Ella's Twisted Senior Year(3)
I’m staring at my phone again when the scent of a powdery perfume hits me so hard I cough. Ethan does too.
Kennedy Price appears, crouching down as she walks, a conspiratorial look on her perfect cheerleader face. She stops right in front of Ethan and kneels down, leaning onto her fingertips so she can kiss him. “Coach Tamara said we had to stay down there but I snuck over here,” she says, grinning at him like she’s madly in love.
Guess I can’t blame her. He is a total hottie now.
Not that I’m allowed to think that.
Kennedy turns to me, her High School Royalty smile in full force. “Can you move over?” she says, moving her hand as if to shoo me away. “I need to sit by my boyfriend.”
I glance down at the three inches of space between Ethan and me. “I’m sure you can slither in,” I say. “I’m kind of attached to this particular spot on the floor.”
She scowls and rocks back on her heels. The shark mascot on her red and white cheerleader uniform seems to glare at me as well.
“Ethan, tell her to move.”
Coach Tamara steps into the middle of the hallway, hands on her hips. “Kennedy, against the wall. You’re not allowed in the middle of the hallway.”
“Just a second,” she calls back, before she turns her glare on me. “Move,” she hisses.
I don’t know why I’m so compelled to deny her request. I could probably scoot over a but then I’d be sitting hip to hip with the most popular girl in the school. What if some of her bitchiness rubs off on me? I can’t have that, now can I?
“Sorry, there’s no room here.”
“Kennedy, now!” Coach Tamara’s voice is a roar over the sound of the tornado, which is still whipping around the school like it’s taken offense to the building being here. Luckily, two large cabinets have been moved in front of the doors at the end of the hallway. We can’t see anything now, but we can hear enough to know what’s going on outside.
The cheer coach points to the wall where she’s standing, right at a blank spot between all of the other cheerleaders. “Get back here or you’re suspended.”
Kennedy tosses a glare over her shoulder, her eyes piercing into my soul with rage, before she tromps back down the hall.
The wail of the tornado fills the awkward silence until Ethan chuckles. I can feel his gaze on me, but I don’t look over until he talks. “That was kind of badass.”
I look into his dark eyes and feel every childhood memory we have come tumbling into the forefront of my mind, falling straight through to my stomach. “Maybe next time she’ll learn to say please.”
Chapter 2
So the tornado didn’t cross over the school or the parking lot. It just came dangerously close to us and tore up the grass on the soccer fields, but it still managed to make all of that noise. It’s nearly an hour later when the tornado warning lifts and the principal lets us return to our classes. Ella has studiously ignored me the entire time, choosing to read a book on her cell phone.
Since there’s only five minutes until the bell rings, I hit the locker rooms with the rest of my athletics class. I take a quick shower and change back into my jeans and T-shirt. Unfortunately, my hoody was swiped this morning when Kennedy got to school and realized it was cold outside. I’d asked her how the hell she managed to get all the way to school before she realized it’s cold and she’d just shrugged and said she parks in the garage at her house so why would she know the weather.
Now, thanks to her absconding my hoody under the laws of girlfriend benefits, I’m freezing my ass off as I walk through the parking lot to my truck.
Toby catches up to me. “Dude check out the drive-in.” He holds up his phone, which is on our town’s Twitter page. There’s a picture of the historical Hockley Drive-in, our little town’s claim to fame. The back screen has been ripped to shreds.
“Looks like I’ll need to find a new spot to make out with chicks this weekend,” he says, shaking his head.
“I’m sure they’ll still let you park there,” I say, stopping in front of my truck. “It’s not like you would have watched the movie anyway.”
He grins. “Hell, I’ll even pay money for a quiet parking spot.”
I know it’s shallow, but my truck is a beauty. Dad promised me the shiny red ride if I kept my GPA up and I didn’t think he’d actually follow through with it. But he did, so now I’m grateful that good grades come easily to me.
Kennedy hates my truck. She calls it an ugly gas guzzler and mentions about once a day that I should trade it in for a sports car, specifically a Corvette. My ugly gas guzzler doesn’t stop her from dating me though, so who cares.
“Any other places get damaged?” I ask, pulling out my truck keys and unlocking the door.
Toby nods, still scrolling through his phone. “Tons. A lot of people lost houses and shit. Look at this.” He tilts the phone toward me. It’s an aerial shot of a neighborhood, the trail of tornado damage looking like it was done with purpose. There’s a dozen houses and four of them are totally wiped out, leaving all the other houses looking okay.
“Wow,” I say, scrolling down to see other pictures of the damage done to our town. “I guess this is better than those hurricanes that wipe out entire neighborhoods. Still sucks though.”