“Oh shit. Speaking of E-Z Stop, I promised Micah and the gang I’d meet them in ten. I gotta go. Call me later, okay?”
“Oh. Sure.” Before I could say another word, the line went dead. “Okay, good talk.”
I stared at my phone, part of me wishing I could crawl into it. Go back to Pittsburgh and hang out with my old friends. The guys too, but that had to be the homesickness talking, because I’d sworn them off forever. Or until I could have something meaningful and real, which felt like the same thing.
I’d never had a real boyfriend. I’d been too busy studying and taking care of Dash anddoing lifeto be able to focus on a boyfriend and so had only awkward, uncomfortable, fumbling encounters in backseats or hangouts in parking lots. No dates, only hookups. Doing things—doingall the things—because it seemed like that’s what I was supposed to be doing. Not necessarily because I wanted to. No real connections. Never rounding emotional bases, only physical ones.
Never again.
I’d compromised myself one too many times and vowed not to docasualever again. The next time I was with a guy, it was going to be serious.
Not that I had time for serious. Not with the NoSci contest dropped in my lap and the schoolwork and the pressure I was under.
I’d been hoping to talk to Vanessa about it all, and maybe about Orion too. But I guess those would all sound like first-world problems. I may as well have been a Richie in her eyes.
Maybe she’s right. This is a tremendous opportunity, and I should suckit up and get to work.
So I bent my head over my desk and got to work.
***
The next morning, I parked in the student lot. No sooner did I step out of my car than a group of seniors—three guys and a girl—surrounded me. My heart clanged in my chest, but I inhaled deep and lifted my chin.
“Hey, Bender,” one guy said. Big, beefy, blond. “This your sweet ride?”
“Obviously,” I replied.
He and a dark-haired guy with black eyes and an equally wicked-looking girl hanging off his arm grinned. “We wanted to let you know that this is our parking lot. The Bender lot is down there.”
He pointed to a rocky patch of dirt on the other side of a chain-link fence where the school’s industrial arts and stagecraft classes dumped their old lumber and metal. My cheeks burned.
“I’ll try to remember,” I said, pushing past them.
“First warning, Bender,” the big blond called after me. “Park here again and there will be consequences.”
I ignored him and the snickering that chased me into the Academy.
Forget it. They’re losers who have nothing better to do than hang around a parking lot being dickheads.
Still.
It was ten minutes into Calculus before the knots in my gut loosened. Beside me, Emery Wallace was drowning in derivative equations. Given the shit I’d just taken, I was inclined to let her, but…
You’re not doing so hot either, you know.
Vanessa was going to stop returning my calls and texts, the connection between us attenuating until it snapped. I could use a friendly face. Some kindness. Who said Richies didn’t too? I could cross enemy lines. What did I have to lose?Be the change, and all that.
I leaned over. “Hi, I’m Harper. If you ever need help—?”
“I’m good, thanks,” Emery snapped back, fixing me with a syrupy sweet smile that didn’t touch her eyes.
Okay, then.
My cheeks burned as if I’d been slapped. My eyes wanted to sting too, but I didn’t let them. No fucking way.
And because no good deed goes unpunished, when we left class, a bunch of her friends fell in step behind me like a wake of vultures, picking apart my clothes, my hair, and the fact I was a Bender.
Emery picked at me too.
