The Me I Meant to Be Page 9

  He grunted, and I felt like a jerk rubbing in the fact that he wasn’t exactly fighting girls off with a stick.

  “Right” was all he said, and in such a curt way that my mortification was only magnified. Whenever he looked at me I felt like he saw a stereotype—​the rich, popular mean girl.

  I grabbed my backpack and dropped down at the foot of my bed and vowed to be nice. Patting the floor beside me, I invited, “Pull up some rug.”

  “You don’t have a desk?” His voice faded as his gaze found my desk, littered with the clutter of my life.

  I smiled brightly. “Of course I do.”

  He settled down next to me, his long legs stretching out before him. He really was tall.

  “You ever thought about playing sports? Football? Basketball?”

  He shook his head. “They’re just games.”

  “Yeah. So?” I shrugged.

  “I don’t have time for games.” He unzipped his bag and pulled out a notebook and pencil.

  I bristled, offended. Soccer was a game, but I needed it in my life like I needed food and air. Clearly, he didn’t get that. Zach understood. He felt the same way about football. I guess there was no sense trying to explain that to some people.

  I shot him a disgusted look as he turned and faced me full-on.

  I forgot about being offended and gasped. “What happened to your face? That wasn’t there Friday night!”

  A thick gash cut into his eyebrow and crept down onto his eyelid. It had scabbed over, but I couldn’t help thinking it had probably needed stitches. The sensitive flesh surrounding it was bruised a nasty shade of purple.

  I brushed his eyebrow with my fingers without thinking, my touch careful against the severe-looking wound.

  He flinched and pulled away from my hand. “It’s nothing.”

  “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “I ran into a door.”

  “A door,” I echoed in disbelief.

  “Yeah. Now, how’d you do on your test?”

  Clearly he didn’t want to talk about his eye anymore. I wondered if he’d gotten it from some bully from school. Madison had its fair share of pricks. Or maybe even his dad did this to him? My stomach turned and twisted sickly at the idea that he might be stuck in that kind of home life.

  “Flor,” he prompted. “The test?”

  “Um . . . Yeah.” I shook my head slightly and looked away from him then . . . from that eye, which hurt my stomach to see. I cleared my throat. “We’re gonna have to really prepare for this week’s quiz.”

  “That great, huh?”

  I opened up my notebook and took out the worksheet I got for homework on Friday. “I tried starting it. Got through some of them.”

  He looked over my work and took out his pencil. He started marking up the paper. I watched his hands as he worked. His knuckles were scratched up. These looked like new scratches. Maybe he’d been working outside. He handed the paper back to me after a few minutes.

  I glanced down at it and then looked back at him with an eye roll. “So I might as well erase everything and start from scratch?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, that’d be fine. Let me watch you work through it.”

  I took a sheet of paper and rewrote the first problem, feeling him watching me. The paper, yes, but me, too. For some reason it made me self-conscious. I tucked my damp hair behind my ear and reminded myself that I wasn’t usually self-conscious. Guys looked at me. Especially teenage guys. They weren’t exactly discreet. And they didn’t only look at pretty girls. They gawked.

  I paused over the problem, tapping the end of the pencil to my lips, not sure of my next move on it. “You must think I’m pretty dumb.”

  A few moments slid by and he said nothing. I turned to glare at him. He was already looking at me. “This is when you say, ‘No, not at all. I don’t think you’re dumb.’”

  His eyes were no less brilliant behind those lenses. Not this close. “You have people complimenting you all day and telling you how great you are. Do you really need me to do it too?”

  I sucked in a breath. “That’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t need constant affirmation,” I insisted. Was that what he really thought of me? What other people thought of me?

  He cocked a dark eyebrow. “Okay.” He shrugged. And that shrug totally killed me. So cold and indifferent. What was with this guy? The other night he was decent and gave me a ride home. I thought we had entered a kind of truce. “Look,” he said, “I’m just here to tutor you. That’s what you’re paying me for.”

  “Right,” I snapped, and turned my attention back to the problem. I worked through it angrily, pressing my pencil deep into the paper, breaking the tip more than once and having to push out more lead.

  “Shouldn’t press so hard,” he commented after I finally successfully completed one problem.

  I moved on to the next problem without comment. He leaned closer to watch what I was doing and I felt his breath on my cheek. It was distracting. I turned to tell him that he didn’t need to be so close, and our noses bumped.

  “Ow.” I cupped my nose. “How about some space?”

  He pulled back. “You write small.”

  “You’re wearing glasses. Maybe you need your prescription checked.”

  His nostrils flared and I knew he was annoyed. Good. So was I.

  “God. Why are you so popular? It’s not like you’re nice.”

  The words shouldn’t have stung, but they did.

  “And you’re a jerk,” I flung out. “You think you’re so smart and superior. Well, if you were smart you would know that popularity and nice have nothing to do with each other.” Sad but true.

  We glared at each other, our insults vibrating between us. The air was charged and tense, and then suddenly I was looking at his mouth. Talk about distracting. But also ridiculous. Not to mention wrong. So wrong. I couldn’t be thinking about kissing again. Not him. This was becoming chronic.

  There was nothing remotely attractive about him. At least not to me. He would be Willa’s type. I was surprised she hadn’t mentioned him before. She always liked the guys with brains. He had to be on her radar. But then she wasn’t boy crazy. She never really got excited over guys.

  “Hey.” The partially open door creaked, swinging wider, and Dana walked in.

  I blinked and scooted a little away from Grayson. She already had a problem remembering he wasn’t my boyfriend.

  Her smile turned catlike and my defenses rose higher. “Ever heard of knocking?” I demanded. My father wasn’t in the room. I didn’t have to fake nice.

  “Oh, Flor.” She cocked her head and said my name in a chiding way that set my teeth on edge. “Should you be in here with the door closed? With a boy?”

  I gawked at her. “Are you serious? He’s my tutor.”

  She tsked. “He’s a cute boy.” She looked Grayson over and I wanted to hurt her right then. She was enjoying making me uncomfortable. And him, too. “I remember the hormones. I was in high school not too long ago.”

  “Yeah. Like ten minutes ago,” I mumbled.

  She laughed overly loud.

  God. When had my life become this? I was living a teen movie, and it was me versus the wicked stepmother, digging on each other every chance we got.

  I shook my head. “Why are you in here?”

  “I wanted to see if you kids wanted some popcorn.”

  Was she serious? “I’m fine.”

  Dana looked at Grayson. “No, thank you,” he answered, then added, “ma’am.”

  She giggled. “Such manners.” She turned back for the door, swaying her hips and not for my benefit. At the door, she made a show of pushing it wide open. “We wouldn’t want you two to get carried away and do something other than math.” She winked at us.

  My face burned hot. Kill. Me. Now.

  She left then, and I stared at where she once stood, my brain tripping over the fact that she was actually going to be livin
g here with me. That I would see and interact with her every day.

  “Hey. You okay?”

  I reluctantly looked at him, mortified at Dana’s parting remarks. “Yeah. Peaches.” I stabbed my pencil in the air after her. “That she-devil is moving in here. They just told me last night.”

  He looked to the door. “That sucks.”

  I laughed miserably. “You have no idea.” I stared down at my paper. The numbers started to swim and I realized I was about to cry. In front of the smartest guy I knew. Who, I was starting to realize, was kinda hot but thought I was the absolute worst.

  How was this my life?

  He nudged me with his elbow. “Hey.”

  I shook my head, an unbearable lump forming in my throat. I dropped my head lower so that my hair fell in a dark curtain around me.

  “Flor?” He pushed my shoulder, forcing me to look up.

  Reluctantly I lifted my gaze.

  He stared at me, his eyes moving over my face, taking it all in . . . including the tears that blurred my vision. “I’m just having a bad day.” A bad month. I gave a wobbly smile. “I’m okay.”

  He turned his body to fully face me and leaned in slightly, propping his hand on one thigh. “You can’t change any of this. So take this.” He pointed to my heart. The stupid organ actually jumped at the brush of his fingertip through my shirt, just above my breast. “And these tears.” He tapped lightly at the corner of my eye. “You use them. Turn them to fuel.” He nodded his head in the direction of where Dana had been moments ago without taking his gaze off me. “How pissed off you feel, how hurt . . . you use that as incentive to pass math. To do everything better. To become stronger so you can graduate and get the hell out of here. You don’t like your life? Then make the life you want for yourself.” He gestured to the books and paper between us. “That’s why I do this. Why I work multiple jobs and do shit I hate and study my ass off.” He took a breath. “So I don’t have to live with my old man forever.”

  It was the most he’d ever said to me at one time, and I was a little stunned. I nodded slowly. I tucked a bit of my long hair behind my ear.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Suddenly he was human again and I couldn’t stop staring at him. He studied me back, and I wondered what he saw. Still the spoiled brat who he thought was mean?

  After a moment his stare shifted, caught on something over my shoulder. “Is that your mother?”

  I looked over my shoulder and followed his gaze to the photo of me with my mom on my thirteenth birthday. We had gone to Dave & Buster’s. It so wasn’t Mom’s kind of place. She kept calling it a kid place even though there were more grown-ups there than kids. She watched with a pained expression on her face as Dad and I played Skee-Ball.

  The picture sat on my nightstand in a white metal frame. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t moved it yet. Buried it in a drawer. I probably should have.

  It was the last thing I looked at before turning off my lamp at night and plunging my room to darkness.

  I loved my mother. Adored her, even. And maybe that was never as it should be. She was like this beautiful moon in the sky, something I was always reaching for, stretching out my fingers to touch, to hold. She had always been just out of my reach. Even when she lived with us. I hadn’t realized it then. I realized it now. Now I knew.

  I stared at that photo a lot. Mom was smiling in the picture, but I kept searching her face, looking for something. Some sign. Some indication that she was going to leave. Did she know even then?

  The curve of her lips looked a little brittle. A shadow of something lurked in her blue eyes. Every time I looked at those eyes I imagined I saw something different in that shadow. I was determined to figure it out. Maybe one day I would.

  “Yeah. That’s my mom.”

  “Wow,” he said in an even voice. Despite his comment, his expression was mild and not salivating like a lot of boys when they first clapped eyes on my mother. There was some comfort in that. It would have bothered me if he’d looked at Mom with lust in his gaze and made some crack about MILFs. I’d heard plenty of that before. I just really really didn’t want to hear it from him.

  “She’s really beautiful,” he added. Just a statement of fact.

  I nodded. “Everyone says that.” Which was true. Everyone said how beautiful my mother was. She was one of those rare individuals who actually got better with age. Maybe Botox had a hand in that, but for the most part it was just good genes.

  “You look like her.”

  I made a sound and gave him a funny look. “Really? You’re the first to say that.”

  “What? You don’t get told you’re beautiful like fifteen times a day?”

  Heat slapped me in the face. I wasn’t starving for compliments. I got my share. I wasn’t insecure with my looks. Hearing him say this, though . . . I didn’t know why it affected me. I didn’t know why it made my stomach churn with butterflies.

  I looked back at her with her blond hair and blue eyes. “I look more like my dad.”

  “Your coloring,” he agreed. “Not your features.”

  And how hadn’t I seen that? I studied Mom’s face every night, but I never saw me in her. Maybe that was why I couldn’t figure out that shadow in her eyes. Because I couldn’t see her as she really was.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s finish these problems.”

  Nodding, I returned my attention to math as he walked me through them step by step, patiently, breaking them down so that I could figure them out.

  He made things sound easier. Doable. Fixable. Like life was really what you made it and all those clichés. He made me believe I could do this. That I could get things right.

  And I wasn’t only talking about math. Grayson was one of the good guys.

  I really should set him up with Willa.

  GIRL CODE #11:

  No group pictures shall be posted to social media without consensus . . . unless you look really really good.

  Willa

  LITTLE niggles of guilt didn’t go away. No, they just grew and grew and became bigger niggles.

  I supposed they would go away with absolution, but there could be no absolution coming from Flor, because she would never know what happened.

  I would never confess what had gone down between Zach and me.

  I was all about justification. Why should I tell her and ruin our friendship? It was a freak collision of lips and hormones, and Zach and I had agreed to move on and put it behind us. It would never happen again. It meant nothing.

  The last thing I could admit to was breaking girl code. Especially as today at lunch we’d spent forty-three minutes inventing girl-code tenets to add to our manual. Yeah, that wasn’t secretly awkward at all.

  “Oooh, I got one!” Jenna exclaimed as she fished a carrot stick out of her plastic bag. “No one shall take a picture of a friend drunk and getting an MIP and post it to social media.”

  She was pissed about that photo from Sharla’s party. Her parents had seen it.

  “Yeah, but is that a violation of girl code when it comes to you and Hailey Hines?” Farah asked. “I mean, you’re not that tight with her. Does she owe you loyalty?”

  “She lives a few blocks from me,” Jenna protested. “We used to be in the same Girl Scout troop.”

  “Tenuous thread,” I offered.

  “I agree,” Flor declared. “I mean, I don’t see Hailey sitting here with us. Is she even in your contacts?”

  “Well, then maybe there should just be a common-decency code,” Jenna grumbled. “I’m grounded indefinitely . . . or at least until my brother or sister manages to screw up and take the focus off me.”

  “Knowing your little brother, that won’t be long,” Flor reassured her.

  “Well, I had to miss it to go visit my stupid dad again.” Farah swung her hair over her shoulder. She had the most gorgeous hair. It hung almost to her waist in dark thick waves, and she was always styling it in various braids she learned from YouTube. “I mean, I feel li
ke I’m missing out on our entire senior year!”

  “Maybe you should be glad you were out of town this weekend. You could have gotten busted,” I pointed out.

  “I would have been smarter.” She nodded confidently as she tore open a bag of chips. “I would have gotten out of there in time like you and Flor did.”

  Jenna rolled her eyes. “Right.”

  “At least your dad wants to see you all the time,” Flor interjected.

  I studied her, detecting an undercurrent of anger in her voice.

  We all knew about Dana moving in and how Flor wasn’t thrilled about it. I’d only met Dana twice, but it was enough. I wouldn’t be happy either.

  The table fell quiet then as Zach walked by with a few of his friends. He didn’t look over at us, but we all followed him with our eyes.

  All except Ava. She knew better. She kept her gaze down.

  She’d been allowed back into the fold, but she’d been quiet since taking her old seat at the table. I brought her into the conversation every chance I got and even offered her one of my cookies, making sure she felt included.

  I was self-aware enough to acknowledge that my kindness to her was driven partly out of kinship. I understood the allure of Zach Tucker. Like me, she had resisted it. Rejected it. Unlike me, she had been strong enough to turn away before that first kiss. I couldn’t stand by and let the others punish her when I had done far worse.

  Flor hadn’t spoken to her yet, and we were all waiting for that to happen. I was confident it would. Eventually. Flor wasn’t a mean person. And Ava hadn’t done anything irreparable.

  Would Flor consider my actions irreparable? My gut told me yes, but I wouldn’t risk finding out.

  I bit into my sandwich. Turkey and Swiss. My favorite, but it was tasteless on my tongue as I watched Zach.

  Even among his friends, jocks like him, he stood out. He walked with confidence, lean and strong, laughing at something one of the guys said. It didn’t seem fair. He’d just turned eighteen. Guys his age were supposed to be struggling with acne and be awkward around girls. Not him. Clearly.