Last night, she’d grudgingly invited me over to her house. I showered and changed clothes before setting out down the beach. The wind whipping off the gulf was cold and dry, swirling my still-damp hair into cowlicks and tangles. It riffled the pages of the sketchpad I’d used for topography sketches, threatening to tear it to pieces and fling my work into the water. I hunched into my hoodie, arm locked over the sketchpad and hands in pockets, hating Mrs Dumont and Melody Dover and whatever jackhole decided geography should be part of ninth-grade curriculum.
Melody answered the door in pink sweats and fuzzy white socks.
‘Hey. Want a Coke or something?’ Without waiting for an answer, she pushed the door closed behind me and walked into the house.
I followed, wondering at the word PINK spelled out across her ass. I arched a brow at the redundant label while eyeballing her slim hips, swinging smoothly, drawing me along until I realized we’d entered a bright kitchen the size of my grandfather’s entire house. She bent to pull two cold sodas from a lower shelf of a huge fridge and I pulled to a stop, staring. PINK was my new favourite word.
Leading me towards the granite countertop, she handed me a can and plopped her perfect ass on to a leather-topped barstool. Turning her laptop towards me, she indicated the adjacent stool and I sat, struggling to shift gears. Geography held even less allure than it had before. I hadn’t thought that possible.
She said words, and I didn’t understand them. The wind must have scrambled my brain. The wind, or the word pink. ‘Landon?’
‘Huh?’
‘Let’s see your maps.’ Her tone said she was anything but excited at the prospect. I opened the sketchbook to the first map. Her mouth dropped open. ‘Oh, my God.’
‘What?’
Her lashes swept up and then back down as she turned the page. ‘Wow. You’re … you’re an artist?’
I shrugged, releasing a relieved breath.
She turned another page. ‘Oh, my God,’ she repeated. ‘These are amazing. Are these figures tiny little people? And trees? Wow.’ She flipped slowly through the rest of them, until she turned to a blank page. Then she did something I hadn’t expected her to do. She turned back to the front of the notebook and opened it.
I reached for it, unwilling to snatch it rudely from her, but apprehensive of her examining sketches I’d never shared with anyone else. ‘Uh, that’s all the maps …’
Her mouth had fallen slightly open again, and she shook her head a little, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. I felt my face heat as her finger ran over a detailed sketch of a seagull cleaning its feathers, and then one of Grandpa, sleeping in his favourite chair.
Returning my hand to my lap, I waited while she examined each drawing, until she’d come back to the first map.
‘You should do me.’
I blinked and cleared my throat, and she reddened slightly.
‘Uh. Sure.’
‘Who’s this?’ a woman’s voice said then, startling both of us. We sprang apart and I nearly fell off my barstool.
Melody’s jaw set tight but her voice was all passivity. ‘This is Landon, Mom – he’s my partner on that geography project?’
Her mother’s gaze swept over me, and I was acutely aware of my recycled clothes, my shaggy hair, the cheap leather-banded watch on one wrist and the faded grey bandana I’d wrapped round the other. ‘Oh?’ One brow arched as her eyes, the same pale green as her daughter’s, turned back to Melody. ‘I thought Clark was in your geography class.’
‘Mrs Dumont assigned partners.’ A slight bit of defiance. Also an excuse – It’s not my fault or choice that he’s my partner.
‘Hmm,’ her mother said. ‘Well. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be in my office across the hall.’ Spinning, she disappeared through a doorway we could see from the counter.
Melody rolled her eyes – but this time, not at me. ‘I swear to God, she’s such a pain in the ass. Parents suck.’
I smiled, and she smiled back and my heart stuttered. Damn. So pretty. So out of my league. So girlfriend of some other guy.
We worked on the project for two hours, during which time she texted with Clark five times and was called by two friends. We were also spied on by her mother every fifteen or twenty minutes. Finally, she walked me to the door and glanced over her shoulder as I zipped my hoodie. ‘So maybe … I’ll walk down to your place next time?’ Her voice was soft. This defiance was to be a secret between us. ‘Mom can’t walk in on us every five minutes there. Unless your mom is worse? Which I doubt is even possible.’
I swallowed thickly and shook my head. ‘No. I mean, yeah, you can come over.’
Had I just invited Melody Dover to my house – where I had no real bedroom? Was I a total jackass? Yes and yes. But I couldn’t take it back. And I couldn’t get the idea of her in my bedroom – which was really a bed and nothing else – out of my head.
I leaped out of bed this morning, the first time my phone sounded an alarm. The sudden storm hastened the already rushed pace I’d set when I walked out the door, so I arrived way early – ten minutes before the first bell. Students weren’t usually allowed inside the building until first bell, but it was raining. They’d look like total dicks making us stand around outside.
My shoes squeaked against the linoleum, echoing in the near-empty hallways, and I knew without glancing back that I was probably leaving a trail of watery footprints. My strident footfalls were loud enough that I didn’t hear anyone come up behind me, and I was so distracted thinking about second-period geography that my usual self-preserving instincts were muted.