Such a Good Girl Page 3

I shift my backpack. I didn’t position my books right, and the corner of my French book digs into the back of my right hip. “Yes?” My heart is beating unevenly with him so close. I am attracted to him.

  I think of his hands on me.

  My God. I need to get it together.

  His eyes shift behind me. “Uh, actually, you know, I’ll just catch up with you next class, okay? Great job on the quiz, though, Riley. You’ve retained a lot of information this year.”

  I squint at him, but he’s still looking behind me. I turn—and see one of the new basketball players, a transfer from across town, waiting behind me to talk to Mr. Belrose.

  Huh.

  Whatever Belrose was going to say to me . . . he didn’t want to say it in front of someone else.

  Something in my stomach does an odd little jump, but I tamp it down.

  Whatever he was going to say . . . it doesn’t matter.

  Not one bit.

  I square my shoulders and walk out of the classroom.

  I wouldn’t flirt with him. And he couldn’t flirt with me. I’m not like Thea. It’s different with Mr. Belrose and me. We have . . . a history.

  He is, after all, the same age as my brother.

  I walk down the hallway to my locker, where I spin the combination without thinking and change out my books, which are all lined up neatly and have color-coded book covers for each class.

  Mr. Belrose has helped me before.

  He hasn’t always been a teacher.

  There was a time when he was just my brother’s friend and I knew him as Alex and he was just the cute youth counselor helping out at the church, where we raised money each year to donate to domestic violence shelters. There was a time when I didn’t think too much about talking to him, when his hair wasn’t brushed so carefully and he didn’t wear neatly buttoned shirts and khakis and he cursed a lot more. It was before he’d studied abroad in France his senior year of college and met Jacqueline and gotten married to someone who looked like she’d been painted by an impressionist.

  I remember one time in particular.

  With Alex. Not Mr. Belrose. Not then, at least.

  I was volunteering. Because volunteering is part of me. It’s more than just a résumé; if I really listed all my charity work on my CV, I’d have to cut down a good portion of a forest just for the paper.

  That day, I was collecting clothes for domestic violence victims. My mother and I had gone through her overcrowded closet the night before, and I’d had fun trying on her high heels while she sorted through her old shirts and made startled noises about how she used to dress.

  “Are you sure the women will even want these?” she had asked me, holding up a sweater with a tiny robin sewn onto the pocket. She wrinkled her nose. “We don’t want to insult them.”

  And I wobbled over on a pair of her highest stilettos that she refused to donate but also swore were too uncomfortable to wear and added the robin sweater to her Donate pile. “It’s fine.”

  It had taken hours, but I’d ended up struggling with a giant black trash bag of clothing. Mr. Belrose (Alex at the time) had seen me come through the door with it, my legs nearly buckling under the weight of it all. He tried to take the bag from me, but I held my hand out. “I got it.” I walked unsteadily back to the booth we were both assigned to and heaved the bag behind the table.

  He grinned at me the whole way, and I wasn’t sure if he thought I was being silly by refusing the help or if he was sort of impressed, but I chose to believe the latter, and that I was one of those plucky sort of independent girls who people admired. It wasn’t until I turned around and wiped my sweaty hair out of my eyes (I had some truly ill-advised bangs at that stage of my life) that his smile hit a false note.

  “Looking a little rough there, Riley.”

  His eyes held mine—my left one, specifically, which was a messy watercolor of purple and black.

  I let myself smile as much as my face allowed. The pain wasn’t terrible, but it was always there, a constant reminder. The previous night, during a basketball game, I’d gotten elbowed by a girl who looked more like a female Thor than an eighth grader.

  So I hadn’t made the layup.

  And only one of the two free throws, because I couldn’t see through my eye for the second one.

  (Shortly after, I’d decided cheerleading full time was more my speed.)

  “Bad night,” I muttered, pulling open the trash bag. “How are we sorting these, anyway?”

  “Uh, shoes, pants, shirts. And then by size. What sizes do you have here?”

  I pulled out a pink turtleneck. “This is a medium. I think my mom was, like, a six back then, though.”

  “Okay.” Alex bent down to grab an armful of clothes from the garbage bag and began going through them, tossing them into piles without folding them.

  A woman with an oversize banana clip clamped into her hair came to the table with a musty box. “I got clothes,” she said. “Can I drop these here?”

  “You’re at the right place.” I tried to smile at her, but she just sort of chewed her gum in my direction.

  “Can you give me a receipt for my taxes?”

  I stared at her. “Uh—”

  “If you can’t, I’ll just take ’em back home.” She put her arms around the box. “There’s lots of good stuff in here.”

  Alex popped up beside me, one of my mother’s paisley sweaters still draped over his arm. “I can take care of that.” He tossed the sweater at me. “Riley, you’re on sort duty.” He grinned at me and pulled a pad of paper out of his back pocket.

  I turned to my mom’s garbage bag, and a minute later, Alex was back with the musty box. He opened it, and a puff of dust came off the top. “So,” he said very quietly, so that no one at the booths on either side of us would hear, “can I ask you something really serious?”

  I looked up at him and nodded, and for some reason, my pulse was going crazy. I could hear thudding in my ears, like pulling up beside a car with the bass turned up too high.

  “Sure.” My voice was barely above a whisper.

  He reached down and grabbed an airy lavender silk scarf. He wrapped it around his neck and put his hand on my shoulder. “Is this—is this my color?” His lip quivered with a held-back smirk.

  I cracked up. Pain shot through my face, but I couldn’t help it. “Nope,” I said, yanking the scarf away. It left his neck with a sharp snick sound as the fabric slid across his skin.

  “What’s going on here?” A familiar voice cut through my laughter, and we both turned.

  Ethan.

  Ethan, looking . . . all too familiar. His untidy hair was sticking up on one side like he had fallen asleep against something, and from the smell emanating off him . . . he had been drinking. Again.

  A lot.

  “You’re early.” My voice was frosty but calm. Very calm. “You weren’t supposed to pick me up for another hour.”

  “Hey, man.” Alex and Ethan did the sort of half-hug-and-hit thing that guys do. Only Ethan’s half was wobbly. “You okay?”

  Ethan shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Uh, yeah. You got a chair or something?”

  Alex and I exchanged a quick look. We couldn’t really have a drunk dude hanging out at a domestic violence table. “Uh, yeah. Listen, how about you lie down back here for a minute?” Alex grabbed my brother’s arm and guided him back, behind the largest piles of clothes, and put a couple of hoodies on the floor. Ethan stretched out on top of them and balled up a flowery blouse as a pillow.

  “Think he’ll pass out?” Alex whispered as he climbed from behind the piles of clothes.

  I nodded. “He probably already has. Unless he snores, we’re golden.”

  An older man with a cane approached the table, and Alex helped him while I snuck a look at my brother. His eyes were already closed, and his mouth had the slightly open look of sleep.

  I grabbed a body spray from my purse and misted it in his direction, hoping no one close could smell the
alcohol on him. I didn’t want anyone to see my brother like that. Think of him like that.

  He was better. He deserved better. Something was just going on with him lately, and I didn’t understand. No one did. He came home late and he slept in late and he didn’t talk to me anymore. But this wasn’t him.

  Still, he was definitely not going to be sober in an hour. Or anytime tonight. I was going to have to find another way home. And it wasn’t just like I could call my parents. They were already pissed at Ethan. I didn’t want to make it worse.

  I sank down in a chair and slumped over, sighing. A few minutes later, Alex joined me, sitting cross-legged on the floor, below me. He looked up through his unkempt hair. “You okay?”

  “Yep.” The response was automatic and came out before I could think about how much of a complete lie it was. Maybe always was. It’s one of those questions you’re never really supposed to answer. Maybe it didn’t count as a lie if you weren’t ever supposed to tell the truth.

  “Your eye—” He started to reach up, but then pulled his hand away, as if thinking better of it.

  I nodded. “I know. It doesn’t look good.” I hesitated. “Things aren’t . . . great.”

  I was misleading him and I knew it. He thought I was talking about my eye and I wasn’t. I was talking about everything. Everything else. “I mean, this is fine,” I amended, pointing at my eye. “Someone got a little aggressive with me during yesterday’s game.”

  Alex just looked at me, the question in his face. But he was patient. He didn’t push or prod, but he was still asking. I saw him asking.

  “Things aren’t always good at home.” I looked back toward Ethan to make sure he wasn’t stirring. “Ethan is always coming home blitzed. And my parents, they’re angry, but he’s just trying to make things easier. It’s not like my dad doesn’t drink too.”

  Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “Your dad?”

  I gave a tiny nod. “It gets a little scary. Sometimes I worry . . . he’s not going to wake up. And my mom . . . she’s just empty. She’s hollow, like she’s this perfect person on the outside and on the inside she’s, I don’t know, not even a person anymore. None of us really are. We’re like these plastic people and we look so perfect as long as you don’t see where we’ve been molded together so carefully.” I stopped suddenly, aware of how bitter I sounded. I glanced at the booth to the right, where there were three women working, to make sure they weren’t paying attention. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

  I was laying it on a little thick, but I relished his attention.

  He reached up and linked his pinkie with mine, like we were girls together at a sleepover, sharing secrets. “No.”

  I gave him a smile with the side of my face that didn’t hurt. “Thanks.”

  We were quiet for a while, and no one paid attention to us, set up in a booth in the big gymnasium, his hand linked with mine.

  “I know it sounds stupid and everyone always says it,” he said finally, “but it’s going to be okay.”

  And even though it did sound a little stupid, it was exactly what I needed to hear. I let myself believe him.

  So I let Alex hold my hand, and at the end of the night, he helped Ethan to his car. On the way home, with Ethan stretched out across his backseat, he took my hand again and squeezed it, and even though he didn’t say it, I could feel it when he touched me.

  Everything was going to be all right.

  FOUR

  Shame

  “Rob!”

  Rob Samuels, a senior football player I’ve gone to school with since preschool, stands at the end of the hallway, talking with Mr. Peters, the chemistry teacher and offensive coordinator.

  Rob and I used to be really close. We used to play together at recess almost every day, and we’d usually stake our claim on the tornado slide on the east side of the playground, farthest away from any teachers on duty. When I fell down the ladder one day, Rob helped me inside and bandaged my knee for me without letting any of the other kids see I was crying. And when we got to be captains during PE, Rob would always choose me first for his football team, no matter what. But when Rob got really good, and I started hanging out with Neta and Kolbie, that kind of changed. I kind of changed.

  I don’t follow the football team that closely anymore. I guess I sort of lost touch. I show up and cheer, sure, and I know who wins and loses, but my mind is elsewhere. I can reel off the players mechanically, and even the plays, if needed, but that’s just it . . . it’s automatic. I don’t let myself love it.

  Rob doesn’t hear me.

  “Hey, Rob!” I call again. I bounce on my toes and wave my hand, and half the hall turns hopefully. Mr. Peters hears me and says something inaudible to Rob, who turns.

  His face splits into a wide grin.

  Rob is glad to see me.

  Always is.

  Always has been.

  That’s how I knew I could count on him.

  He waits on me at the end of the hallway, his backpack hanging on one shoulder, the goofy smile on his face. “Hey, Riley.”

  “Hi, Rob. Hi, Mr. Peters.”

  Mr. Peters nods and gives Rob a little punch on the shoulder, like, Go get ’em, champ, which I have no doubt has to do with me, before vanishing back into his classroom. The action makes me feel a little sick.

  “What’s up, Riley?” Rob asks. “What can I do for you?”

  I cast a look back over my shoulder, at Belrose’s classroom.

  What can Rob do for me?

  Because even Rob, smart, sandy-haired Rob, who a million girls like, who already has two football scholarship offers to good schools, respected schools, is a little suspicious of why I’d be talking to him.

  Riley Stone doesn’t date.

  Everyone knows that.

  So there has to be another reason why I’d be talking to him.

  And there is.

  It’s because of . . . that night.

  With Alex.

  With Belrose.

  What happened that night was most definitely not Riley Stone.

  Not even a young Riley Stone.

  It was stupid.

  It was vulnerable.

  And it’s because of that moment in the classroom last week.

  Nothing like that can ever happen again. After all, I have a future to think about. And if that means I have to put up some sort of obstacle between the two of us, even if it’s just for my own sake, then that’s what I’ll do.

  I link my arm through Rob’s and draw him close to my side. “Well, we used to be friends, didn’t we, Rob?”

  “Sure,” he says, slowly, as if waiting for the punch line, but there’s something else in his voice. Eagerness.

  “I was just thinking about you. That’s all.” I make my voice a little shy. A touch quiet. I was just thinking about him. I’m not promising anything. But if I can walk past Belrose’s classroom with him attached to me, then maybe it will convince me that I am not actually interested. And that he is not . . .

  Anyway.

  It’ll be enough for both of us. It will need to be.

  “Yeah?” Rob asks, a little more air in his voice than usual, and his arm tightens around my own. “Yeah?”

  He does that a lot. Or at least he used to. Repeat himself.

  “Yeah.” I let myself agree. “What class do you have?”

  “World history. What do you have?” He looks down at me, his eyes filled with wonder, like he absolutely can’t believe his luck, and all around us, I can feel people looking. For a moment, I feel like a starlet, and not in a good way—in a way that I feel like people are invading, ready to snap photos, ready to whisper, ready to take stock of my life and lay it all out for entertainment, and I’m exploiting it, mapping out the story and the characters and setting for my own gain.

  “Walk me to the library. I have study hall,” I direct. “Let’s catch up.”

  “Of course,” he says, and he’s still looking at me as this great mystery, but there’s happine
ss behind it. He turns up the stairs.

  “Wait,” I say. “Where are you going?”

  “Library.”

  Oh. He wants to take the shortcut, straight to the study pod where Kolbie, Neta, and I always meet, which is on the second floor of the library. But I need to walk past the French classroom.

  “Do you mind if I go to my locker first?” I say, blinking a couple of extra times. I think it’s true what they say about eyelashes. They’re endearing. All Neta has to do is bat her long black eyelashes and guys are practically dog-piling at her feet.

  But that goes for anything Neta does. And has since basically fifth grade.

  Rob walks with me to my locker, his chest puffed out and his shoulders squared. “Are you having a good day?” he asks me, and I realize, while I’m adding extra pencils that I don’t actually need to my backpack, that he’s waiting for my answer, his eyes wide.

  He actually wants to know.

  “Um, yes.” It’s automatic, like always. “Just the usual, you know? What about you?”

  “Amazing.” He looks at me, his gray eyes solemn, and I know he means it. “Just really great.”

  I smile at him, and my heart drops the tiniest bit in my chest. But I link arms with him again anyway, and he walks me toward the library, like he’s supposed to be the man on my arm, and I feel the hallway buzzing around us, as if every single person is more interested in what’s happening in my life than I am.

  Except for the ten seconds when I walk past the French classroom. And in my peripheral vision, I see Mr. Belrose, in a cornflower-blue button-up, leaning against his door frame, talking to Lydia Andrews, one foot kicked up in front of the other.

  And I think maybe, just for a second, he pauses when he sees me floating by with Rob. But I don’t turn my head. After all, Mr. Belrose doesn’t matter.

  And maybe it’s just my imagination, but I am almost certain I feel his eyes on my back as I walk away.

  But I don’t care. Not really.

  “I have a football meeting tonight,” Rob says apologetically as we reach the wide glass doors of the library. “Otherwise I’d ask you to hang out.”

  “That’s okay, Rob. I’ll just see you tomorrow at school.” I give him a careful, practiced smile, and he returns it in full force.