Carrie looked away. She tugged on the drawstrings of her hoodie. She didn’t want to help me, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t.
“Please,” I asked again, my voice cracking. “This is bigger than you and me. This is about saving the people we love.”
Did she love anyone or anything?
Carrie stared at me for a long time, and I thought I was going to have to walk away with silence as her final retort, but then something in her expression changed. She didn’t look angry anymore, only resigned.
“Do you even know my real name?” she asked.
It was a simple question, but somehow it carried with it my past, my present, and my future.
“No. I don’t. I only know the nickname.”
“The nickname you gave me,” she charged.
I nodded, finding it difficult to meet her eyes.
“Follow me,” she said, pulling her hood back over her head with a resolute tug.
I followed her into the break room. I stood awkwardly in the doorway as she grabbed a brown grocery bag from the closest. She sat the bag in front of me on the floor. “Study these. We’ll talk on Monday.”
“You went through all of these last night?” I asked as I began to rifle through the bag.
She nodded.
I held up the box set of season five of Lost. “And how is this supposed to help?”
She almost smiled. Almost. “Watch episode eleven.”
I wanted to tell her she was crazy, but knew it would be like taking two steps off the edge of a cliff in an already shaky partnership. I turned to leave when the sound of her voice stopped me.
“My name is Josephine. If we ever become friends, you can call me Jo.”
“All right. Well, if we ever become friends you can stop using those ridiculously lame nicknames.”
“Fair enough, loverboy.”
Chapter 8
“So, I heard a rumor.”
“Um. Cool?” I replied.
“Don’t you want to know who it’s about?” Alec asked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
Alec draped his arm over the top of my locker and leaned towards me. We were already five minutes late to class, but it didn’t matter. Mondays and Fridays were jersey days. We had Spanish first block, and Senor Rubin was one of the teachers who pretty much let us doing anything we wanted while wearing the Shepherd coat of arms. Besides, Mondays were also Starbucks days.
“Not really. Here,” I said handing Alec my frappuccino. I reached down into my locker, having to use both of my hands to get my Spanish notebook out from underneath all the crap that threatened to spill out onto the floor.
Today was a quiz day. Usually, Senor Rubin let us football players use our notes. I didn’t really take notes, but that’s what cheerleaders and eager-for-attention Drama Club girls were for; they’d copy their notes for me, and I would shove them in my notebook. I respected Senor Rubin enough to at least pretend to have written down the notes myself. He was cool. He understood the pressures and long hours that came with being a football player.
I’d like to see one of the honors kids spend three hours practicing out on the field every afternoon, attempt a social life, and try to fit in homework concerning stuff they would never use in their real life. Quadratic equations? Really?
“Focus,” Alec said, snapping his fingers in my face.
“If you drop my frapp...I swear to God Alec,” I said, pointing to the two cups he had pressed against his chest with one arm.
“The rumor was about you and Scary Carrie.”
I ducked my head into my locker, pretending to search for something. I could feel my face heat up. It was the one thing that would always keep me from being any good at lying.
“Me and Scary Carrie? I can’t even imagine how anyone could connect the two of us” I said, continuing to shuffle through all the junk in my locker, throwing around a half-eaten Chick-fil-A biscuit from God knows when.
“Cut the crap. Bernie from JV told me you were having them snoop around for where she worked this weekend.”
You can do this.
You have to do this.
Besides, no one would believe the truth. Something about the end of all hope is hard to accept.
I slammed my locker closed. “We’re working on a project together.”
Alec grinned.
“Stop,” I said, grabbing my drink from his arm. I slung my book bag over my shoulder and began to walk down the hallway. I didn’t wait for Alec. It’s not like we were best buds or anything. We played football together since peewee. It was a relationship born out of similar schedules.
Alec was just as ruthless in life as he was out on the field. “So, how crazy is the sex?” he asked me, running to catch up.
“Ssshh,” I hissed.