Go Your Own Way (4 page)

Will ignored her last statement. “What’s that look for?”

“What look?” Natasha gave him an enormous cheesy grin. Sophie plastered a smile on her face, too, and batted her eyes at him as Natasha continued. “So, how much trouble did you get in?”

“A week of detention with Mr. Robinette,” Will said after a moment. “And
him
.”

Sophie covered her mouth and coughed violently, but Will could hear her giggles trickling through. The entire class could. Natasha did nothing to hide her laughter as Mrs. Andruis asked them to break into groups of three to discuss what journalism was. Will, Natasha and Sophie formed a group before Roxanne could stand.

Instead of starting on their assigned discussion, Natasha kept giggling and Sophie gave up on hiding her laughter.

“What
?
” Will said.

More giggling. A loud snort erupted from Natasha.

“What the hell are you two on about?”

Natasha fanned her face and finally stifled her laughter. “Come
on
, boo. Do I have to spell it out for you?”

Will flipped Sophie’s notebook open and scribbled down the list of journalism and creative writing terms on the board as Mrs. Andruis passed. She saw him writing and moved on to the next group. Will stopped writing.

“Why do you insist on calling me that?” he said.

“Because you’re frightening to look at.” Natasha winked at him. “Lennox is totally into you.”

“He’s an asshole.” Will’s words were louder than he meant them to be, and the group beside them glanced over. “Right, let’s define this before Mrs. Andruis comes over here and joins us. Journalism is—”

“He’s hot and
gay
, Will. Or bisexual or something.” Natasha snatched his pen out of his hand. “The point is, how many more gay guys do you think you’re going to meet around here?”

“So I should just throw myself at him because he’s interested?” Will managed to keep his voice down this time, but only just. A trickle of anger ran down his spine at her suggestion. That was the stupidest thing she had ever said to him. So what if he’d never had a boyfriend before? That was no reason to launch himself at the first available boy with an interest in him. “He’s not my type.”

“Oh,
puh-lease.
We all saw the way you were looking at him.” Sophie nodded helpfully as Will rolled his eyes. She hadn’t seen a thing. She wasn’t even
in
band. “Since we don’t stand a chance with Lennox and you do, you should give him a kiss or two. Dur­ing detention.”

“No, he’s the last thing I need in my life.” Will knocked Nata­sha’s hands away from his notebook and took back his pen. “De­fine journalism.”

Will sat back as the girls finally started working on the defi­nition. As much as he didn’t like it, Natasha was right about one thing.
Someone
would be trying to make a move during detention, and Will wasn’t sure whether he liked that idea.

Lennox sneaked back into the lunch line and snatched another apple from the basket rack inside the entryway. He’d learned a long time ago that having the last lunch shift had one benefit: All of the cafeteria workers were too busy in the back cleaning up to notice him sneaking food. The other students weren’t paying attention either; they were jostling each other to dump their trays and hurry back to class. Just one more class left today. He checked his schedule: AP Chemistry. Lennox grimaced.

Maybe Will Osborne would be in his class. Calculus had been boring. Ms. Jenkins was snarky and muttered a lot, but the most exciting part of class had been a discussion about derivatives. French had been awful, too. Everyone had spent the class waiting for him to entertain them with a new stunt and, for once, he wished they wouldn’t. No other class would be difficult, but for­eign languages were his worst subject. Trying to conjugate and wrap his tongue around French pronunciation was much more difficult with the entire class whispering about him.

Will was already there when he got to the chemistry room. Before Lennox took two steps into the room, Will flung his back­pack into the chair beside him, but his eyes lingered as Len­nox took the seat at the next lab table.

“See something you like, Osborne?”

Will’s face turned pink, but he squared his shoulders and looked down his nose at Lennox.

“Just admiring your gaudy jewelry,” Will said, trying to sound dignified as his freckled cheeks slowly darkened to a pleasant red. His eyes lingered on Lennox’s ankle monitor. “It’s reassuring to see someone’s keeping you on a short leash.”

Lennox’s lips curled. Of course Will had noticed. In almost every class today, someone had caught sight of his ankle monitor and whispered about it until everyone in class was glancing his way. Will eyed him as Lennox stretched his mouth and cheeks in the memory of a smile.

Will rolled his shoulders a few times, and then hugged himself as he looked away.

As the rest of the class shuffled in, Lennox propped his feet up and pulled his headphones out of his backpack. He’d let Will stew for a few days, maybe a few weeks, until he was bursting with want and came after him. It wouldn’t be long if Lennox kept on him.

A squat woman with thick glasses entered and called for their attention. Lennox reluctantly stuffed his head­phones back in his ratty backpack and watched her. She was one of the younger teachers and hadn’t yet been eroded down to nothing but a smart mouth and aggravation as Ms. Jenkins, his calculus teacher, had.

“Everyone, I’m Ms. Mentore. We’re going to start with an intro­­ductory lab today.” She grabbed a stack of papers from her desk. “Please, split into pairs and grab a lab station as I bring the work­sheet packet around.”

A great scraping echoed around the room as everyone shoved their chairs aside and hurried to pair up. Will convinced a girl with brown pigtails to work with him and headed to the far side of the room. It took a few minutes for Ms. Mentore to realize Lennox was still sitting at his table, his eyes on the others as they picked their stations along the back wall.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Everyone, it looks like we have an additional stu­dent, so who wants to be a trio?”

Lennox leaped to his feet before Ms. Mentore could pick a pair. Nobody spoke. Everyone shrank back as if they expected him to hurl chairs at them. Good. If they were scared of him, they’d leave him alone all year.

“I prefer to work alone, if that’s all right with you,” Lennox said. He plucked a worksheet from her hands.

“Are you su—” Ms. Mentore stopped at his expression. Lennox clomped over to the last available lab station and took a seat. Everyone was watching him; he could feel their gazes trying to boil him alive. A few stations away, Will frowned at him, looking for all the world as if someone had slapped him across the face.

“Okay, everyone, the directions and worksheet are simple enough. You’ll be getting to know all of our lab equipment today,” Ms. Mentore said. “This is the most important lesson of the year, and it’s critical that you understand all of our safety measures.”

Lennox ignored her. He read the first few lines and almost walked out. He didn’t want to get familiar with his lab station tools. Any idiot knew what goggles were for. As the rest of the class followed along with Ms. Mentore, Lennox scribbled out his answers to each asinine question. He was finished, but the rest of the class was only on the Bunsen burners section, a little over halfway through. Ms. Mentore was helping a pair of girls across the room adjust the height of the flame when Lennox caught Will’s eye again.

“What do you say we light a few flames, huh, Osborne?” Len­nox called down the row. The pair between them gave then dis­­gusted looks. “Wouldn’t mind getting a little heated with you.”

Will made a good show of ignoring him. He held his head high and turned away, but Lennox could see how red the back of his freckled neck was. It made him smile.

“You’re really sick, you know that?” one of the boys between them said. He was a twiggy boy with dark hair and a prickly upper lip. He glowered at Lennox and elbowed the boy he was working with. “Osborne’s queer as anything, but at least he shuts up about it. You—”

“Boys, enough chatter,” Ms. Mentore said. “Get back to work!”

The boy who had spoken grumbled and petted his upper lip. It looked as if he’d accidentally taped a few specks of pepper there. Lennox was halfway to his feet on a mission to get a bathroom pass so he could sneak out of school when the boy spoke again.

“Faggot,” he said under a cough. His friend snorted and glanced at Lennox, laughter bright in his eyes. For a moment, at least. The next second, both boys were on the ground on their backs, their stools knocked from under their butts.

Lennox pulled his leg back for a good, hard kick. But Ms. Mentore was there in an instant, blocking his shot and demand­ing to know what had happened.

“He’s a damn lunatic!” The dark-haired boy checked his elbows as he stood up. Lennox was pleased to see his elbows were both raw and bleeding. “I can’t
believe
anyone let you out of prison with only that thing on your ankle.”

“Michael, that’s enough.” Ms. Mentore helped the other boy up, but Lennox had had enough. He scooped up his backpack, dropped his worksheet on her desk and left.

Lennox spent the walk back to his motel room stewing over the boy’s words, and worse, his own reaction. As much as he didn’t care for Hardy, the old lump was right. If he kept this up, he’d get expelled and sent to a detention center. Of all the schools and places Lennox had been during the last five years, that was the one he never wanted to return to. Gangs and cruelty. Boys his age who only wanted to harm everyone around them. Others so lost they didn’t realize they still had a chance to live after their time in a cell. In there, hope didn’t exist. Everything was the end of something else lost.

He flicked his tongue ring a few times as he turned onto Thomas Street.

Click click click.

Then he heard something shatter around the corner. Lennox paused at the fence behind the motel and listened.

Another shatter, this time with an echoing clang like something ricocheting off the dumpster between the fence and the side of the building. A few pings from Neck Beard’s pellet gun. Of course they were here. Where else would they be?

A second later, Lennox heard the laughter. If they weren’t drunk yet, they would be before dusk. Then they’d start harass­ing him if he showed his face, or they’d beg the young woman next door to trot outside and blow them. It only took a moment for him to cut behind the fence. He’d had enough bullshit today and he wasn’t going to waste time on more.

Lennox walked along the fence. The sounds of their drunken voices and laughter dulled as he counted the windows. At the fourth, he stopped and pulled the straps of his backpack over both shoulders. Climbing this fence was a pain in the ass, but anything was better than another confrontation where he was outnumbered three-to-one.

He backed up as much as he could between the fence and the junkyard behind him, and then took a running leap. The fence bowed under his weight as he tried to wedge his toes into the chain-links. An angry shout echoed from the other side of the motel. Lennox cursed and froze, listening. Another thud from the street, more pings from that stupid gun. He swung himself to the top, and dropped down into the narrow space between the fence and his bathroom window. He pushed it open and hoisted himself in face-first. His palms hit the toilet seat, his foot caught on the window ledge, his hands slipped and he tumbled to the floor. Lennox winced as his ass hit the side of the tub. No broken bones at least.

Instead of locking the window, Lennox inched toward the cracked bathroom door and peered through it. The front door was closed. Nothing looked out of place either. Lennox darted out of the bathroom, past the floor-to-ceiling pipe and the dresser, and shoved his trunk back into place to block the door. He’d have to start leaving through his window in the mornings. Leaving his door unsecured was too much of a risk. Milton, the motel owner, had brushed him off when he’d asked to have the lock fixed. So far Milton hadn’t helped with anything besides inventing new fees for him to pay every month.

From here, their voices were a little louder, but they’d get bored soon. Lennox set his backpack on his bed and opened the bottom-right drawer on the lopsided dresser.

It held his secret stash: apples, oranges, a few bananas, a small row of bagels in a plastic grocery bag. Lennox dropped the apple he’d stolen from the cafeteria behind the others and grabbed an orange. It wasn’t much, but if he was careful, he could grab something from the cafeteria every day or two and save him­self some money. His grandfather’s monthly allowance hadn’t amounted to much so far; almost all of it went toward the water and electric bill Lennox hadn’t expected to pay. It wasn’t included in his rent, according to Milton, but Lennox didn’t believe him.

It was just an excuse to get more money out of him, but Lennox couldn’t do anything about it.

Lennox grabbed his backpack, a napkin from the top of the dresser and his flashlight from atop the stack of books serving as a bedside table and headed back into the bathroom.

Until Neck Beard and Shrimpy were gone, he couldn’t turn on the lights, especially when it got dark. He settled down in the bathtub, drew the shower curtain closed, propped the flashlight on his shoulder and dug in his backpack for his calculus book and a notebook. The school hadn’t offered any calculators, but at least that meant this assignment would take up more time. He’d have to do every calculation by hand, and that beat talking to the busted up Furby toy he’d found when he’d gone dumpster diving for his new lamp. The books and comics in his trunk could only be read so many times before they got old, and he’d only found old magazines in the dumpsters nearby. Except for Crooked Teeth, nobody lived here permanently besides the girl next door, and he’d only caught a glimpse of her once. She’d been wielding a baseball bat on her way to her car.

“Psst! Hey.”

The window he’d left unlocked flapped open. Lennox sat there, his chest tight. It was a woman’s voice. He peered around the shower curtain. He recognized the hand as belonging to the woman next door: Nobody else around here wore yellow nail polish. Lennox stood on the toilet lid and looked out at her. She was a tiny woman with her hair all braided up in a nest on her head and a thick leather bracelet on her right wrist. She had a full plastic bag swinging from her arm and a hand on her hip.

“Care to give me a lift up?”

Lennox stared. From here, he could hear more pings from the pellet gun.

“I got stupid, went for a walk to get dinner,” she explained. She waved the bag in his face. Tacos. He could smell them. “My window’s locked and—”

“And you want to eat tacos instead of their dicks,” Lennox finished. “Right. Interesting choice.”

The woman frowned, pulled out a taco, and offered it to him. “Let me in and I’ll split it with you.”

Another shattering sound from out front. He could leave her out back and ignore her. The dumpster blocked off the back of the lot and those men would never hear her over their own raucous laughter and the pellet gun. She’d handled them on her own plenty over the last six weeks. Lennox had been woken up by it more than once. He inhaled deeply, and his stomach rumbled. Tacos had never smelled so delicious.

“Move back so I can climb out.”

“Thanks.”

He boosted her up, handed the food in to her and finally climbed back in himself. But the bathroom was empty when he got inside. Instead, she was standing in his room, looking around.

“Nice pipe,” she said, giving it a tap with her shoe. “My heater’s in this spot. I’ve got a stove, too. It’s not very good, but if you ever want to use it, let me know. I’m Lucy, by the way.”

Lennox flinched. His sister’s name. Even here in the mountains he couldn’t escape reminders of her, out there somewhere, grow­ing up without him.

“What? Don’t you like my name?” Lucy dropped the bag of tacos on the bed. Lennox eyed it hopefully. He hadn’t expected dinner tonight—he hadn’t for several days now.

“So about those tacos?”

“Take them,” Lucy said. Even as he grabbed the bag and sat on the floor, it hit him that this might have all been a ploy to… what? Meet him? Harm him? Not likely. Lucy dealt with the same harassment he did. At least she’d bought food, more than she could eat in one evening. “Except the quesadilla. That’s mine. Rest is yours.”

“So you buy me food to get in here.” Lennox bit into a taco. “For what? I’m gay, so if you’re trying to get some—”

Lucy grimaced. “From a twiggy kid like you? I don’t rob cradles.”

“You’re what? Eighteen? Nineteen? I’m not that much younger than you.”

“Twenty-three.” She plopped down beside him on the floor, their backs against the bed. “You still haven’t told me your name, taco thief.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He finished his first taco and unwrapped a second. Lucy took out her quesadilla and ate a few bites.

“I’m trying to be nice here,” she said. “It’s not like I don’t know your story already.”