Hopeless (Hopeless #1)(25)

I fold the letter up and smile, but I don’t cry. She wouldn’t expect me to cry over it, no matter how much she might have just made me want to. I reach over to the nightstand and take the cell phone she gave me out of the drawer. I already have two missed text messages.



Have I told you lately how awesome you are? Missing you.



It’s day two, you better text me back. I need to tell you about Lorenzo. Also, you’re sickeningly smart.



I smile and text her back. It takes me about five tries before I figure it out. I’m almost eighteen and this is the first text I’ve ever sent? This has to be one for Guinness.



I can get used to these daily positive affirmations. Make sure to remind me of how beautiful I am, and how I have the most impeccable taste in music, and how I’m the fastest runner in the world. (Just a few ideas to get you started.) I miss you, too. And I can’t wait to hear about Lorenzo, you slut.





The next few days at school are the same as the first two. Full of drama. My locker seems to have become the hub for sticky notes and nasty letters, none of which I ever see actually being placed on or in my locker. I really don’t get what people gain out of doing things like this if they don’t even own up to it. Like the note that was stuck to my locker this morning. All it said was, “Whore.”

Really? Where’s the creativity in that? They couldn’t back it up with an interesting story? Maybe a few details of my indiscretion? If I have to read this shit every day, the least they could do is make it interesting. If I was going to stoop so low as to leave an unfounded note on someone’s locker, I’d at least have the courtesy of entertaining whoever reads it in the process. I’d write something interesting like, “I saw you in bed with my boyfriend last night. I really don’t appreciate you getting massage oil on my cucumbers. Whore.”

I laugh and it feels odd, laughing out loud at my own thoughts. I look around and no one is left in the hallway but me. Rather than rip the sticky notes off of my locker like I probably should, I take out my pen and make them a little more creative. You’re welcome, passersby.



Breckin sets his tray down across from mine. We’ve been getting our own trays now, since he seems to think I want nothing but salad. He smiles at me like he’s got a secret that he knows I want. If it’s another rumor, I’ll pass.

“How were track tryouts yesterday?” he asks.

I shrug. “I didn’t go.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

He laughs. “Because I like to clarify things with you before I believe them. Why didn’t you go?”

I shrug again.

“What’s with the shoulder shrugs? You have a nervous tic?”

I shrug. “I just don’t feel like being a part of a team with anyone here. It’s lost its appeal.”

He frowns. “First of all, track is one of the most individual sports you can join. Second, I thought you said extracurricular activities were the reason you were here.”

“I don’t know why I’m here,” I say. “Maybe I feel like I need to witness a good dose of human nature at its worst before I enter the real world. It’ll be less of a shock.”

He points a celery stick at me and cocks his eyebrow. “This is true. A gradual introduction to the perils of society will help cushion the blow. We can’t release you alone into the wild when you’ve been pampered in a zoo your whole life.”

“Nice analogy.”

He winks at me and bites his stick of celery. “Speaking of analogies. What’s up with your locker? It was covered in sexual analogies and metaphors today.”

I laugh. “You like that? Took me a while, but I was feeling creative.”

He nods. “I especially liked the one that said ‘You’re such a slut, you screwed Breckin the Mormon.’”

I shake my head. “Now that one I can’t lay claim to. That was an original. But they’re fun, aren’t they? Now that they’ve been dirtied up?”

“Well,” he says. “They were fun. They aren’t there anymore. I saw Holder ripping them off your locker just now.”

I snap my gaze back up to his and he’s grinning mischievously again. I guess this is the secret he was having trouble holding in.

“That’s strange.” I’m curious why Holder would bother to do such a thing. We haven’t been running together since we spoke last. In fact, we don’t even interact at all. He sits across the room now in first period and I don’t see him at all the rest of the day, aside from lunch. Even then, he sits on the other side of the cafeteria with his friends. I thought after coming to an impasse, we’d successfully moved on to mutual avoidance, but I guess I was wrong.

“Can I ask you something?” Breckin says.

I shrug again, mostly just to irritate him.

“Are the rumors about him true? About his temper? And his sister?”

I try not to appear taken aback by his comment, but it’s the first I’ve heard anything about a sister. “I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve spent enough time with him to know he scares me enough to not want to spend more time with him.”

I really want to ask him about the sister comment, but I can’t help which situations my stubbornness rears its ugly head in. For some reason, probing for information about Dean Holder is one of those situations.