Through to You (2 page)

A feeling of trepidation came over me. Why was she reading my note again? Maybe she was a stalker. I sized her up. Long dark hair, average height, wearing jeans and a pink tank top with a sheer white shirt over it.

She didn't look like a stalker. And besides, I was the one who'd put a note on her desk. If anything,
I
was the one who could be considered a stalker.

But still.

You can never tell. What do stalkers really look like? You'd expect them to be girls who aren't all that cute, girls who are desperate for male attention. But from my experience—and honestly, not to sound like an asshole, but I have kind of a lot of it—the ones you need to worry about are the ones who
are
good-looking. It's like they're so used to getting what they want, they can't take no for an answer.

Is Harper good-looking? I wasn't sure yet.

“Whatcha doin'?” I ask, and lightly pull on a strand of her hair.

She turns around, startled, and drops the note I gave her.

We both bend down to pick it up, and then we both stop when we see what the other one is doing, and so we end up just kind of crouched down over the floor together. I stay like that for a moment longer than necessary, because I can tell she's flustered. I know it's fucked up, but like I said, I like that I'm having an effect on her. Finally she grabs the note and we both stand up.

“Um, I'm not doing anything.” She smoothes her ponytail, and her tinsel shimmers. “What are you doing?”

I shrug. “Why do you have to go to the nurse?” I ask. “Are you sick?” She doesn't look sick.

“I'm not going to the nurse.” A look of panic crosses her face.

“But you just got called down.”

“So?”

“So then why aren't you going?” It's almost funny, me asking someone why they're not doing something. I never do anything I'm supposed to.

She shrugs and shifts her weight from foot to foot. “I don't know.”

“Liar.”

“Whatever.” She pushes her hair back from her face and looks at me defiantly, like she's waiting for me to say something. So I don't.

“Okay, well. I guess I'm just going to go walk around,” she says finally.

“The
school
?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I just told you, I'm not going to the nurse.”

I have no idea what she's talking about. She definitely might be a crazy person. Not, like, a dangerous crazy person or anything. Although, usually if people are nuts in one way, they have the potential to be nuts in all sorts of other ways. But I kind of like it. I like that she's always been quiet in world history, and now here she is, talking nonsense.

“What do you have against nurses?” I tease. I start walking down the hall, just in case Mr. Marks decides to come out and make sure I'm actually going to the bathroom.

Harper follows me.

“Nothing, really.”

“Well, you must have
something
against them.” Is it possible she doesn't know the amazingness that is the nurse's office? “You know if you go down there and tell them you threw up in the bathroom, they'll let you go home. It's, like, a rule.”

“She wants me to have a physical,” Harper says, “and I have a phobia.”

“Of physicals?”

“Of all things medical.” She looks at me and raises her chin, challenging me to call her crazy. But I don't. A girl who can admit what she's afraid of is refreshing.

“It's just a school physical, though. You know that, right? They don't take blood or anything.” It's true. I've had a million sports physicals for baseball, and if you're not, like, five minutes away from dying or have scoliosis, the physicals are totally useless.

She shrugs. “It's all the same to me.”

I'm still walking down the hall, and she's still following me. “So you're just gonna wander around the school?”

She nods. “Until the end of the period, yeah. Then hopefully they'll have forgotten they want to see me.”

What a horrible plan. Everyone knows that if you're trying to get away with skipping class, you don't hang around at
school
. “That's the worst idea ever,” I tell her. “Someone's going to catch you.”

“No, they won't,” she says. “I'm going to hide in the bathroom.”

“Oh my God,” I say, rolling my eyes. “That's the first place they look!” It's such an innocent, ridiculous plan that I can't help think that maybe she's joking. But there's no sign of a smile on her face. I shake my head and then look her up and down. She bites her lip, and she looks so damn cute and kind of like a lost puppy that I can't resist. “You wanna get out of here?”

She looks shocked. “Leave the school?”

“Yeah.”

“With
you
?”

“Yes.”

“And do
what
?”

“I don't know. Eat. Walk. Have an adventure.” I give her my patented smile, the one I use when I want to get my way.

She taps her foot against the floor. “I don't even know you.”

“Penn Mattingly.” I put my hand out, and she gives me a look like she can't believe I'm trying to pull bullshit on her.

“I know your name.”

“So what else do you need?” I pull my wallet out and hand her my license. “Name, date of birth, address . . .”

She looks down at it doubtfully. “That's a horrible picture of you.”

“Really?” I cock my head. “I kind of like it. It was after this crazy party, and this girl had . . .” I trail off for a moment, then reach out and take the license back. “Well. It was just a rough night. So given the circumstances, I think I look pretty good.”

“Are you always this cocky?”

I shake my head and pretend like she's got me all wrong. “It's a real shame,” I tell her, “that you would think that about me.”

“You just told me you think you look good in that picture, and that you had some kind of random sexual escapade with a girl. What else am I supposed to think? I mean, I haven't ever spoken to you until today. You're not exactly making the best first impression.” She turns on her heel and starts walking away from me.

I chase after her, wondering how I've suddenly become the follower instead of the followee. “That's awful,” I say. “That we've been in the same school all this time and we've never even talked. I mean, what if we're soul mates?”

She turns on her heel and gapes at me. “Me and
you
?”

“What, like you're too good for me?”

She shrugs, like maybe she thinks she is. I'm annoyed for a second, and then I realize she's probably right. I might have never spoken to her until today, but I know she's smart. I know she's quiet. I know she always eats lunch outside when the weather is nice. All those things make her too good for me, because the truth is, pretty much any girl who has her shit together is too good for me.

But I push that thought out of my head as best I can, because if I let myself think about that, I won't be able to convince her to come with me. And I don't know why, but I really, really want her to.

“Anyway,”
I say. “Now that we've explored that possibility, we really shouldn't waste another moment. Let's get out of here.”

She tugs on her hair again, and I can see her mind working. She
wants
to go with me, but she's a good girl. Her instinct is probably to be afraid and cautious.
My
instinct is to give her another grin and make a witty comment, but some part of me has a feeling that's not going to work.

So I just wait.

And sure enough, after a moment Harper shrugs. “Okay,” she says. “Let's go.”

Oh my God.

This is crazy.

This might be the craziest thing I've ever done. Which really isn't saying that much. I mean, I don't do crazy things, like, ever. Although, sometimes, if someone is making me feel like I'm too chicken to do something, I get kind of mad and then I do it.

Like the time last summer when everyone at my dance camp was jumping off this rope swing at the lake, and I was totally afraid to do it because every time someone used that rope, all I could think about was them falling and smashing their heads open. People in books and movies are always getting killed when they jump off rope swings. Always.

It's, like, a thing. And every time I watched a movie or read a book like that, I'd always be like, who would be stupid enough to jump off a rope swing? But then there I was, and everyone was doing it, and so then I kind of had to.

It wasn't because everyone was making fun of me. It was because no one was making fun of me. It was like no one expected me to do it, so much so that they didn't even bother to try to make me feel lame for not doing it. Which pissed me off.

So I did it. I didn't crack my head open, but I did almost lose my bathing suit top.

But this.

Leaving school in the middle of the day? I've never done that.

Leaving school in the middle of the day with a boy? I've
definitely
never done that.

Leaving school in the middle of the day with a boy who looks that good in his driver's license picture and knows it? A whole new definition of “outside the realm of possibility.”

Not to mention he's a
strange
boy.

Not like “strange” in the sense of being weird. “Strange” like he's a stranger. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, wondering if he's psycho. I run through a list of things in my head that I know about Penn Mattingly.

1. He has an I-don't-care attitude.

2. He used to be a big baseball star, before he hurt his shoulder or something last year.

3. He gets away with murder, I think mostly because of his I-don't-care attitude. Like, for example, if he comes into class late, the teachers hardly bother saying anything to him about it, because he doesn't give a shit. There's nothing you can really do to him, because he doesn't care if he ends up in the office.

4. He's hot. This is a new one to the list. I mean, I always knew Penn was good-looking. But it was more something I noticed abstractly, not something I was necessarily super-aware of. But now I am. Super-aware of it, I mean. I'm super-aware of the way his hair flops over his forehead, how smooth his skin is, how broad his shoulders are, and how he towers over me, even though I'm five-eight.

“Where are we going?” I ask as we walk through the front doors of the school. As soon as we're outside, I have to resist the urge to look over my shoulder and make sure no one has seen us. Penn, on the other hand, is walking like he doesn't have a care in the world.

He glances back at me and gives me this totally mischievous grin. “Stop asking me that. I told you I don't know.”

“Yeah, but how can you not know? I mean, shouldn't we have a plan or something?”

“Plans are for wimps.”

I don't want to seem like a wimp, so I just follow him. He's walking with a crazy confidence, like we're totally justified in leaving school in the middle of the morning, and not just two
delinquents who are skipping class. I wonder how many times he's done this, and if he's somehow perfected the casual I'm-supposed-to-be-doing-this walk. I try to mimic it and almost trip over my feet.

I'm still not sure if I'm going to actually go anywhere with him. Leaving school is one thing, but leaving school
property
is another.

As soon as I see his car, my mind gets made up.

“
That's
your car?” I ask as he unlocks the passenger-side door for me.

“Yeah.” He opens the door and motions for me to get inside.

I shake my head. “No way. I'm not getting in there.”

“Why not?”

“Because, it's . . .” I try to think of a way to put it delicately. I know how boys can be about their cars, and I don't think he'll like it too much if I tell him it looks like a death trap. But it does. It's not that it's run-down or anything. In fact, it's the opposite. It's shiny and black and looks really new. But it's a truck, and it's one of those trucks that have double wheels or whatever.

Double wheels that look dangerous, like the kind of thing you use to street race, or whatever it is teenage boys do when their hormones are raging and they're bored. A truck like that cannot be trusted. A
boy
who has a truck like that cannot be trusted.

“It's what?” Penn asks impatiently.

The sun is starting to move higher in the sky, and it's a
lot hotter out here than it was inside. Penn unzips his hoodie, then takes it off and tosses it into the backseat. His arms are strong and lean, and his biceps flex under the thin material of his white T-shirt as he opens the door of his truck wider, inviting me in.

I quickly look away and force myself to ignore the buzz that's starting to vibrate through my body.

“It doesn't look . . . I mean, it looks . . .”

He rolls his eyes. “I'm a very good driver.”

“You are?”

He nods solemnly. “Of course. You really think my parents would let me drive a car like this if I was reckless?” He puffs his chest proudly. “I've only been in three accidents.”

Oh, for the love of . . . I turn around and start to head back toward the school, but he reaches out and grabs my arm. “I'm kidding, I'm kidding,” he says. “I've never been in an accident.”

“Ever?”

“Ever. And I passed my driver's test on my first try, I swear.”

I swallow. I'm not sure if he's telling the truth. He seems like the kind of guy who could lie and make it seem completely true. He also seems like he's used to getting what he wants. Both of those things are having conflicting effects on me. On one hand, it's making me not want to go with him, but on the other hand, it's making me
want
to go with him. The whole thing is very weird.