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So I would put up with Sawyer exactly to the point that my ironic patience might start to seem suspicious to onlookers, and they figured out I had a crush on him.
Or, worse: He did.
Sawyer stroking my hair definitely was something I wouldn’t tolerate if I didn’t like him. I tried to dodge away from his hand, which hurt because he’d already wound a curl around his finger.
“Ow!” Collecting myself, I informed him drily, as if he wasn’t holding me captive by a thread, “I don’t like it when people touch my hair.”
He raised his brows. “That’s a completely different statement from ‘Stop touching my hair, Sawyer.’ ”
It certainly was. And now that he’d pointed this out, I was afraid he did suspect the truth. Overdoing my reaction now, protesting too much, would just draw attention to the fact that my crush on him was getting more serious. I gave him my best withering look—I was good at these, if I did say so myself—and grumbled, “I’m sensitive about my hair, Sawyer. I just had a huge fight with Aidan about this.” In fact, that’s where my recent trouble with Aidan had started.
I’d never straightened my hair, but I hadn’t been bold enough to let it pouf twice the size of my head, either. I’d worn it tamed in twists or braids until two weeks ago. Natural hair had been gaining popularity—not so much around small-town Florida, but in the parts of America that mattered, like New York and California and TV. I wanted to try it.
I’d finally found the courage to spend a long Saturday unbinding my hair and nudging my curls to life. My mother had been supportive and helpful at first, working with the twists I couldn’t see in back. Halfway through she’d started complaining that she made enough money to pay someone else to do this.
When we had finished, I liked the way it looked. I couldn’t wait to show Aidan when we went out that night. He’d told me it looked like an Afro. Logically I knew I shouldn’t have taken this as an insult, but he’d meant it as an insult. I was wearing my hair the way it grew on its own, more or less, and he told me it was ugly. Or dated. Or at least not what he wanted or expected in girlfriend hair.
“Judging from the part of your fight that I overheard at the Crab Lab,” Sawyer said, “I think you came down too hard on Aidan about that.” I couldn’t see what he was doing, but it felt like he was looping a bit of my hair around and around his finger, then carefully pulling his finger out, curling iron–style, seeing if my hair would stay that way. It would.
“You?” I exclaimed. “Are taking up for Aidan?” Sawyer made fun of everybody indiscriminately, but later you’d see him having a halfway normal conversation with most people. Not with Aidan. He definitely had it in for Aidan. Probably because Aidan’s life was so put together, and Sawyer’s wasn’t.
“I’m definitely not taking up for him,” Sawyer said, tugging at a curl, eyes on my hair rather than my face. “It would be fine by me if you hated him now, but you’d hate him for the wrong reasons. At the Crab Lab, it seemed like you were dancing around the edge of calling him a racist. I don’t think that’s what he meant. None of the girls at school are doing their hair like yours. It makes a statement. Aidan doesn’t want his girlfriend to make a statement.”
Sawyer was just running his mouth, saying anything he could think of to get a rise out of me. This time it was working.
“That’s not true,” I said. “Aidan wanted me to run for vice president of the student council. I make statements in that job constantly.”
“Correction: Aidan doesn’t want his girlfriend to make a statement he hasn’t preapproved. You can’t make a move in student council without him okaying it. If you did, he’d force you to undo it. He’d make you backtrack even if your idea was good, just for spite. That was really clear in the meeting today.” Sawyer paused. His eyes flicked to mine. “I can tell from the look on your face he’s done that to you plenty of times before.”
I glared at him, neither confirming nor denying. The problem with Sawyer was that he moved through the halls of the school with a scorched-earth policy, insulting everyone in his path, but he actually was perceptive about what made people tick. Including me. That’s why his insults were so effective. He understood what buttons to push.
His lips were very near my cheek as he said, “Here’s my theory. You’ve been angry with Aidan for a long time. You knew how he’d react to your hair. That’s exactly why you did it.”
Sawyer had gotten a rise out of me before. But this time he’d taken antagonizing me to a whole new level. I felt my face burning, and it seemed like the space between us was hot with energy. He’d correctly guessed something incredibly personal about me that I’d only half acknowledged myself.
And he acted like he’d only dropped another insult, or made a comment about our team’s chances at the game tonight. “God, your hair is so cool,” he said. “None of the curls are the same diameter. It’s like the track of nuclear particles during fission. It’s a shame you waited so long to wear it this way.”
“It’s hard to maintain,” I said weakly. “It gets dry. It gets squashed when I sleep. Boys mess with my curl pattern. You act like natural hair is this strange, exotic thrill. It’s patronizing.”
Finally (regrettably) he pulled his hand away and looked at me. “Would I patronize you?”
