Something True (9 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

True

“How’d it go?” I asked, the second Wallace walked over the threshold at Goddess on Wednesday night. The place was packed with kids from a handful of local schools, and he glanced around before answering.

“You know the battle at the end of the second
Star Trek
?” he asked. “The new ones, I mean.”

My coworker Torin looked up from the box of cupcakes he was filling. “Dude. That was brutal.”

“Yeah. About like that,” Wallace said.

My heart sank as I handed change to the girl I was helping. She shot Wallace a sympathetic look as he slumped against the counter in front of me.

“It can’t have been that bad,” I said, biting my lip.

“She likes Orion. It’s blatant to the world,” he said with a groan.

“Maybe she does like him, but that doesn’t mean they’re meant to be,” I replied. Okay, maybe snapped.

Wallace lifted his head. “So what do we do?”

I smiled. At least he wasn’t ready to give up.

“Tell me a little about this history you were talking about before,” I said, tilting my head toward the end of the counter, away from the hustle and bustle. Cassie, one of the few employees over the age of twenty, cleared tables nearby. Other than her, the only people close enough to overhear us were two scrawny guys sitting together, each listening to their own music on their earbuds. “The other day you said you used to be friends. What did you guys used to do together?”

Wallace sighed and drew doodles on the countertop with his fingertip. “I don’t know. We were just kids. I tutored her in math, she schooled me in science. We used to swim in my pool and play adventure games.”

My forehead crinkled. “Like what?”

“Harry Potter and Hermione, Spiderman and Mary Jane, saving the world. That kind of thing.”

I laughed. Loudly. “Sorry. I just can’t imagine Darla doing any of that.”

“Yeah, well.” Wallace gave me a mournful look. “It was a long time ago.”

I nodded, setting aside my mirth. “Okay, that Darla is still in there somewhere. Deep, deep inside. I’m sure you can find some common ground. Spend more time with her. Figure out what you guys have in common in the here and now.”

“Well, we do have Boosters again tomorrow. And afterward we have to do some shopping for the pancake breakfast on Saturday,” Wallace said.

“Good! There you go!”

Wallace’s phone beeped. He checked the screen. “I should go. My mom’s expecting me to come home with pizza. I’ll see you later, True.”

“Okay. And don’t worry! It’s all going to work out!”

As Wallace shoved open the door, I heard an angry shout. I glanced over, and the blood rushed from my face. Artemis and Apollo stood right outside the shop, not twenty yards away. They were dressed in modern clothing now, head-to-toe black with a definite vinyl-and-leather vibe. Artemis’s brown curls were pulled back from her face in a bun, and Apollo’s hair hung in scraggly black locks over his ears. He was glaring at Wallace, who had raised his hands in an apologetic
don’t shoot me
kind of way. The twins let him move on, then turned. I hit the floor so fast I smacked my kneecap on the tile and my leg exploded in pain.

“True? What the—”

“Shhh!” I scrambled toward the back of the shop, squeezing past Torin’s legs and pushing open the door with the top of my head. Inside, I jumped to my feet, ignoring the fact that my knee felt shattered, and raced for the break room, where I yanked my duffel bag off the bottom shelf of the storage area and opened the zipper with shaking hands. Bow and arrows in hand, I backed up against the wall, held my breath, and listened.

Nothing. No yelling, no crashing, no explosions. Maybe they hadn’t seen me. Maybe I was still safe.

“True?” Torin called out.

Crap. I quickly shoved the bow and arrow back into the bag and kicked the whole thing under the storage shelf. Torin’s curious face appeared in the small round window of the break room door. He spotted me, then slowly pushed it open.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

He was wearing a black T-shirt with the Superman
S
emblazoned across the front. If only such a hero actually existed. I wouldn’t mind having him on my side right now.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, swiping my hands on the back of my jeans. “I just saw some people I’m trying to avoid.”

“Ah.” His face flooded with understanding. “Been there. Stalker exes. Not good.”

I laughed and sat down shakily on the old couch near the back of the room.

“Hang out here until I lock up,” Torin said.

“Thanks.”

He left, letting the door swing closed behind him, and I leaned back into the cushions. My hands were trembling, and my heart felt like it was trying to wrecking-ball its way out of my chest.

The twins were clearly closing in. I wasn’t sure how much longer this avoidance plan of mine was going to work.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Orion

“I still can’t believe we could actually win this thing,” Darla babbled, leaning over my shoulder as I scrolled through pictures of us on my computer. “I mean, can you believe it? Darla Shayne, homecoming queen.”

I could believe it. Mostly because she’d said it so many times by now it had been hammered into my brain. I would have paid good money to talk about anything else, but we were here to make homecoming posters, so there wasn’t much opportunity to change the subject. Instead I kept staring at the screen as photo after photo of me and Darla flashed by.

It was insane, how many pictures she had when we’d only known each other for two weeks. Pics from the diner, from football games, in the cafeteria, in the hall, at some park I didn’t even remember going to. I swear her and her friends were like amateur photojournalists.

“I like that one,” she said, just as I flipped past it.

I went back and smiled. She was sitting on my lap, laughing, with my arms around her waist. She looked really happy. It wasn’t posed. It was real.

“Me too. Should I send it?”

“Go for it.”

She kissed my cheek. “Just . . . don’t tell Veronica, okay?”

I swiveled in my chair. “Tell her what?”

Darla pressed the pen she was holding between her two palms. “What Wallace said. That we could really win. If she finds out, she’ll freak.”

“She’s your best friend. She should be happy for you.”

Like that was even possible. But maybe if I said it she’d see how one-sided her relationship with her best friend was. She dropped back to the floor, where a new poster was laid out, and began carefully outlining her name.

“Please.” Darla rolled her eyes. “If she thought I could potentially be more popular than her, she’d be furious. She’d probably stop talking to me. No one’s more popular than Veronica Vine.”

More logic I did not understand. I mean, I got that Veronica Vine was a bitch and people were scared of her, but technically, that wasn’t popularity. It was dictatorship. I didn’t want to argue with her about it, though. Darla had a sensitive spot when it came to Veronica.

With a sigh, I dropped the image into the email we were sending to her mother’s assistant, who could apparently rush print anything in any size. Darla laid out on her stomach, crossing her legs at the ankles behind her. Her hair trailed down onto her poster and her lips screwed up in concentration. From that angle, I could see almost all the way down her shirt.

God, she really was hot. And she was in my room. Lying down. And the door was closed. What were we doing talking about Veronica Vine?

“You’re cute when you’re busy,” I told her, tilting off the chair to lie down next to her.

“I’m always cute,” she joked back.

“Can’t argue with that.” I moved her hair off her shoulder, then leaned in to kiss her neck. Darla stopped coloring or glittering or whatever she was doing and turned to look at me. My lips met hers and I moved in closer, wrapping one arm around her back. She turned onto her side and pressed herself into me, deepening the kiss. I ran my hand down her side until my fingers rested on her hip, then moved them back over her totally perfect butt.

“Orion, your sister’s right next door,” she whispered. It was a protest, but her heart wasn’t in it. Her hips moved closer to mine even as she said it.

“So? She never comes in here,” I said, pulling her into me.

Darla dropped her marker and ran her hand up my side too. She clenched me to her and my hand traveled under her sweater, my fingers sliding over the warm skin of her flat stomach.

Then my phone rang.

“Dammit,” I said under my breath.

“Just leave it,” she said, kissing my cheek.

I pulled myself away with some serious effort. “I would, but I have to talk to Greg about the place mats. That’s probably him.”

I grabbed my phone off the desk, hot all over, and blew out a calming breath. Then I saw the name on the front of my phone, and it wasn’t Greg. It was True. My lungs clenched around my heart.

“I’ll be right back.”

She shrugged and went back to her work. Meanwhile, my brain was vibrating inside my skull, danger warnings flashing everywhere. I slunk out into the hallway and closed the door quietly behind me.

“Hello?” I said into the phone.

“Orion? Hi, it’s True.”

“Yeah, hey.” I locked my arm around my stomach and grabbed my shirt at the side. My skin pulsated.

“Why are you whispering?” she asked.

“Am I?” I turned away from my room and walked toward the bathroom at the end of the hall. “Sorry.” I slipped inside and half closed the door. “Is that better?”

“Yeah. That’s better,” she replied.

I shoved the small window open and breathed in the gush of cool air, then looked into my own eyes in the mirror. I looked like a guy who was totally scared. Why? I could talk to whoever I wanted on the phone, and Darla knew that True and I were friends.

“How are you?” True asked. “I didn’t see you much today.”

“Were you looking for me?” I teased.

Damn. Stop flirting, you idiot.

“Maybe,” she said, playing along. “But I guess you’re pretty busy being Mr. Popular Homecoming Guy.”

I turned my back on my reflection. “I’ll never be too busy to talk to you.”

What? What the hell? I had to get control of myself. My girlfriend was two doors away.

True, meanwhile, sighed. She sounded content. Like I was saying exactly what she wanted to hear. The thought made my throat close over. I liked it. I liked that she felt that way.

Ugh. It was like there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

“So what’s up?” I said finally, trying to steer the conversation in the right direction.

“Oh, right. Did you have a chance to talk to Greg about taking a photo for us?” True said.

“No. Not yet.”

“Orion?”

It was Darla, calling me down the hall.

“One second!” I called back.

“Where’d you go?” she asked.

“Who’s that?” True asked.

I could hear Darla approaching on the hardwood floor. Her foot hit that one board in the center that always creaked. She was less than three steps away. My hand went slick. For a split second I considered telling True it was my mom, but then the door pushed open and there Darla stood in her bare feet and skinny jeans looking vulnerable, and I knew I couldn’t do it. I shouldn’t do it. Maybe she was a tad obsessed with homecoming, but she was still my girlfriend. She was still the person I had asked to go to this stupid dance with me. The least I could do was not lie right in front of her to spare someone else’s feelings.

“It’s Darla,” I said. “We’re making posters for homecoming.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then, “Oh.”

“I should probably go,” I told her.

“Right. Okay. But you’ll talk to Greg tomorrow?” True asked, her voice tight.

“Yes. I’m on it. See you then.”

I hit the end button and shoved the phone deep into my back pocket.

“Who was that?” Darla asked in a tentative voice that made me want to punch myself.

“It was Greg,” I replied instantly. Apparently I
would
lie to save
her
feelings. “Like I said.”

“You have to hide in the bathroom to talk to Greg?” she asked.

“The connection was bad.” I slid by her into the hall, feeling gross over how easy the story was flowing from my lips. “I kept moving until I could hear him.”

“Oh.”

Her “oh” sounded almost exactly like True’s. This wasn’t right, the lying. I didn’t like the way it sat inside my stomach, like a big, fat, festering blob. I wasn’t this guy. I didn’t play. I didn’t cheat. It just wasn’t me. But I really liked Darla, and I really liked True.

Sooner or later, something was going to have to give.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Orion

I was kind of glad to have a yearbook meeting at lunch on Thursday. Usually it sucked because, obviously, lunch is the best period of the day, but this way I had an excuse to avoid Darla and True being in the same room together. On top of which, the endless homecoming talk was getting old. I mean, I wanted to win—actually, I wanted Darla to win, because it was really important to her—but I didn’t think it was
that
big of a deal, and it was getting harder and harder not to blurt it out. Like the next time I heard Veronica Vine say, “If it’s humid that day and my hair frizzes, I’ll die,” I might just up and say, “You know there are kids in the world, right now, who are
actually dying.
”

Which would probably not be good for my social life. Or Darla’s.

Greg and I sat at the end of one of the U-shaped tables while our adviser, Mrs. Mattia, blabbed on about mixing it up in the layouts—going for the unexpected. Greg was scrolling through pictures on his camera, while I tapped my pencil against the edge of the table until Dani Trainor, the editor in chief, brought her hand down on top of the eraser. She had a star tattoo on the back of her thumb, which had to have caused some serious pain to have inked, and wore so much eyeliner it was as if her eyeballs were staring out at you from the bottom of some huge sinkhole. Not the kind of girl you wanted to mess with. I dropped the pencil, and she watched it roll noisily across the table with narrowed eyes until it finally hit Greg’s arm. When Mrs. Mattia was done, Greg rolled the pencil back.

“I got an idea, why don’t we do a layout that’s all words and no pictures?” he suggested under his breath. “That would really be mixing it up.”

“I think the girls of the school would revolt,” I joked back. “The first thing they do is flip through it for pictures of them and their friends, right?”

“That is
so
sexist,” Dani said, shoving her chair back. She stormed across the room, dropping her huge yearbook binder on the front table with a
thwap
and staring me down the whole way. I really hoped she didn’t know how to make a voodoo doll, because if she did, I was screwed.

Greg laughed and got up to walk to one of the computers near the wall. “You wanna work on the Boosters layout?” he asked. “I got a few good shots at the game last weekend.”

“Sure.”

I turned my chair around to sit next to him as he plugged in a USB. The ancient screen went blue and then actually groaned as it tried to load the pictures.

“We could be here a while,” Greg lamented. He reached into his bag and pulled out an apple, then tossed one to me.

“Thanks.” I crunched into it, and the juice ran down my chin. “So listen, you wouldn’t happen to have any good pictures of the football field, would you?”

“Probably, why?” Greg asked.

“Me and True are in charge of the place mats for the pancake breakfast on Saturday,” I explained. “We thought it would be cool to use an image of the field. Problem is, we need it today so we can get it to the printer tomorrow.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. If I don’t have one you like, I can take a few after school,” he said, lifting his chin toward the computer. “We’ll look through my files once this dinosaur finally warms up.”

At that moment, the first picture blinked onto the screen. It was a close-up of True, wearing a blue-and-white Boosters T-shirt, shouting in the stands. The second I saw her, I had a sudden flash. True was in this huge, rolling field under a clear blue sky, bending to pick wildflowers. Her long hair trailed over her shoulders and tickled the tips of the pink and yellow petals. She was wearing some kind of long white dress, and the strap slipped off her shoulder, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was totally unself-conscious and confident. She looked back at me and laughed, her eyelids falling heavy as she watched me approach.

I wanted her. I wanted her more than I ever knew I could want anything.

“. . . I mean the pictures are really awesome.”

I blinked, Greg’s face and the computer screen coming slowly into focus. Part of me was still stuck back in that field, and I felt as if I could reach out and touch True—as if I
needed
to. Every inch of me longed for every inch of her. The back of my skull radiated pain into my eyes, down my tongue, and to the very tips of my ears.

“Dude. Are you okay?” Greg asked me, his brow wrinkling.

“Sorry,” I said to Greg. “What?”

“You look like you’re gonna throw up or something.” He pushed his chair back, away from me, a few inches. “You need a garbage can?”

Suddenly the rest of the room snapped into harsh relief. The colors, the laughter, the scents of dry paper, bad pizza, and spilled soda. I still held the apple in my right hand, and the juice leaked over my palm. My stomach turned. Maybe I was going to be sick. I put my head between my knees and breathed. The image of True was fading, but the way I felt was not. I had this awful, physical urge to see her. Worse. To hold her. To kiss her. To . . . do other things with her.

It was like she’d cast some kind of spell on me.

I shook my head and laughed. Voodoo? Spells? Maybe all those TV shows my sister was obsessed with were starting to seep into my subconscious.

I pushed True out of my mind and thought of Darla. Her eyes, her hands, her lips, her body. Darla. Yes. Darla.

I lifted my head and took a breath. “I’m okay.”

Greg looked me over and seemed to believe me. He edged his chair back toward the computer.

“Got a caption for this one?” he asked.

I shook my head, staring past his shoulder. Honestly, I was afraid to look at the screen again. “Go to the next one.”

The next picture was of Claudia, Wallace, and Claudia’s friend Lauren. I took another breath. The pain in my head was easing.

“Anyway, your posters are great,” Greg said, reaching for the mouse. “You guys have my vote.”

“Posters?” I said.

“Yeah. For homecoming.” Greg’s light eyes were disturbed under his black hair. He must have said something while I was off in that field with True. Something I hadn’t heard. “You and Darla? King and queen? I’m gonna vote for you.”

“Oh, right,” I said, nodding. “Thanks.”

After this I’d have to track down Darla and tell her we’d scored another vote. Darla. Sweet, cherry-flavored Darla. She was my girlfriend. She was the one I wanted.

“So do you want to find some pictures for True?” Greg asked.

“What?” I blurted. “I wasn’t thinking about True.”

“Dude, seriously? Maybe you should go to the nurse and lie down.”

I blew out a sigh and reached into my bag for a bottle of water. “Let’s just look at some pictures of the field. I’ll be fine.”

I just had to convince my frantic pulse and jackrabbity heart that it was true.