Through to You (3 page)

“Come on,” he says. “If we don't hurry, someone's going
to find us out here, and then you're going to have more than getting into my truck to worry about.”

He's right.

And besides, I want to go.

So I climb into the front seat.

Usually when I have a girl in my truck, we just drive around until I find a random spot for us to park in and make out. Either that or we end up at some party where we get drunk and then end up making out. Wow. I never realized how often I end up making out with girls. Pretty much every time I'm hanging out with one.

I'm not sure if I should be proud of this. Probably not.

Anyway. Obviously I can't do this with Harper. I glance at her out of the corner of my eye. Even if I want to.

“So, any idea where you're taking me?” Harper asks. She's trying to sound nonchalant, but I can tell she's suspicious. I don't even know her, and she's acting like I'm bad news. I mean, I
am
bad news. But there's no way she can know that yet.

“Why are you so suspicious of me?” I ask.

“Because you left a note on my desk and now you're whisking me away somewhere.” She reaches over and opens my glove compartment.

“Whisking you away? Is that what you think I'm doing?” Something about me whisking her away makes me happy. It sounds almost whimsical.

“Yeah. You coerced me into this truck, and now you're whisking me.” She pulls a bunch of stuff out of the glove compartment—papers, a pair of sunglasses, some napkins—and starts looking through them. I'm not sure if I should be angry or impressed.

“I didn't
coerce
you anywhere,” I say. “You came here of your own volition. And stop going through my stuff.”

She ignores my request and raises her eyebrows at me. “Wow,” she says. “ ‘Volition.' Big word.”

“You think I don't know words like ‘volition'?”

“I don't know if you do,” she says. “I don't know anything about you.” She holds up a receipt that was buried in my glove compartment. “Wow, except that you spent two hundred and thirty-two dollars at Hooters.”

“
What?
Let me see that.” I reach over and grab the receipt out of her hand.

“Yeah, and only twenty dollars for a tip.” She clucks her tongue. “Less than ten percent. That's awful, Penn. Those girls work hard for their tips.”

“That's not mine,” I say.

She raises her eyebrows and gives a skeptical little laugh.

“It isn't! My friend Jackson used to borrow my truck whenever he'd want to get up to something. He was dating this girl who was supercr— Um, didn't like what . . . He just needed to borrow my truck when he wanted chicken wings.”

“Mmm,” she says noncommittally. “Sounds like a lie.”

“It's actually not.” Figures that one of the only times I'm telling the truth, I don't even get credit for it. I hit my blinker and head east. I have no idea where we're going and what we're going to do, so I just drive.

Harper doesn't say anything. She just puts my stuff back into the glove compartment (
shoves
my stuff back into the glove compartment, is more like it), then nonchalantly reaches into her purse and pulls out her phone. She starts to text someone.

“Who are you texting?” I ask, mostly just to make conversation.

“None of your business.” She moves her phone away from me.

I sigh. “Seriously? It's going to be like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like every time I ask you something, you're going to make a big point of showing me just how much you don't trust me.”

“Trust needs to be earned,” she reports.

“Apparently not,” I say. “Since you just got into my truck with me, no questions asked.”

“I asked questions!”

“Hardly.”

She's still texting, and I catch a glimpse of the words
 . . . in his truck. If he kills me, then . . .

I reach over and grab the phone out of her hand. “Hey!” she says.

We roll to a stop at a red light, and I glance down at the screen. “Anna,” I read out loud. “Is that the girl with the spiky hair you're always with?”

She nods. “What are you, like a stalker?”

“Please,” I say. “You guys are always together. It's impossible not to notice.”

She grabs for the phone, and I give it back to her. “I'm glad you're telling your friend that we're going somewhere,” I say. “I think it's a good idea.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. That way you won't be able to deny you were with me.”

“Why would I deny I was with you?”

“Because we're skipping class right now, and if we get caught, you're probably going to try to say we weren't together.”

“That makes no sense.” She shakes her head and then looks back down at the screen. It seems like her friend has texted her back. She frowns.

“Let me guess,” I say. “She's telling you to come back to school right this instant.”

“No,” Harper says. “She told me that you're the kind of guy I could get into a lot of trouble with.”

I glance at her out of the corner of my eye. I wonder if she's the kind of girl I want to get into trouble with. I've made up my mind. Harper is definitely hot. “I don't even know this Anna,” I say. “But already I can tell she's smart.”

The way Penn's looking at me, like maybe he wants to kiss me or maybe even get me naked, is making butterflies swarm around in my stomach. He's just so . . . I don't know,
real
.

Like, what guy do you know who admits he's trouble? Although, the fact that he's admitting he's trouble is definitely a big red flag. It's like a huge, huge, huge red flag. I'm not sure if I should be glad he's being honest, or nervous that he's obviously crazy enough to think that admitting how much trouble you are is okay.

I'm not the kind of girl who looks for trouble. I'm not even the kind of girl who finds trouble when she's
not
looking for it.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask. I think it's a good variation of my usual “Where are we going?”

“God, you really are uptight, aren't you?” Penn asks. He shifts the truck into another gear, and as he does, his hand brushes against my thigh. I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but I feel like maybe he did it on purpose.

“No.” I don't think I'm uptight. Am I uptight? I don't think I am. But probably people who are uptight don't realize they're uptight. Oh God. I might be uptight. “I'm just not used to strange boys accosting me in the hallway.”

He grins. “I'm a man.”

I snort.

“And I'm sick of you being so suspicious of me.”

“You haven't known me long enough to be sick of anything about me.”

“I've known you long enough.” He looks over at me, and his gaze slides up my body. Suddenly I feel kind of exposed and uncomfortable, and I shift on the seat, intentionally moving my leg away just in case his hand goes for the gearshift again.

“You've known me for all of ten minutes.”

“So then tell me something about yourself.”

I reel off the list of things I always keep on hand for these situations—like when they ask you to name three things about yourself at the beginning of camp or on the first day of school or something. (Which is so stupid. Who remembers anything from the first day of school?) “My middle name's Louise, I'm an only child, I want to be a choreographer, and my best subject is math.”

“Your best subject is world history, because I'm in it. And those things you just told me are lame.”

“They are not lame!”

“Yes, they are. They don't tell me anything about you.” Penn shakes his head and then looks at me before returning his gaze to the road. “Tell me something good.”

I don't know what he means. Those things I told him
are
good. Especially about me wanting to be a choreographer. People are always super-impressed with that one. And my middle name being Louise? That's a hideous middle name.

I look down and try to think of something scandalous I can tell him. The floor of Penn's truck is littered with straw wrappers, but other than that it's sparkling clean.

“I'm going to Ballard,” I say. “You know, the music school? I've already been accepted to the school, I just have to audition for the choreography program.”

He shrugs, like he's never heard of it, even though it's, like, one of the most prestigious schools in the country. Then he sort of shakes his head, like he should have known better than to ask me to tell him something scandalous.

Which pisses me off.

I can be scandalous.

Can't I?

“My dad cheated on my mom when I was four months old, and he took off and I haven't heard from him since.”

Penn cocks his head, like he's maybe a little bit interested.

“And one time I overheard my mom saying I would probably have issues with men because of it.”

“And do you?”

“Have issues with men?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I'm not sure. I don't know any men.”

He smiles.

He opens his mouth to ask me something else, but suddenly I don't want him to. I realize it's because I'm intimidated by him. Penn is beautiful and interesting and charming, and the only thing I have to offer is an absent father and a dance audition.

I check the clock. “We should probably go back to school,” I say. “The period's almost over.”

Penn looks at me in shock. “You want to go back to
school
?”

“Well, yeah.” It's one thing to get away with skipping world history. Probably no one would catch me, since I was technically supposed to be in the nurse's office anyway. It's another thing altogether to end up missing a whole day. No way I would be able to get away with that.

He shakes his head. “You obviously haven't had much practice at this.”

He's right, but I don't want him to know that, so I just roll my eyes.

After a moment he turns the car around. “Okay, fine,” he says. “I'll take you back to school.”

As soon as he turns around, I want to take it back. I realize that once we're back at school, we'll be away from each other. And it's weird, but I don't want to leave him. I don't know anything about him, and yet I don't want to be away from him. It's a very unsettling feeling.

When we get back to school, he pulls into a parking spot near the front. He stops the car but leaves it idling.

“Aren't you coming in?” I ask, surprised.

“Nah,” he says. “The point of walking out of school when you're not supposed to is that you stay out for the whole day.”

“Okay.” I get out of the car. “Well, um . . .” I'm not sure what to say. Thanks for the ride? See you soon?

“Have a good day,” is what comes out.
Have a good day
. Ridiculous. Silly. Mortifying.

Penn just smiles. “Have a good day, Harper Fairbanks,” he says.

I shut the door.

And Penn pulls away, leaving me standing there with butterflies swarming around in my stomach.

I pull out of the parking lot, leaving Harper standing in front of the school, and in that moment I decide I need to stay away from her. She's definitely not the kind of girl I need to be getting involved with. Actually, strike that. I don't need to be getting involved with any girl, not now, not ever.

At least not in the sense of having an actual relationship. I'm bad at relationships. Not that I've ever had a relationship—at least, not in a romantic sense. But the rest of my relationships are pretty much all fucked up, so it's not a stretch to believe that I might be bad at the romantic ones too.

As if to illustrate this point, at that moment my phone rings. It's my older brother, Braden.

“Hello?” I answer, trying to keep my voice light. There's only
one reason Braden would be calling me during the day, only one reason he'd be bothering me. (I'd like to say he doesn't call me during the day because he knows I'm in school and doesn't want to take me away from my studies, but that's definitely not true. Braden couldn't give two shits about school, illustrated by the fact that he barely graduated high school and then dropped out of community college halfway through his first semester.)

“Oh, hi,” he says, like he's surprised that I answered. I can picture him on the other end of the line, clutching his phone in his hand and chewing his lip. Even though Braden is two years older than me, he's pretty much useless. At least when it comes to what I know he's about to tell me.

“Braden,” I say, forcing faux cheer into my voice. “To what do I owe the honor of this phone call?”

“It's Dad,” he says. “Uh, he left.”

“Really?” I try to sound fake shocked. It's a little game I like to play with myself, almost like I'm an actor on a soap opera and it's my job to have the craziest, most over-the-top reactions that I can. You'd be surprised how easy it actually is.

“Penn,” Braden says. “He really did leave.”

Braden has no sense of humor. Either that or he's trying to one-up me by pretending he doesn't know what I'm doing. But I'll bet the former.

“Okay.” I shrug, even though he can't see me. “Any idea where he went?” It's a rhetorical question. No one knows where my dad goes when he disappears, except that we can all be sure that wherever it is, there's a bar.

“No.”

“Then there's nothing I can do.”

I hear a flipping sound on the other end of the line, probably Braden peeking through the blinds, like maybe he's going to be able to spot my dad's car somewhere, or get some clue as to where he's gone.