The Beauty in Between: Too Close (A Beautiful Series Novella) (5 page)

A bunch of guys
from year ten to twelve were on the school’s basketball team. It
wasn’t much of a commitment. We just had to train on a Monday at
lunch time and play a game on a Thursday afternoon against one of
the other schools in our district.

There were
maybe twenty of us in the change rooms. I was in taking a shower
and when I came out, I could hear Ben telling Aaron all about the
things Katrina would let him do to her. I did my best not to listen
in because it seriously made my chest hurt to hear him talk about
her like that, but my ears wouldn’t tune him out.

By the time I
was dressed and had my shoes on, I knew exactly how far she had let
him go, in explicit detail. I swear that steam was coming out of my
ears as I tried to breathe through my anger.

“I reckon if I
play my cards right, she’ll let me go all the way at the Formal
After Party,” he bragged, earning himself a high five from
Aaron.

“She’d better
put out. All the other girls are giving it up, and you’ve waited
nearly six months for her,” Aaron said.

“For sure man,
I so deserve this.”

I’m not sure
how I got from the other side of the locker room to standing behind
Ben, but all of a sudden I was there saying, “Do you know what you
deserve Ben?” I don’t even think he realised who it was, because he
turned around grinning like a fuckwit. “This,” I told him as I
rammed my fist into his gut, doubling him over as he stumbled back
into the wall behind him.

“You fucking
bastard!” he spat at me as he righted himself.

“Stay the fuck
away from her!” I yelled.

“I knew it. You
are
into Katrina? Well, too bad mate. She doesn’t want you.
She wants me. I’m the one that’s touched her in those
special
places. Not you,” he taunted me, getting spit in my
face as he leaned in close to prove his point. “And I am going to
fuck her after the formal. All. night. long. and there’s nothing
you can do about it.”

A rumbling
growl built in my chest and exploded out of me, echoing through the
change rooms as angry red colours coated my eyes, and my fist shot
out and slammed into his jaw, sending him reeling backwards.

I physically
launched myself against him, ramming him into the brick wall behind
him where we embarked on a blow by blow fist fight. There was
cheering and yelling around us, and eventually, I was hauled off
him, kicking and spitting, swearing that I was going to take his
life if I ever heard he touched her.

“You’re fucking
crazy!” he yelled at me.

Immediately, we
were hauled into the principal’s office. Our parents were called,
and we were both suspended for three days.

My mother also
grounded me for a month. I was to go to school and come straight
home – no friends… no Katrina.

That night, I
heard a gentle tapping on my window. I opened the curtains, knowing
exactly who would be there.

“Trina, are you
crazy? You can’t go walking around at night on your own!” I hissed
at her through the darkened window.

“I needed to
talk to you. Your mum said you were grounded, and Ben won’t tell me
what you were fighting about.”

I pulled on a
pair of shoes and jumped out the window onto the ground next to
her. “I’ll walk you home. It’s not safe around here. What were you
even thinking?!”

“Why is it safe
for you to come to my window, but it’s not safe for me to go to
yours?”

“Trina, I can’t
even believe you don’t see the difference. You’re a girl - girls
shouldn’t walk around at night on their own. Simple as that.”

We walked back
to her house in silence for a while. “Are you badly hurt?” she
asked.

“I’m ok. I'll
heal.”

She pulled me
to a stop under a street light and grabbed me by the chin, turning
my face from side to side as she took in my battle wounds. She then
picked up my hands, and ran her fingertips lightly over my grazed
knuckles.

It wasn’t cold,
but a chill ran through me as she gently stroked my hands. Sighing,
she looked into my eyes. “Tell me what the fight was about.”

“He just pissed
me off, and I snapped.”

“Did it have
anything to do with me?”

“Let’s keep
walking,” I said and started moving toward her house.

“David!” she
called, jogging to catch up. “Answer the question.”

“We got into a
fight because he’s a fuckwit alright. I know he’s your boyfriend
Trina. But the guy’s an arsehole.”

She didn’t say
anything more to me until we were back at her house.

“Here I’ll give
you a boost,” I said, interlacing my fingers and holding my hands
open for her.

“It has
something to do with me, doesn’t it?”

“Trina,” I
sighed. “I’m sorry I fought with him. He said some shit that I
didn’t like, and I snapped. Don’t read into it. Your choices are
your own – they’ve got nothing to do with me.”

“What did he
say about me?!” she demanded in a harsh whisper.

“Are you going
to let me give you a boost or not?”

“Fine,” she
said planting her foot in my hands and letting me heft her over the
fence while she mumbled about squeezing blood out of stones.

“Good night
Trina,” I told her as I turned to leave.

“Whatever
David,” she said from the other side of the fence before her head
popped up again. “You know something? I would have thought that out
of everyone in that locker room, you would have been the guy to
tell me the truth. What is this? Some stupid bro code? I thought I
meant more to you than that.”

I moved closer
to her, taking her head in my hands as I planted a soft kiss upon
her forehead. “You mean the world to me Trina, and I don’t want to
upset you over guy talk. It’s all my problem ok. You haven’t done
anything wrong. Now go inside before your parents hear us and
ground you too.”

***

During my
suspension, my mother left me a huge list of jobs that I needed to
have competed by the time she got home each day. She also swore
that she was going to drop by randomly to check on me and alluded
to having some sort of surveillance set up to make sure I stayed
home.

I wasn’t in the
mood for socialising anyway. I spent my days trimming trees and
weeding garden beds, as well as cleaning out all of our storage
areas. I wish that the list of jobs took my mind of things, but
they didn’t. I hated, HATED, hearing Ben talk about Katrina like
she was any other girl out there. It made me sick. I kept feeling
like he was goading me on purpose. I guess that’s what I get for
trying to move away from the group, all of a sudden, by my own
actions, I wasn’t one of the top dogs of our grade anymore. I had
made myself a target, and I was going to have to get used to
it.

That didn’t
mean that I was ever going to stand by and listen to any of them
bad-mouth Katrina.

On the third
day of my suspension, Katrina detoured past my house on her way
home from school. I was busy raking leaves in the front yard, so I
didn’t realise she was there until she called to me.

“Are you back
to school tomorrow?” she asked, standing on the council strip and
talking to me over the garden bed.

I paused what I
was doing and leaned on the rake. “Yeah. How’s it been in my
absence?”

“Boring,
enlightening, and a little lonely.”

“Okay…?”

She bounced a
shoulder and chewed on her lip a little, I could tell she was
deciding if she wanted to tell me something, so I waited.

“Do you know
Ethan? He’s in year twelve and gets off a stop before us on the
bus.”

“Yeah. I know
Ethan.”

“Of course you
do. He’s on the basketball team isn’t he?”

I simply
nodded, feeling pretty sure what was coming next.

“Well, Ethan
sat next to me on the bus today. He told me what Ben was saying
about me and what he said would happen after the formal. He told me
how he was provoking you.”

“I should have
just ignored it. It’s none of my business Trina. You can do what
you like.”

“Yeah, but the
stuff he said. It’s not true. Half of it hasn’t even happened, and
I’m certainly not ready to… you know. Anyway, tomorrow morning I’m
going to break up with him. It sucks because I really liked him,
but he’s been pressuring me a bit and well, I don’t like being
spoken about that way. It’s supposed to be private you know?”

“Yeah, Trina. I
do know.”

“Do you think
Loren and the rest of them will let me come to the formal in the
group limo still? My plans are kind of ruined now.”

“I’m pretty
sure they’ll let you. I’m not sure if I’m going though. I’m
grounded remember?” It was at that moment that my mother’s car
turned into the street. “Oh shit, now I definitely won’t be able to
go.”

“Hi Mrs
Taylor!” Katrina called happily as my mum pulled into the driveway,
a stormy look on her face.

“David’s
grounded Trina. That means no friends, not even you,” mum said as
she got out of the car.

“Oh, I actually
came to talk to you Mrs Taylor. If you have time,” Trina smiled,
hitching her bag up higher on her shoulder as she headed toward my
mother who narrowed her eyes suspiciously, but still smiled,
nodding toward the house to tell Katrina it was fine to follow
her.

“Back to work
young man,” my mother said to me with a smile. “You’re suspension
isn’t over yet.”

I finished up
in the front yard, bagging up all the leaves and cutting up the
palm fronds that never seemed to stop falling from the tree next to
our letter box. By the time I was finished and putting the tools
away, Katrina was leaving my house and calling goodbye to me,
leaving me wondering what she’d been inside talking to my mother
about.

“You’re not
grounded anymore, and you can go to the formal,” my mother said as
soon as I walked inside. “Trina just told me what the fight was
over. Frankly, I think he deserved to be hit for talking about our
girl like that. You should have told me David. I wouldn’t have been
so hard on you.”

The next day at
school, Trina and Ben had a very public break up. I think that
perhaps they had secretly tarnished Katrina with the same brush
they were using for me, because they all sided with Ben. Katrina
then came to sit with me and the new group I’d been hanging out
with.

“Did they kick
you out of the club?” Loren asked her.

“Truthfully, I
never really fit in. I’m not that much like those girls.”

Being in the
same grade level, we all knew each other anyway, so there wasn’t
any need for introductions.

“I don’t get
why anyone would want to hang out with those stuck-up bitches
anyway Katrina,” Loren’s boyfriend, George told her. “They’ve never
said a nice word to anyone other than their own. You and David
though, you two were always nice to everyone. We actually thought
you were a couple until you started dating Ben.”

“Nah man, she’s
just my friend,” I told him, nudging Katrina playfully with my
arm.

“Well, whatever
you are to each other, welcome to the group Katrina.”

During the last
couple of weeks leading up to the formal, Cassie was a fucking
bitch. I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t talk about people like that,
but that’s what she was. She got the shits that I wouldn’t go to
the formal with her, so she started up a rumour that she was
pregnant, and that I refused to speak to her until she got an
abortion.

How seriously
fucked up is that? I felt like such an idiot for ever getting
involved with her in the first place. I mean, a girl who throws
herself at you repeatedly, despite you constantly telling her that
you don’t want a relationship is, in my books, either totally
self-aware, or a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. I just
wish I'd been smart enough not to get involved with her in the
first place.

On the upside,
I was so lucky to have found the group of people that I was now
hanging out with, and Katrina seemed much happier too. They didn’t
for a second, believe the shit that Cassie spouted, but they’re
just ten people out of a hundred and fifty, so there were a lot of
people that still did.

The whole year
seemed to be getting pretty jazzed about this formal thing.
Admittedly, I was kind of happy about riding in a limo, because I’d
never been in one before, and I was glad that Katrina was coming
with me instead of going with Ben. We used to be friends, but now I
had some pretty deep-seated feelings of hatred towards him.

In my
experience, the guys who brag the most are the ones who aren’t
doing anything. I understand that now, but every time I looked at
him, pictures of him feeling up Katrina plagued my mind and drove
me crazy.

“Hey, what’s
got you frowning like that?” Katrina asked me one lunch time while
I was staring off into the distance, watching some of my ex-friends
playing footy. We were lying next to each other on the grass not
far from the oval.

“Nothing
really,” I responded, rolling over onto my back, so I was looking
up at the sky with my arms folded behind my head.

Katrina leaned
on my chest, her long hair falling over her shoulder and brushing
against my face as she moved it over to one side. “Do you miss it?”
she asked, peering down at me, a look of concern in her blue
eyes.

“Miss what?
Playing footy?”

“Being popular.
Do you miss it?”

“I’d only miss
it, if you were over there instead of right here with me,” I
smiled, reaching up and tucking some of her hair behind her
ear.

She laughed
slightly through her nose as she rolled off my chest and onto her
back next to me. “So are you going to dance with me at the
formal?”

“Sure, why not.
You’re not worried about dancing with a monster like me? You aren’t
worried it will ruin your reputation?”