect Couple vote seriously, are you?” he asked. “I’ll bet a lot of people decided to prank you.”

“Of course I’m not taking it seriously,” I said, and should have left it there. I couldn’t. “Why do you think we’re so mismatched? Because he’s popular and I’m not?”

“No.”

“Because he’s a local celebrity and I’m not?”

“No, because he broke his leg in sixth grade, trying to jump a palmetto grove in his go-cart.”

“I see your point.”

“Besides,
we’re
the perfect couple.”

Right. I smiled. And I waited for him to put his arm around me, backing up his words with a touch. But our relationship had never been very physical. I expected a caress now because that’s what I imagined Brody would do in this situation. I was hopeless.

I said brightly, “If I was staring at Brody, I was zoning out.” I nodded to the Times Square poster. “I get lost in that image sometimes.”

Kennedy squinted at the kiss. “Why? That picture is hackneyed. You can buy it anywhere. It’s on coffee mugs and shower curtains. It’s as common in the dentist’s office as a fake Monet or a print of dogs playing poker.”

Yes, because people loved it—for a reason. I didn’t voice my opinion, though. I was just relieved I’d distracted Kennedy from my lame obsession with Brody.

When Kennedy had bumped my chair, he’d stopped himself squarely in front of my computer. Now he closed my screen
without asking
. I’d saved my changes to Brody’s photos, but the idea of losing my digital touch-ups made me cringe. What if Kennedy had closed my files before I saved them? I took a deep breath through my nose, calming myself, as he scrolled through the list of his own files, looking for the one he wanted. I was tense for no good reason.

I’d known Kennedy from school forever. We’d talked a little last spring when Mr. Oakley selected him as the new editor for the yearbook and I won the photographer position. Back then, I’d been sort-of dating my friend Noah Allen, which made me technically off limits. I’d viewed Kennedy as a tall guy who looked older than seventeen because of his long, blond ponytail and darker goatee, his T-shirts for punk bands and indie films I’d never heard of, and his pierced eyebrow.

Sawyer De Luca, who’d been elected Most Likely to Go to Jail, had taunted Kennedy mercilessly about the eyebrow piercing. But Sawyer taunted everyone about everything. I’d had enough trouble screwing up the courage to get my ears pierced a few years ago. I admired Kennedy’s edgy bravery. I’d thought it put him out of my league.

We hadn’t dated until five weeks ago, when we ran into each other at a film festival in downtown Tampa that we’d both attended alone. That’s when we realized we were perfect for each other. I honestly still believed that.

I crushed on Brody only because of the Perfect Couple title, like a sixth grader who heard a boy was interested and suddenly became interested herself. Except, as a senior, I was supposed to be above this sort of thing. Plus, Brody
wasn’t
interested. Our class
thought
he should be, but Brody wasn’t known for doing what he was told.

“Here it is.” Kennedy opened his design for one of the Superlatives pages, with
BIGGEST FLIRTS
printed at the top.

“Oooh, I like it,” I said, even though I didn’t like it at all.

One of my jobs was to photograph all the Superlatives winners for the yearbook. The Biggest Flirts picture of my friend Tia and her boyfriend, Will, was a great shot. I would include it in my portfolio for admission to college art departments. I’d managed to capture a mixture of playfulness and shock on their faces as they stepped close together for a kiss.

Kennedy had taken away the impact by setting the photo at a thirty-degree angle.

“I have the urge to straighten it,” I admitted, tilting my head. This hurt my neck.

“All the design manuals and websites suggest angling some photos for variety,” he said. “Not every picture in the yearbook can be straight up and down. Think outside the box.”

I nodded thoughtfully, hiding how much his words hurt. I
did
think outside the box, and all my projects were about visual design. I sewed my own dresses, picking funky materials and making sure the bodices fit just right. The trouble I went to blew a lot of people’s minds, but sewing hadn’t been difficult once I’d mastered the old machine I’d inherited from Grandmom. To go with my outfit of the day, I chose from my three pairs of retro eyeglasses. The frames were worth the investment since I always wore them, ever since I got a prescription in middle school. They made me look less plain. If it hadn’t been for my glasses and the way I dressed, everyone would have forgotten I was there.

As it was, my outside-the-box look and the creative photos I’d been taking for the yearbook made me memorable. That’s why Kennedy had been drawn to me, just as I’d been intrigued by his eyebrow piercing and his philosophy of cinematography. At least, that’s what I’d thought.

I wanted to tell him,
If this design is so great, tilt the photos of the chess club thirty degrees, not my photos of the Superlatives
. Instead I said carefully, “This layout looks a little dated. It reminds me of a yearbook from the nineties, with fake paint splatters across the pages.”

“I don’t think so.” Turning back to the screen, he moved the cursor to
save
and communicated how deeply I’d offended him with a hard click on the mouse.

I kept smiling, but my stomach twisted. Kennedy would give me the silent treatment if I didn’t find a way to defuse this fight between now and the end of journalism class. Tonight was the first football game of the season, and I’d be busy snapping shots of our team. I was the only student with a press pass that would get me onto the sidelines. Kennedy would likely be in the stands with my other sort-of ex-boyfriend, Quinn Townsend, and our friends from journalism class. They’d all be telling erudite jokes under their breath that made fun of the football team, the entire game of football, and spectator sports in general. After the game, though, Kennedy and I would both meet our friends at the Crab Lab grill. And he would act like we weren’t even together.

“It’s just the way the picture is tilted,” I ventured. “The rest of it is cool—the background and the font.”

In answer, he opened the next page, labeled
MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
. I hadn’t yet taken the photo of my friend Kaye and her boyfriend, Aidan, but Kennedy already had a place for it. He selected the empty space and tilted that, too, telling me,
So there
.

“When are you going to turn in the rest of these photos?” he asked me. “The deadline to send this section to the printer is two weeks from today.”

“Yeah,” I said doubtfully. “It’s been harder than I thought. I mean, taking the pictures isn’t hard,” I clarified quickly, before he reassigned some of my responsibilities. “We’ve had so many tests. It’s tricky to get out of class. And convincing some of our classmates to show up at a scheduled time is like herding cats.”

“Harper!” he exclaimed. “This is important. You’ve got to get organized.”

I opened my lips, but nothing came out. I was stunned. I prided myself on my organizational skills. Kennedy should have seen the schedule on my laptop. My arrangements for these photo shoots were difficult but, in the end, impeccable. If the people who were supposed to pose for my pictures didn’t meet me, how was that
my
fault? I couldn’t drag them out of physics class by the ears.

“I need these shots on a rolling basis so I can design the pages,” Kennedy said. “You can’t throw them all at me on the last day. If you make us miss the deadline, the class might not get our yearbooks before graduation. Then the yearbooks would be
mailed
to us and we wouldn’t get to
sign
them.”

My cheeks flamed hot. What had seemed like a fun project at first had quickly turned into a burden. I’d been trying to schedule these appointments during school, around my classes. At home, I selected the best photos and touched them up on my computer. But I also had other responsibilities. I’d signed on to photograph a 5K race at the town’s Labor Day festival on Monday. And of course I had to help Mom. She ran a bed and breakfast. I was required to contribute to the breakfast end of it. I didn’t see how I could produce these finished pictures for Kennedy any faster.

“Is everything okay here?” Mr. Oakley had walked up behind Kennedy.

“Of course,” Kennedy said. From his position, Mr. Oakley couldn’t see Kennedy narrow his eyes, warning me not to complain. Mr. Oakley had said at the beginning of school that he wanted the yearbook to run like a business, meaning we students reported to each other like employees to bosses, rather than crying to him about every minor problem. That meant Kennedy had a lot more power than a yearbook editor at a school where the advisor made the decisions.