Expelled(7)

“Well, I invited Sasha to come here, too,” I say. “So if hell freezes over, there might be three of us.”

I hear Jude’s sharp inhale. “Way to nard up, Theo Foster! What’d she say?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.”

“She didn’t text you back?”

“I didn’t text. I asked her in person.”

“In person?” Jude’s incredulous. “Who does that anymore?”

I put my head in my hands. I don’t know what to say. I still feel sick, and I don’t know how to make anything better. “Dude, what are we supposed to do now?” I mean this in an existential way—like how are we going to deal with our ruined lives—but Jude takes it literally.

“Let’s watch YouTube supercuts,” he says. “I saw one that’s all about improbable movie weapons, and it was amazing because Clive Owen murders a guy by stabbing him in the face with a carrot.”

“Uh…”

“And Vin Diesel kills a dude with a teacup. Hello? What, does that not appeal to you?”

But it’s not that.

Sasha’s car is pulling up.





7


“No effing way,” Jude says. “Hell hath frozen over.”

The weird, unpleasant churning in my stomach I’ve felt ever since yesterday gets exponentially worse. I can’t believe she came, and I’m really glad she did. But I wish she didn’t have to see me like this: sleep deprived and full of nard-shrinking dread about my future.

I jump up, waving, grinning despite myself. “Hey! Sasha! Over here!”

This is idiotic—obviously she can see us. A person could see Jude’s shirt from outer space.

Sasha waves back with a lot more decorum. She’s wearing a dark blue dress and oversized sunglasses that cover most of her face. I invited Sasha Ellis to the Property—and she actually came. There is, without a doubt, a thin but bright silver lining to being kicked out of school.

But then Parker Harris gets out of Sasha’s car, so I have to take that feeling back.

Parker reaches into the backseat and pulls out a large white box with a gold star on it. He looks about as thrilled to see us as I am to see him.

“Terrible,” Jude whispers to me, eyes on Parker. “Nothing ruins an otherwise perfect physical specimen like a pair of cargo shorts.”

Sasha steps onto the deck. “My dad’s sleeping one off, so I took twenty bucks from his wallet. We brought Gold Star doughnuts.”

“Oh, my God, Gold Star’s the best,” Jude says. “Have you tried the Kevin Bacon? It’s a jelly doughnut wrapped in bacon, and it sounds gross but it’s totally the opposite.”

“He won’t miss it?” I ask. My mom watches every nickel—not because she thinks I’d steal anything but because she’s got to save everything she can.

“Please. He has no idea,” Sasha says. “But he’d give me five times that if I asked. He’d tell me to buy myself something pretty.”

“Must be nice,” I mumble.

Parker sets the box on the deck. Then he reaches down and adjusts himself, like his junk’s so big and untamed it won’t stay in the right place. “All this yours?” he asks me, nodding at the pond and the trees. “It’s like a state park.”

“It’s only a few acres,” I say. It’s actually more like twenty-five, but for some reason I feel like downplaying it. Like I don’t want him to know anything about it.

“It’s gorgeous,” Sasha says, lifting a cruller from the box. “I love it here.”

Although these might be six of the most wonderful words I’ve ever heard, it doesn’t make up for the fact that she brought Parker.

“Here’s to summer starting three weeks early,” Jude says. He knocks his doughnut against Sasha’s, as if they’re wineglasses. “Prost! That means ‘Cheers.’” He’s still on the team-spirit train, I guess.

Sasha lifts her sunglasses and looks at him like he’s weird, which he is. But it’s not a mean look—it’s more like puzzled.

Parker doesn’t grab a doughnut. Instead he takes a slug from a Mason jar full of brownish sludge. It’s probably a protein shake made with flaxseeds, raw eggs, and wolf’s blood. Then he wipes his mouth with the back of his paw and peers into the gazebo. “Couch, table, mini fridge… All you need’s a sixty-four-inch flat screen and a Lakers game and this place wouldn’t suck, amirite?”

I don’t answer. I have decided to pretend like Parker doesn’t exist.

I watch as Sasha breaks her cruller into small pieces and picks at the crumbs. Her skin is very pale, and there are faint bluish shadows under her eyes. She looks sort of romantically macabre, if there can be such a thing.

No one says anything. We just listen to one another chewing.

After a while, Sasha breaks the silence. “This is mildly awkward,” she says.

“No kidding,” Jude says. “It’s like—have you guys seen The Breakfast Club?”

Sasha shakes her head.

“Yeah, I’m into movies my mom watched in high school,” Parker says, his voice thick with sarcasm and testosterone.

If I were fifty pounds heavier, I’d be big enough to sucker-punch him and run. Seventy-five and I could stick around to get my ass kicked.