After a couple of minutes, I heard Trinity say, “Stalk much?”
A few seconds after that, several of the others chimed in.
“Hell-o, Sexy!”
“He can stalk me any time.”
“That’s just creepy.”
“He looks weird. And dangerous.”
I looked up to see who was causing such a commotion. All the girls were looking back toward the fence that surrounded the practice field. Curious, I turned in that direction, too.
The setting sun was right in my eyes, but if I squinted, I could see a guy in a black hoodie, standing at the fence. Since I hadn’t seen him around school before, I could only assume that he was new. He was leaning against the metal chain link, one arm draped casually across its top, watching us as if we were shiny new things that puzzled him.
I held my hand up to my eyes, shielding them from the bright light so that I could get a better look at him. When I met his eyes, I realized that he wasn’t watching us; he was watching me.
“Got a new admirer, huh Ridley?” Carly liked to tease. Carly also liked to spread rumors.
“And you’ve got a great imagination, Carly,” I said lightly, not wanting to make a big deal of it. I was dead set against my name being bandied about in typical cheerleader fashion so I made sure to give her as little ammunition as possible.
A masculine voice interrupted our rude staring.
“Hey, T!”
It came from somewhere behind me. I recognized the voice of course, but even if I hadn’t, I still would’ve known who was hailing me. It was Drew. For some unknown, inexplicable reason, when he didn’t call me Ridley (which was most of the time), he called me “T”.
Some of the cheerleaders gossiped that it stood for “tease” because I didn’t put out, but I doubted Drew was that crude. If I really thought he was, I wouldn’t be with him.
Reluctantly, I turned from the stranger to find Drew. He was coming across the field, decked out in his football pads, looking attractively sweaty and mussed.
“Hey, babe, can you get a ride home with Trinity or Summer today? Josh wants me to go with him to pick up some parts for the Mustang after practice,” Drew explained.
“I’ll just walk,” I said, swallowing my frustrated sigh. “No biggee.”
That was the one bad thing about letting Drew drive me to school. If he changed his plans, I got screwed. Luckily, I didn’t live far and I never minded walking when the weather was nice. It was like a mini vacation.
“You sure?”
“Yep.” I nodded to further reassure him and reinforce my answer.
“You’re so awesome,” he said, winding one arm around my waist to pick me up and smash his lips playfully to mine.
“I am?” Even as I so coyly—teasingly—asked the question, I thought of my nickname, “T”. Maybe the girls were right. I couldn’t help the frown that accompanied the thought.Setting me back on my feet, Drew just grinned mischievously and shrugged. “That’s what they say,” he taunted as he turned and jogged back across the field to his own practice.
Turning back toward the bleachers, I wiped the frown from my forehead and forced my mind to return to the task at hand. “All right, let’s get this toss down.”
Grumbling and complaining, the girls reluctantly descended the stands. I watched in wonder as they dragged themselves to the field. It was probably a mystery to almost everyone how such a motley crew managed to make it so far in competitions. We didn’t look very dedicated or energetic.
As the last of the girls walked past me, heading back out onto the grass, I couldn’t stop my eyes from flickering back to the fence. I was curiously hungry for one more peek at the stranger. He was still standing there, too. He just stared at me, as motionless as a statue.
Though he was backlit by the setting sun, I could see his eyes clearly. They were a dark, rich brown that seemed almost black in his pale, pale face. The spark of interest shone in their depths, but beyond that, there was something else. Danger? Determination? Sadness? Fear? Satisfaction? Was it him, or was I simply seeing a reflection of my own inner demons? After all, I’d always wanted but never found someone with whom I could share the real Ridley. Was I imagining that I saw such a person in the face of the stranger? I couldn’t be sure what it was, but something in those eyes felt strangely familiar.
The longer he held my eyes, the more I felt like he was touching me in some way, almost physically, tangibly. Much to my surprise, my belly did a little flip, excitement dancing along my nerve ends.
We watched each other for a second or two longer and then, dismissively, he turned and walked away.
********
Later that evening, Summer and I sat cross-legged on my bed, making flash cards for our Anatomy and Physiology test. We were both taking college preparatory classes and Mr. Richardson, our A&P teacher, gave us only four grades in the whole year. We had two major tests, a mid-term exam and a final exam. If you bombed any of the four, you really didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of fully recovering your grade.
Summer was probably my best friend, though that didn’t mean as much as it used to. Much as had happened with almost everyone else, I’d grown apart from her over the last three years. But still, she was the lesser of the evils as far as friends went. I mean, confiding in Trinity was completely out of the question. Having her as my best friend would be like keeping a pet barracuda in my bathtub.
“If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell?” Summer didn’t look up at me, just kept writing on the back of the card marked Alveoli.
“Of course.”
“Trinity wants me to help her get revenge on Devon. Well, sort of.”
Devon was Trinity’s ex. If she had anything close to a weakness, he’d be her Achilles heel.
I put down my marker. I could sense a storm on the horizon, a nasty plan birthed in the sick mind of Trinity and it deserved my full attention. They didn’t call her The Unholy Trinity behind her back for nothing.
“By doing what?”
“She wants me to get Devon to take me out and then post on Facebook that he’s really, really tiny so that no one else will want to go out with him.”
“Ahh,” I said, immediately understanding her end game in such a plot. “Then Trinity will be the only one gracious enough to date him despite the vicious rumors.”
Summer shrugged. “I guess.” She still hadn’t looked up to meet my eyes.
“Summer, you’re not considering this, are you?”
She shrugged again.
“But why? Why would you do that? To Devon or to yourself?”
She looked up at me, frowning. “Oh, I wouldn’t actually have sex with him. I’d just tell people that we did.”
“But everyone would think that you just went out and slept with him. Do you think they won’t be calling you a slut by lunchtime if you do this?”
“You know how Trinity is. If I say no, it’s hard to tell what she’ll do to me.”
I growled, sliding off the bed to pace the floor. Everyone was afraid of Trinity, afraid of what she would do if she was angered. Trinity was smart, though. She never pushed the wrong people. She always picked the weakest ones of the herd to do her dirty work. She would never ask me to do something like that. I might bite my tongue a lot, but she knew I wouldn’t go along with something so deplorable. It was times like this that made me wonder if Stanford was really worth it.
“Summer, you can’t do this.”
“I have to,” she said miserably.
I paced the floor, thinking. I stopped when a possible solution occurred to me. “Devon’s a nice guy. Let me talk to him. If he refuses to take you out, problem solved, right?”
Summer’s eyes lit up and she clapped excitedly. Though this disaster was averted, I knew it was just a matter of time before Trinity thought of something else, some other despicable way to win Devon back.
I called Devon and, as I suspected, he was more than willing to go along with our counter-Trinity plan and keep it hush-hush.
********
The next morning, I decided to drive to school. There was an away game that night and I didn’t want to get stuck riding home with somebody else when the bus dropped us back off at school. Since I could never count on one of my rogue parents to be a reliable back-up plan, I tried always to make other arrangements—me. As usual, I was my own plan B.
I pulled my old Civic into a parking spot and grabbed my duffel from the back seat. I had to hurry. I was running late.
I scurried into Home Room and scooted into my seat, dropping my bag quietly onto the floor. Mrs. Dingle was going over the local news, as she did every morning. She felt it was her duty to keep us informed of what was going on around us, as if we were all so oblivious we wouldn’t find out otherwise. But then I realized something. She was probably right. The only reason I knew what was going on was because I went to sleep with the television on. I couldn’t tolerate silence. Or, better yet, I couldn’t tolerate the places my mind went in the silence. Either way, I heard the news whether I wanted to or not.
The first tidbit she force-fed us was the increase in the number of animal deaths. Farm animals were being mauled and brutally killed all over the area. The Wildlife Officers had neither confirmed nor denied speculation that there might be a pack of wolves or even a mountain lion terrorizing livestock in the region. As an avid animal lover, topics like that disturbed me, even more than those involving the Slayer, which was what Mrs. Dingle moved on to next.Southmoore was a thriving city that lay just north of our small South Carolina town, Harker. For that reason, citizens and reporters alike had all been closely following the killings there. As a community, we hadn’t been put on lockdown yet, but if things got much worse up north or, heaven forbid, moved down south to us, our freedoms would be quickly and severely curtailed.