Shot Through the Heart (10 page)

The school’s only a few blocks away. Five minutes for Joe, if he runs. Worse, our getaway car is parked on a side street between here and the school.

We’re heading straight toward the enemy.

Chapter Nine |
Peyton

N
ever in my life have I wished for Josh to hustle home from soccer.

I cradle the telephone between my ear and shoulder, then use my fingers to separate the slats of my bedroom blind. Closing my eyes, I send my wish skyward and count to ten. When I peer through the blind again, the driveway’s still empty.

“You there, Pey?”

“I’m listening. Finish your story.” I drop the slats and turn my attention back to Tessa, my voice chipper despite the fact I’m cursing Josh in my head.

Mom’s texted me twice asking if he’s gotten home yet, once asking if he could have forgotten his phone—as if it’s my duty to keep track—and then again to inform me that Josh has a dentist appointment at four-thirty and if I see him, to tell him that he needs to move his tail or pay for the missed appointment out of his own pocket. Even so, that’s not why I want him home.

Any other day, it’s like the minute I touch the receiver Josh’s internal radar starts pinging with the message,
burst into Peyton’s room ASAP and interrupt her call in the most obnoxious way possible.
So where in the world is he now, when it might actually be to my benefit? No way would my sister keep yakking about her personal problems if she knew Josh might overhear.

I desperately want to finish my trig homework. It’s a fairly important assignment, since it’s an end-of-the-unit overview, and we’ve already been on the phone for forty minutes.

On the other hand, I owe her. First, because her fashion advice has long been the only thing standing between me and social disaster. Whenever she’s home, she ferrets through my closet, eliminating potential disasters and helping me choose outfits that work. Second, two weeks ago, right before my friend Kendall’s birthday, Tessa found a great little tea shop near her dorm. Since I’d mentioned that Kendall loves fancy tea and I was trying to find some, Tessa bought several varieties and overnighted them to me for Kendall’s surprise party. I couldn’t have found a better gift; Kendall was thrilled to pieces.

Listening to Tessa complain is the least I can do. Thankfully, she doesn’t do it often.

“I’m sorry to dump all this on you when I’m sure you have tons of homework,” she says, as if reading my mind. “But Mom and Dad either don’t get it or don’t want to get it.”

“Been there,” I say. “What about your friends? Do they have any advice?”

There’s a thunk on the other end of the line, then running water and a series of beeps as she starts her coffee maker. “They’re all accounting majors. They think yoga’s nothing but woo-woo. They don’t understand how—or why—I’d want to be an accountant and teach yoga, too. Of course, they’ve never stepped foot inside a yoga studio, not one of them. It’s all so frustrating!”

I imagine they find her frustrating if she’s whined to them half as long as she’s whined to me, but I keep that thought to myself and ask, “So why
do
you want to?”

Tessa launches into a long description of how yoga makes her feel open both physically and mentally—which sounds kinda grukky, if you ask me—and how if Mom and Dad could be inside her head for a day, then they’d understand that practicing yoga actually makes her sharper, therefore improving her performance in accounting classes. I sort of follow, but sort of don’t. I only have so much compassion, even for Tessa, but if I try to tell her she’s being silly, I’ll hurt her feelings and end up with an even bigger headache than the one she’s already giving me.

“You know what really sucks, Pey? Mom tells me I’m squandering my potential. She keeps telling me how smart and pretty I am and how I have all these opportunities. I’ve tried to explain that,
hello, this is one of them,
but she can’t see what’s right before her eyes.”

I drop my forehead against the desk, the phone still tight to my ear. Mom and Dad have never accused me of squandering my potential. They don’t mention my potential one way or the other, which bothers me more than the fact that I don’t get the pretty comments.

“You get it, don’t you, Pey?”

“Oh, I get it.” But I wish Tessa would get it through her head that what really sucks isn’t being told you’re squandering your potential. It’s being compared to your older siblings—the smarter, better-looking, more popular Lindors—and being considered second rate by everyone from neighbors to teachers to family friends no matter how hard you work. That is, if you’re noticed at all.

Listening to Tessa’s yoga diatribe and self-centered smart-and-pretty complaint aren’t the worst of it, though. My insecurities are nothing more than that—insecurities—and I’m lucky to have a tight group of girlfriends who’ll give me a boost whenever they hear an adult compare me to my siblings. It’s that whenever Tessa mentions her boyfriend and the way he opened a whole new world for her, it pulls the trigger in my brain that makes me think about Connor.

Which is stupid, because he’s not my boyfriend. He’s nothing more than my older brother’s best friend who kissed me once. At least, that’s probably all Connor thinks of what happened between us.

On the other hand, there’s the reply text he sent not long ago, the one that has me itching to finish my conversation with Tessa so I can
think
.

Does
exactly what u r looking 4
mean Connor wants to explore something more serious than an afternoon session of Extreme Makeout?

Or are texts about chemistry just that, texts about chemistry?

Somewhere around our fourth or fifth kiss yesterday afternoon, I decided that having Connor as a boyfriend wouldn’t be the worst thing. In spite of the fact I haven’t been able to trust myself for more than a month or two tops with a boyfriend before, Connor could be different. For one thing, he has goals in life and he values them. He’d understand if I refuse to chase him into yoga teacher training or do anything else that’d knock my possible valedictorian status off track. The word
valedictorian
would stand out as if it were written in bright red ink if I could list it on my MIT application. If I end up with a less-than-great SAT score, that single word could save my tail.

Best of all, I wouldn’t even have to explain my reasoning to him. He’d get it.

Hearing him mention his obsession with design that maximizes natural light—he obsesses about architects named Richard Meier and Renzo Piano the way I obsess about the Mars Rover—while we sprawled against his pillows with our arms around each other answered an ache I’ve forced myself never to acknowledge exists within me. An ache to be with a guy who makes me laugh, yet whose goals are every bit as far-reaching and out of the ordinary as my own.

I close my eyes, allowing myself to imagine us as students at MIT, walking along the Charles River in search of a bench where we could hold hands and watch the sailboats and the college rowing teams go by while we discuss his architecture classes or an engineering project I’m designing. It would be incredible to have someone to talk to who encourages my fascination with the aerodynamics of spacecraft and the logistics of wheel deployment and retraction on an unmanned planetary rover. As an architect, Connor’s design challenges wouldn’t be that different, they’d simply be land-based.

Then, as the sun set, he’d loop his arm behind me on the bench. We’d share a few kisses while listening to the lap of the water along the river’s edge and the sound of rowers calling to each other as they return to the boathouse for the day. Connor would take my hand, letting me know it’s time to head back….

I roll my forehead against the cool surface of the desk in an attempt to stop my crazy obsessive daydreaming. Urgh! Is this why so many of my friends are boy-crazy? Does a switch flip inside their heads that makes it impossible to think of anything
but
guys?

Is this what makes Tessa so insane?

I need Josh to stand five feet away from me with one of his high-powered water guns and shoot me in the head. Or in the heart.

I don’t want to be this way. I want to be my same, reliable, studious self. Dependable. Even-tempered. Logical. Focused on important things like my classes rather than on whether or not Connor Strabinowski might kiss me again. With the (whopping three) guys I’ve gone out with before, my brain didn’t suffer this kind of poisoning, and—as much as I want to—I can’t attribute the disparity solely to the fact I share Connor’s MIT dreams.

Bottom line: They didn’t kiss me like Connor did.

“You have a boyfriend these days, Peyton?” Tessa asks. “Maybe a cute guy Mom and Dad and Josh don’t know about?”

My head whips up so fast it’s a wonder I don’t injure myself. “Why do you ask?”

Tessa laughs at my suspicious tone. “Just curious! You don’t have to tell me. The thing is, Matt introduced me to yoga. But that’s all he did. As much as I adore him, as much as his hard work inspires me to do the same, the teacher training was
my
idea. That’s what Mom and Dad can’t comprehend. There’s a difference between doing something because a guy is telling you to do it—no matter how wonderful you are together—and pursuing it because it’s what you truly want. I mean, if Matt dumped me tomorrow, I’d still want to do the teacher training. I wouldn’t take
his
class, obviously, but I’d find a teacher training program I liked and enroll.”

She exhales. I think she’s finally winding down. “This is about what I want to do in life.
My
future. Not about any possible future I might have with Matt. I’ve figured out that having or keeping a boyfriend isn’t entirely within my control, but my career? That can be. Knowing you, you’d do the same thing in my shoes. Wouldn’t you?”

“I hope.” I fiddle with the pencil I’d sharpened right before Tessa called. “I wouldn’t want my boyfriend—not that I have one—diverting me from what I really wanted to do.” That’s been Tessa’s record, despite what she says now. Her senior year of high school, she and her then-boyfriend got busted at Burger King at ten in the morning by the principal’s husband. He didn’t buy their story that they were eating egg and cheese sandwiches as research for a class project. In fact, Tessa missed turning a class project because she was at Burger King.

Maybe she’s finally learned from her mistakes?

“The thing is, I know that yoga teacher training isn’t the expected thing for an accounting major to pursue, Matt or no Matt. But sometimes, you know a decision is the right one.”

“Then do it,” I tell her. Because really, what’s her choice? She either does it or not. Griping to me might make her feel better, but it doesn’t solve her problem.

My three-word recommendation is met with a dramatic sigh. Five bucks says she’s sitting on the beat-up orange sofa in her dorm suite, holding her coffee mug and rolling her eyes at me. “I can’t until Mom and Dad see this from my point of view. They’re all hot to pay for college but won’t pay for this. I can’t convince them that it’s
all
education. The yoga teacher training and the accounting degree complement each other. I mean, how can someone run a yoga studio if they can’t manage the business side of things? And it gives me a backup plan. If I end up being a terrible yoga teacher, I can still get a straight-up accounting job. By the same token, if I discover that I’m a great teacher but lousy at running a business, I could teach at someone else’s studio. This is
smart.
And it’s what I really want, even if—”

“Tessa,” I interrupt. “If you really want to do it, if this is your dream, then find a way to pay for it.” I can’t believe I’m telling her this, let alone in a voice I usually reserve for Buster when he attempts to steal my food. “Maybe put off the training for a semester and get a part-time job to cover the cost. Try cutting back on your other expenses, like buying gourmet coffee every morning or going for manicures with your roommate. If you want it badly enough, make it happen. It’s all about priorities.”

She’s quiet. I can’t tell if she’s mad at me or if my words are sinking in, but I forge ahead and say what I’ve always wanted to tell her. “Look, Mom and Dad go crazy on you because you’ve done stupid stuff to make your boyfriends happy before, whether or not it’s made
you
happy. You’ve always said education is your top priority, but—”

“I need to act like it?”

“Yes!”

It’s more emphatic than I intended; there’s a sniffle on the other end of the phone. I rub my free hand across my forehead and eyes, very much the way Mom does whenever she’s talking to Tessa. Maybe I should have left well enough alone and kept my mouth shut, which is my usual M.O.

“You’re the best, Pey.” Tessa’s voice is quiet, but filled with emotion.

“Um…really?” Given how sweet she’s always been to me—sending tea is only the most recent instance—I suspect I’ve been too harsh.

“You’re wiser than you think, Peyton. What you said…well, I knew it all in my heart already. But I needed to
hear
it. Thank you. I’ll let you go. I just hope that you can take your own advice someday.”

I should be grateful she’s finally hanging up, but I can’t ignore that last part. “What do you mean?”

“I bet anything, somewhere down the line when you’re hot and heavy with some guy who really does it for you, you’ll be tempted to make a few of the same stupid decisions I’ve made in the past. It’s human nature. Just remember what you told me today, okay? Make your own long-term goals your priority.
Then
have fun with the guy. If he breaks your heart—which will probably happen at some point, unless you’re, like, the luckiest person ever—then it won’t mess up the other parts of your life.”