Chapter 4
Griffin
August, Age 15
“Dude, what did you do to piss Ellie off so bad?” David asks, laying on the couch tossing a basketball up in the air absentmindedly.
We’ve assumed our regular positions in my basement – David on the couch, Jack on the floor with the contents of his backpack laid out on the coffee table, and me in the oversized armchair my dad put down here when my granddad had to get a recliner with more back support.
You’d think they live here with how often the three of us are at my house. It’s because my house has “better snacks,” according to David.
David has been my next door neighbor since his family moved here when we were both two years old. Our dads started golfing together, and our moms started taking us to the park while they went. I guess you could say we didn’t really have a choice in being friends.
Jack joined us in sixth grade. Me and David were riding our bikes around the neighborhood when we saw himsitting on the curb a block over in front of a house with a “Sold” sign on it.
It was just him and his grandma, and something in the awkward one-word answers he had to every question we asked gave us the impression that he’d had a rougher time than either of us combined. He’s a year older than us, but in our same grade.
The one time we asked him about school, he mumbled something about his dad missing the deadline for kindergarten registration. We’ve never seen his dad, and we’ve never brought it up again. Instead, we forced him into friendship the same way me and David’s parents had forced us, and we’ve been a trio ever since.
“You’re going to drop that on your face again, and I’m not driving you to the ER when you break your nose this time,” Jack says without looking up from the homework he’s diligently doing.
“I don’t know, man,” I say, yanking my hands through my hair again, like that’ll somehow pull an answer out of my scalp. At this point, I probably look like some sort of electrocuted Jimmy Neutron.
WhatdidI do to piss her off? When I walked into Spanish that first day, I noticed her instantly. From the moment I saw her nervously twisting a tendril of her long blonde hair, I knew I wanted to be as close to her as possible.
I could barely remember my own name to introduce myself, and the second her deep blue eyes locked onto mine, I was a total goner. I didn’t know what or how or why, but I did know that I wasn’t going to be learning much Spanish that semester–I was much more focused on learning everything about the girl in the chair behind me.
Unfortunately, all I’ve learned so far is that she’s about as uptight as they get. If you look up “overachiever” in the dictionary, it’s just a giant picture of Eleanor Turner, glaring disappointedly at you for not doing the extra credit. And she’ll definitely be wearing a scowl, which is all I’ve seen her since day one.
She’s insanely smart, funny in a sort of quiet way that you don’t expect, andeveryonelikes her–and she seems to like everyone, myselfexcluded.
Which brings me back to the scowl that seems reserved for me. I might put her next to “overachiever,” but I think she’d put me next to “scum of the earth.”
David is just as loud, and Jack is just as distracting, so I don’t understand why I’m somehow the sole target of her annoyance. It seems like the harder I try to build a bridge between us, the more irritated she gets with me.
I wasn’t joking when I told her I might be the most darling gentleman in all of Larkspur. Okay, maybe I was exaggerating. Alright, I wasdefinitelyexaggerating.
But I’ve always been well liked. Old ladies love me, all my kid cousins want to hang out with “cool cousin Griff.” I have table manners, I hold the door open, I say “sir” and “ma’am”, and the smile I inherited from my dad usually wins people right over.
Eleanor Turner is apparently immune to charm–especially mine. And for some reason, I can’t stop testing the limits to see how far I can go before she cracks. I guess I found that breaking point today.
“She really laid into you,” David continues on. “For a second there I thought she might smack you upside the head.”
“You probably deserved it,” Jack muses, still laser focused on his textbook.
“I don’t understand why she gets so worked up,” I grumble, crossing my arms and slumping further into the armchair. “You bozos are just as annoying as me, butyounever get yelled at.”
Snickering, David pauses his one-man game of catch and sits up to look at me with a suspicious looking glint in his eye. “Face it, she just likes us better than you. But…”
“But what?” I ask cautiously. When David gets that look, I know he’s about to say something that’s going to make my life a lot more complicated.
“But I bet you can change that. You like a challenge, and you’ve never met a chick you couldn’t get to like you.”
He’s not wrong, but Eleanor isn’t like every other girl I’ve smooth-talked. To be honest, I haven’t even tried my normal tactics on her. From the moment I met her, I knew they wouldn’t work.
This girl is different.
“Okay so what’s your point?”
