Autumn Falls (8 page)

Evan’s the bad-ass Miracle Worker. I like her.

ADAPT technically ends at the close of the school day, but they let us out about a half hour early. I hang in the black box while Sean finishes talking to his own group leader. The second he’s done I casually slide out beside him.

“So how’d you adapt to ADAPT?” he asks.

“Far better than I’m adapting to you as a guy who tells corny jokes.”

He smiles. “Come with me.”

“Demanding much?” I ask, though the truth is if he keeps smiling like that I will follow him anywhere.

“Demanded
of
,” he says. “Three older brothers. That’s why I like playing quarterback. Lets me give orders to someone else.”

“Wow,” I say. “How hard did you have to work that answer to slip in that you play quarterback?”

“I’m exhausted from the effort,” he says. “Are you duly impressed?”

“Swooning.”

“I like that,” he says. “It’s rare I get a good swoon.”

We’re at the far end of campus now, wandering by the athletic fields, and I’m surprised how much I like talking to him.

“You’re different than I thought you’d be,” I admit. I mean it as a compliment. I knew he was nice and polite, but until now I worried his personality stopped there.

“You thought I was what, quieter? Maybe not so quick?”

I shrug, feeling like he caught me. “Kind of.”

“It’s okay. I get that sometimes. It’s the Auditory Processing thing. I miss stuff, especially in big groups, and default to smile-and-nod. I like to think I’m better one-on-one.”

I remember what Amalita said about him, that instead of dealing with difficult situations he ignores them and hopes they’ll go away. She still might be right, but now I wonder if part of that is him not always knowing the bad stuff exists.

“So what’s the deal with you and J.J. Austin?” he asks, switching topics. “Are you guys together?”

“Me and J.J.? For real?” I blink at him in surprise.

Sean shrugs. “I see you together all the time. I just thought …”

“We’re friends,” I say more quickly than I probably should.

I suck in my cheeks so I don’t grin. Sean’s checking up on my status. He’s been watching me to see if I’m available.

“How about you and Reenzie?” I ask.

Sean smiles. “Our parents have been best friends since college, we’ve lived next door to each other our whole lives, and when I look at her I still see an eight-year-old girl.”

I give him a dubious look. “Really,” I say flatly.

He nods. “She’s like my sister. I had to make out with her on a dare once at a party. It felt like kissing my brother.”

I consider asking how exactly he’d know how kissing his brother feels, but I like his answer too much to mess with it.

Across the campus, I see dots of people emerge from the main building. Class is officially over. We automatically start walking back toward our lockers.

“Are you around for the next couple hours?” Sean asks. “I have track, but you could hang and watch practice if you want. Maybe we could hang out after.”

“That would be great,” I say.

Amazing. I wanted time with Sean and I got it. Now I know.

I like him. A lot.

Guess I’ll be staying on Reenzie’s list.

Almost feels like home
, I text Jenna. Walking down to watch track practice.

I used to watch Jenna’s practices from time to time. It’s the same scene, except here there’s a huge grassy hill leading down to the track, and everyone is sprawled out on it. In Maryland, only the athletes got soaked in sweat, while in Florida, the air is so thick and sticky that after two minutes I can wring out my skin.

I’m not the only one sitting by myself, but just about. I didn’t tell my friends I was coming. Sean asked
me
. It would have felt lame showing up with a posse.

The good thing is no one seems to care. No stares, no snickers. Jenna was right: the picture was embarrassing, but one bad picture offers only limited entertainment. The world has moved on.

I look around for Sean, but both the boys’ and girls’ teams practice together, and there are groups everywhere
doing sprints and hurdles. The field in the middle is covered too—people stretching, long-jumping, pole-vaulting …

Unbelievable. Marina Tresca is pole-vaulting. I can’t escape this girl. As I watch, she races forward, plants her pole into the dirt, and hurls herself impossibly high into the air. She sails over the bar with so much room to spare that all the other pole-vaulters applaud.

So the wench who’s out to humiliate me isn’t just evil, she’s an evil ninja. Perfect.

She hasn’t seen me yet. I should go before she does. It’s not running away, it’s avoiding unnecessary hell.

“Autumn!”

It’s Sean, and Reenzie and I both turn when he calls my name. He smiles at me before he joins his teammates on the ground. They’re doing core work. Planks. His arms tense as they hold his body taut, and I have to wrap my own arms around my knees so I don’t race onto the field and touch the rigid outline of his bicep.

I might be drooling. If I’m going to come out here regularly I might need to bring a bib. I hold up my phone and pretend to check messages while I zoom in and take a picture to text to Jenna. I send it with no message. It speaks for itself.

I planned to do homework while I was down here, but it’s far more entertaining to watch Sean sprint. The boy is hard-core rocking the shorts and singlet. He’s fast, and when his arms and legs pump down the field, every muscle on his perfectly tanned body ripples and flexes and …

He’s like a jungle panther
, I text Jenna.

If you’re lucky, maybe he’ll pounce
, she replies.

Sadly, the one who looks ready to pounce is Reenzie. She keeps glaring at me like I’m dinner, and I’m fairly certain fire actually flares out of her eyes when Sean ambles over between sprints and collapses on the ground next to me.

Ignore the witch. Jungle panther in near proximity.

“Thanks for hanging out,” Sean says, taking a swig from his water bottle.

“You
should
thank me,” I say, adjusting my ponytail. “It’s hard sitting out here in the hot sun. It’s a serious aerobic workout.”

“ ’Cause your heart is pounding so fast watching me run?”

“Yeah, that’s it, stud.” I laugh. “You’re pretty fast.”

He laughs too and bends forward into a hamstring stretch. “Oh, yeah? Who’ve you been talking to?”

“Running,” I clarify. “Fast
running
.”

“I’m not. I mean, I’m okay, but football’s more my thing.”

“Right, someone told me you play quarterback. Oh, wait, that was you.”

I could keep this up all day, but Sean has to go back to the track. I won’t even look at Reenzie; she’s probably lancing a voodoo doll of me with her pole.

More likely she’s planning her next online assault. I heard they were reviewing the school portal with some sort of hacker prevention team, but that will just make Reenzie more creative. She’ll make a fake Facebook
account with my name, or a Pinterest page filled with pictures that’ll make last night’s look flattering.

I hate this. I hate that I have to worry about what Reenzie’s going to do. I hate that I can’t just enjoy seeing whatever happens with Sean without having to watch my back.

Forget it. I’ll enjoy it
and
I’ll watch my back. And if she does anything else, I’ll make sure she gets caught. I feel so determined about it that I pull the journal from my bag.

Dear Dad,
I begin.

I chew my pen for a second, thinking, then add:

I tuck my journal away in the bag and go back to watching Sean. I’ve had boyfriends who played sports before, but I’ve never been the girlfriend-in-the-stands type. Only for Jenna, but she’d put in the hours. She’d earned my devotion.

Sean, though … I could handle being watch-from-the-stands girl for him. I could even enjoy it.

“Are you kidding me?”

The shriek is bloodcurdling. I snap to its direction and
see Reenzie slowly getting to her feet. Goose bumps race across my skin. From the way she screamed I assume she broke something, and here I was wishing for her to wipe out. But no, she’s not limping. She’s filthy. She’s streaked with mud and holds her arms far from her body and her legs bowed like all her limbs are badly sunburned and she doesn’t want them to touch anything. Walking that way she looks stiff, but not hurt. Teammates—including Sean—flock toward her, but quickly pull back to a wide diameter.

“Just get away from me!”
she screams.

Some back away, but a circle of girls walks with her off the field and toward the locker room. I watch the spectacle until Sean appears next to me.

“What happened to her?” I ask.

“Not sure,” he says. “Do you mind if we hang out some other time?”

“Yeah, of course,” I say, as if I’m not jealous and a little dubious about the she’s-a-sister-to-me thing.

“Great. Give me your phone.”

I do and he enters himself in my contacts, then hands it back.

“Text me so I can call you back later. Talk to you soon.”

He jogs off in Reenzie’s direction. Practice was almost over anyway, and no one’s going back to it now. People are still hanging out and talking, but I’m done. I walk home, have dinner with Mom and Erick, and dive into
Hamlet;
all the while I keep checking my phone to see if Sean will really call.

It’s ten at night before he texts me.

I can’t help myself—I screen-shot our text exchange and forward it to Jenna and Amalita, complete with my own LOLs,
’s, and huge strings of :D!s. I’m rolling on my bed, laughing so hard I snort, and Erick has to bang on his wall so I’ll shut up and he can sleep.

Even after I’m off with Sean, and even after I’ve called Amalita and relived every detail of Reenzie’s in-retrospect-even-more-spectacular wipeout over and over, I’m still not
done reveling in it. I pull out the journal so I can record the moment properly, but as I’m about to write I notice the end of my last entry.

That’s what I
thought
I’d written. But now that I see it in front of me, it says something different. I stare at the letters to make sure they’re not floating around on me, but the words I see don’t change.