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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781509221554 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wild Rose Press |
| Publication date: | 08/08/2018 |
| Series: | High School Is Hell |
| Pages: | 232 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.49(d) |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
I stood in front of the dairy case, pretending to study the milk selection. Since I was at the tiny neighborhood Stop On By convenience store, making my choice should have taken about ten seconds. Plus, I was there for a half-gallon of nonfat milk. Slowly I opened the glass door and grabbed a carton. Taking a deep breath, I plastered a smile on my face and marched up to the register.
"Hi." The clerk took the milk and ran it over the scanner. Then he frowned. "I'll grab another one for you from the back. This expires tomorrow. Sorry about that."
I watched Jamie walk away with the offending carton and sighed. I wondered how much milk I could convince my mom to drink overnight and how soon I'd have a reason to come back. And I wondered how I'd ever get Jamie to notice me and ask me out if I never found the nerve to speak to him. It was getting awkward, at least in my mind. After all, I'd figured out a way to buy something at the SOB every other day or so most of the summer. But summer was almost over.
I took the new and unexpired milk from Jamie's strong, tan hand.
"Have a good afternoon." He smiled and looked past me at the man behind me in line. "You need some smokes today, Ray?"
I walked out into the stifling heat of the August sunshine and stood on the burning asphalt. Maybe I could bake the stupid shyness out of me. Resigned to being a hopeless idiot, at least for the moment, I headed home in my ancient Toyota.
Mom arrived a few minutes after me as I stood in the kitchen, staring at the milk on the counter and contemplating my lameness.
"You stopped to get milk, Lauren. Thank you."
"No problem," I mumbled. "I was on my way home from work anyway, and I know we'll need some for our oatmeal in the morning."
"Yup, you'll be getting up with me, won't you? Are you all ready for the first day of school, sweetheart?"
I considered my answer for a moment. In fact, I was sort of glad to be done with summer, in spite of the pains of high school. My best friend, Ember Rexroth — yes, that's her actual and somewhat unfortunate name — spent about four weeks visiting family on the East Coast, so I was home alone a lot. I worked at the local newspaper, a weekly, but only about ten hours a week, which was all my boss could afford. It was sort of nice to be going back to school, in a routine with my friends. Plus, I'd resolved to make my junior year as memorable as possible, in a good way.
"Yeah, I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Can't wait to see Ember, for one thing. She's getting back late tonight."
"Excited about the new principal?" Mom inquired.
I nodded as I opened the fridge to look for something to make for dinner. "But I'll miss Mr. Wright for sure. I hope the new guy isn't totally awful."
Over the summer our principal, Mr. Wright, had dropped dead of a heart attack. The thing was, he wasn't that old. His abrupt death had shocked everyone.
As if reading my mind, Mom sighed and said, "He was only in his fifties. And in such good shape. Mrs. Wright said he'd run a marathon only a month before."
"It seemed random. Everyone at school was pretty devastated about it. Except for April Legowski, who showed up at the funeral with a new belly button piercing."
Then I'd had the misfortune of covering the school board meeting for the newspaper after Mr. Wright's death. The Rushton school board was an all-volunteer and divided governing body. Those people usually couldn't get their act together long enough to approve a five-minute change in the student lunch hour. But somehow they'd gotten it together long enough to organize a hiring committee to find a new principal before school started.
I looked forward to checking him out. Hardly anyone had applied for the position. Not too many people with doctorate degrees in education were dying to work in an economically struggling, semi-rural, small town in western Michigan.
"I'll be sure to fill you in on all the details and let you know if the new principal's single." I was teasing, mostly.
Mom smirked at me. "Don't be a smarty-pants. What's for dinner?"
* * *
The next morning, at 7:45 sharp, Ember appeared on my doorstep. I was ecstatic she was back in town, and I told her so, for about the tenth time.
"Texting isn't the same as talking," I mused as we ambled down the sidewalk. "And Mom was super-busy at work all summer. She was hardly home, except to go to bed."
"Big case?" Ember asked.
I nodded. My mom's a lawyer. She's the public defender — the only one — for our small, not-quite-rural county in western Michigan. "Public defender" meant the person who defended people charged with a crime who didn't have money to hire a private lawyer. The county paid my mom to do this work, but they didn't pay well.
"This summer was kind of weird. Mom had a murder case and an attempted murder case that went to trial, plus all her usual petty criminals. She wasn't home much."
"Interesting." Ember didn't sound interested. For the rest of the walk we speculated about the new principal, whether there would be any new additions to the student body, and other matters of national importance.
"Good God," muttered Ember close to my ear as we arrived at the front entrance of our ancient brick school. "Who would have thought we'd get a hottie like that to replace Mr. Wright?"
My eyes widened in surprise, and I had to agree. The new principal, Mr. Gill Bellamy, was standing at the front door, doing a meet-and-greet with the students filing in. He was a young-looking forty. I knew he was forty, because my mother had gone to the final summer meeting of the school board, which was a huge sacrifice for her to make. She hated meetings with a passion but cared about the quality of education in our schools. The highly anticipated new principal had a full head of jet-black hair, but he also had a slight tan, so he didn't end up looking like a vampire. When we passed by him and were the recipients of his mellow-voiced "good morning," I noted his bright blue eyes. I might even go so far as to call those eyes piercing.
"Damn," Ember said, her voice still mercifully soft. "Ms. Anders is going to have a heart attack of her own." Beth Anders was our history and social studies teacher. In a politically correct town, she wouldn't have been called an old maid. Rushton wasn't a politically correct town, and people were always speculating on Ms. Anders' apparent lack of a love life.
Our musings were rudely interrupted when Ethan Jordan almost flattened Ember with an "accidental" shove as he pushed his way past us.
"Out of my way, Sexsloth, you cow," Ethan hissed, loud enough for Ember and me to hear, but too softly for the alert ears of the teachers greeting the incoming students.
Ethan had spent our entire sophomore year calling Ember the "Fiery Sexsloth," which made a certain segment of the school laugh. And he loved to make people laugh, especially at Ember. He'd also taken to calling me "Whore and Faker" which rhymed with my name "Lauren Baker." Apparently, he was a thwarted Keats or something. But I was sick of him and had mentally prepared myself for this moment all summer long.
"Shut up, you bastard," I muttered, conscious of listening teacher-ears. "And why don't you pick on someone your own size? If you can find anyone as scrawny and pathetic as you." Unfortunately, my mutter wasn't loud enough, and Ethan kept going. I wanted to provoke him in front of the teachers and get him off Ember's back. In fact, I aimed to do my best to get him suspended. He'd made Ember miserable the entire preceding year, and one of my New School Year Resolutions, as I called them in my journal, was to get Ethan to back off. Ember was a tiny bit on the plump side, but so what? She was gorgeous with long, curly, dark auburn hair and huge green eyes, and she was super-funny, incredibly smart, and the best friend a girl could want. How dare some jerk — any jerk — put her down?
Ember's perfectly glossed lips trembled, then she firmed them up. "Thanks, dearest," she said to me. "I know he's a dick, and I need to learn to ignore him or stand up to him. You don't have to do it for me."
She sounded like she'd been practicing those remarks all summer, like me, and I told her so. She laughed as we arrived at our lockers — the same ones we'd had last year. That, at least, was a perk of a small school and small-town life. Never having to change lockers in high school if you don't want to.
Another perk, or pain, of a small school is that you're in the same classes with the same people all day long. Our school had a sort of advanced track and a regular track. Ember and I were in all the same core classes, though we took different electives and liked different extracurriculars — she was a marching band girl, and I was a school newspaper writing and editing girl. Ethan was in the regular track of classes, and except for lunch time, we didn't have to see him hardly at all.
Our first class of the day was with Ms. Anders. First semester, we were doing European history. The syllabus said we were going to cover all of the Renaissance, which looked fairly interesting and in-depth. Ember and I were intrigued to see if Ms. Anders had any comments about the hot, new principal. She did, but not the type of comments we were expecting.
"So," Ms. Anders said, tucking her neatly bobbed black hair behind her ears and peering over the rims of her somewhat severe black-framed glasses, "you will have all noted Mr. Bellamy out front this morning."
We all mumbled or nodded an assent. Ms. Anders was a stickler for responding when spoken to.
She continued. "Mr. Bellamy isn't from around here. He's from South Carolina most recently, though you might not pick up any Southern accent. We had a staff meeting yesterday. Mr. Bellamy seems to have firm ideas of appropriate behavior. I strongly advise you to keep that in mind this year."
Ember and I looked at each other quizzically. Mr. Bellamy hadn't seemed like a hard-nose, and Ms. Anders almost sounded like she disapproved of him. But I forgot about her remarks as class continued, caught up in taking notes about our upcoming reading assignments.
The rest of the day was mundane, but my first ethical dilemma of the school year arose right when classes let out for the day. Ember and I had walked to school together like usual; it was only about a quarter mile from my house, and I liked to save gas and the environment. Besides, my mother and I really liked to bake, and we also really liked to eat, which makes exercise important. But I didn't want to walk straight home, a walk on which Ember also usually accompanied me. I wanted to make a detour to the Stop On Buy and try to have a conversation not involving expired milk.
But the dilemma was this: the guy I had developed a painful crush on over the summer was — God help me — the older brother of Ember's tormenter. Jamie Jordan seemed to have nothing in common with his little brother. Where Ethan was scrawny, ungroomed, and unspeakably mean, Jamie was tall, well-built, and always looked neat. And he was nice. I knew I sounded like the world's biggest geek for liking a guy who looked neat and tidy, and who I described as "nice." My bad. The whole bad-boy thing was highly overrated, in my humble opinion.
But I hadn't told Ember how I felt about Jamie yet, and I didn't know how to tell her. We were united in hating Ethan. How could I explain to her that I walked into the SOB one day my old self, and walked out of the SOB a weird, new, obsessed person? How could I explain I saw Jamie help some older lady carry a heavy, plastic sack out to her car; how I watched as he came back in and helped some little kid figure out how much candy he could buy with his change; how I stood there for ten minutes, watching him take debit cards and get cigarettes from behind the counter, until finally he saw me, standing there like the world's biggest idiot, and he said, "Can I help you?" and I'd said, "No," and left the store without the milk. How could I explain something to Ember I couldn't understand myself?
It's not like I'd never had a crush before. If I ever managed to meet a girl who survived junior high without some painful crush experience, I would interview that rare creature for the school paper. But since junior high and my unfortunate and short-lived "relationship" with a boy nicknamed "Oboe"— yeah, like the instrument — I hadn't been interested in anyone. I'd gone out a few times with a couple different guys in our class, and at least I wasn't the seventeen-year-old who'd never been kissed. But I never got the big deal about kissing, until I started looking at Jamie Jordan's lips. Now I couldn't think of anything else. Clearly, I'd lost my mind.
I realized Ember had been speaking to me. She raised an eyebrow. "Lauren, are you all there? I've gotta run to a band meeting about the first halftime performance, so I can't walk home. Okay?" She was speaking slowly, and she was looking suspicious.
"Sorry," I blurted out. "I was drifting off a little. Strange deal, the new principal, no Mr. Wright, first day of school, all that, you know? Call me later?" She gave me a nod and a wave and headed toward the band room. I set off down the sidewalk toward the Stop On Buy.
It was a gorgeous afternoon. September in western Michigan is underrated. The weather was still warm. The temperature was in the high seventies. The trees were still green, but here and there the smallest hint of gold was showing. Big trees, maples and elms, shadowed the sidewalk as I ambled along, trying to formulate some way to start a real conversation with Jamie. But all my mad word skills had deserted me.
CHAPTER 2The SOB was located on a corner in my neighborhood. Most of the other stores were situated in Rushton's historic, sort of classic-looking downtown. For some reason the SOB had survived for years, first and long ago, as a neighborhood grocery store. At some point, maybe twenty years ago, the little grocery store building had been torn down, and a modern convenience store, complete with gas pumps, had taken its place.
The bell on the door dinged as I entered. Sure enough, Jamie was behind the counter, ringing up a couple of junior high students, who got out of school before the high schoolers. Rushton was so small it had only one elementary, one junior high, and one high school.
I didn't know why, when I was a freshman and Jamie was a senior, I hadn't noticed him in any particular way. I mean, I had noticed him. He'd been the true star of our pathetic little football team. But I hadn't noticed him. Now I was making up for lost time by noticing in a big way.
He looked up and smiled as I came in the door. No mistake, he was looking right at me. He's smiling at me, I thought. He's actually looking at me.
He finished with the two kids at the counter, and I took a deep breath and walked up to the register, not even pretending to shop. I reminded myself of another New School Year Resolution. I was going to ask out Jamie Jordan. I was not a wilting violet. I was a twenty-first-century woman, in charge of my own destiny. I might end up a twenty-first-century woman who was too embarrassed to ever go in the local convenience store again, but I had to take my chances.
My twenty-first-century woman voice shook a little as I said, "Hi. How's it going this afternoon?"
Jamie's eyes — gorgeous, dark brown eyes — met mine. He didn't look perplexed. He didn't look displeased either. "Doing fine. How was the first day back at school?"
My heart started beating faster. This was the first time we'd had a conversation that didn't involve him telling me my total, or me saying inanely, "Have a nice day!" as I left with purchases. He seemed surprisingly receptive.
"Typical first day. We have a new principal. That's sort of interesting." I was interrupted as the bell on the door dinged again, and Jamie looked away from me. His face darkened. I turned to see who'd entered, and it was Ethan. Crap.
"Hey, big brother, spot me ten bucks?" Ethan said, ignoring me. "I wanna go downtown and —"
"I don't care what you want to go downtown and do," Jamie cut him off, his voice tight. "I want you to go home, take care of the dishes, and do any homework you have. Got it?"
Ethan turned a bright and unattractive red. "You're not Daddy, big brother."
Jamie's face flushed in turn. Apparently, this genetic pool had a blushing problem. Despite the color change, he replied in a calm and firm way, "I'm not trying to be Dad, Ethan. But I'm responsible for you, and you have to stay out of trouble and do better this year. You know what's going to happen if you don't."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Junior Year is Hell"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Claire Corvey.
Excerpted by permission of The Wild Rose Press, Inc..
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