13 to Life (11 page)

Derek released her hand. His eyes met mine. There was no message there—no meaning for me to read. I felt sick. Stringing me along? As much as I didn’t want to believe it, every one of my doubts and insecurities agreed until I did. Guys like Derek didn’t waste time on girls like me.

“Derek,” Harnek said, her tone meant to shame.

He had the good grace to look at the floor.

“But it’s all okay now,” Jenny said with a pleasant smile. “I don’t want her to be punished. Living like she is—well, that’s punishment enough.” She shrugged.

Macie looked up from beside her and grinned at me. “Yeah. Her life’s so miserable, she’s suffering enough already,” Macie agreed. “I’m over it.”

Perlson swallowed, looking stunned. Probably by all of it. “Well, ladies. That’s very—generous of you. Will your parents agree, though?”

Jenny and Macie laughed in that strange calculating way they had. “Of course, Vice Principal Perlson.” I realized then that they ruled their homes. Ruled their parents. It was a chilling thought.

Jenny and Macie rose as one. Jenny put her hand out and Derek stood, too, taking it. His head hung from his neck like part of his spine had disintegrated. I struggled to understand what could have happened during the time between his exiting the office and his return with both girls. Had his talk with me been simple bravado?

“Then I guess we can wrap things up here,” Harnek said. “Wow.” She looked at the clock. “Just in time.”

Derek opened the door, but Macie and Jenny paused before exiting. “We
forgive
you, Jessica.” And then, giggling, they were out of my sight.

Derek didn’t even give me a glance as he pulled the door shut behind them.

Harnek patted my knee. “Well, that came out differently than I’d imagined. How about you?”

I groaned.

“You have enough time to get changed and make it to the bus,” she said, startling me into action. I’d seen her look at the clock—heard her comment about the timing—but it hadn’t sunk in. The whole day had slipped past me. I wondered for a moment if Pietr’d made it to his remaining classes on time. Harnek was speaking again. “. . . going to Homecoming?”

“What?”

“Are you going to the Homecoming game?” she repeated.

“I don’t see any point in going now,” I whispered.

“Hmph. Well, as your appointed counselor, I suggest you
do
go. Get your mind off everything else.”

I shrugged and stood. Indifferent.

Harnek opened the door, and we stepped into the main office’s waiting room. “I might want to see you about all this later,” she said. “Just to wrap stuff up.”

I nodded.

“Hey, look. Someone’s glad to see you.”

My head snapped up.
Derek—?
But, no. Of course not.

Pietr peered up at me from the line of uncomfortable office chairs. “Oh.”

“I’ll leave you two—” Harnek said, giving me a puzzled look and exiting before I could correct her misconception.

“Why are you here?” I asked a bit too harshly.

“I’m getting my bus assignment.”

“Oh.” I surprised myself by actually being a little disappointed. But why should I be surprised? The guy I thought was going to ask me to Homecoming had been leading me on. And
he
had been my self-appointed savior. Pietr aspired to no such station.

One of the secretaries came to the counter. “Bus thirteen,” she announced.

“You’re kidding me.”

“What?” he asked, eyes guiltless.

“That’s my bus.” Crap. My bus generally had only one or two empty seats on it, so packing in another body wasn’t going to make the ride any more comfortable. “I need to get changed.”

“Better hurry—time’s running out,” he advised, pointing to the numbers on the face of his cell phone. “I’ll wait for you.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” I said, leaving the office and abandoning Pietr so I could have a few peaceful moments before the ride home.

I left him standing there, head down, looking like my last words wounded him deeply. I was immediately sorry, but I didn’t know how to say it. The day’s events had confused me.

In the bathroom, I quickly slipped out of my bloodstained gym shirt and shorts and into my street clothes. Today had officially been Hell and tonight would be Homecoming—the bonfire and game.

Hell. Round two.

There was no escaping it. As an editor of the school paper, I needed to attend. Besides, didn’t I want to watch Derek on the football field, leading Junction’s Jackrabbits to victory?

I sighed and tried to fix my hair in the mirror. “Ugh!” My fingers still trembled from the fight. Why did I bother trying to
fix unfixable things? Fixing my mop of mousy brown hair here and now was like a metaphor for my life—wrong place, bad timing, never the right tools to solve the problem. But I kept trying. Stubbornly stumbling forward.

Now my failure was all brought into glaring focus in Junction High’s girl’s bathroom. Under fluorescent light. Because if I was going to suffer, my suffering should absolutely be illuminated by the worst lighting ever.
Crap.
It was official. My hair couldn’t get worse unless it caught fire. The hum of the fluorescents overhead didn’t reassure me that wouldn’t happen next.

Of course it wasn’t as if I’d see Derek before the bonfire—probably not even before the game wound up. All I had to do was wash the last bit of blood off my knuckles. “Out, damned spot,” I whispered, quoting Lady Macbeth as I cranked the faucet on to rub the stain away with fierce fingers.

I’d get on the bus and head home. I’d clean up there. Regroup. Figure out what was going on with this Derek and Jenny mess and where I fit in with Derek—if I really did at all.

After the bus ride. After sitting by Pietr, with my luck.

“Crap, crap,
crap
!”

At least Lady Macbeth believed her Hell was murky. My newest version of Hell was crystal clear—lean and handsome, with a soft Russian accent and a frustratingly mysterious past. Ever-present. And yeah, he’d probably be at the bonfire and game, too. And if I compared him to Hell in front of my friends? Amy would just point out that Hell was supposed to be hot.

And Pietr Rusakova was at least that.

When I finally boarded the bus, Pietr was already there. I took the remaining seat across the aisle, nodded to my seatmate, Stella Martin, and began to watch Pietr surreptitiously.

Pinned beside the window by some anonymous freshman, Pietr stared out at the other kids hurrying to their buses. But he didn’t react to any of them, didn’t seem to actually see them. Then he shifted and turned, looking straight at me. He scrutinized my expression, eyes tracing over my forehead, traveling around my eyes as I felt their edges crinkle in response to his odd deliberation, and finally his gaze rested on my lips. Lips that betrayed me by twitching into a nervous smile.
Dammit
.

He turned back to the window.

“He really likes you, Jessie.” Stella’s whisper was weighted with happiness and awe. “You two should sit together. . . .”

“No. No, Stella,” I protested as she began gathering her things. I wanted to apologize for being rude to Pietr, sure, but sit beside him on the way home? I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.

But Stella was already squeezing past me to stand in the aisle as the bus bounced forward, rumbling to life.

Our driver glared into the rearview mirror at her. “Stella—take a seat!”

“Yes, Stella,” I urged, scooting over to the window. “Sit.”

“I will in a minute.” She frowned at me. “How hard is it to get something good out of life for once, Jessie?”

Pietr watched our exchange.

“Pietr,” Stella began, “I would like to sit here. Beside—” She looked pointedly at the freshman. Sweat glazed his upper lip as he realized he was embroiled in the affairs of upperclassmen.

“Billy,” he muttered, straightening in his seat. He rubbed at his upper lip. The faintest trace of a mustache grew there.

Stella appeared suitably impressed.

“Beside
Billy,
” she said. “Pietr, would you please sit over there with Jessie?”

Pietr bared his teeth in a charming smile. “Billy,” he said, “it appears you are getting a much more attractive companion.”

Stella beamed at Pietr as he brushed past.

“Sit down, both of you!” the driver bellowed.

He settled in next to me. I wedged my backpack between us like a wall. He didn’t seem to notice. The bus lurched along, shuddering as it paused at a stop sign. It was going to be a long ride, like always, made longer by what I now had to do.

We stopped a few times before the edge of town, kids stumbling to the exit as the bus continued running, still swaying faintly even as it sputtered at its appointed stops. The houses spread out slightly, not quite so tight against each other.

A few more stops and scarecrows would decorate small, rock-walled gardens instead of poorly lit porches just off of cement sidewalks. After that there’d be fields dotted with brick-red barns and stacked with the huge round hay bales that marked winter’s inevitable approach.

Then, home. And since I didn’t know where Pietr lived, I couldn’t wait any longer to say what I knew I should. “Pietr . . .”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry about the way I snapped at you in the office.”

“It’s okay. You seem to be under a lot of stress,” he commented, staring into the back of the seat before us like he could drill a hole with his eyes. “It’s not a big deal.”

Okay. He forgave me. Macie and Jenny forgave me. It seemed like everyone was forgiving my bad behavior and I was the only one still holding grudges. How ironic. Wouldn’t my mother have been proud?
Nuts.

I dug my novel out of my pack. Leaning back, I parted the pages right at my bookmark and began to read. I hadn’t gotten far when I felt his eyes on me. Well, on my book, at least.

I noticed one of his dark eyebrows was raised skeptically.

I closed the book. “What?”

“
Life Sucks
?”

I looked at the title of my book and smiled. “Yeah.” My reply was more than an agreement on the title.

He put his hand out and wiggled one finger. “Come on.”

I was frozen for a moment, remembering the electric vibe of those fingers. Tentatively I handed the book to him for his appraisal, all the while telling myself I really didn’t care.

He scanned the back of it. “Seriously?
Vampires?
”

I grabbed the book back and shot him a
how-dare-you-judge-what-I-read
sort of look.

He shrugged and tried again.
“Vampires?”

“Vampires are quite hot right now,” I replied matter-of-factly, as if the quality of a book was truly based on its mass-market appeal.

“Hot? I’d always presumed the undead were perpetually cold.”

I snorted at his cool delivery of the line.
Dammit. He got me to smile.
I schooled my features, but he’d taken in my reaction.

And was smiling back.

“I keep meaning to read other stuff, like
Anna Karenina
”—his eyebrow rose even higher, threatening to merge with his hairline—“but vampires are all the rage right now,” I said. I ruffled the book’s pages. “It’s a quick read and it takes my mind off stuff,” I justified. Although I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to justify anything to Pietr.

“I just think it’s kind of unfair,” he replied.

“What?”

“That vampires get so much time when there are plenty of other—monsters—to choose from.”

I turned in my seat to face him. “Like what—or is it more properly
whom?
” I challenged.

He grinned. His smile was as perfect as Derek’s. “I think they’d request the use of
who
or
whom,
” he advised with a nod. “Werewolves, for one.”

I wrinkled my nose at the suggestion. “Werewolves?” I shook my head, trying to imagine them ever really being a challenge to the popularity of vampires. “Why werewolves?”

He leaned back, pressing his legs against the seat in front so his feet dangled free. In their
large
sneakers.

I blushed.

“Think about it,” he said. “Life’s about transformation, right? We grow, we change, hopefully we evolve into better people. . . .” He shrugged. “Who represents transformation better than werewolves?”

“Okay. Interesting. But vampires—that whole thing of living beyond the life span of those you love . . . it’s so tragic.”

His eyes darkened, his features masked. He peered past me and out the window again, searching for something. “
Da
. Wouldn’t
that
be difficult. Having eternity to figure things out, see the world—to get it right.
Da
. That’d totally suck.”

“Besides”—I smacked his arm to pull him out of his sudden funk—“don’t werewolves only transform under the light of a full moon? Vamps have to cope with bloodlust all the time.”

He looked at me, searching my face. Pietr sighed. It seemed like he hadn’t found what he was looking for in my
expression. “
Da.
I forgot.” He shrugged again. “You’re probably right. Vamps are way more marketable because of that, too.”

“Besides,” I teased, “it’s not like I believe in either of them.”

His lips quirked at their corners. “
Horashow.
Good,” he said. “It’s definitely better that way.” He stood then, and I noticed the bus rattling to a stop. “This is my stop,” he said. “Oh—Sarah gave me a note for you.” He dug into a pocket in his jeans. “Here.” He pressed it into my hand and I fought not to shiver at the contact. “See ya.”

“Yeah,” I called weakly as he walked down the aisle. I flopped back into the seat, peeking out the window and watching for him, wondering which road he’d take, which house was his. . . . But he’d already disappeared.

“See,” Stella confirmed across the aisle. “He likes you.”

I nodded, my lips in a tight grimace. Pietr was starting to grow on me, and Derek—could he have really been stringing me along to make Jenny jealous? Maybe, but I didn’t like the idea I’d just been some pawn in the mind games the popular kids played. Settling back in to the seat, I unfolded Sarah’s note.