All The Glory (22 page)

He nodded, chewing away at the last piece of sandwich he’d crammed into his mouth in one bite. “Yeah. Helps build muscles.”

I lifted up my arm and flexed. “I’m pretty sure I don’t have any, actually. Today proved it.”

He shook his head. “No, today proved you’re strong. You have a great frame. Just work out with me five times a week and you’ll see results fast. I promise.”

“You promise? But what about all the sweat? I’m not really into that part of the equation.”

He grinned, revealing mushy bread and raspberry seeds stuck in his teeth. “Sweating feels great. Gets rid of toxins. You’ll see.”

“You seriously need a toothpick,” I said, laughing slightly.

“What are you talking about?” He smiled harder.

I looked away. “Gross. Forget what I said earlier. You’re really not all that good-looking after all.”

He stood up and took our plates, responding on his way to the sink. “Don’t think for a single second that I’m going to forget all those things you said about me. My hot face and my muscles and all that.”

I groaned. “I was just saying it for illustrative purposes. Don’t let your head get too big over it.”

He turned around and leaned on the counter. “So you’re saying I’m not good-looking at all, then?”

I nodded. “Yep. Right now I’m actually picturing you with that snatch-beard on your face, and I’m thinking it would be an improvement.”

His grin got way too evil for comfort. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Worried he might actually grow one just to spite me, I changed the subject. “So, what’s going on with your case, anyway? Any news?”

Jason pulled two apples out of a bowl on the counter and tossed one to me. I tried to catch it with one hand while he bit into his, but it bounced off my thumb and landed with a thunk on the table. Luckily I pounced on it before it rolled to the floor.
Yum. Bruised apple for lunch.

“My case? Jesus. Talk about a mood breaker.” He chewed a huge bite of apple, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand when the juice splooged out.

I took a bite of my apple just to have something to do with my hands and waited for him to talk. I’d had enough with discussing his looks and our lame high school existence. Anything had to be better than that garbage, even his legal situation. Besides, it wasn’t like we had a lot to talk about other than those two subjects.

“My lawyer says I have to plead not-guilty and give them a chance to build a defense while we wait for the trial.”

“What are they going to build it out of? The defense, I mean.”

Jason took another big bite of his apple and chewed it like he was trying to murder it, which was kind of disturbing, to be honest. He shrugged, not really answering.

“I mean, what
could
they build a defense of, really?” I was playing dumb, like I was just mulling the idea over in my head, when I was really just trying to pressure him into saying something. I hated that he was just so accepting of everything, especially when it made no sense.

He shrugged again, so I continued.

“I mean, you killed the guy, you have the bruises to prove it. No one else was there…”

Jason’s gaze flickered over to the door and then came back to me, but it was such a telling gesture, he might as well have lit up a neon sign over his head.

My ears started to burn with the implications running through my head. I schooled my tone to remain normal, casual, somehow knowing if I acted too excited about his reaction that he’d shut down and refuse to talk to me anymore. Unfortunately, while my tone was casual and smooth, my choice of words was not.

“Who else was there, Jason?”

He blinked a few times and then tried to play it off. “No one. Just me and the coach.”

“You’re lying.” I stood up and slowly made my way over to him, taking a bite of my apple on the way. When I got closer I pointed the fruit at him. “Why are you lying?”

He looked at me like I was nuts, frowning. This same look would have sent me cowering away from him in the halls of our school before, but not anymore. Now I knew he was full of shit.

“Lying to you? I’m not lying.” He huffed out some air. “Get over yourself.”

I laughed right in his face. “You are
totally
lying.” I couldn’t stop grinning. It quickly turned into a kind of angry grin, though. “Someone else knows what happened that night and you’re covering up for him.” I narrowed my eyes. “… or her. Was it a girl? Was Brittney there?”

He rolled his eyes and moved away from me. “Jesus Christ, give it a rest, would you? Brittney was with the cheer team. There wasn’t anyone there. No one was there but us two, and that’s it, end of story.”

I followed him around to the other side of his kitchen island and trapped him next to the refrigerator. Staring up into his face, I refused to back down.

“You need to tell me right now who was there besides you and the coach.” I was actually shaking a little, thinking about how finally this whole situation might start making sense.

He stared down at me, his nostrils flaring out a little. He looked … dangerous. “Or else, what?” he asked. He was either angry or doing a very good impression of an angry person.

My heart was hammering away in my chest, like it was trying to escape or something. Jason had gone from being my laughing workout buddy to being an adult murderer in the space of half a second. I probably should have left right then, but my mouth wasn’t finished destroying things.

“Or else I won’t be your friend anymore.” My voice didn’t have a whole lot of strength to it.

He lowered his voice too. “That’s fine, because I don’t want to be your friend anyway.” And then he was kissing me again.

His arms wrapped around me and pulled me in close. I could smell our sweat stink mingling in the small space between us, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t think it was the worst odor in the world.

This time, I didn’t immediately pull away. Because
this
time, it felt different. Gone was the tenderness. Gone was the spark. Gone was the hope. Now all I felt was a lie.

Jason pressed his lips harder against my mouth and he angled his head to the side to make it deeper. I did nothing but accept what he was doing. I didn’t actually participate, but I didn’t fight him off either.

He pulled his head away just a fraction of an inch. “You’re not stopping me.”

“And you’re not really kissing me, are you?” I was starting to get mad at this point. He was ruining everything, being the old Jason, trying to make me do things that neither of us wanted just because he could.

He pulled back more, confused. “I’m pretty sure I was, actually.”

“Nope.” I shook my head, looking way more confident than I was feeling. “You were trying to intimidate me and distract me, but I’m not that easy to manipulate, sorry to have to inform you.”

He let go of me and hissed out a whole lungful of air, running his fingers through his hair and making it stand on end. “Do you have any idea how annoying you can be?”

I smiled, feeling both embarrassed and a tiny bit proud. Hey, I might be a complete idiot but at least I have a skill. “Yes. Bobby tells me all the time, as a matter of fact.”

Jason didn’t say another word. Instead, he pulled the fridge open and blocked me from view with the door.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said from behind the stainless steel barrier. A picture of Jason and his father held to the fridge with a magnet was about an inch from my nose.

“Maybe you should.”

I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me. “If that’s what you really want.” I didn’t expect him to call me on it. Unfortunately, I underestimated him greatly.

The door shut and he was standing there glaring at me. “I like you, Katy. I really do. But I can’t do this with you anymore.”

My heart plummeted into my toes, leaving my chest an empty cavern filled with pain. I swallowed hard to get the lump in my throat to go down enough to let me speak around it.

So much for having a skill and feeling confident. Unfortunately, since rejection was something I was much more familiar and comfortable with, this situation felt normal. More normal than anything that had happened recently, anyway. Now Jason was acting like the Jason I knew before. It was devastatingly sad to me, but I kept my game-face on.

“Fine. I’ll leave, then.” I backed up and went around the kitchen island to grab my backpack, glad my hair was covering my burning ears so he wouldn’t see how humiliated I was.

“And you probably shouldn’t come back,” he said, as I made my way to the front door. “No more picnics. No more work-outs.”

Stab, stab, stab. More pain stabbing me in the heart with every word that came from his mouth. Who knew he had such efficient weapons at his disposal?

My face flamed hot red, thinking about how desperate I must have looked coming over here with my lame sandwiches and goofy smile. “That’s fine too!” I shouted, opening the door and stepping out onto the porch. I couldn’t get away from him fast enough. The cooler air outside did nothing for my beet-red face.

He didn’t respond, and I let the door shut behind me. I didn’t slam it like I wanted to, I just let it swing closed on its own. The latch clicking into place had a finality to it that made my entire insides ache.

I took a deep breath, trying to get control over my raging hurt emotions.
Just let things be,
I thought to myself. That was the adult part of me speaking sense. The girl in me wanted to scream and rant and break all the windows of his house in with a brick. A big, frigging, bastard of a brick.

My hair swung into my eyes, thank goodness, keeping the reporters from getting any clear shots of my face. With those stupid, high-powered lenses they’d for sure have been able to catch the tears swimming in my eyes.

I made it all the way to my bedroom before any of them fell. When they did finally escape, they came in rivers I thought would never run dry. I cried for myself and my sad little attempts at befriending a person who didn’t want a friend, I cried for the coach and all the people who’d lost him, and I cried for Jason, a boy who was really and truly all alone in a world that had once revered him but now had turned on him with a vengeance. Life was so unfair.

Chapter Thirty-Five

I DIDN’T TALK TO JASON for the rest of the weekend. When Bobby texted asking me if I wanted to hang out, I lied and told him I had too much homework and my parents had forbidden me to go out. My room became my hideout, where I could lie in my bed and lick my wounds, trying to forget what a loser I was.

My mother was so worried about me, she let me have dinner in my room, which was normally a big no-no. I ended up eating two bites of my hamburger — all protein, Jason would have been so proud — and throwing the rest in the garbage. I fell asleep listening to the mix I made for him and picturing him having dance-seizures all over his kitchen. My eyes were pretty much swollen shut with all the boo-hooing I did.

Monday dawned dark and dismal, a perfect background for my mood. Rain ruined my hair and brought out the scent of the fabric softener my mother uses on my clothes before I was ten steps out the door. I was sweating and hating every drop of it, more so than usual. Sweat reminded me of Jason and Jason reminded me of the pain of rejection.

People in the hallways stared and whispered as I walked by, but I ignored them and their tiny minds. I had nothing to say to anyone, or so I thought.

Mrs. Davis the civics teacher caught up with me on the way to fifth period. I’d made the mistake of taking the short way to class that led me right past her door during her off-period. She snagged me with a shout that pretty much alerted half the school that we were about to have a conversation.

“Katy! Hey, Katy! Could you come here for a minute?”

I tried to pretend like I hadn’t heard her, but everyone else stopped and stared, so it would have been too obvious a snub to continue on.
Curse my parents for refusing to allow me to be rude growing up
. So much for personal freedom. I was starting to think that I had none at all, seeing as how most of my responses and actions were dependent on the approval or disapproval of someone else. I was starting to doubt if I’d ever had an independent or original thought in my entire life.

I sighed and turned around, making my way back to her door with my head down. “Hi,” I said, still not really looking at her. I focused on the black cummerbund around her waist, lost in her eighties time warp that wouldn’t quit.

“Would you come in for a minute? I promise I won’t keep you very long.”

“I have class…” I looked longingly out into the hallway.

“I’ll write you a note if necessary.” She backed into the room and hitched a buttcheek up over the corner of her desk. “So, how are things going with Jason?”

I shrugged. “How would I know?”

“The news channels show you going over to his house every day, so I figured you were at least talking to him, seeing how he’s doing?” She leaned her head down, forcing me to look up at her.

Busted. Fuck the news.

I sighed, very put-out that she was using her teacher-power to force me into having a conversation I totally wasn’t interested in having. Could this be false-imprisonment? It felt like it.

“He’s as good as you would expect,” I said with undisguised attitude. “Besides, I won’t be going over there anymore, so … whatever.” I twisted to the side, looking out into the hallway. I couldn’t have hinted any louder how badly I wanted to be gone from her classroom, but she continued to ignore my screaming body language.

“Why’s that? Did your parents tell you they don’t want you to go over there?”

“No,”
not that it’s any of your cummerbund-wearing business,
“they’re fine with it.” I finally looked at her, mad at her insinuation. “Jason’s not dangerous.”

“I wasn’t saying that he is.” She stared at me, like she was trying to see into my soul or something. It was annoying as hell.

“Can I go now?”

“In a minute. Did you give any more thought to what I said before? About how I might be able to help you?”

“I’m not the one who needs help.”

I couldn’t figure this woman out. Was she a sicko who got off on hearing terrible news? Was she looking for a story to sell? It never crossed my mind that she might actually care about anybody but herself. My time with Jason had turned me against the world.