13 to Life (8 page)

Max raised his arm and rested his palm flat on a locker, leaning over slightly. “Getting an arm up to shoulder height or higher,” he whispered to Pietr, “helps accentuate the triangulation of your body. Girls like that.”

Amy certainly didn’t seem to mind.

He grinned at Amy. I’d read enough romance books parading as paranormals to have stumbled across dozens of descriptions of roguish smiles. They all paled in comparison to the dangerous twist of Max’s lips. In this case, words were not enough. “You look absolutely rockin’ in that shirt,” he said.

Pietr raised an eyebrow.

“Lowering the pitch of your voice,” Max continued coaching, “makes you sound even stronger. And whispering”—his voice grew softer—“is a way to get her to lean in closer.”

His gaze drifted away from Amy’s eyes and past her lips. Falling down.

The crack as her hand slapped Max’s face made both Pietr and me jump.

“And staring at my boobs’ll get you smacked,” Amy replied with a grin of her own.

Max rubbed his jaw but never stopped smiling. He chuckled as he straightened, looking at her with newfound respect. “Sorry, Red.”

“The name’s Amy,” she corrected, rubbing her hands together. She winced. “Thickheaded,” she muttered. “Here are a couple tips for you, Max. Learn a chick’s name first. Focus on a girl’s face. Eye contact?
That’s
hot.”

“Hey, Max.” Stella had found us. She slipped her arms around his waist and peered at Amy.

Max didn’t even seem to notice her until Amy did.

“Of course,” Amy clarified, “it depends on what you’re really after.” Her eyes settled on Stella for a moment before she narrowed them in a glare at Max. “Some people will settle for less than they deserve. I won’t let Jessie do that.”

I blushed at her protective tone.

“You’re a good friend,” Max assessed correctly.

“The best,” Amy stated.

“Come on, Max,” Stella urged. “I’ll walk you to class.”

He followed Stella. But he nearly turned all the way back around once to look at us. Well, at Amy.

“What an ass,” I said.

“Yeah,” Amy muttered, staring as Max walked away. “What an a—”

“Amy!” I scolded with a laugh. “God, Pietr. Is he always like that?”

“More often than not,” he admitted.

“He was kind of funny, though. Thinking you were hitting on me,” I added.

Pietr’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. “
Da.
Funny.” He paused. “We’re going to be late,” he said. “Now.”

The bell rang and I jumped, startled by his accuracy.

“Gotta go,” Amy agreed as Pietr and I hurried off toward the gym, just the pair of us walking together in the scattering crowd, and I wondered if perhaps the new-boy mystique was already wearing thin.

“Hi, Pietr!” someone shouted from across the hall.

Izzy. Evidently Pietr had impressed Izzy beyond being brand-new to Junction. Fabulous.

“Boys’ locker room.” I pointed down the hall a little, hoping to avoid any Izzy-related annoyances.

“Girls’ locker room.” He pointed to the door directly before me, giving me a sideways smile.

I smiled back before I could stop myself. So now he was being playful about pointing out the obvious. I entered the locker room, one of the last to arrive. I wiggled out of my jeans, slipped off my T-shirt, and exchanged it for my gym uniform, emblazoned with the Junction High name and mascot.

The Junction Jackrabbit glared out from my shirt, hind legs twisted to kick an unseen opponent, the rabbit’s teeth so big and pointy my dad had proclaimed it a beast worthy of a Monty Python sketch. Although I never considered myself a morning person—most mornings I felt I wasn’t much of a person at all—the morning was progressing nearly normally except for the additions of Pietr and Max.

I slipped my necklace over my head and set it on the locker’s top shelf and gave my jeans pocket a squeeze to reassure myself that my worry stone was still there. I hated not having it, but gym class had rules about jewelry and “accessories.”

Sarah caught up to me and I asked what she was reading today. “I’m already deep into
Great Expectations
. Have you read it?”

I said, “No,” although I thought I had.

Even at my fastest, I couldn’t consume books as she now did. Something had flipped a switch in her brain after the accident and she’d come out of it hungry for words.

“It’s amazing. It’s all about moral self-improvement. The character Pip wants to be a better person and works really hard at it,” she said, glowing.

“Sounds great,” I said. “I’m all about the self-improvement.” More important, I hoped Sarah was big on that same theme. We exited the locker room and entered the broad and open expanse of the gym. Coach Mac took a shot from the foul line with a basketball, Pietr in his shadow.

Pietr nodded at me. Girls glared in my direction, eyes daggers at the idea Pietr might have found some special connection with me. At least there were fewer of them stalking him today than yesterday. Popularity like he’d had earlier neared paparazzi-level.

The ball swished into the basket, and Coach Mac said, “Yep, Petey, that’s the way we do it at Junction.
Sswish!
” Coach squeezed Pietr’s shoulder before pointing to the locker room. “Derek!”

Derek swung around. “Yeah, Coach?”

“Get the fresh meat a uniform and assign him a lock.”

“No problem.” Derek smiled in a way that left me wondering, even as Sarah maneuvered me to the stands.

I watched Derek and Pietr disappear into the locker room together. Sarah said, “Sit,” and I sat, eyes stuck to the locker room door. “What’s going on with you?” Sarah waved her hand in front of my face and I gasped, jolted out of my trance.

“What?”

“What’s wrong with you, Jessica? I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“Sure, you have. Everyone has. You probably just don’t remember,” I said gingerly. I ticked the times off I’d been precisely like
this
on my fingers, “Bobby Constantine in fifth grade, Aaron Johnson in sixth grade, Matt Greene in seventh grade, and Derek—”

Sarah shook her head in denial. “Yeah, you probably got a little nutty over each of your crushes, sure. But you’re, like—like—” She searched for the right word, and I knew a snappy piece of vocabulary was going to be thrown my way. “You’re totally
vacillating
between love and hate.” She smiled.

“What?”

“You’re totally up and down over him. You can’t decide to love him or hate him.”

“What?”
I tried again. “I
totally
adore Derek. You know that.” I rolled my eyes.

The locker room door popped open, and Derek strode out, looking sour.

“I’m not talking about
Derek,
” Sarah insisted.

But I didn’t pay attention because Pietr threw the door open and stepped into the gym, a dark look twisting across his face. Even so, I never thought a person could look decent in our gym uniform, but Pietr had pulled it off.

“What do you think they talked about in there?” I asked, leaning into Sarah’s shoulder.

“What do guys ever talk about? If it’s not about themselves, or sports, it’s girls.”

Stella Martin leaned forward, wedging her face between us. “Maybe they whipped out their
stuff
and compared sizes.” She giggled.

I raised an eyebrow at her intrusion, but Stella always tramped around outside the bounds of common social graces and never took a hint.

Sarah blushed at the suggestion but surprised me by adding, “So who do you think won
that
competition?”

“I heard you could tell by their shoe size,” Stella mentioned.

I couldn’t help it—I found myself comparing sneakers in curiosity.

Sarah nodded in sage and silent agreement.

Stella crossed her arms and leaned back in the stands, out of the bubble of what I’d thought was a private conversation.

“Ridiculous,” I muttered.

Coach was speaking. “So, since we’re playing shirts and skins in b-ball today and Admin frowns on shirtless girls—” He winked at Amber Fox in a way that made me shiver. Amber just beamed. “You girlies are going to be on one team, but don’t worry your pretty little heads, ’cause I’m also giving you our two best guys—best at any sport—Derek
the man
Jamieson and Jack
desperado
Jacobsen.”

They jogged onto the court, Coach clapping.

“Come on, laay-deez!” Jack whistled what he must have thought was a rallying signal. I thought it was an insult to any self-affirming young woman. But Amber bounded out to the court as if answering a language only she could understand.

Sarah and I groaned and stalked out onto the court as well.

“Let’s get everybody into position, Jack,” Derek called over his shoulder as he approached me. His scowl from earlier had eased. “Jessica,” he said, smiling again. He put one hand on my waist and one on my wrist to steer me into position, his eyes never leaving mine.

Warmth crept out of his fingertips and I struggled to focus. For a moment I could almost imagine we were dancing . . . but the sensation dropped away when he let me go. My face felt as if it were on fire. A sudden dizziness made my knees tremble.

Derek’s fingers swept under my chin, tilting my face up. My eyes fogged, seeing only him. “I want to talk to you about Homecoming.”

I nodded, mute.

“Later,” he assured, leaving to help Jack.

I noticed he didn’t touch any other girl the way he’d touched me. Not even his ex-girlfriend, Jenny. And she noticed, too.

Coach rattled on, one moment complimenting Derek and Jack’s emerging strategy, the next teasing the remaining ragtag group of guys. I tried to remember to be disgusted at such blatant favoritism of the jocks, but Derek winked at me and I couldn’t remember anything anymore.

The other guys were climbing out of the stands and peeling off their shirts. There was a sudden glare as fluorescent light bounced off white skin as first one debate team member and then a chess club guru shrugged off their cotton tees and revealed their thin frames. It was like watching vampires disrobe, but none of them looked as healthy as the undead I’d read about.

A wall of white flesh formed with Pietr lost somewhere on the other side of it. I heard a gasp. The white wall shifted. It was then I caught a glimpse of Pietr, surrounded by the smartest guys in school as they hypothesized about something beyond my view.

Pietr stood frozen, uniform shirt in his hand, mouth tight. Not nearly as alabaster as his observers, Pietr’s skin looked like someone beginning a tanning regimen. He looked . . . warm.

Pietr stood as still as stone while the other, shorter boys pointed and speculated over something on his back.

Smith, always my favorite debater and member of my frequent flirters club, said, “It looks as if you have a peculiar
birthmark.” His eyes narrowed behind the frames of his thick glasses.

“It’s a tattoo,” Pietr countered. “My whole family has them.”

Jaikin jumped in, trying another tactic. “It is a very
natural
color for a tattoo.” Just because the boys had bonded a little with Pietr at Golden Oaks didn’t mean they’d stem their natural curiosity for the sake of his comfort. I loved my nerds and their boldly awkward ways.

“Amazing what they do with dyes,” Pietr quipped.

“It
does
have a very well-defined shape to be a birthmark,” Smith agreed. I nearly smacked my forehead, suddenly too aware of why our debate team was on a losing streak. Mrs. Feldman had been absolutely correct: Sticking to their guns was not my nerdy boys’ greatest talent.

By now, even Coach Mac was curious about the symbol marking the new student.

As he moved in to take a look, the rest of us drifted from our assigned positions. From my spot in the curious mob of uniform-wearing students I could see the tattoo clearly. So clearly that I had to agree with my boys’ first instinct: It was not a tattoo marking Pietr’s left shoulder blade.

Someone asked the question I didn’t because I didn’t want to appear too interested.

“What is it exactly?”

“A sword,” Pietr said, flipping his shirt over his shoulder to try to end the debate.

But Hascal added his own perception, which, oddly enough, made Pietr even more uncomfortable. “It looks like a saber.”

I circled the group of them, taking the opportunity to look at Pietr shirtless. He was slender but not thin, his muscles moving sleekly beneath his skin as he turned his torso slightly, seeking to end the crowd’s curiosity. His arms and shoulders
were well defined, his chest broad and strong, as if he spent mornings helping on a local farm. But I knew better. Because I knew Pietr’s family came from Farthington.

And there were no farms there.

“A saber is a
type
of sword,” Pietr nearly groaned.

“Hey—the last name’s Rusakova, right?” Hascal knew he was right. He seldom said anything he doubted was correct.

Pietr’s lips thinned and paled, but he nodded.

“Was your family in the Russian military?”

“Somewhat.”

But that was when I saw the thing that made the mysterious tattoo fade to nothing in my mind.

“Somew . . .?” Hascal floundered. I could almost hear the cogs in his brain shift to interpret the cryptic answer.

I stepped forward, slipping between observers until I stood intimately close to Pietr, and before I realized what I was doing, my hand was touching a wicked-looking scar that started at his side and twisted cruelly, racing raggedly across part of his abdomen, just below the ribs. Pietr was as warm as he looked. “And what’s this?” I whispered, startled that someone could be cut like that and stand before me—in gym class—alive.

“Appendix.” His hand took my wrist, my nerves jangling at the contact. His eyes were a smoky blue, clouded, distant, and stunning as a sandstorm rising against a perfect desert sky.

Coach Mac snorted. “Sue your doctor, then, Petey, ’cause that’s the wrong side for your appendix.”

Just then a basketball slammed into Pietr’s chest. He didn’t blink, couldn’t have seen it coming, but he caught it, his eyes never leaving my face. He had released my wrist.

My fingers were all pins and needles. My spine only jelly.