Reject High (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 1) (17 page)

She’d temporarily lost function in her legs, not
permanently
. While the girls talked, I found Selby sulking on one side of a see-saw. Though I was tempted, I did not force the other side down and send him into outer space.  

“She’s not ready.”

Selby hid his eyes from me.  “She doesn’t call you Captain Obvious for nothing, does she?”

“What’s your rush, anyway?”

An uncomfortable silence passed between us. I remembered what Sasha told me about his parents. It’s a wonder the kid hasn’t jetted off halfway around the world by now with that kind of pain.

In a way, I felt for him. Ray hadn’t beaten me or locked me in a basement, but it’s not like he loved me, either. If Selby hadn’t done something to my girlfriend or tried to stab me to death we might actually have been friends.

Sasha and Rhapsody, who had shed her black stockings, joined us. Rhapsody rubbed Selby on the shoulder. “Hey,” she said tenderly. “No worries! I’m okay.”

“Yeah,” he said with animosity. “But
I’m
not.”

In a flash, Selby stood up and sped out of our sights.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

the most awkward dinner ever

Selby wouldn’t answer his cell phone or his home phone.
What’s up with that?

We’d been calling for a half hour. Rhapsody dialed his house, so it wouldn’t sound suspicious. Although Mrs. Selby
loved
Sasha – her words not mine – whatever Selby did during their relationship was
so bad
that she didn’t want to try calling there.

Now, I
had
to know what it was. I started to ask, but Rhapsody pulled me aside.

“I know that look. Don’t,” she said, not allowing me any room for comment. “Just
don’t.
Not now.”

Waiting is not my thing. I marched up to Sasha and asked, “What happened between you and Selby?”

Her mouth fell open. “What did you just ask me?”

I repeated each word carefully, ignoring Rhapsody’s continual warning. “What happened between you and Selby?”

“Quit playing dumb, Jason. I’m not proud of it, alright?”

Rhapsody wagged an index finger. “Umm, no, Girl Genius,
he really doesn’t know.
Your boyfriend is pre-etty slow on the uptake.”

“Shut up, Rhapsody,” I said. 

“Can we do this in private?” Sasha asked, her arms hanging at her sides.

Rhapsody shook her head as she strolled away to the other side of the playground. Sasha walked with me around the outskirts, near the basketball courts. A pickup game was taking place. She sat on a bench, and I joined her. Sasha drew her knees up to her chest. I hoped she’d speak soon.

“Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked.

“I think you’re beautiful,” I replied. And I did, too.

“Guys didn’t notice me before this year.” She moistened her lips. “It does something for my pretty girl swagger when I’m noticed by a boy. No bragging, but I’ve always been kind of a brain. My classes are all AP.”

“I believe that.” The constant sound of the basketball clanging against the rim kept breaking my concentration, so I moved closer to drown out everything else but her voice.

“Selby asked me out at the beginning of the school year. None of the girls like Asia think he’s good-looking, but he’s a junior and a football captain
.
Believe it or not, he’s actually a nice guy, sweet, even.”

I didn’t believe it – that it was possible for him to be “sweet” or that he ever stopped being a jackass.

“That’s what I wanted – to be
noticed
. I said yes and got what I asked for.”

I’d been patient this long, but couldn’t hold it back anymore. “What happened?”

“Selby was my first real boyfriend. He was my first.”

My heart dropped into my feet. She’d been with a guy, or guys, I accepted that. But
that guy?
I swallowed hard and tried not to throw up my breakfast.

“He said if we didn’t. . . that he’d break up with me, and I couldn’t go back into that hole. He said someone else videotaped us and posted it online. I believed him.” Sasha broke into tears and buried her face in my shoulder. “It happened at school on the drama set. When Mr. Rush found out, he sent us to Reject High.”

She actually bought that crap line that he didn’t film them? I didn’t know what to think. But the words “go back into that hole” – I knew
exactly
what they meant. If it buried you deep enough, you’d go desperate and do anything to get out. 

“You
really
didn’t know?” she asked, her words still muffled in my shirt.

“No,” I said calmly, letting her continue.

“He’s the only guy, Jason, I swear.”

Honestly, it didn’t matter whether he was or wasn’t. But why say stuff like that note when she has no intentions of following through? “It doesn’t matter.”

Sasha gazed into my eyes and kissed my lips. I put Selby out of my mind and kissed her back. Rhapsody cleared her throat beside us. “Did you make up?”

“Never fought,” I admitted. Sasha hooked her arm over mine. “Now, I know the truth.”

“Good,” said Rhapsody. The two girls shared a glance, some sort of female code, I guess.

“Debra invited Sasha over for dinner tonight. You down?”

Rhapsody smiled and slapped me on the shoulder. “I’m bicycle, not
tricycle
, Cap.”

As usual, her slang went way over my head. “What?”

“She doesn’t want to be a third wheel, Baby,” Sasha said. “Try to keep up.”

Rhapsody walked away, throwing a peace sign in the air with her right hand. “See you two later. If Selby comes back or something pops off, I’ll be at the hospital.”

My watch read 1:15. If Debra had been waiting, she’d have texted me by now, so Sasha and I took our time walking back to the parking lot. I reassured her that, although the whole school knew about what happened, I’d never seen her video and wouldn’t ever watch it.

“Good,” she said. “So, you’re okay if we
don’t,
at least for a while?”

I’ve gotten superpowers, been shot a couple of times by my teacher. Got in a car accident and jumped over our town twice over the past week. “Yup, I think I’m good.”

“You’re the only fifteen-year-old boy in America who thinks like that. That’s not normal.”

No, it wasn’t. And it didn’t look like I would ever be that way again.

That night, Aunt Dee was off the clock, and Debra didn’t feel like cooking. She suggested pizza, but we
always
get pizza, and even I get sick of that sometimes. The Chinese place close to us delivered, but Sasha wasn’t a fan of it. Aunt Dee had made fried chicken two nights ago, but none of us wanted to eat it. Sandwiches won.

Debra offered to go get them, so she wrote down our orders and left us alone in the apartment. My little brother, who had just woken up from his midday nap, crawled around the apartment – hardly private time for us. I turned on a DVD and Zachary turned into a drooling zombie in front of the television. 

“Your stepmom is nice,” Sasha said. “I think she likes me.”

Which was a major achievement. She didn’t like any of my three ex-girlfriends. “Alright, you need a Champion/Brown history lesson.”

Sasha smacked her hands together and rubbed them against her blue jeans. “I’m ready.”

I diagrammed my twisted family tree, from my parents getting married in ‘95, having me in ‘97, and my birth mom dying in September, 2010 three days before I turned thirteen.

“He married Debra on New Year’s Eve, 2011,” I said. “Zachary was born in June last year. They separated right before school started and I moved in with Debra afterwards. Their divorce finalized in March, I think.”

“Wow.” She blinked her eyes several times. “That all happened pretty fast.”

Sasha had already told me about her family, but I’d forgotten most of it. We spent the rest of the time Debra was gone kissing. So I’d have to wing it when I met Joyce. 

Around 7:15 p.m., Debra unlocked the door and bolted straight for the kitchen. I made one last swipe on my lips, hoping I’d cleaned off most of Sasha’s glittery lip gloss. She did a quick retouch. “Alright, you kids ready to eat?”

Zachary broke from his trance and yelled, “Eat!”

I lifted my brother into his high chair, where Debra gave him some cut-up bites of her meatball sub and some soy milk. For us, she laid our sandwiches – my turkey breast and Sasha’s seafood salad – onto plates with a handful of chips and a bottled soda. Like me, Sasha liked Sprite, but she chose grape soda. I tried to remember that about her.

Debra sank into her chair and sighed. She hadn’t fully healed from the wreck, and her energy came in spurts. It reminded me of my mom after a day of radiation.

She slowly blinked and smiled at me. “Stop looking at me like that, I’m fine, Jason.” She extended her right hand to me and her left to Sasha to say grace. “Sasha – Jason, Zachary, and I give thanks to God before we eat.”

“That’s fine, Ms. Brown,” she said. “I’m a Christian.”

Wait, she is?
We’d talked about a million things over the past two days, but somehow we skipped over our belief systems. My third girlfriend was a Jehovah’s Witness. When September rolled around, she wouldn’t sing “Happy Birthday” to me. I’d asked her, “What do you do for holidays – stand around and look at your family?” That was pretty much the end of that. 

Once Debra finished praying, I dove into my sandwich – long before it occurred to me that I shouldn’t eat so fast in front of a girl I’d only been dating for a few days. A string of lettuce dangled from my mouth. Sasha giggled, pulled it out, and placed it on the side of her plate.
Oh yeah, this one’s a keeper.

“So, Sasha.” This was the way Debra always started questioning a date. “What do your parents do?”

Sasha waited to finish chewing a small bite before answering. “My mom Joyce works for the state in human resources. My dad owns a headhunting firm. He calls his employees ‘diamond thieves’, but they’re just really good job recruiters.”

Good thing she explained that, so I didn’t have to pretend to understand what “headhunting” was, besides cutting people’s heads off. Zachary batted his food, occasionally picking up a piece and smashing it against his face. Sometimes, he actually got some it inside of his mouth.

Debra pointed to me. “How did the two of you meet?”

“She went to North, too,” I shot out. “She’s in my Visual Arts class. Draws a lot better than I do.”

My stepmom focused on the yellow chips scattered on her plate. Something was cooking inside of her brain. I could almost hear the sound of wheels turning. “You went to
North
, Sasha?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she answered politely, without hesitation. “Until a few months ago.”

For once, instead of letting something bad happen, I chose to prevent it. She couldn’t find out about the video. But how? What should I do to stop her? I started choking on a banana pepper –
that
wasn’t the plan. Sasha patted my back, and I stumbled into the bathroom. I coughed it up, flushed the toilet, and rinsed out my mouth.

Sasha stood in the open doorway. “Are you okay? Your stepmom’s getting you some water.” 

My face was really hot, but I was okay. “Yeah.”