The Crushes (12 page)

Rule 3:
Wear raspberry body splash—it drives boys wild!

Rule 26:
Do not feel you have to tell your friends who you are crushing on!

Friday morning, on her way to work, Sydney pulled into the drugstore on the corner of Mulberry and Danner streets to grab some lip balm. She couldn’t find hers, and she liked having it at work because it was cold in the hospital. Her lips were always dry.

Inside the store, the assistant manager, Tammy, waved to Sydney from a display of new body sprays.

“How are you today?” Tammy asked, ripping open a cardboard box at her feet.

“Fine, thanks.” Sydney went straight to the lip balms and took a package of two vanilla tubes off the rack. Better to have a backup. She decided she’d grab a bottle of water, too, while she was here and went over to the coolers on the far wall.

When she passed Tammy at the front of the store, Sydney paused, her nose picking up the scent of something sweet. “What’s that smell?”

Tammy straightened and pushed up the sleeves of her floral blouse. “Raspberry body splash. One of the bottles was leaking in the box. Smells nice, though, doesn’t it?”

Sydney nodded, eyeing the display Tammy was putting together. There were bottles of cucumber melon spray and McIntosh apple, something called Hawaiian ginger and another called Japanese cherries.

Raspberry body splash…why was that setting off bells in her head?

The Crush Code. There was a rule about raspberry body splash driving the boys wild. That was one of Kelly’s additions to the new code. She had an entire shelf of body sprays in her bedroom. Sydney typically didn’t use sprays or perfumes or anything really, for that matter.

Did raspberry body splash really drive boys wild or had Kelly made up a useless rule because she hadn’t wanted the Crush Code in the first place?

Well, the spray
did
smell good, either way. And Sydney wasn’t adverse to trying something new. Would Drew like it? Would it drive him “crazy”? Despite her best efforts, Sydney had yet to reignite the spark in their relationship, and she was almost frustrated with trying at this point.

Trying to save a relationship with body splash was such a dumb idea, but there she was, grabbing a bottle off the shelf anyway.

After paying, Sydney went out to the car and sprayed the raspberry body splash on the underside of her wrist. She didn’t want it too strong. She didn’t want to choke out the kids at the hospital, but a little bit couldn’t hurt, right?

“Hello, Carl,” Sydney said as she entered the boy’s room in West Two. “How are you today?”

Carl, an eleven-year-old who’d just had surgery on his heel, shrugged and flipped through the meager fifteen cable channels on the TV.

“I’m bored. Like really, really bored.”

“Where’s your mom?”

“Getting lunch.”

Sydney thought for a second, then, “How about I bring in an Xbox?”

Carl stopped flipping through the channels to look over at Sydney wide-eyed. “There’s an Xbox here?”

Sydney nodded. “With lots of games, too.”

“Do you have Madden?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll check.”

“Cool! Thanks.”

Sydney went to the media room and stopped just inside the doorway. Quin was there organizing the movies.

He looked up at her through his glasses. His hair was down today around his face and wavy, too, as if he’d washed it and let it air dry.

“Hey,” he said, straightening.

“Hi.” She entered the room, going to the video game shelf. She scanned the titles, running her finger along the
spine of each game box. There were so many, more than any video store she’d ever seen.

“Looking for something?” Quin asked.

“Umm…Madden something?”

Quin went to the third shelf, pulling out a football game. “Here you go.”

“You know where everything is, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “Oh, hey, by the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you I saw your picture the other day in the art hall. I was really impressed.”

A smile spread rapidly over her face. “Yeah?”

Quin nodded. “The light composition was great, and I loved the fluid motion of the runner.”

Sydney didn’t even pretend to know what he was talking about. “I’m afraid I don’t know much of the technical side of photography.”

“Well, you have a good start on instinct. You can learn techniques. If you want, I can take you out sometime. My schooling has to be good for something, right?”

“Really? You wouldn’t mind?”

“No. I love photography, and people like talking about the things they love.”

Sydney laughed. “That’s true.”

But what would Drew say if she hung out with another guy? There was nothing romantic about Quin’s invitation, but that wouldn’t matter to Drew. Guys didn’t think like girls did. It wasn’t okay for a girl to hang out with a guy she wasn’t romantically linked with.

It was such a double standard because Drew hung out with Kelly all the time and Sydney never said anything about
that
.

“I’ll keep the invitation in mind,” Sydney said to Quin. “It’s just, I have a boyfriend and I don’t know if he’d…you know, be okay with it. But I appreciate the offer.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

She grabbed the TV cart and headed back to room 412, regret and disappointment settling in her stomach. She didn’t want to hurt Drew, but she really wanted to go with Quin on a photo excursion. Was that so wrong of her? She hated that she had to decide between her boyfriend and a hobby that she loved. The fact was, she could learn something from Quin. He was enrolled at the Brooks Institute!

It just disappointed her that she had to miss such a great opportunity.

Rule 10:
Have a sense of humor! Guys like to laugh!

“God, I love you,” Ben said, squeezing Alexia to his side as they hung out on her bed. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me since my brother peed his pants in that carnival fun house six years ago.”

Alexia laughed because Ben’s twin brother, Will, often held himself as if he were above everyone else. And Alexia had gone into that fun house. She hadn’t peed her pants.

Ben kissed her forehead, his fingers running over her ribs through her T-shirt. An excited shiver teased her back. She bolted upright. “I think I’m going to check my Email.” She went to her desk and shook the computer mouse.

She, Alexia Bass, was no longer a virgin, but she’d only had sex that one time and it’d been over a week now. She was still a little freaked out by what had happened.

Ben sat on the corner of her desk. He was wearing his usual cargo shorts and a blue T-shirt. The only skin Alexia could see was his legs and his arms, but her brain filled in the rest using the night of the Fourth as reference.

“Alexia? What are you doing?”

A blush spread across her cheeks, and she looked back at the computer screen. “I’m just checking my Email.”

“Except you’ve been staring at the screen for about five minutes. Are you trying to check your Email using mind control?”

She shook her head, barely cracked a smile.

“What is it, Lexy?”

She sighed and rubbed at her forehead. Could she tell him what she was thinking? Of course she could. He would never make fun of her.

“The other night,” she began.

“Are you regretting it?”

“No.” But that wasn’t entirely the truth. Still, that’s not what she’d wanted to talk about. And besides, she couldn’t go back and change her mind. It was done. What she could control was what happened from here on out.

“I know we used something,” she muttered, looking at her hands in her lap, “but…”

“I know. Look.” Ben pulled his wallet from his back pocket and showed her two condoms slipped inside. “Take one. So you always know you have it.”

She shook her head.

“Take it.” He put it in her hand, closing her fingers around it. He leaned over, put his finger beneath her chin and kissed her. “I love you, Lexy. All I want is for you to be happy.”

She nodded, butterflies flapping satisfied wings in her belly.

Despite everything with the sex issue, she loved him, too. And she felt like the luckiest girl in the world to have
him. She knew he cared for her, that sex hadn’t been his goal right from the start.

She was just happy that the stress of making the decision was over. Now she just had to deal with the aftermath of having
made
that decision.

It would be okay, she thought. As long as she had Ben, it’d be okay.

Later that night, after Ben left, Alexia called Raven to hang out. Alexia wanted to talk to one of her friends about the sex thing because she needed to tell
someone
, and Raven seemed the obvious choice. Alexia and Raven had always been closer than the other girls. Not to mention, Raven wasn’t a virgin, and Alexia hoped Raven would make her feel not so stupid for having lost her virginity.

When she got no answer on Raven’s cell, she decided to drive over.

Pulling up to the curb, she noticed Raven across the street at her neighbor’s house hanging out on the front porch.

Alexia parked and walked over. Blake was in the middle of a story about his visit to L.A. last week. Raven, head back, laughed at a joke about Hollywood “Bimbinos.” Blake smiled, clearly pleased with Raven’s reaction.

Rule 10 said to have a sense of humor.
Guys like to laugh!

Was Raven using the Crush Code on Blake?

“Hey,” Alexia called, waving from the bottom of the porch steps.

“Alexia, right?” Blake said, nodding his head just once in a greeting. He waved her up. “Come hang. I just got back from L.A., and I’m starving for conversation with chill people.”

Raven went quiet, the smile having left her lips.

“Actually, I just wanted to talk to Raven for a second,” Alexia said.

Raven got up and tugged down her tank top. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Blake and followed Alexia to the street, out of Blake’s hearing range.

“What’s up?” Raven asked, crossing her arms defensively over her chest.

“Well.” Alexia swallowed, licked her lips. Suddenly her problems vanished, and she said, “Are you cheating on Horace with Blake?”

Raven widened her eyes, hung her mouth open in disbelief. “No. How could you even ask me that?”

Alexia shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “It just seems…I don’t know…like you’re hanging out with him a lot, and I thought maybe you’d decided to use the Crush Code on him. I know how you are, Raven. You like the thrill of the hunt.”

Brow furrowed, Raven straightened, putting herself an inch taller than Alexia. “You make it sound like I’m some…cougar or something. God, Alexia. I’m not a slut.”

“I didn’t say that—”

“But you implied it.”

“No.” Alexia shook her head, feeling the situation spiraling out of control. She didn’t know how to fix it. Or how to calm Raven down. Blake and Mil-D were suddenly quiet on the porch.

Alexia leaned closer to Raven and lowered her voice. “I just don’t want to see Horace get hurt and then have you calling me because you’re upset that you screwed up the relationship. You love Horace, Raven.”

“Yeah, Alexia, I know.” Raven’s shoulders went rigid. “And I’m not cheating on him, so why don’t you butt out of my business and go psychoanalyze someone else.”

Raven stomped across the street to her own house, opened the front door and slammed it shut behind her. Alexia stood frozen by Mr. Kailing’s mailbox, wondering what had just happened.

Her face was hot, her throat felt ready to close.

She glanced up at Blake’s house, and he and Mil-D quickly looked away. Alexia shot them a scowl before getting in her car and leaving.

Rule 7:
Be adventurous and daring! See life as an adventure!

Rule 31:
Do not send your friend to tell your crush you like him!

On Sunday afternoon, Kelly sat on one side of the living room in the cushy reclining chair and her brother on the other side on the couch. There was a bag of popcorn in Todd’s lap and a bowl in Kelly’s. The TV blared music videos. It was literally the only thing on right now.

“Ready?” Todd said, a piece of popcorn in his hands.

Kelly opened her mouth into an O, and Todd chucked the piece of popcorn at her. She leaned forward, eyeing the popcorn sailing through the air. She caught it.

“Yes!” she said, clenching her hands into victorious fists. “Now my turn.”

She threw a piece at Todd, but it sailed right over his head and disappeared behind the couch.

“Nice throw,” he said sarcastically.

“Ha. Ha. Let me try another one.” She tossed another piece to him and this time he snatched it from the air.

She clapped her hands. “Yeah! You were like a dog catching a Frisbee.”

Todd narrowed his eyes. “Aren’t you HIL-arious.”

Kelly set her bowl of popcorn on the coffee table and went over to the couch, flopping down next to her brother. “I’m bored!”

“Let’s build a castle out of cheese.”

“You are such an idiot.”

Kelly closed her eyes and instantly she thought of Drew. She’d been thinking of him all day. And all day yesterday while she worked at the shelter. And all day the day before that, too.

It didn’t help that he was best friends with her brother and at the house all the time. Something had changed between them. She couldn’t tell what. Maybe it was the fact that she’d admitted out loud to Adam that she liked Drew.

Drew didn’t know that, of course, but that had to change the way Kelly acted around him and maybe he’d picked up on it.

“Let’s go do something, then,” Todd said, chomping on a mouthful of popcorn.

“Like what?” Kelly sat up.

“Something fun.”

The Crush Code came to mind. Despite the idea behind it (forcing Kelly to go after Adam) some of the rules were fun to follow. Maybe there was an idea in the code.

“I’ll be right back,” she said and went to her room to grab her list of rules.

Rule 1:
Be playful, fun, and flirty!

Nope.

Rule 6:
Make him feel special—

No.

Rule 7:
Be adventurous and daring!

Hmm…that had potential, but what could they do in Birch Falls that was adventurous and daring?

When she was a kid, she, Todd and Drew, and some other kids from the neighborhood would get a group together to play capture the flag.

That used to be her favorite game.

Tucking the Code back in her desk, she went out to the living room.

“I have an idea,” she said. “Let’s play capture the flag.”

Todd spit out a popcorn kernel. “Hell, yeah. I’m in.”

“Cool.” Kelly grabbed his cell phone off the coffee table and tossed it to him. “Call Drew and see if he can come.”

Kelly bent over, sweeping all her hair forward so she could tie it in a high ponytail. Drew and Todd were in front of her, Adam next to her. She’d invited him because, despite the realization that they were not going to be dating each other, they did make good friends.

Kelly liked Adam, just not
like that
.

With her hair tamed, Kelly took the pink rubber band off her wrist and tied it up.

Someone whistled behind her. “Nice view.”

She straightened, shooting Craig Theriot an eat-rocks-for-breakfast look. He only grinned at her.

“Who invited you?” she asked.

Todd and Craig shared a guy handshake.

“I invited him,” Todd said. “Why?”

Kelly rolled her eyes. Craig and her brother were the perfect duo; they’d make a good sideshow act at the idiot circus.

A few other people showed as the group waited in the parking lot of Eagle Park. Kelly had called her friends, but Sydney said she just wanted to hang out at home. Raven had asked if Alexia was going to be there and when Kelly said she wasn’t sure, Raven suddenly had chores to take care of. Kelly wasn’t sure what that was all about. When she called Alexia to get the scoop, her brother said she was working.

Now, looking around at the group of twelve, Kelly realized she was the only girl.

Great.

“Let’s break into teams,” Todd said. “Draw names? Captain picks the teams? How do you guys want to do it?”

“Who are the captains?” Matt asked.

“Let’s draw names for captains,” Drew said, shaking hair from his eyes. “And then captain picks.”

Kelly stuck close to Adam, trying not to look at Drew. She didn’t want him catching her staring, but suddenly she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

He was in a pair of faded, boot-cut jeans and vintage brown leather boots. It was mid-sixty degrees now that the sun had set, but he had on a white long-sleeve shirt and a blue T-shirt over that.

Craig said something to him and Drew shook his head, laughed, flashed those pretty white teeth, and when he looked away from his friend, he turned his neon blue eyes directly on Kelly.

A week ago, she might have smiled or made a face at him. Instead, she turned to Adam, her cheeks most likely flushed. There was an odd weakness in her knees. She hadn’t felt this way since last winter when Will flirted with her in their American government class and later asked her out.

“Blue team on the south end,” Todd said, throwing Matt the blue flag. “Red team has the north end.”

“I’ll call Drew when we’re set,” Matt said. “Deal?”

Drew nodded.

“Are we ready, then?” Todd rubbed his hands together. “You’re all going down.”

“Whatever,” Kelly countered. “They have
you
as a captain.”

Todd rolled his eyes. “I’m the capture-the-flag master.”

“Master of losing.” Kelly laughed, giving her brother a shove as she passed him and Drew.

“Good luck,” Drew said to Kelly, grinning, “’cause you’re going to need it.”

“Have you told him yet?” Adam whispered as he and Kelly slinked through the trees.

Darkness had settled through the park. Kelly could see the trees in front of her, but little else. She tugged down the hat she’d put on at the start of the game. That’s what they used as their individual “flags.” To take out someone from the other team, you had to get their hat.

“Told who what?” she said.

Adam stopped. “Drew. Have you told Drew?”

Kelly pursed her lips and went ahead of Adam, keeping close to the trees.

“I can’t tell him,” she finally said.

“Should I, then?”

Kelly whirled around. “No! Don’t you dare.”

Adam laughed. “All right. Fine.”

She relaxed and continued walking. “He can’t ever know. He’s going out with one of my best friends. That’s like one of the mortal sins of friendship.”

“Yeah, but you can’t help who you like.” Adam hurried to match her pace.

“But I can help whether or not I ruin another relationship.”

A twig snapped somewhere off to their left. Adam grabbed Kelly’s arm and dragged her down. They used a thick tree trunk as cover, poking their heads around it to watch the surrounding forest.

“You see anyone?” Kelly whispered.

“Shh.”

A few minutes later, Kelly saw a flash of white shirt. Who had worn a white shirt to play capture the flag?

Drew had, she remembered.

He and Mike Renze crept through the thickening shadows.

“There’s the wild,” Adam said directly in Kelly’s ear.

She narrowed her eyes at him, remembering the line of poetry he’d quoted the night of the Fourth. That love was the wild that ran through the forests.

“Go get it,” he said, grinning, and then stood up, running off in the other direction.

Mike and Drew froze.

“I’ll get him,” Mike said, darting after Adam.

Alone now, Drew surveyed the area. Kelly clung to the tree in front of her, the bark digging into her forearm. She held her breath, afraid that Drew would hear it. Her heart hammered loudly in her ears.

When Drew passed her hiding spot, Kelly went around her tree to came up behind him. She lunged, but he grabbed her arm and tackled her to the ground.

She burst out laughing as Drew wrestled her hat off.

“I told you that you were going to need luck.”

Kelly met his eyes. Even in the darkness, she could see the vibrant blue color.

“I let you take it,” she countered.

Drew was practically on top of her, his face just inches from hers.

I could kiss him, she thought, they were that close.

He was warm next to her, his breath hot against her cheek. She could feel his heart beating through his shirt.

He wasn’t laughing anymore and neither was she. She was pretty sure she wasn’t breathing either.

Drew bent down. Every nerve in Kelly’s body sizzled. His lips brushed hers, and she inhaled sharply. Her fingers trembled at her sides.

Drew breathed roughly, licked his lips. He leaned down as if to kiss her again, real and aggressive this time, when his cell rang in his pocket.

He bolted up, startled by the sound.

Kelly lay there in the old, crisp leaves among acorn caps and green moss.

Drew answered his phone. “Hey, Syd,” he said, eyeing Kelly.

Kelly’s stomach churned. She swallowed down the heat rising in her throat. There was no way Sydney could know what had just happened, but Kelly felt as guilty as if Sydney were standing right there looking down at her.

Kelly scrambled to her feet, fixed her hair, and wiped the dirt from her pants. She headed off down the trail that would take her out of the woods.

Footsteps hurried behind her. “Wait,” Drew said, holding his hand over his cell.

“I have to go,” Kelly said, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

“Kelly.” He ran in front of her. “Just two seconds.” He went back to his cell phone and said to Sydney, “What? No. I’m with Mike.”

Kelly widened her eyes at the blatant lie. Drew cocked his head to the side, apologetic. She wasn’t the one he should be apologizing to.

“I’m leaving,” she whispered and hurried out of the woods.

This time, Drew didn’t follow.