Don't Kiss the Messenger (Edgelake High School, #1)(7)

What if things had been different? Would I be here?

I headed across the parking lot. I had to stop focusing on the what-ifs that plagued my mind. You can spend your whole life contemplating the what-ifs.

All I was certain of was this: I couldn’t change the past and I sure as hell couldn’t control the future. There was just this moment. Instead of what-if, I had to train my mind to focus on what now?





Chapter Two


CeCe


“CeCe!”

I squinted down the sidewalk, my eyes still adjusting to the bright afternoon sunlight after being trapped in a dim science lab for the past two hours. Bryn was jogging toward me across Library Mall, waving her hand.

“CeCe!” she yelled again, as if she needed to draw even more attention to herself. Her black spandex shorts were riding up her thighs, spaghetti straps of her tank top accentuating her broad shoulders and ample chest. Her body was as loud as a siren wailing and every head turned to stare. I stopped in my tracks and gave her a half-hearted wave.

Bryn met me partway up the steps, linking elbows with me. “Come on, I need lunch.” She had really attached herself to me over the past few days. I wondered how long I would be her security blanket.

We threaded our way around students. I started counting all the double takes Bryn was getting. It’s my nature to observe. I counted two trips, one triple take and two audible whistles in our direction. Not bad statistics for a three-minute walk.

I let her pull me up the steps to the Union. Bryn appeared to be one of those girls who always had to be touching, holding hands, hugging, squeezing. She even talked with her hands. I didn’t really mind. If anything, it made me jealous. I usually kept my arms at my sides, my hands tucked into pockets. I gave terrible hugs, mostly air and hardly any body contact. “A-frame hugs,” my dad always teased me.

The only thing that felt right beneath my hands was the soft leather of a volleyball, the way it curved beneath my palm. I even loved feeling it smack my forearms at eighty miles an hour. It was a welcome type of contact.

The Memorial Union smelled like burnt coffee. We were early for the lunch crowd, so we were able to get sandwiches without waiting in long lines. Bryn and I found Tuba and our other teammate, Aisha, sitting with some guys from the crew team. They occupied several tables in full sunlight near the water.

Showing up with Bryn was like bringing the keg to a party.

“CeCe! Over here!” shouted Prentice. He was an East Coast prep school kid who had probably been rejected by his top choices and had to settle for his Plan B School. I was pretty sure he came from money, but he dressed like a bum. His T-shirt, advertising a sailing school in Sydney, Australia, was riddled with holes. His shorts were uneven cut-offs that looked like the result of a dumpster diving foray behind a homeless shelter. His brown, wavy hair sat in a disheveled heap on his head. The soles of his Birkenstocks were peeling away. He was absently scratching up the leg of his shorts.

His friend Tucker was pulling up chairs for us. Tuck was also East-Coast-Old-Money. But unlike Prentice, he exuded sweet humility. Big and strong, he was a solid athlete, but he’d always carried about 20 extra pounds and had been in the junior varsity boat. This fall, though, Tuck looked different. Those extra 20 pounds were nowhere to be seen. He was tan and lean and happy.

“You guys know Bryn?” I asked.

Prentice seized the opening and monopolized the conversation. His slight East Coast accent had a way of holding women’s attention. He did his best to incite some sort of response in Bryn, who sat back, perfectly at ease. She exchanged jibe for jibe, effortlessly deflecting even his most overt propositioning.

Tuba twirled the end of her sloppily braided long dark hair around her finger while her eyes were pinned to a newspaper article splayed out on the metal table. From her eager expression, I could only assume it was the answer to our high school quarterback crisis. A pre-season injury just a week into fall camp and our all-star football lineup was fractured. The second-string quarterback had no experience. Forget strife in the Middle East. Forget the drug war in Central America. The real crisis was going into the season without our MVP quarterback.

I sat down and scanned the front cover of our student newspaper, The Cardinal Gazette, which sported a bold headline: LAST MINUTE TRANSFER: CAN HE SAVE THE CARDINALS? The front page showed the shaded silhouette of a football player with his hand drawn back in throwing form. I couldn’t make out any clear features from the grainy resolution, or maybe that was the point. The photo bordered on spiritual, illustrating football as a practiced religion and this player as a prophet.

I knew who it was before I read the caption under the photo. Emmett Brady. From all the buzz around the locker room, you would think Edgelake had just acquired its first celebrity student.

Shaking my head, I skimmed the article over Tuba’s shoulder and picked up key phrases: surprise football transfer, senior from a Division Two high school in Pennsylvania. This detail interested me, so I read closer. He had intended to play at Edgelake his freshman year, but a family illness kept him at a public school close to home.

Tuba flipped the newspaper over with a frustrating slap.

“Why didn’t they mention his dating status?” she groaned. “Give us the news we really want.”

“In-depth journalism is dead,” I mused in mock disappointment.

I grabbed the newspaper and scanned other articles. A tennis player scandal. A feature on personal finance. I leafed through the pages looking for any mention of The Science Festival. I would be working at one of the events—a hands-on chemistry demonstration for kids.