She's So Dead to Us (13 page)

I rolled my eyes, but inside my stomach was doing flips. This girl was definitely not like the others. There was no apology. No “Oh! You hurt yourself! Let’s get you cleaned up!” Nothing.

“I’m sure,” I said.

She bounced the ball to me. The rain was coming harder now, and we were both soaked through. Her T-shirt clung to her in all the right places. I had to get back to the game before my body started thinking for me.

“Twelve– fourteen,” I said.

I dribbled from hand to hand. She bent at the waist, rocking back and forth on her hips, her eyes on mine. She had this look on her face like she knew she was going to win. Screw it. Basketball was not my game. There was a good chance I wasn’t going to get around her. Might as well go through. I barreled straight ahead, slamming her shoulder with mine. As she went sprawling I realized that might have been kind of unnecessary. I hesitated before tossing the ball up, which gave her just enough of a window to spring off the ground, go vertical, and slap the ball away. It bounced toward the edge of the court, and by the time I figured out what had happened, she was shooting a perfect arcing shot over my head. It fell through the net with a slosh, spraying water everywhere.

“That’s game!” Ally shouted, raising her arms.

I hung my head. Good thing it was raining. Otherwise Hammond or the Idiot Twins might have dropped by and witnessed this tragedy.

“Nice one,” I said, reaching my hand out to her.

She slapped it and sat down on the bottom bleacher. “Yeah. You too.”

I sat down next to her. Too close. Our thighs and knees touched. She looked at our legs but didn’t move away. I was breathing kind of heavy from the game and wished I had a Gatorade or something so I’d have something to do with my hands.

I looked over at her. She quickly looked away. We both laughed.

“That was fun,” I said, leaning back. My shoulder pressed against hers. “We should do it again.”

“And risk pissing off your friends?” she asked.

My face turned hot. “Screw them.”

She twisted slightly, leaning her hand into the bench. Which meant that her knee was pushing more solidly against mine. I cleared my throat.

“What the hell did you do to Chloe, anyway?” I asked. I mean, the girl was obviously cool. I couldn’t believe she could have done anything that bad. Maybe if I could sort of ease her back into the group, we could hang out. “No one will tell me.”

Ally’s face grew serious, and she sat up straight. Her leg was no longer touching mine. She looked down at her feet, which she kicked out in front of her. “I skipped out on her sweet sixteen.”

“No way.” I laughed. “That’s the big drama?”

“Yep.” She looked away.

“And the punishment for that is a lifetime ban?” I asked.

“The funny thing is, I never even got an invitation,” she said. “Chloe claims she sent it, but if she did, I didn’t get it. So technically, there’s no reason for them to be mad.”

“Girls,” I said—then hoped she wouldn’t take it to mean her.

“Tell me about it,” she joked. “It’s more what my dad did, I think,” she said, swinging her legs back and forth. “When they look at me . . . all they see is him. He really did eff up. They have a right to be pissed at him. We all do.”

I swallowed hard. We were getting into heavy territory. I’d never been good at heavy.

Ally sighed and looked down at her hands, fidgeting with her fingers. “I guess we all just need to move on.”

Then the weirdest thing happened. I had this sudden itch to hold her hand. My fingers actually twitched toward hers, but I held back. That would definitely be too weird. And definitely be sending a signal I did not want to send. So instead, I pressed my palm into my thigh and sighed. I waited. The rain got harder and louder for a second, and then, all of a sudden, stopped. Ally was done talking. Rain dripped from our hair and clothes. I had to clench my teeth to keep from shaking. Now that we’d stopped moving, I was getting cold.

“So whose idea was it?” she asked suddenly.

“What?”

“The lawn jockey.”

I froze. Like I was really going to rat out Shannen. “Why do you want to know?”

She stared at me for a long moment. “It was Shannen’s, wasn’t it? You can tell me. It’s not like I’m going to go fight her or something.”

I didn’t answer, but my face must have said it all.

“I knew it.” She pulled the fabric of her T-shirt away from her stomach and wrung it out. Skin. She was showing skin. And her stomach was seriously ripped. “It’s so insane. We used to be best friends.” She shook her head and looked out across the court with this sad look on her face. “I knew they were going to be pissed, but I never thought . . . I mean, I thought we’d all get over it.”

I swallowed hard. “Sucks.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I guess we’re really just not going to be friends anymore. I just have to deal with it.”

Ally let the hem of her shirt drop over her abs again and glanced up at me. I tore my eyes from her stomach, and she blushed. Crap. Suddenly I was finding it hard to swallow. And now I was staring at her lips.

“So, then . . . what should we do?” I asked. I mean, she was here. She’d come here in the middle of a downpour to hang out with me. Even though last night she’d been kissing David Drake at the Harvest Ball. That had to mean something, right?

She smiled slightly. “Play another game?”

My heart dropped. Or maybe she was just using me for her basketball court. I stood up, relieved to put some space between the two of us. Relieved to have something to do other than think about kissing her. I grabbed the ball from the ground where we’d left it.

“You’re on.”

I dropped my old Orchard Hill High duffel bag on the bottom bleacher in the gym and sat down to retie my sneakers. It was the second week of November and the first day of basketball practice. By Friday Coach Prescott would have to cut the thirty-one hopeful players down to a final roster of fifteen. As I casually checked out the competition, I saw a lot of familiar faces—girls I had played with on JV freshman year. I could imagine that the lineup would be similar to that one, and as long as none of them had developed crazy skills since I’d been gone, I had a pretty good shot of making the team.

“Hey, Ally! Come shoot around with us,” Jessica Landry shouted, waving me over.

Jessica was a Norm senior who I’d always thought was the coolest girl on the team. She was one of those girls who wore sweats practically every day but always looked good anyway. Plus, she had a smile for everyone all the time. Not once in my life had I ever felt uncomfortable around her. I jogged over to join her and her friends, slapping a few hands and feeling lighthearted and ready for a workout.

I had just hit a sweet three from the corner when Shannen walked into the gym. My gut twisted with nerves, which just annoyed me. I was not going to let Shannen Moore make me nervous. She had no power over me. If anything, I should be pissed off at her.

Coach gave one bleat on her whistle and shouted at us to grab some water before we got started. I’d just dropped down on the bottom bleacher and was fishing in my bag for my water bottle when the toes of Shannen’s sneakers suddenly lined up with mine. My stomach hollowed out.

“Hey,” she said. Her foot twisted so that the side was to the floor for a second, then righted itself. She wore an Orchard Hill basketball T-shirt and held a ball loosely between her crossed wrists and her stomach. Her dark hair was back in a sloppy pony-tail, those long bangs half-hiding her eyes. How she expected to play ball with her hair in her face all the time, I had no idea.

“What do you want?” I asked, standing.

We were exactly the same height. Always had been. It was like God had put us on the same growth schedule when we were born, and in seventh grade we’d both shot up and started towering over all the boys in our class. By the time I left in freshman year, most of them still hadn’t caught up. Even now, we were taller than a lot of them.

“Whoa.” She held her hands up and backed up a step. “What’s with the angst?”

I rolled my eyes, laughed bitterly, and slammed her shoulder with mine as I walked by.

“Do you have a problem with me?” Shannen asked.

I whirled around on her. “What do you
want
, Shannen?”

She blinked a few times, appearing legitimately surprised. Had she woken up with amnesia this morning? Did she have zero memory of the past two months?

“I just thought since we’re going to be on the same team together it might be time to call a truce, that’s all.”

“A truce,” I repeated acerbically.

“Yeah. I mean—”

I took a few steps toward her. “Okay, you want a truce? How about you start by apologizing for the lawn jockey?”

“What?” she said.

“I know it was you,” I told her. “That prank had Shannen Moore written all over it. Do you even realize what that did to my mom? You want to screw with me, fine. Whatever. But she doesn’t deserve it.”

“Wow. Look who suddenly grew a spine,” Shannen joked.

I rolled my eyes and turned away from her.

“All right, fine. I’m sorry. The lawn jockey thing was stupid,” she said.

I paused, looking down at the floor. At least we were getting somewhere. She dribbled the ball over and held it out to me on her palm. “Are we cool now?”

She had to be joking. Like one apology was going to make up for everything. For freezing me out, for insulting me over and over again, for ostracizing me for something over which I had zero control. I took a deep breath and held it, clutching onto every bit of courage in me.

“No,” I said. “I want to know why. Why have you been so awful to me since I’ve been back?”

Shannen laughed contemptuously and shook her head, dribbling the ball from left to right.

“Don’t laugh. I’m serious.” I stole the ball with a resounding slap and held it against my chest. “What the hell did I ever do to you?”

She looked up at me, pushed her bangs out of her eyes, and clicked her teeth together twice before she answered. “I know what you and Hammond did the night you moved away. I was there.”

The edges of the room blurred, and the laughter and shouts seemed to echo between my ears.

“What?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked one knee, looking off toward the scoreboard. “My parents were arguing, as usual, and I heard my mom say something about how you guys were leaving that night. I tried to call you, but it went right to voice mail, so I snuck out and rode my bike over to your house. I couldn’t let you leave without saying good-bye.”

She stared at me then, an accusation in her eyes. My heart thumped with guilt. I’d really hurt her by not calling.

“I opened the front door—your parents were fighting too, so they didn’t hear me—and when I got to your room there you two were, writhing on top of each other on your bed.”

Her lips screwed up in disgust as she looked me up and down. I felt nauseous as the memory of that night swirled through me. I’d been avoiding thinking about it since I’d been back, but now here it was, in vivid HD. Hammond’s breath on my face, his hand on my cheek, the scent of the rain on his clothes. He’d asked me to go out with him just a month earlier, and I’d said no. I’d said I thought of him as a friend. And two weeks later he and Chloe had gotten together and were all lovey-dovey and inseparable. Chloe had been in love with him forever—had always thought they were destined to be together—so everyone was happy for them, but I had felt a little . . . jealous. I mean, one minute he was saying he liked me, and the next second he was all in love with her. But even so, I never would have done anything about it. Even then I knew that my feelings were stupid—that I was just wanting what I couldn’t have. But then, everything fell apart.