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Chapter One
Trevor
The only thing worse than being stuck in Twin Oaks for the summer without my best buddy, Nathan, is being stuck in Twin Oaks for the summer and having to spend most of it with Everly Jenkins. She’s the person my guidance counselor assigned as my tutor. Don’t get me wrong, the girl is cute as hell, but I have zero in common with her. And from what I remember, her nose is stuck so far up in the air I’m pretty sure it’s in a different time zone.
Jesus. Everly Jenkins.
She goes to church every Sunday, and considering her father is the pastor, I get it. I’ve been to church exactly once in the last five years and have no plans on attending anytime soon. Not because I don’t believe in a higher power or anything like that. I just don’t think that I need to prove it every damn Sunday.
Her reputation is that she’s straight as an arrow. Again, no judging. I just like a bit more of an edge to the people I hang with. Besides, during freshman year, Nathan and I “borrowed” my cousin’s truck for the weekend and got caught. To our classmates the stunt elevated us to a weird sort of celebrity status, but that year in English class, Everly had done a speech on the perils of delinquency. Damn. Perils of delinquency. At the time I’d thought I was nowhere near her radar, but I’d been wrong. That day she was talking to me. I knew it. Everyone knew it. And of course, I’d acted like it didn’t matter. I mean, who the heck cares about delinquency when you’re fifteen? But the truth of it was I didn’t like being under her microscope. Didn’t like the thought of her judging me.
And yet here I was again. About to be analyzed and probably found wanting.
I pulled Dad’s old rusted Mustang to the curb and cut the engine. It ran on for a bit, chugging and jerking as if it still had somewhere to go, and I made a mental note to tell him the carburetor was screwed.
I snorted. Mental note. What a joke.
It was the second Monday of June, and the disaster that had been my senior year was almost behind me. I had one more hurdle to jump, and then I could finally call an end to the most craptastic year ever. All I had to do was pass my government test and I could finally end this all and move on. I hoped that, with Everly’s help, I’d get it done.
I tapped the steering wheel, eyes on Everly’s house, and tried to remember the last time I’d actually had a conversation with her but came up with nothing.
That didn’t mean it didn’t happen. Sometimes my memory was a little hazy, and as I stared across the lawn, I gave up trying. What was the point? It’s not as if I was going to chat her up about the new Gibson Les Paul I’d seen online or the bush party everyone was talking about, the one in the woods behind the old drive-in.
I sighed and focused. Come on, Trev. Get your shit together.
Her house was white, and like everything else about Everly Jenkins, it was picture perfect. There was the picket fence. The expertly trimmed hedge and the greenest grass I’d seen all summer. A miracle in itself considering our spring had been the driest in years. Heck, even the hanging baskets on her porch looked good; I wouldn’t be surprised if they were fake.
Everly Jenkins’s place looked nothing like mine. Not that I lived in a dump or anything, but the grass had always been the least of my dad’s worries, and my mom didn’t exactly have a green thumb.
I smiled for the first time today. God, my mom. She’d even managed to kill a plastic planter because she’d put it too close to the oven. It had been a fake poinsettia, and we’d woken up Christmas morning to find the red leaves melted to the pot. My dad still kidded her about that one.
I groaned and closed my eyes, pushing back the long hair that fell over my brow. It was early yet. Not even noon, and already I was tired. That familiar throb was there, just behind my eyes, and I prayed like hell a headache wasn’t on its way. They wiped me out, and it was exhausting trying to pretend that I was fine when all I wanted to do was close my eyes and block everything out.
I heard a door slam shut and spied Everly on the front porch.
Busted.
I threw open the car door and winced. My right knee had been banged up but good in the accident, and when I sat for too long, it got stiff and sore. Grabbing my laptop, I walked around the car and pushed open the gate.
But Everly was already headed my way, ponytail swinging behind her, a laptop case slung across her shoulders. She wore a white T-shirt that fit her the way a T-shirt was meant to fit a girl. Tight in all the right places. (Hey, I’m a guy, so these are the things I notice. Sue me.)
I stopped walking for a few reasons.
One. I’d forgotten how damn beautiful she was with all that dark hair and blue eyes the color of a new pair of jeans.
Two. I had no idea why she was walking toward me as if we were supposed to be going somewhere. Were we supposed to be going somewhere? Was that something I’d missed?
And three. Damn. The girl had great legs, so the fact that her cutoff denim shorts showed them off wasn’t something I could ignore. And well, the T-shirt.
I took a moment and looked her over. Like I said, I’m a guy first.
I watched the blush creep up into her cheeks. Saw how she lifted her chin as if to say “F you.” Pretty much killed whatever she had going on.
We’d never really clicked, she and I. Not since grade six when I’d kissed her in a closet at Jackson Breckman’s house and told the entire class about it. I’d been pretty pumped. Heck, she was the girl all the boys liked, but she was also the girl who was hands off. Pastor’s daughter and all.
Everly had been mortified. That was the word I think she’d used. She’d told me that she would never talk to me again. That she knew I was the kind of boy who would spread dirty gossip and that the only reason she’d kissed me in the first place was because she’d been dared to.
Oh, the tragedies of being a twelve-year-old. So other than the delinquency lecture, we’d pretty much had zero contact.
