Summer's Desire (11 page)

"There's no proof of that,"
Will says with a frown.

"He's never been caught at it, that's
true enough," Marcie clarifies. "But I'm pretty sure that's the
reason why Seth and the others don't like him. Seth especially is
really
anti-drugs."

He would be, I reflect. He's had
firsthand experience with the consequences of drug abuse by watching his mother
and bearing the brunt of her rages.

"Besides," continues Dana,
"Josh is tight with Jessica Anderson. That's enough reason for any normal
person to be seriously wary of the guy. They've been together on and off since,
hmm... their Sophomore year? Even if Jessica's never given up on lassoing Seth
one day."

"I think Josh and Jessica are
friends with benefits," whispers Marcie with a glint in her eye.

"Jessica's hot." Will nods
sagely.

"Will!" the girls shout.

"What? It's true!"

"Jessica's a bitch," says Dana.

"Yes, she is," agrees Will.
"Doesn't mean she's not hot."

I grin at the exchange and dare to look
up again, toward Seth. He's talking to his friends now but I know with my
special sense of him that a moment ago he had been looking at me. He's been
watching me all through lunch. I just can't figure this boy out. Why does he do
that? What does he want from me?

But God, how I miss him! Somehow it's
even harder now that he's so close than it's been in the five years when he was
hundreds of miles away from me—and even then it was exceedingly hard. But at
least, at that time he was completely out of reach. Now though, he's in
physical reach yet completely unattainable in all other ways.

He said that our past together was gone,
and the way he said it, it meant that he didn't want me in his life. And why
would he?

He's the most popular guy in school, the
other guys' object of envy and the girls' object of desire. He's smart, he's a
star athlete, he's headed for a brilliant future. He's the hottest guy I've
ever seen; I honestly think that if he were to somehow decide that he doesn't
want to play college ball, he could become a male model and shoot to instant
wealth and fame.

So I read it well, the first time I saw
him again: he's unreachable now—especially to someone like me. I mean, not that
I lack self-confidence (though I totally do) but come on, let's be honest. He's
so far above me—in terms of looks, popularity, prospects, and everything else,
really—that it's not even funny.

I'm heart-broken because of this, but at
the same time I'm so darn proud of him! This is
Seth
, the boy with whom I
spent my childhood, my former best friend and the person whom I loved most in
the world. Whom, to be completely truthful, I still love; I don't think that
love as powerful as that, once felt, can ever entirely disappear.

He's had such a hard life but somehow
he's managed, from the most inauspicious beginnings, to set the foundations for
a good future. I just wish I could be a part of that future, no matter how
small. There's nothing I wouldn't do to have him back as my friend.

Nothing at all.

Chapter 8

I'm in my second week at Rockford High
and I'm a wreck, mentally and physically.

At the house, Jessica keeps sticking me
with her poisonous barbs whenever she sees me. I try to stay out of her way as
much as I can, but I do have to eat, unfortunately, so at breakfast and dinner
at least, Jessica manages to get her claws into me.

Lately she's even upgraded to coming into
my room so that she can continue tormenting me. I can't stop her from entering since
my door doesn't have a lock, and though I begged Greg for one, he told me that
he doesn't believe in locking doors inside his house—not even the ones attached
to bathrooms, I might add. Un-freaking-believable, right?

Meanwhile, I've become well acquainted
with Jessica's fearsome arsenal of weapons: from the in-your-face slicing
insult to the subtle, just as cutting, innuendo—all of which she wields
brutally. But her most powerful weapon of all is Seth. I don't know how, but
she's somehow guessed that I care for him, and she takes great joy in telling
me how pathetic I am, aiming so high above me.

She tears me to shreds verbally every
single day, and there's no escape from her because we're living under the same
roof. I'm desperate to find a job so that I have a valid reason for getting out
of the house at least in the afternoons, but I haven't had any luck so far.

The first couple of times Jessica ripped
into me, I gave her as good as I got, but then she went to Louise with faked
tears and repeated my words, evidently leaving out the fact that she had been
the one to harass me into losing my cool in the first place. Then Louise tore
into me as well.

It hasn't been difficult for Jessica to
turn her mother against me. Louise hadn't liked me from the start, but at least
she was civil to me. Now, her civility has turned frigid. Even laid-back Greg
hasn't been able to remain completely impervious to the antagonism weighing
down the atmosphere in his house, all of it directed at me.

It drives me crazy that I can't face off
with Jessica like I want to and like she darn well deserves. But unfortunately,
she's the daughter of the house while I'm only an interloper. If I fought back
against Jessica, it wouldn't matter that she had provoked me: I'd just be
giving her ammunition against me. Which I'm afraid she'd use to convince her
parents to send me away.

And I really want to stay in Rockford. I
want to keep seeing Seth. I want to let myself enjoy the tentative friendships
I've developed to Marcie and her group. I want to keep seeing Seth. I don't
want to change yet another school. And yes, I want to keep seeing Seth. After
years of living in an emotional wasteland, I've found something that I can't
bear to give up. This frustrates me because of how vulnerable it makes me, but
still I want to keep it. Even if the price I have to pay is putting up with
Jessica.

All the same, the state of things with
Jessica and her mother is really affecting me. The house has become some kind
of hell dimension in my mind, and I'm sleeping less than ever. The five hours I
used to accomplish at night before coming to Rockford are a thing of the past. I'm
so tired all the time that I fear I'm going to lapse into a coma and lose my
mind when the nightmares come and I won't be able to wake up.

My night terrors are hounding me with a
vengeance, as if feeding off my emotional instability these days, and I'm
terrified that I'll start screaming in my sleep. As bad as it is living here, I
don't want to leave. Therefore, I can't risk letting the Andersons learn the
truth about me, about my awful nightmares. They'd be as horrified as all my
other fosters before them and ask my social worker to remove me from their
home. Then I'd almost certainly be sent to a different city.

I can't allow that to happen. Not now,
when I'm finally close to Seth again.

Truthfully, he is the first and foremost
reason for my wanting to stay here. I see him every day in school, and my heart
rejoices. Even my all-encompassing veil of tiredness lifts a little when I look
at him. I never approach him, though, and he never speaks to me, not even
during the World History class we share.

Still, I feel his eyes on me often,
quietly observant. Yesterday, he frowned when I showed up in class and he got a
close look at me, and I wanted to cry.

I know I look terrible. I have big
violet bags under my eyes and my face is sickly pale. I'm starting to lose
weight that I can't afford losing and, dressed in my hideous, already-too-large
clothes, now I really look like a scarecrow. At lunch, Marcie and her friends
throw me worried glances that I try to ignore. I tell myself that I don't
really care what they think.

Seth, though... I wish that he wouldn't
set eyes on me when I'm like this. And when he's constantly being pursued by
girls who are my complete opposite and who make it clear that they are his to
take at the mere snap of a finger. His indifferent manner with them does calm the
green monster that keeps churning inside me—but only marginally. For even
though I'm fiercely glad that I don't have to actually
witness
Seth
encouraging anyone, still I'm crushed by the suspicion that he must, nevertheless,
be taking some of these girls up on their explicit offers. That's what playboys
do, right? And Seth is reputed to be the most infamous of them all.

Even so, I'm always looking for him in
school; he's the one light in my miserable existence. I wish he wouldn't notice
my poor health but I need to see him, and unfortunately, if he's close enough
for me to feast my eyes on him, then I'm close enough for him to look back at
me in return. Which he does.

That's the odd thing—he's always
watching me too. I still haven't figured out the why of it.

Then, as if I didn't already have enough
on my plate, Josh hasn't stopped hounding me. He's at the bus stop when I arrive
at school in the morning, he's in front of my classrooms when I finish class,
he's constantly trailing me in the hallways. He keeps asking me out, I keep
ignoring him, but I can't shake him and I'm starting to get scared.

He still uses a polite tone when
speaking to me, but I sense that on the inside he's vibrating with anger. I
know that I'm a nobody in his eyes, yet I've dared to reject him repeatedly.
He's smarting at the humiliation, I'm sure of it, and I'm really afraid he'll
find a way to punish me for my effrontery. He seems the vengeful type.

So here I am, on Thursday afternoon,
dragging my feet toward my last class of the day, and once again I have Josh
stalking beside me.

"Come on, Summer, you know you want
to. One measly date, is that really so much to ask?" His once oh-so-charming
grin has definitely lost its luster and acquired an edge of menace instead. I'm
so glad I listened to my instincts and didn't go out with him in the first
place.

Fortunately, I reach the classroom and
walk inside. Yet unbelievably, Josh follows me in, unconcerned since Mr. Abbot
is late as ever. And I see that Seth isn't here yet.

Before I make it to my seat, my wrist is
suddenly caught in a tight grip and I'm forcefully turned around. I hate that
he's touching me, but when I try to pull my arm away, his grip only tightens,
becoming hurtful. Josh leans into me with a irate expression, and my heart
starts beating too fast.

Holy crap, he's tall! I had been
concentrating so hard on ignoring him all this time that I didn't realize this,
but I have to look way up to meet his gaze. He must be almost as tall as Seth.
And he's strong—if he hits me, he'll do some real damage. He has a scary glint
in his eyes, and I can't imagine how I ever thought that he looked the least
bit similar to Seth. He's such a scumbag that he's become hideous in my eyes.

"Now listen here, sweet cheeks!"
he spits out. "I get that you're playing hard to get to whet my appetite,
but I gotta tell you, this whole ice princess routine is getting real old."

"Let go of my arm!" My voice
is firm, hiding my fear.

He ignores my demand. "So this is
what we're gonna do. After football practice today, at six sharp, I'll come by
your house to pick you up. You'll be waiting for me and you'll fucking get in
my car like a good little girl."

A good little girl.
A good
little girl...
Those words, on top of the violence pressing against me,
chip at a very fragile lock in my mind... and the lock cracks open. Through the
split, that other, infinitely loathed voice rears up from the land of nighttime
terrors, and its poisonous tones fill my ears, merging with Josh's words.
"Now,
now, buttercup—be a good little girl and keep quiet. We wouldn't want you to
get hurt."
I shake my head in violent repudiation.

"Let go of my arm!" I tell him
hoarsely, and this time my voice trembles. And not only my voice but also my body,
and I hate Josh with my entire being for having brought me to this point.

And then a supremely pissed off voice
intervenes. "She told you to let her go."

Seth
.

My legs go weak with relief.
Oh,
thank you, God! Thank you.
Seth is here and he won't let anyone hurt me:
not Josh, and not even
him
—the one from my nightly terrors.

I look up at my former best friend. His
face is filled with rage, his eyes laser-blue, fists bunched, arms corded, his
whole body poised to spring into action. When Josh doesn't release me quickly
enough to suit Seth, his hand moves lightning fast, takes hold of the arm
imprisoning me, and twists it in an obviously painful way until Josh is forced
to either let go of me or have his own wrist broken.

He lets go of me.

But Seth keeps bending his arm. Josh's
struggles to free himself are useless against his opponent's formidable
strength, and his face has become a grimace of distress.

"Thought I told you to leave Summer
alone," Seth snarls at him. "Tell me, you asshole, didn't I make
myself clear when I talked to you?" He keeps twisting and Josh is moaning
softly, his eyes wild with pain.