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No complaints here.
I twist the lock to slow Graham down in case he decides to come after me.
“Let’s split,” I mutter, and Scarlett knows to keep up as I jog down the two sets of wide stairs that lead to the front driveway. We jump in her Mercedes Coupe and she hits the gas just as the mudroom door flies open and Graham appears wearing his suit pants, no shirt, and a scowl the size of the new Walmart in nearby Allerston Lake that got the Sandy Haven residents all up in arms.
“Sebastian Caleb Murdoch! Get your ass back in here!”
We can hear his muffled yell even from inside the car with the engine fully revving. But I just lift a hand casually from the passenger window as Scarr peels out of the driveway, like I truly believe Graham was just popping out to see us off with a friendly wave.
I crank the tunes as we turn onto Ocean Drive, and for the next little while, we just listen to music. Scarlett’s not the kind of girl who has the patience for mundane things like small-talk. Actually, Scarr’s not the kind of girl who has patience. Period.
Soon the road curves out of our swanky peninsula subdivision and a little way down, Ocean Drive turns into Main Street. We keep driving until the roundabout that marks the beginning of Sandy Haven’s touristy town center, where Scarr pulls into the parking lot of Mallard’s Gas & Convenience.
Across the street, down some steep, decaying wooden stairs camouflaged by the surrounding cliff-side forest, there’s a hidden cove that only the local kids know about. So, while everyone else usually heads to beautiful Sandy Cove Beach (the wide, powdery public beach that runs the length of Main Street, across from the restaurant terraces and shops that sell jewelry and beach-themed crap at a five-hundred percent markup), the rest of us flock to Helicina Cove. It’s where most of the bonfire parties happen, and where couples head to hook up, or friends go to just hang out. It’s private and sheltered and off tourists’, and more importantly, parents’ radar.
Scarr jolts the car into park, sending her purse flying into the back seat and our heads against the leather headrests.
Fun fact: in addition to being the hottest girl in school and likely the most complicated human being on the planet, Scarlett is also possibly the world’s worst driver. Top ten, for sure.
She’s also oblivious to all three of those things.
Okay, maybe not the first one. But even there, it depends on the day.
She flicks her auburn hair over her right shoulder. “I’m dating Justin.” she says, leaning across my lap to rifle through the glove compartment for something.
She’s telling me now to get it out of the way. She knows how I feel about Justin Tanner—certified douchebag and Titans linebacker. The kind of guy who messes around with a girl and spills the details in the locker room the next day.
“Yeah, I heard,” I say. Meaning I was in the locker room last week when Tanner bragged in intimate detail about their hookup.
See my above comment about Justin Tanner being a first-rate ass-wipe.
Scarlett eventually finds what she was looking for in the glove compartment: a pack of spearmint gum, which she opens, removing a thin stick that she folds daintily between her glossy lips. Then she extends her hand to offer me a piece. I take four, squeezing them into a ball before shoving them in my mouth.
“You’re disgusting,” she says. And again, her face looks disapproving, but her voice sounds a tiny bit amused. At least she keeps you guessing. Maybe that’s part of her appeal.
“Yeah, and you love it.” I grin around a mouthful of gum.
Scarr gifts me another one of her patented eye rolls as she leans over and twists the rearview mirror so she can check out her hair. No clue why. It always looks amazing—even when she wakes up and it’s messy. Never fooled around with her, but I’ve crashed at her place more times than I can count. Snuck into her room when her parents were asleep, after parties or whatever. So, I’ve seen Scarr at her best and at her worst. And she’s always hot. Her hair is always immaculate. Like everything else about her.
Also, full disclosure: it’s not entirely true that I’ve never fooled around with Scarr. In middle school, the two of us spent “seven minutes in heaven” in Jackie Delaney’s rec-room closet. Only let’s just say it was more like seven minutes of awkward. Or rather, two minutes of awkward, one minute of agreeing we needed to stop because the experience felt weird as hell and like kissing a sibling, then four minutes of whispering about who each of us was crushing on and trying to guess who had crushes on who at our first ever Saturday night party. And by party, I mean twelve gangly pre-teens, a few bowls of chips, and Jackie’s adoptive parents popping in every twenty minutes to make sure we weren’t getting up to anything too out of hand. Like playing seven minutes in heaven in their rec room storage closet.
“You know Tanner is a total prick, right?” I say, more serious now. There’s no way she doesn’t know, but I need to say it.
“Relax.” Scarr doesn’t even look away from the mirror. “I don’t plan on marrying the guy or anything.”
I watch her for a second. She’s doing that thing where she acts like she’s way more shallow than she really is. But unlike the rest of the people in her life, I know the reason she does it. And it’s too heavy and messy to fix with just a few conversations with a blockhead like me. Still, I hate she feels she has to be this way.
“Whatever,” I mumble.
I will stick up for this girl with my life, but if she doesn’t want to take my advice or face the crap in her world that needs facing, I’ll back off. This whole dating guys who only want in her pants thing isn’t new. She knows how I feel about it. But Scarr’s a big girl; she can date who she likes. It’s not like most of the girls I date have five-star personalities, so I’m hardly in a position to judge.
Scarr twists the mirror back in place, satisfied, I guess, that every strand of hair is where it should be, and we climb out of the car. It’s sunny, but cool. Fall weather. I doubt there will be anyone else down on the beach. Scarr’s wearing chunky high-heeled boots but somehow makes it down the rickety steps to Helicina Cove without tripping or sliding once. It would take more than a few slippery stairs to take out Scarlett Thiels.
There’s just one person on the cove—some girl who looks a couple years younger than us, wandering along the rocky ledge that hugs the beach on the opposite side to where Scarlett and I are headed.
“So, how was your first day of suspension?” Scarr asks, tying the belt around her long, knitted cardigan-sweater thing as we walk. It’s cooler down here, right along the ocean.
“Suspension blows,” I groan.
