Impossible (2 page)

“No, Mom, I haven’t.”

She had this look in her eye that she always got when she was about to convince me to do something. “You should talk to him.”

I groaned. “Mom, he is the last person I want to go out of my way to talk to.”

Mom frowned at me. “Ashton, honey, I did not raise you to ignore your best friend.”

“We are not best friends. The last time we spoke was when we were 10, and I really, really want to forget about him. He’s just plain creepy.”

“That doesn’t sound like something you would say. More of a Kance thing.”

I hung my head and stared down at the floor. It was scary how right Mom was. It really was something Kance would say. Maybe I was just copying her comments about Luca instead of making up my own mind about him, but Kance had a point. The way Luca dressed was creepy and weird. Everyone thought so.

“Mom, you’ve seen the way he looks now. His momma probably had a heart attack when he started dressing like that.”

“Maybe it’s what all the cool kids are wearing,” Mom said with a twinkle in her eye.

“Yeah, maybe it’s the latest trend in the Underworld, but not here in Statlen.”

Mom laughed and ruffled my hair. “I can tell I’m not going to convince you either way, but if you do run into him, talk to him, okay? He’s had a rough few years.”

“We’ve
all
had a rough few years.”

She fell silent and I knew she’d grasped my meaning. Since Bryan had left, the way some people in town talked about mom, she might as well have a scarlet letter stamped on her forehead. The negative attention had put a great deal of stress on her, and on me.

Before Mom could say anything, the doorbell rang and her brow furrowed. “Will you see who that is, sweetie? I’ll be another half hour finishing up the chapter I’m writing, but I’ll start dinner after that.”

“Sure, Mom.”

I walked through the kitchen and down the hall to the front door, glad for the interruption. Mom asked me about Luca at least once a week and my answer was always the same. I didn’t know why she was so fixated on getting me to talk to him. It’s not like we had anything in common anymore. We were completely different people.

Luca spent his lunches hanging out with those weird friends of his, whose names I couldn’t bother to remember. He was either making noise with his band after school or was in detention almost every week for breaking some rule or other. On the other hand, I spent my lunches hanging out with the cheerleaders and the jocks. I went to the hottest parties and hung out with the coolest people. There was no common ground there at all. The one class we did share was American History, and he spent most of the lesson with headphones stuck in his ears.

What could we possibly have to say to each other, and why on earth would mom want me to befriend a delinquent like him? Sure, we’d been best friends since we were toddlers, but that was before Luca had started doing drugs, drinking, and playing in his annoying garage band.

Seriously, I would be happy if I never had to speak to him again.

I opened up the door and gaped at the person standing outside. He wore low slung, black jeans and a black t-shirt that said ‘Do or die’ across the front. His hair wasn’t spiked up like it normally was—it was flatter somehow and fell into his eyes—although it still had a spiky look about it, like he’d gone to great lengths to style it that way. Both arms were covered in tattoos, but the right arm didn’t have as many as the left—I’d never been close enough to notice that before.

I’d forgotten how beautiful and green his eyes were and, even though half his hair was covering his eyes, I could still see the intensity in them as they stared back at me. There was an awkward silence as we eyed each other up.

When he smirked at me, I had to blink again to make sure that Luca Byron was really standing outside my door.

Luca

Ashton stared at me like she’d seen a ghost. I glanced over my shoulder just to make sure that that look was for me and not someone else. Nope, no one was there. It was just me.

“Um, can I help you?” she finally asked, her pretty blue eyes wide.

“I need flour.”

“Huh?” Ashton seemed confused, and her hand lingered on the edge of the door as if she wanted to slam it shut in my face.

“FL-OU-R,” I repeated slowly, enunciating each letter. “Need it.”

“Why do you need it?”

“What are you, the flour police?” I sighed and stuffed my hands into my pockets. The last thing I’d wanted to do was come over here and ask Ashton Summers for flour, but momma had been halfway through cooking and had made me go instead. I missed the days when my momma wasn’t so absent-minded that she forgot half the groceries on the list.

Ashton folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the doorframe, regarding me like I was a dirty rodent. “Well, if you’re going to come to my house and ask me for flour, I want to know what you’re going to do with it. What if you vandalize someone’s property?”

Really, she thought I was going to vandalize someone’s house with flour? When had she become so uppity? Had she forgotten the time we were nine and had thrown eggs at Mr. Krasinky’s car because he’d called her dog a menace?

“My momma needs it for baking. She’s making a pie for the fundraiser thing tomorrow.”

Ash tilted her head to the side, her expression softening. “Oh, what kind of a pie is she making?”

“A cow pie, what the hell do I care?” My voice shook with anger. “If you’re so interested then why the hell don’t you walk your prissy ass over there and ask her yourself? Or maybe you’re too good for that, princess?”

Ash’s face flushed bright red and she set her mouth in a firm line. “Wait here.” She slammed the door shut and left me standing outside.

Whoa. I hadn’t meant to attack her like that, but the words had just tumbled out one after the other. I mean, I guess I was angry with her for a lot of things, but it wasn’t like I was going to pour my feelings out to her so we could be best friends for life. That was never going to happen.

Ashton Summers was a stuck up cheerleader who thought she was better than everyone else. Sure, she was pretty hot with her long, golden hair, those legs that went for miles and that smile that brought out the dimples in her cheeks, but she was too full of herself. She made fun of girls who she didn’t think were as pretty as her, and she completely ignored guys who weren’t up to her insanely high standards. I had watched her enough at school to know this.

She wasn’t the same girl who would go skate boarding and not cry when she banged up her knee, or who’d play in the dirt with me for hours until her mom yelled for both of us to come inside and take a bath because we were worse than pigs in the mud. I didn’t know who the hell she was anymore and, frankly, I didn’t give a damn.

Taking a deep breath, I turned around and looked out across their lawn. The grass was getting really long now. Too bad they didn’t have someone around to cut it for them. On closer inspection, I noticed that the paint was peeling in some places on the house. They really needed someone around to maintain that stuff.

Okay, now I felt pretty bad for yelling at Ash like that. Obviously, they had their own problems and I’d just gone and acted like a total ass when all she’d done was ask a question. It was no mystery that Ash’s mom had left her husband and gotten stuck with another kid to look after. You only needed to go into town and you’d hear the old gossips talking about it. That is, if they weren’t talking about my friends and me.

The front door opened with a bang and Ashton stormed out carrying a container. “Here.” She thrust it at me with force. “Tell your momma to bring it back when she’s done.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, running a hand through my gelled hair. It wasn’t lost on me that she had specifically asked for my momma to bring it back. I guess I’d rubbed her the wrong way.

We stood there awkwardly, and I really wanted to say something. I mean, I should apologize for getting angry earlier, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

As I struggled to find the right words to say, Ashton shot me a cold look. “Well, I’d love to stand around and chat, because you’re
such
a pleasure, but I have things to do other than speak to devil worshippers. Good bye, Luca.”

She spun around, her golden hair billowing behind her, and stormed back inside. The door slammed shut in my face for the second time, but I stood rooted to the spot, hardly believing my ears. She’d actually acknowledged me. She’d called me by my name.

Shaking my head, I started back towards my house trying to wrap my head around what had just happened. I mean, it was stupid to be amazed that she’d said my name. Of course she knew my name, but her actually saying it meant she had to admit that I still existed, no matter how hard she tried to ignore me and act like I didn’t exist.

I wasn’t exactly sure when our friendship had fallen apart, but it’d been sometime after dad’s death. I’d needed time and space to get over it, and when I’d turned around she’d moved on and made new friends. Friends who were better looking, richer, and more fun. Not miserable and depressed the way I was. She’d seemed happier, so I’d let her go.

And then I’d found music to fill the void left by her.

It had always been around me, but it re-entered my life at a time when I needed it the most. One day, I just picked up dad’s guitar and started playing it. Day and night. I barely slept or ate. I just kept playing that guitar and singing until all the sadness was out of my system, until the thought of dad brought a smile to my face, and Ashton was just a girl I once knew.

The music enclosed itself around my mind and my thoughts. It became a way for me to communicate, to de-stress, to live, and to breathe. To get on with my life and redefine myself. It made me strong and it made me weak, but it was an important part of me.

As I opened up my front door, something else Ash said came back to me. Had she called me a devil worshipper? Was the girl on crack? I couldn’t help but burst out laughing as I entered the kitchen. My momma turned around, wiping her hands on the apron around her waist, and looked at me in surprise.

“Luca?” She stared at me like I was someone else. “I haven’t heard you laugh like that since…” She trailed off. She didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she was going to say. She hadn’t heard me laugh like that since before Dad had died.

My momma was an average height and build and, even though she had just turned 40, she still looked like she was in her mid-thirties. The only sign of her aging were the wrinkles around her brown eyes. She had dark brown hair which I’d gotten from her, except I preferred the black color my hair was now.

“Oh, um, it’s nothing,” I said as she took the flour from me.

“Really?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Because I saw Ashton answer the door. How long has it been since you last spoke to her? Six, seven years?”

Damn. I’d forgotten that momma had a choice view of Ash’s front door from our kitchen window. Of course she’d been watching, hoping that Ash and I would speak to each other again. “Yeah, something like that.”

“What did she say?” Momma put the flour down on the counter and turned back to me, her eyes full of curiosity.

I shrugged. “Nothing much.”

“Is that why she made you laugh?”

I swear nothing ever got past my momma. She knew me too damn well. “She called me a devil worshipper.”

Momma burst out laughing, and I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m not surprised. You look like you sleep in a coffin.” Her face became serious. “She doesn’t know what you do in the garage, does she? I’m sure if you showed her, she would change her mind about you.”

I shook my head. “There’s no way I’m taking her into the garage. She probably already thinks I’m a freak without adding to it.”

“You’re not a freak, Luca,” Momma said with a frown. “You’re just worried she’ll see what the real you is like.”

I raised my head and looked up the ceiling, sighing deeply. I wasn’t in the mood to be psychoanalyzed by my mother. After my encounter with Ash, all I wanted to do was hang out with my friends and forget that the run in with her had ever happened. I’d gotten used to thinking that the girl from my childhood was someone else—someone who’d moved away years ago. She wasn’t the stuck-up snob who lived next door and hated me.

“Is it alright if I go out tonight?” I asked, looking back at her again. Seeing my friends and getting wasted would distract me from thoughts of Ashton.

“Very smooth changing of the topic,” Momma said. She headed back to the counter and started pouring the borrowed flour into a bowl. “I guess you can go, but be home by eleven. No later, okay?”

“Sure thing, Momma.”

I headed up the stairs, intending to go to my room, but found my feet taking me somewhere else. I continued down the corridor and pushed open a door on the left. A musty smell greeted me as I stepped into the empty room. This had been my room growing up, but after my dad had died in a car accident, I’d moved to a different one.

This room had reminded me of him constantly until I couldn’t take it anymore. And I hadn’t wanted to face Ashton either. I just wanted to get away from her concern and dad’s memories, so I’d moved across the hall and away from the person I’d been when I slept in here.