"Mind if I come with you?" he asked.
No, she didn't mind. Maybe Max would get jealous and then realize he should really talk to her.
"Sure." She glanced back to Cam, Blake and Max. "I'm sure I'll see you all soon."
Cam said nothing, but smiled and started off with Blake. Max held her gaze a few extra seconds, laughed, and followed them. Something in her plummeted as he did it.
She shook it off, and turned her focus to Johnny. Walking with him to the courtyard felt like walking the red carpet with Brad Pitt for all the stares they were getting. In the tabloids, she'd be a "mystery blonde."
Not for long.
He held the door open for her. "After you."
She walked through and sat down on a bench obscured mostly by bushes. "These socks are so ugly," she remarked, taking a cigarette from the top of one of hers.
"Everyone has to wear them, so it's not like you're going to stand out. You're not going to be the girl with those weird, ugly socks."
Becca raised her eyebrows. "Well, at least I found a use for them. They're so freaking bulky you can't even see my cigarettes-" she reached for her other sock "-or my lighter."
"You kind of can," he said, and watched her as she lit it. "I didn't know you smoked."
"What, do you not like it or something?"
He made a face. "Not my business."
True.
"I'd stop if I had to." She eyed him, and took a drag. "So, why did you want to come out here with me?"
He looked as if this was a subject he'd hoped she wouldn't broach. "I don't really know. I kind of...just wanted to talk to you."
"Oh, really?" She smiled playfully. She was used to this approach. This was much more comfortable for her than what Max was doing. Or wasn't doing.
People passing by the windows that overlooked the courtyard were noticing them. She blew some smoke out of her lungs and stood in front of him.
"Do you like me, Johnny?"
"I barely know you." He looked into her eyes. "But I'd like to get to know you."
"Good. I like you, too." She focused on the grass beneath her feet. "But I don't want to get a bad reputation."
She raised her head, hoping he'd say that Max had told him about what had happened. She envisioned a proud scene in which Max went for high fives and everyone was jealous.
But Johnny just furrowed his brows. "Bad reputation?"
Dammit. "Oh, you know. I don't want to jump into something with someone too fast."
"That's okay, I'm not saying- I just feel like I want to know you. It's stupid...."
More looks from inside. She smiled winningly at him. "It's not stupid at all. Let's go eat lunch."
They walked down the hallway, Becca telling a story about her old school. He made a joke, and she laughed, laying a hand on his arm. "You are so funny."
Together they waltzed into the dining hall.
"Let's sit by ourselves, okay?"
"Sure," he said.
Becca set her purse down on a table and got a small bowl of soup. As they ate and he talked about whatever it was he was talking about, Becca surreptitiously scanned the hall for Max. Finally she caught him at a crowded table across the room. He wasn't looking at her. She couldn't help but glance up every now and then at him. Finally he did look in her direction, then quickly averted his gaze.
It was working, she could tell. He cared if she talked to Johnny. So she didn't look up again, but directed her attention to Johnny only.
"So how long have you and Max been friends?"
He ignored the change in subject and took a bite of his sandwich. "Since we were kids. We both grew up in D.C."
"Cool. How come he doesn't date?"
He looked at her with a small smile. "You like Max, don't you? See, here I thought you weren't like every other girl here."
She laughed, trying to look as though this were preposterous. "I do not! I'm just curious. He's not even that good-looking, I don't get the appeal. So many girls like him, and he never dates." She took a sip of her water. "It's just weird."
"Girls are always throwing themselves at him. He doesn't need to date." Johnny shrugged. "I guess he's never gone for the desperate type."
"Well, who does?"
"True."
"So," she said, "tell me something about you."
Whatever he said, she didn't listen. She was just trying to look like she thought every word he said was fascinating.
A couple days later, as Becca left her last class of the day, she saw Max going into the gym. She hurried upstairs to put on her "workout clothes" and then walked in, too. She stepped onto a treadmill a few down from his, her headphones on, and acted like she didn't see Max.
She had to run for fifteen minutes before he came up next to her.
He was in a gray T-shirt, soaked with hard-earned sweat in all of the right places. She lowered the speed and took out her pink headphones.
"Hey," she said, with a small smile.
He smiled back. "So, you're hanging out with Johnny now?"
"What do you mean 'hanging out with'?"
He shrugged. "You tell me."
"I'm getting to know him, but I'm not hanging out with anyone."
"Right."
Not being able to take it anymore, she turned off the treadmill.
"I'm going to get in the sauna. You want to come?"
He considered her for a moment, and then said, "I thought you weren't hanging out with anyone?"
"I'm not," she said, and led the way. Then she added, without looking back at him, "And besides, we've already done our hanging out. What interest are you to me now?"
"Ha!" he said.
The sauna was already warm. She took off her shirt and her shoes, leaving her in her neon pink sports bra and black nylon shorts. He followed her lead and stripped down, too.
It was the first time she'd really seen his body. It was perfect. The type of body artists would want to sculpt and poets could gab endlessly about. He was lean but strong.
They sat next to each other for a minute in silence, him leaning against the wall with his eyes shut, and her looking around the small brown room. The door had a lock. She leaned forward and turned it.
He turned to her, a small smirk on his face. "Yeah?"
Determination filled her. He had to want her. She couldn't be just another girl throwing herself at him, but she needed him to do something.
"What? I'm generally quite modest," she said, "and I just want to make sure no one comes in while I don't have my shirt on." She indicated her sports bra.
He nodded, visibly not believing her. "Come here," he said.
Yes. Now she had the power. "Why?"
"You know why."
She smiled and stepped up to where he was and lowered herself onto his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck and let him kiss her. Soft at first but then with urgency.
The surge she felt in her chest was not romantic. It was victorious. She knew that as soon as he started to show interest in her, that she'd have no trouble walking away. But right now...
He laid her on the surface of the wooden bench and they did it again. By the time they emerged from the room, their faces were pink, and their bodies were slick with sweat from the heat.
CHAPTER SIX.
ONE OF THE THINGS THAT HAD BEEN INTIMIDATING about heading to Manderley was its boast that almost every student had a 4.0 GPA. My 3.2 was pretty good, but who knew how that would translate from a public high school in a beach town to a private New England boarding school.
I suspected "not so well" when I sat down on my first day in my first class.
"Good morning, everyone." The teacher was a small woman with black, beady eyes and hair that looked like it would feel like straw. Her voice was a bit low and booming. "I am Professor Van Hooper. Welcome to English. I'll tell you now that this class will not be easy. Expect a C to be a good grade."
I got a chill as I imagined what we'd have to do to stay afloat. As if she'd read my thoughts, Professor Van Hooper went on.
"Every two weeks, we will begin another book. At the end of those two weeks, you will owe me a paper written on your own choice of topic. The only restriction is that you must find something worth investigating in the book and write about it."
A girl in front raised her hand. "Like a book report?"
"No. Not like a book report." The way she responded made me sure I'd be keeping my hand down as much as possible. "For example, this week, we are reading To Kill a Mockingbird. You may, for instance, choose to theorize on how the main character, Scout, grew through her experiences in the book. Or you might get a little bit more creative, and talk about her relationship with her father or brother. It's up to you to write something I want to read. It's up to you to find something about the book that isn't on the back cover. Now. Let's talk about basic formatting. Times New Roman, one-inch margins..."
There was a sudden shuffle as people dug through their backpacks for pens and notebooks. At my school back home we'd pretty much started using laptops, but the brochures had made it perfectly clear that they were not allowed in class. Stupid rule. I have terrible handwriting.
She switched on the overhead, and it hummed into life.
She sped through what she expected technically from us, and skipped straight into finding the deeper meaning in the classics. I loved to read, so I wasn't dreading it.
"I assume you've all read To Kill a Mockingbird, yes?"
There was an uncomfortable shuffle from the students who I guessed had skimmed through it and used SparkNotes.
"So as you read it this second time, I want you to start thinking more about the underlying themes. Yes, we know it's about prejudice and the struggle between right and wrong-but what else is there? What else did Harper Lee bury within her pages?"
World History demanded a lot more prior knowledge than I had. The teacher started off the class by asking us what we knew about the religious beliefs of the Neanderthals. I sank in my seat and hoped to God I wasn't called on.
Math, which was always my worst subject, started off with a quiz. Really? Day One of Algebra II and we're taking a quiz? Just to see what we know, but still. It's a quiz. Everyone else around me seemed to know what was going on, making my inability to follow along stick out like a sore thumb.
And then I walked into the huge concrete studio on the top floor of the main building. The windows went from floor to ceiling, and there were big black filing cabinets with wide, skinny drawers lining the walls. There were about thirty easels standing on the hard, cold floor, which was splattered with the paint of a million masterpieces gone by.
The room echoed the music that came out of a silver MacBook Air on one of the black cabinets. It wasn't until then that I realized I'd gone almost three days without hearing music, and thought how unusual that was for me.
There were a couple of people there already, sitting on stools and talking to each other. I sat down on an empty one and stared at the floor while people filtered in for the next five minutes. I didn't talk to anyone and they didn't talk to me. Maybe I was being paranoid, but as their whispers echoed throughout the room, I heard a lot of "she," and I automatically and self-pityingly felt sure they were talking about me.
Professor Crawley walked in as the clock struck three, marking the beginning of my last class of the day, and smiled at us. He'd been the first teacher to crack a smile all day long.
"How's everyone doin'? Good first day?"
Silence.
"Yeah, me, too." He sat on a stool and looked down at the papers on his clipboard. He ran through attendance, reading our last names and waiting for the small murmur of acknowledgment.
"...Francis? Gordon? Hanover? Holloway?" He looked up and around. I did, too. Had I not noticed him somehow? "Nope, no Holloway. All right, Langston? Marconi?"
My stomach dropped. I didn't know why, but I was disappointed he wasn't there. Maybe he was just late.
As Professor Crawley reached the end of attendance, everyone's heads turned toward the door. I followed the collective gaze to see- "Mr. Holloway, there you are. Don't let your tardiness become a habit. You go by Max?"
He nodded his head and sat down on the stool next to mine. I looked straight ahead, suddenly unable to feel natural.
"So on to class, then. Welcome, all of you. Some of you I know, some of you I don't." Professor Crawley looked at me. "But I'm absolutely sure we'll get to know each other in no time. I'm Professor Crawley. You can just call me Crawley while we're in the classroom. Too many syllables otherwise. So how many of you have any experience in painting? Or art of any kind, really? Drawing, sculpting, maybe just doodles in your biology notes?"