Crushed (3 page)

She
shrugged. “No problem. Sorry I can’t drive you home tonight. I can’t believe I got
scheduled to work right after school. I’m barely going to have time to get out of
here and change into my uniform
.
And it’s the first day. Who wants to work on the first day?
”

“It’s
really
okay,”
she
told her. “I don’t expect you to drive me everywhere.”

Emma
’s gaze darted
toward
Reece again
. S
he
grabbed Cleo
by the arm. “I don’t feel like hanging around out here today. Do you mind if we just
head inside?”

Cleo nodded. She wasn’t clueless. She knew the only reason they
were
headed in this early was for her
benefit. Because Mia and Reece were not that far away.

As
they
entered the school, the
familiarity
calmed her
.
She loved school. She
loved bei
ng in school. She
knew it had something to do wi
th school being the only place she had really felt happy when she was younger. Her
mom had been sick.
Not physically as much as mentally ill. Clinical depression, to be ex
act. I
t was such a debilitating disease that often times, she’d be bedridden for long periods
of ti
me. At those times it was Cleo’s
j
ob to keep Luci quiet so
their m
om could rest. Or because she had a headache a
nd the noise bothered her. Their
house, considering there were two kids in it,
had
alw
ays
been
unbelievably quiet.

Cleo
was
not a big fan of quiet.

So school was a refuge
for her
. There was always noise and activity and energetic teachers.
She
always welcomed the organized chaos.

Just walking into a school brought all
of that back. She
hoped to
get her
deg
ree in education. She
couldn’t think of a
better place to spend all of her
working years than in a school.
Pref
erably a
kindergarten classroom
. All those busy little bodies, all that energy.

For a while, college had seem
ed like an elusiv
e dream. Until she met with Mrs. Gaines, the
school counselor, la
st year. She’d nearly assured her that she
would probably qualify for enough fi
nancial aid to cover most of her expenses. She
had decided it might be the one and only perk of being parentless.
She
’d st
arted working when she was sixteen. She’d started saving most of her
paychecks right away
. B
ut working part-time at minimum wa
ge would barely make a dent if she had to come up with all of her
tuition.

She
had a nice l
ittle chunk of money saved away. B
ut it would go fast once tuition bills started rolling in.
So when Mrs. G
aines laid everything out for her
, it was like a huge
burden had been lifted off of her
shoulders.

Their local university was small enough and her grades were high enough that she had
no doubt she would get in. She wanted to be able to be close to Luci. But those were
issues to ponder another day. For now, she had to get through senior year.

As so
on as they
entered the main hall of the school,
Melanie and Lauren bombarded them
.

“What lunch do you two have?” Laure
n demanded. She was usually so put together but at the moment, she looked completely
frazzled.

“Second,”
Emma and
Cleo
said together
.

Lauren made a miserable face and
groaned.

“
Awesome.
We all have second lunch,” Melanie pointed out.

“Um,” Lauren said, looking a little offended as she waved her schedule at Melanie.
“No we do
not
all have second lunch
, Mel
. I’ve got first lunch.”

“Well, right,” Melanie said unapologetically. “I didn’t mean you. I meant the three
of us. Adam has first lunch though, right? Can’t you eat with him?”

“We’re not really at the eating lunch together stage. And even if we were,
Mia and Reece have first lunch. He’ll be eating with them
.
I’d lose my appetite if I had to watch Mia hanging all over Reece
. It was
bad enough having to witness it
over the summer,
”
she grumbled. She turned to Cleo
.
“Sorry, but it
was
disgusting.”

She
shrugged
, not eve
n bothering to fake a smile. “It’s fi
ne.” She
knew that Lauren had dated Adam on and off over the summer
. I
t only made sense that she’d spent some of that time with Reece. Which translated
to Reece
and
Mia.

“Of course it’s fine. It should be fine,” Melanie pointed out. “You’re the one that
dumped him, remember? Because you were with Ethan?”

“Watch how you word that,” Emma snapped. “She wasn’t with Ethan until
after
.”

Melanie snorted. “Yeah, thirty seconds after. I’ve got to find Natalie. I’ve got some
questions about practice times. I’ll see you at lunch,” she said as she sashayed off.

“Or maybe you won’t,” Emma muttered. “Want t
o go off campus?”

“Only if you really want to,”
Cleo replied. She packed her
lunch
. It didn’t really matter to her where they
went.

“Then we’ll go somewhere. But be quick after third hour so Mel doesn’t catch us,”
Emma ordered.

“Maybe I can have my lunch changed,” Lauren mumbled
. S
he looked over the paper in her hand again.

“You might have t
o change your whole schedule,” Cleo
pointed out.

“It might be worth it,” she said.
“I’m going to go look for Andrea. Ma
ybe she has first lunch,” she
moaned as she headed off.

Cleo felt for her. She
wondered if whoever was in charge of the almighty lunch schedule had any idea how
detrimental it could be to someone’s school year if they ended up in the wrong one.

She and Emma
migrated with the rest of the students through the
halls, separating to go to their own lockers. She
grabbed a few notebooks and headed toward Community Participation. It was a newer
class but it was popular
. She
’d heard they’d had to add another section of it this year
because two hadn’t been enough
.
She
was glad that
Emma was in first hour with her. When she
got there, there was a
group
of people in front
of the door.

Emma
appeared and
groaned beside her
. “A seating chart? What is this, preschool?” She scowled at the white tag board,
with its neat little squares drawn out, depicting desks. Each little desk had a name
scribbled inside. “I’ll go check this out,” she said. Her tiny body slipped through
a crack in the wall of people.

Cleo
managed to
squeeze her
way into the door
. She
backed up a few feet into
the room. She
glanced around and
…there was Reece. Every nerve ending in
her
body erupted.
Or maybe it was a
n adrenaline rush. Either way, she felt sparks go off and her
heart sped up.

His caramel colored hair had been neatly cut. His skin was a deep bronze, probably
from baseball and fishing on the lake he lived on. And then his dark brown eyes were
on
her
, catching
her
sucking up the sight of him.
She knew she
should look away
. She should
try
to
not to
make it awkward fo
r either of them. But she
just couldn’t.

She was expecting him to give her
a look of disgust
or frustration or…something. She
wasn’t expe
cting him to wave. To be decent. But of course he was decent because he was Reece.
H
e gave her
a small smile
—so small it didn’t even set his dimples free—
and she forced one back.
And managed a wave.

“Crap,”
she heard Emma mutter from right next to her
.
She
knew she had spotted him
, too. “You s
it right here,” she informed Cleo
. She pointed
con
veniently
at the desk Cleo
was already standing next to. The look on her face was apologetic. She turned her
back to Reece.

“
Maybe
you
need to look into a schedule change,” she suggested.

Cleo shook her
head. “This isn’t a big deal. I can handle it.”

“Of course you can,” she sighed. “It’s just one class, right?”

“Right,” Cleo said with a shrug and an overly bright smile. If she were to drop the
class, Reece might take it personally
. A
fter everything else, she didn’t want him to be upset with her over that, too. And
if she was going to be honest with herself, she was
thankful
for the chance to see him. No matter how much more difficult it made things.
Though she would never tell that to Emma.

However, f
or p
ossibly the first time ever, she
was gr
ateful for a front row seat. She knew she couldn’t really lose her
self in
accidentally
gawking at Reece that
way.
It would be too con
spicuous. She
was glad to be clo
se to the door
as well. She
could bolt as soon as the bell rang and not have to worry about being next to him
as the crowd filed out. If seeing him across th
e room had such an effect on her, she
was sure being right next to him would be so much worse.

She leaned her elbows on her
desk
. She rested her face in her
hands as
M
r. Jessen
bounded
into the room. H
e smiled, looking pleased that most of the class had found their seats.
The last few stragglers and the ones chatting at the door finally found t
heirs now that their
teacher had arrived. The bell rang and he grinned. H
e looked up and down the rows. Cleo
had the distinct feeling he wa
s already trying to remember their
faces. Or maybe trying to see if
he already recognized any of them
from the hallways. He finally pushed
his gold f
ramed glasses up on his nose
and
he
began his introduction.

She
tried to listen as he wen
t over the expectations of their
community service projects.
They
’d be working on everything from
making
up posters for school events to going out in the community and volunteering. He explained
they
would be doing this with partners.

“Alright class, it’s time to pair up,” Mr. Jessen finally announced.

Cleo glanced over her shoulder and her
eyes
inadvertently
landed on Reece. His best friend Adam happened to have the seat directly in front
of him. Adam was turned around in his seat, presumably locking up a partnership with
Reece.
In the split second it took her to assess this and for her to redirect her
gaze
and smile
at Emma, Mr. Jessen cut
off the noise that had erupted.