Chapter Fourteen

We were throwing around a football. The faceless boys now had faces…and names. Tommy and Russ. Scarlett was there, too. I was young, barely a teenager, although my age probably surpassed my maturity. Tommy was the tallest of all of us, but I was close to him. Russ was short and stout. She kept yelling at us to throw the ball to her. We ignored her.

“I’m open,” she yelled more than once, holding her arms out, her crimson hair in pigtails, her knees all skinned up.

“You throw like a girl,” Russell said.

“Yeah, but I catch better than you, butterfingers. C’mon, Tommy, throw me the ball.”

“Fine, if it’ll stop your yapping,” Tommy said and swung back, throwing it way too hard.

She caught it but lost her footing a little. Russell and I pounced on her. We managed to knock her down. “You’re not so tough, Miss Scarlett,” Russell said.

She groaned, tilting her head in my direction. As her sweet breath washed over my face, something weird happened. I got a little hot for no reason. Her deep blue eyes widened, and her lips puckered for just a second.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah…um, can you please get your hand off my boobs?” She turned in Russ’ direction. “Both of you.”

The spell broke.

I was touching her boob. And Russell, the stupid turd, had his hand on its twin.

“Get up, man,” I yelled at him, the previous warm sensation replaced with irritation.

Both of us shot up like her body was made of fire and we’d suffered severe burns. Perhaps we had. It was Tommy who helped her up. He brushed the dirt off her behind. She backed away from him, from all three of us, like a cornered animal.

Shit.

Her face matched her hair, and she bit down on her lower lip. God, this was uncomfortable. She wasn’t one of us anymore. I looked around in any direction that kept her out of vision. Scarlett was a girl. When did that happen?

“Where did you get those mosquito bites, Scar?” Russell asked, gesturing to her upper body. I got it. He was trying to make things okay again with his joke.

“At the Goodwill where you got your shirt, asshole. Where do you think?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, which was probably wise because despite my attempts to avoid her, my gaze shifted right back.

“Hope you kept the receipt,” he said. The three of us laughed, but it was hollow.

“I don’t want to play anymore.”

“Don’t be like that,” Tommy said, but she shrugged his hand off her shoulder.

“I should hang around my own kind for a while.”

“Trailer park people?” I asked. Shit, did I just say that? Her lower lip quivered, and I felt like an ass. It was like we all suffered from vomit of the mouth, and no matter what we said, it was wrong.

“Girls!” she screamed at me.

“It’s a joke.” I held up my hands in surrender. “Just kidding around.”

“Next time, try to be funny.”

“I’ll try,” I said, mustering as much sarcasm as I could. A flicker of pain flashed across her face. Shit, did we cause that? I took a cautious step toward her. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“Of course she’s not. She has natural padding,” Russell said.

“Shut the fuck up, Foster,” I growled at him. Although his smart mouth wasn’t taking a break, he looked nervous. Whatever was happening to me was going on with him, too. For some reason, that frustrated me even more.

“I’m gonna hang with Anna. I’ll catch y’all later.”

We watched as she hopped on her bike. She sped away from us, looking back once as if to check we weren’t chasing her.

“Next time, why don’t we just push her down on purpose and call her fat? Oh, and if she has any candy, we should take that, too,” Tommy said.

“Why is she mad at us? We fool around all the time,” Russell said. That was true; we made fun of each other. It’s what friends did, and she was our friend, so she wasn’t immune to it. Besides, that girl could dish it out as good if not better than the rest of us, but something was different now.

“Why did you go and say that stuff about her boobs, Foster? That’s why she’s pissed.” I shoved him.

He shoved me right back. “Oh, like you handled it well with that trailer park shit. Whatever, at least I said something instead of asking her if she was okay fifty times.”

My jaw clenched along with my fists. “I wanted to make sure.”

“So fucking what? She’s got boobs now. Are we supposed to ignore that?”

“Uh, I think you guys should stop talking about her boobs,” Tommy, the wisest among us, added.

After that day, she avoided the three of us like we were the walking plague. We thought she’d come around, but four miserable months came and went. I missed her. I wanted things to go back to normal. We all did.

None of us voiced it, but there was something else in the guarded way she stood that day. I caught sight of it right before she jumped on the bike…fear.

Why would she be scared of us? We were the kids she’d played with every single day. The ones who made her laugh and annoyed her and joked with her. How could she be frightened by us?

She’d changed in other ways, too. Scarlett wore huge sweatshirts and baggy jeans every single day, even when the temperature soared past a hundred degrees. Her hair hung limp and greasy with a mess of braids in it. Her eyes sported dark circles, and she was fidgety in class. We each had our own theories. Russ said it was girl problems and we should leave her be because we sure as hell had no business in that area. I thought it had everything to do with the insults we flung that day. But Tommy suspected there was something much deeper bothering our Scarlett. The worse she got, the more I agreed with Tommy.

It was Tommy who hatched the plan to cheer her up and maybe even get her to forgive us…dumbass plan.

“This is stupid,” I said, watching Russell strum his guitar outside the cafeteria doors.

“It’ll work,” Tommy insisted. “We embarrassed her. And now we’ll be embarrassing ourselves for her, so she’ll forgive us.”

His adolescent logic actually made sense. Still, I’d rather stick my hand in a beehive than go through with this fool idea.

“Why do you have your guitar, Foster? Didn’t you pay Joe the twenty bucks to sneak into the office and plug the music through the speakers?”

“I did, but I’m gonna play along. It’ll sound better that way.” Better my ass. The dickhead was just showing off for Scarlett.

“We didn’t practice it that way.”

“Jesus, Flynn, just figure it out. It’s not rocket science.” Russ smirked, a big shit-eating grin I wanted to swipe from his face.

“If it was rocket science, Flynn might be good at it,” Tommy said, trying to deflect the situation.

My fists unclenched, but my jaw flexed tighter. “I don’t know about this. I think we’ll make it worst.” I’d voiced this opinion at least a hundred times since Tommy came up with the idea.

“Shit, Flynn, you know Scarlett loves music. It will work,” Russell said with fake confidence.

“Yeah, if anyone’s going to back out, it should be me. I didn’t touch her boob or say anything mean,” Tommy said.

“This was your idea, Castings,” Russ said, shoving him a bit. “No backing out for any of us.”

“Relax, I’m joking.” Tommy responded to Russ but looked at me. “Besides, I’m the only one of us who’s got some talent.” Turning to me, he notched down his cockiness. “It’ll work. Girls love this kinda grand gesture crap.”

“What the hell is a grand gesture?” I asked. Judging from Russell’s puzzled look, he had no clue, either.

“See, this is why both of you suck.”

“How do you even know about this?” Russ asked.

“My mom watches a lot of girl movies. A grand gesture is something huge you do for someone else. Something that will stick with them. They do it in movies all the time.”

“Like when Bruce Willis stops the terrorists to save his wife in Die Hard?” I asked.

Tommy’s amused smile told me I got it wrong, but he nodded anyway. “Sure…like that.”

He adjusted his tie. We were all wearing white button-down shirts, black dress pants, and matching red ties. Not just for our performance, but because it was a game day and Coach made us dress up.

“Showtime,” Tommy announced.

The three of us strutted into the cafeteria with an arrogant swagger, which cloaked our real anxieties. We stood in front of her table. All conversation ceased as Russell plucked a few chords. Then it got so silent that you could hear a plastic fork drop on the carpet.

Scarlett’s face turned a deep shade of crimson. This wasn’t going to work. The girl would die of embarrassment, and the three stupid boys in front her would get their asses kicked before we finished the first verse. Her new best friend, Donna Corrigan, giggled uncontrollably.

Why did you make Donna your best friend?

Why did you give my job away, Scarlett?

“What the heck are you doing?” Donna asked. “Don’t tell me y’all are serenading us?”

Not you, Donna. This has nothing to do with you.

“Just gonna sing a little song,” Tommy answered.

“Why are you doing this?” Scarlett demanded in a terse whisper.

I almost darted for the door. Maybe Russ and Tommy sensed that because they flanked me.

Tommy cleared his throat. “We’re jerks. Sorry. This is for you cause you’re cool.” Russ and I nodded along as if Tommy had recited the most impassioned speech.

Then we froze like a pack of possums.

“Well? Are you gonna do something?” Donna asked, her shrill voice cutting across the cafeteria silence.

The three stupid boys turned their faces toward the speakers in the ceiling. Castings make the sign of the cross. Foster’s breathing picked up. I fiddled with my tie, which suddenly turned into a noose. I almost used it to wipe the trickle of sweat running down my temple. Russell plucked a few nervous chords. Tommy checked and rechecked his watch. Damn it, Joe, where the hell are you? Had he gotten caught? Fuck, Foster was good on guitar, but I doubted he could do the whole song. When the music did finally ring through the speakers, we almost missed our queue.

Russ strummed along to “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” by the Temptations. None of us was capable of the appropriate apology when it came to Scarlett, so we decided to use someone else’s words. We even had some choreography. I’d like to say it was a beautiful grand gesture and everyone cheered for us.

But that didn’t happen. We disgraced the Temptations awesome song and missed more steps than we made, bumping into each other the whole time. What was it about this girl that made the three of us act like complete idiots?

Russell was the lead. He had the best voice. Tommy and I hummed along. Actually, I croaked, my voice cracking with the changes of puberty. Thanks, puberty…you suck ass. I couldn’t hit a note if it was on a standing bullseye right in front of my face. I didn’t know why we didn’t just lip-sync it, but Foster and Castings vetoed me on that one. Of course, they did. They actually had talent.

“Have your balls dropped yet, Flynn?” asked one of the kids on the football team. I was questioning that myself.

Everyone laughed at us, even the janitor and lunch ladies. We kept going, though. We didn’t sound too hot, but Tommy could move with some rhythm. Me? I just shifted my feet, trying not to trip over myself. To my surprise, the girl’s worried frown let up. A smile took its place. Show me the dimple, girl. She did.

When the last note died down, the three of us were full-on sweating like we’d played four quarters with no breaks. We might be the butt of every joke until the end of time, but seeing her smile would make me do it again.

I dragged a hand through my hair. I mouthed the word sorry over the heckling roar of the crowd. She connected her thumb to her index finger, making an okay sign.

I nodded to indicate I understood.

The rest of it didn’t matter. I had her forgiveness. And that was more than okay by me.