Four Doors Down(5)

I shrug. “Just went for a coffee with Sam after school.”

“I’ve brought your parents over an invite for Bill’s 50th birthday party just before Christmas. Of course, you’re invited too.” Mrs. Jackson explains.

I roll my eyes and my mom shoots me a warning look. Immediately after Ryan and I had our big falling out back in seventh grade, our mom’s kept trying to put us together for things, hoping we’d sort it out. They soon realized that neither of us had any intention of speaking to each other again and dropped it. Clearly Mrs. Jackson has forgotten this. There is no way that I’m attending that party.

Mrs. Jackson misinterprets my look. “Oh, don’t worry honey. It won’t just be us oldies there. I’ve told Ryan he can invite some friends from school, so there’ll be plenty of people you know there.”

I smirk. Great. Ryan’s friends who I can’t stand. Surely Mrs. Jackson knows that we don’t mix in the same crowd these days? She must be delusional.

“Don’t forget you’ve got Jay on Monday,” my mom reminds me.

“Yes, I know.” She keeps reminding me like I’m stupid and I’ll forget.

Jay is my little cousin. He’s only five and his mom, my aunt, is kind of going through a lot at the moment. She divorced her husband, Jay’s dad, last year and hasn’t taken it very well. I think she’s going through some sort of mid-life crisis; dressing seriously inappropriately and going on dates with some very dodgy men. My mom’s worried about the effect all this is having on Jay and him not seeing his dad very much now that he lives out of state. My mom ends up watching him a lot, and lucky me gets to watch him once a week too or else she’ll confiscate my car. I don’t know what the big deal is. The kid’s fine. In fact, he’s a total brat and is well aware that he has all the adults in his life wrapped around his little finger.

“I’m going to do my homework,” I tell them, leaving the kitchen and heading up to my room. I get to my desk and pull out my books but soon get bored and spend the next couple of hour’s texting Charlie and day dreaming about seeing him tomorrow.

Charlie Jordan is basically all I’ve thought about since I met him at a party about two weeks before senior year began. I’d spent most of the summer visiting family in Europe, so I hadn’t really been around. Sam invited me to a party that her boyfriend Chris, who goes to a different school than us, was having. I almost didn’t go. I was still a bit jet lagged and couldn’t really be bothered, but Sam had insisted, so I turned up.

The party had been okay, mainly full of people I didn’t know, and I was feeling tired and crabby when I wandered into a separate room and found ten or so people sitting around listening to a guy playing his guitar. I listened for a few minutes, and then he looked up and our eyes had met. Well, that was it. I’d never felt an attraction like it. He was gorgeous, but not in your stereotypical way. He had dark blonde hair which was just a bit too long, big brown eyes and he was wearing a ratty old t-shirt and ripped jeans. When he smiled over at me, my heart had started beating faster in my chest. I couldn’t look away from him, and suddenly I didn’t want to go home anymore. In fact, I wanted the night to go on and on.

I tried to play it cool, of course, and act uninterested, pretending I wasn’t watching him from the corner of my eye, but when he came over to talk to me an hour or so later, I don’t think I hid my interest in him all that well. In fact, I was like putty in his hands. Turns out he was a friend of Chris’ from grade school and had just moved back to the area. When he asked me out on a date, I agreed instantly and that was that as far as I was concerned. He’s pretty much all I’ve thought about in the two months since we met, and I promptly handed over my virginity to him a few weeks after our first date with absolutely no concerns. You’d think I hadn’t guarded it for the first seventeen years of my life the way I quickly gave it up to him, but Charlie made me feel in a way I’d never felt before, and I wanted to be his completely. It’s pretty safe to say that I am definitely in the throes of young love.

Like totally lost in it.





I pull into the school parking lot the next morning still yawning. I’ve never gotten to school at this ungodly hour before. Damn Henderson for my morning detention. I pull down the sun visor and check my reflection in the mirror. My long brown hair is still damp from the shower which has made me late, but even I can’t go four days without washing my hair; you genuinely would have been able to fry bacon in my hair this morning. My green eyes look tired, but there’s no time for makeup. Thank goodness for clear skin.

I climb out of my car and grab the papers on my passenger seat and hurry up to the entrance. I’m almost at the steps when I look up and see Ryan Jackson and half the football team hanging around on the steps.

Shit.

If I’d seen them earlier, I would have used a different entrance. Why the hell are they here so early? They must use this time to creep on everyone coming into school and bully anyone that pisses them off. A quick scan of them tells me that Jake is absent. No one would say anything to me if he were here.

Great. Just great.

They go silent as I approach, and I walk up the steps, forcing myself to walk normally and not speed up because of them. I’m almost through when Kevin Wilson, a slimy, creepy senior jumps down from the railing and throws his arm around me, turning me back to the group.