Handcuffs (16 page)

I
t’s a strange situation, deciding where to sit in class now that we are kind of tentatively back together. I mean, do I move to the back of the room, or do I stay in the middle? Why doesn’t he move to be with me? If I move, do I sit where I have a good view of him? Or do I allow him the view of me? Are the other students watching me? Are they even slightly aware of the things passing through my head, or am I crazy?

The questions just keep coming. Do I sit to his right or to his left? Should I try to pass notes to him? Of course I don’t pass him lame little notes. I sit two seats behind where I used to sit, before we started talking in the first place. He’s in the very back, I’m one row ahead and to the left diagonally. I rarely look at him, not even when I’m sitting in class, but all I can think about is him.

This is the last class of the day, and I am so ready to get out of here, but it’s a long class. We’re on a block schedule, which means I may actually die of old age before I get out of here, and the hands on the clock above the whiteboard are barely moving. The Gruesome Twosome are totally smirking at me. I guess they saw the pictures too. I don’t want to think of them looking at me, and I think maybe he feels the same way. Out of the corner of my eye I see him frown. He kind of shifts in his desk, and I can tell he’s annoyed by their smirks. Since we’ve been dating, they haven’t even looked my way. The little freakazoid is staring down at his desk now. I’m aware, like I’ve got some kind of radar to tell who’s looking at me and who’s not. If I could just get that focused on the lesson. I glance at the little weird kid. Maybe he’s just keeping his head down because he has a black eye and a busted lip. Who knows how he got beat up, but he had it coming.

The essay is a piece of cake, even though I don’t have my notes. Even though my neat outline of everything Ms. White had to say about the Romantic poets is now a dripping mound at the bottom of the Dumpster outside the office. She writes her prompt on the board and sets a timer, and I tune out all the tension around me, forget about the other students in the classroom, and start to write. I turn the paper in just before the dismissal bell rings. I can feel the evil twins checking me out from behind. I step out into the hallway, relieved to get away.

My purse is making little buzzing noises. We’re supposed to keep our cell phones in our lockers, but that wasn’t an option today with the slush and all. I fumble for my phone. Finally, Raye calling me. My mom gave it back this morning so I can get in touch with her if I have an emergency—the whole reason they bought me the phone in the first place, in case the school blows up or something.

“Hello?” As I speak I turn and search the hallway for him. Is he still in the classroom? I stop and wait, just in case.

“Hey, Park, I didn’t make it to school today.” Like I hadn’t noticed. Raye’s voice is all scratchy, like her nose is stopped up. “But I can take you home. Want to meet me at Arby’s?” The Arby’s is right next to the school. Big sigh of relief. I had been toying with the idea of asking him to drive me home, but now I can’t even locate him.

“Sure.” I have to move on. This tall girl is glaring at me. I guess I’m standing in front of her locker. I look over my shoulder and then start to move my feet. Defeated. You would think after the afternoon, the walking together and the glances, that he would take the time to say goodbye. I swing my purse over my shoulder and lug my new stack of old books with me, out the side door and toward the sidewalk that leads directly to Arby’s. I wish Raye were here to walk with me; I always feel self-conscious walking alone. I have to go all the way across the school parking lot to where the sidewalk begins and then across the Arby’s lot.

She’s hiding behind a big roast beef sandwich dripping with bright yellow cheese. “What happened to you?”

“God, Parker you have to get ungrounded. Not having anyone to talk to is ruining my life.” This is good, I like being irreplaceable and important. Not good that she feels her life is going to hell, but really, this happens to Raye periodically, and with my help, she deals with it.

“Maybe you can tell my parents that.” I sit down. Dad isn’t really aware of little details like when I’m supposed to get home from school, but if Mom asks him what time I arrived and they realize I didn’t come straight home, well, that could extend the grounding. I push the fear of further punishment out of my head and focus on Raye. “So you broke up with Josh?”

“We’d only been on four dates. I wouldn’t call it an official breakup.” She looks down. I think she’s being too casual about this, and that means something.

“Then why did you sit in your car and cry?”

“Ian e-mailed me last night.” Okay, first there was the e-mail. Then she cried and left the lights on. I wonder suddenly how she got her car started after she called to tell me the battery was dead this morning. Raye puts the sandwich down on the shiny foil it was originally wrapped in and reaches for her drink. She isn’t looking at me, which I think is a bad sign.

“Really?” I pick up one of her curly fries.

“Yeah. He just wrote about all this personal stuff. It reminded me of the old days. I miss him.” She wrinkles her nose. Some other emotion is hiding under her carefully blank expression. Hope? Is she getting back together with the magnificent Ian?

“He started your car today. With jumper cables or whatever.” It’s a guess, but her eyebrows fly up and almost hit the spiky fringe of her dark hair.

“He had jumper cables.”

“So do lots of people.” I say this softly so it doesn’t sound so confrontational.

“Afterwards we talked. It was good. He went to school. I couldn’t.”

“You can’t be serious?” I’m testing her a little bit, she’s been so staunchly anti-Ian for so long. I need to be careful. I can’t blast him if she thinks she loves him.

“I said I miss him, not that I want you to be a bridesmaid at our wedding!”

“I know you too well, Raye. I know what the look on your face means,” I say.

“He’d have to come back on bended knee and kiss my feet and apologize.”

I hear what she’s saying, but what I’m picturing is totally different.

“Even that wouldn’t be enough, even kissing your feet, not after what he did to you.” Instead of Ian, I’m imagining my ex on bended knee. It’s kind of enticing, and I can see why she’s in dreamland with this prospect.

“At least I’m not doing Kandace Freemont leftovers.” That one gets me. I mean, the shock of an attack like that from Raye. My eyes start to water.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.” She backpedals. Now it’s her turn to be careful. She reaches out and puts her hand on my arm. Sometimes Raye can get overly defensive about the whole Ian situation, but I know pretty much exactly how she feels, so I’m not really mad about it.

I don’t want her to think I’m crying because she snapped at me. Raye can be pretty snappy. It’s just part of who she is. You accept it, or you get scorned and made fun of.

“It’s been a rough day,” I tell her. I didn’t want to talk about today before I had a chance to work things out, but I need Raye firmly in my court and not doing that “you’re my best friend so I can take my crap out on you” routine. So I tell her everything about the locker and the ice and the pictures. She takes a second to digest my information, and possibly her sandwich as well.

“Oh my God, Parker.”

“You haven’t been on the bitch blog? You haven’t seen or heard anything?” I ask. Raye checks these things more frequently than I do.

“Of course not, I would have told you. I’ve been on the move all day, hiding from Mom and Dad. I just couldn’t stand to see Kara after some of the things Ian told me. And this morning I needed to think.” Kara Bennington is the girl Ian broke up with Raye for, and she’s in Raye’s chemistry, algebra 2, and English classes. Nice, huh?

“I need to get home before my dad gets suspicious.” I check my watch. I’ve sat here way longer than I planned. “Come on, Raye.” I’m starting to get nervous. I hate having to go home almost as much as I hate the thought of my dad frowning and looking away whenever he sees me. I feel trapped between life and my life, if that makes sense.

“You don’t want a sandwich or something?”

I don’t want to tell Raye that I don’t have any money. I mean, she will insist on buying me something, and I owe her from the last three times we went out.

So I lie. “My size-fours are a little snug right now.” She laughs, stands, and gives herself a little shake.

“Nothing to be ashamed of about a size six,” she says, angling her cup to get the last of the Diet Pepsi out.

“I figured I’d move up to a five first.” We both stand and she carries her tray to the garbage can. I didn’t think she’d heard me, but she turns and says,

“The Limited doesn’t make jeans in size five.” I love the Limited’s basic jeans and that Raye knows me so well.

“I might shop someplace else.”

“Fat chance of that!” Raye laughs and I join her. Yes, I am predictable. It feels good to just be me in my classic-cut jeans and not worry about things for a minute, like whether she’ll realize I’m a total loser and drop me for cooler friends. I feel like an imposter sometimes when we’re laughing and I’m pretending to be spontaneous. I try to be careful with my friendships. It seems sometimes like friendship can be a fragile thing. I’ve been dropped before, by Marion when we were neighbors, by the popular girls in middle school. No matter how dumb it is, those things still hurt when I let myself think about them.

Sometimes I wonder whether Raye’ll get so wrapped up in Ian love that I’ll drop off her radar. She pulls into my driveway and I gather up the crusty dusty books and manage to hit my elbow really hard on the door of her car. My eyes start watering all over again as I stumble out of the car and up the sidewalk.

Dad is in the living room and he calls my name but I pretend I don’t hear him and head straight for the computer. I pull up the Social Siren and take a look.

The pictures are black-and-white, which is weird. Like some artsy photographer was traipsing around the neighborhood snapping shots. I know that’s not the case, because the pictures are digital and black-and-white is just one of the options on a digital camera. Still, it’s a weird choice.

Is it wrong that the first thing I notice is that I look really good? Zara was right. Those painful crunches I do every night before I go to bed have paid off. The first shot is when I pulled him back into the water with me. He’s kind of leaning back, and my body is on top of his. I might as well be totally naked since someone (probably Marion) has put little black squares over the really private parts. This makes it look like I am hot-tubbing naked with him, and Marion, out of the goodness of her heart, covered me up. Even if you know to look for them, you can barely see my bra straps in the first shot, but nobody’s going to notice something like that anyway. People usually think the worst.

The second shot is the one that makes me stop breathing. It’s of the two of us, wrapped in his towel. In the black-and-white shot the towel is unbelievably white. You can’t see my face because I’m looking down, but you can see his. I don’t know how to describe it, the look. Yearning. His cheek is resting against my hair, and the look is almost painful. How could anyone look at this and think we had sex?

If he ever once looks straight at me with that expression, I will do anything for him. Anything.

21

T
here’s no mention on Marion’s blog of me or any pranks involving ice. Of course, I knew Marion wouldn’t post anything there for Mr. Dawson to pounce on. She may be evil, but she isn’t stupid. The ice incident is probably destined to remain unsolved. And the pictures? I sigh. I miss the days when my life was uncomplicated.

I go downstairs for a snack and to find Daddy. He’s on his cell phone, but he hangs up as soon as I come into the living room.

“How was school today?” he asks.

“Fine.” I know my dad really cares, but how could I even hope to begin explaining the Ice Princess thing to him? It just isn’t going to happen. Plus, I don’t want him to think that I’m unhappy or a reject or anything. He needs to think I’m happy.

“Theresa is going to show the house to a couple tomorrow.” Kick in the gut. A couple possibly buying our house. This is a family house. This is my family’s house.

“If they buy it, where will we move?”

“I don’t know. There are some new houses going up across town, some new developments. Your mother and I are going to look at some places next weekend.”

New development. I know what that means—no yard, no trees. House the size of a postcard. Raye and her mom and her little brother, Flint, lived in one of those until her mom got remarried. It was fine for them, but they didn’t have Preston. My brother could make a mansion feel like a confined space, what with the running and the jumping and the yelling.

“Will I still go to Allenville?” My voice sounds panicky and I take a deep gulpy breath. There’s no way I can handle a new school, don’t they know that? Even with the stuff that’s been happening, the fear of starting over is enough to paralyze me. I don’t do well with change.

“Of course. Allenville High is a magnet school, and your grades are outstanding. You’ll be able to go there no matter where we live.” If I can get a ride. Will Raye drive to some crappy place across town to get me? She can barely make it to school on time as it is.