01 Untouchable - Untouchable (2 page)

“
Well, you should try out
anyway,” Mr. Lykman continued. “You have the right build for it.”
He slapped Evan on the shoulder. “I’ll talk to Coach Cleveland and
we’ll look over your grades from Dawson.”

“
Ah, I really…”

“
Great!” Jewels chimed in.
“Now Daddy, leave us alone so we can eat before the bell.” Then she
gave her ‘I like getting everything I want’ smile and said, “Unless
you want to give us late lunch passes?”

Mr. Lykman’s face hardened. “No. Eat.
You’ve got two minutes left.” He glanced down at his watch and then
walked away.

“
Thanks Jewels,” I whispered
as soon as her dad was out of earshot. “I’ve been basically told
that the resource officer will be waiting for
my
music to get too loud in the
parking lot.”

“
That was you?” Evan said
with genuine surprise.

I gave a fake smile, “No, it was
Jewels. I’m just the scapegoat.”

“
Leese is the Christian rock
singer. I’m the rapper girl,” she said with a wink and a peace-out
hand sign.

“
You sing?”

I simply nodded, as Jewels
continued.

“
Yeah, Leese is really good.
I got to listen to her at one of her Wednesday night Christian jam
sessions…”

“
It’s called youth group,
Jewels,” I corrected.

“
Well, anyway, I told her
she should like try out for American Idol, but she won’t do
it.”

“
Why not?”

I smiled at him and shrugged, “I guess
because I don’t like attention; I’m an introvert at heart.” This
was a straight-faced lie, because I actually used to like the
lime-light before my life went nuts.

“
So why did you take the
blame for Jewels?” The whole concept of taking blame for someone
else seemed to confuse him.

“
It doesn’t matter,” I
shrugged. “One of these days she isn’t going to have me to park
beside and then she’ll be busted.”

“
Why? Are you
leaving?”

I looked into those dark green eyes and
wondered why the seriousness to the question. He was handsome, but
I was sworn to secrecy and I wasn’t about to babble things to this
guy I barely knew.

“
No. I mean, you know, like
I might be absent one day.”

The ear-splitting bell rang above the
cafeteria noise and would (hopefully) end my uncomfortable
conversation.

“
What class are you going
to?” He asked me as Jewels grabbed his left arm and started pulling
him toward the door.

“
French,” I smiled,
completely confident that it was a class that anyone looking that
tough would never be enrolled in.

“
Me, too,” he grinned as he
laced his free arm through mine.

Jewels wasn’t happy when she had to
turn loose of him as we rounded the bend to the foreign language
wing. “Well,” she sighed, “I’ve got to go to English. What’s your
schedule like for tomorrow?”

He fumbled in his pocket for the pink
paper and then handed it to her. “You tell me. The schedule here is
crazy.”

“
It’s not that hard to get
used to,” I said, glancing over at his classes. “You have even and
odd days, but every day you have first period. Today is even; one,
two, four and six, and tomorrow is odd; one, three, five and
seven.”

“
All right! We’ve got P.E.
together tomorrow,” Jewels responded, never getting the point that
he was as confused about the even/odd days as I was when I started.
She looked up beaming, “If I don’t see you after school today, I’ll
catch you in Government tomorrow morning. Bye!” And she took off
down the hall, grabbing the arm of one of the football players as
she went.

Evan raised his eyebrows. “So, does
Jewels have a boyfriend?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, I
guess she has several. You just happen to be the FOTM right
now.”

“
FOTM?” He questioned as he
held open the door for me to French class.

“
Yeah, you know, the ‘flavor
of the month.’”

“
Oh, okay, I get it. I just
wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to have some pissed off guy
waiting for me in the parking lot.”

“
No, I don’t think that’s
going to happen, but if it did,” I paused, checking out the biceps
as he handed the teacher his schedule. “I think you could handle
yourself.”

“
Damn right,” he responded
and then became aware that he was standing in front of a
teacher.

My mouth gapped open and I felt the
flush of embarrassment color my cheeks.

Mrs. Knoosh’s eyebrows knitted together
in a scowl. “I’ll not have any of that talk in my classroom, Mr.
Lewis. I suppose you’ll be starting your first day with a
referral.”

“
Je suis désolé, Madame,” he
replied in French.

“
Ah,” she sighed, breaking
out in a big smile and clapping her hands together. “Parlez-vous
français?”

“
Oui, Madame—depuis que je
suis un garçon,” he smiled.

“
Avez vous habité en
France?” By this point she was beaming, evidently forgetting
altogether his verbal blunder when he came into the
classroom.

“
Non. Je suis de la
Nouvelle-Orléans.”

“
Ah, oui—Nouvelle-Orléans.
Je suis heureuse de vous rencontrer, Monsieur Lewis.”

“
Merci,” he responded in his
flawlessly executed and accented French.

“
Annalisa,” she said turning
to me, “Since Mr. Lewis is new perhaps you would be a good
influence.” Her eyes cut quickly back to Evan, “Asseyez-vous dans
le fauteuil à côté de Annalisa.”

With that, Evan suddenly looked very
pleased. “Merci beaucoup.”

I was a third year French student so I
understood most of what they were saying, but I was still in shock
that Evan was apparently so good at it.

“
Wow!” I said quietly as we
took our seats and the majority of the heads began turning back to
face the teacher. “You certainly surprised me.”

“
Why? Don’t I look like
someone who could speak another language?”

“
No, because she didn’t
write you up for cussing.” I couldn’t help but snicker just a
little because I really didn’t think he looked like someone that
could speak another language, but I wasn’t going to let him off
that easy, especially since he was evidently off the hook for his
slip of the tongue.

He gave me this really sexy smile and
raised one eyebrow, “They don’t call it the language of love for
nothing.”

“
Ah!” I smacked him lightly
on the shoulder with the textbook. “Page 148, s’il vous plaît,
Monsieur.”

We spent the rest of class conjugating
verbs, but I have to admit he did most the conjugating before I
could open my mouth. It seemed to please him that he could run
circles around me in French.

Ten minutes before the bell, Mrs.
Knoosh said we were allowed free time to talk quietly.

“
So what do you do after
school?” Evan asked, turning in his chair to face me. I stared at
him for a minute just taking in the handsome lines of his face, his
dark brown hair had that hand-tousled look like instead of combing
it, he just ran his fingers through it. His green eyes sparkled
from beneath long black lashes, set against a creamy, but not quite
tan face. I still wanted to ask about the two scars, but figured it
wasn’t very polite. For just a moment, I had forgotten all my
troubles and secrets, and I was just a high school girl talking
with a cute guy.

“
Hello? Earth to Leese,” he
said, waving a hand in front of my eyes.

“
Umm—sorry, I wasn’t paying
attention. What did you say?”

“
What do you do after
school? Do you want to go hang out somewhere? I haven’t seen much
of the town since I got here yesterday, but I’m guessing you have a
McDonalds or some kind of place like that for a quick
bite.”

Reality snagged me back to the problems
in my life. “I—I can’t. I’ve got tons of home work and I have to
babysit my little sister until my—my aunt and uncle get home. But,”
I added. “There are a couple McDonalds close by, up on Fairview and
one down in the historic district on Cervantes.”

“
You’re kidding, right? You
can’t stop to get something before you go home?”

“
No, afraid not. But,” and
it was killing me to say this, “I’m sure Jewels would be thrilled
to show you around town.” Jewels had a half dozen guys wrapped
around her little pinky and I was getting ready to add another one
to her collection.

He honestly looked dejected as he
closed his textbook. “Yeah, but going with Jewels doesn’t help me
get to know you, does it?”

The way he said it gave me a tingle;
this guy is interested in me. I had made some male friends while
here at PHS, but they were easy to keep just as friends. I made it
a point to never give out the signals that would lead a boy to
assume that I was looking for anything else. I was used to the
attention from the cute guys at my old school, but then again they
knew who I was which always left me wondering what it was that they
were really interested in. Here I didn’t have my Porsche or my
designer clothes to scream out to everyone, “Hey, I’m somebody.”
Instead everything about me had been toned down so that no
attention would be drawn to me. Yet this guy didn’t seem to care
that I was wearing Wal-Mart off-the-rack, or the fact that I wasn’t
dripping in jewelry.

I tried a smile, but it was weak.
“Jewels is more interesting, I’m sure.”

“
Definitely not. I spent
first and third period with her and I can tell you she is extremely
shallow—nice, of course, but nothing more than ankle-deep. You on
the other hand, I get the feeling have a whole ocean
available.”

I rolled my eyes, but all the while my
pulse was picking up the pace. “Not me,” I said, trying to sound
convincing. “I’m an ankle-deeper one, too.” And then, thankfully,
the bell rang.

He leaned over and whispered in my ear,
“Liar.”

In that instant I realized he had on
cologne. It was very faint, like he’d put it on yesterday and only
a little remained, but it was awesome. Without a conscious thought,
I closed my eyes and inhaled. What was it? Expensive and very
masculine, but I couldn’t think of the name. When I opened my eyes
he was smiling and still just a little bit too close. I grabbed my
books and made a bee-line for the door.

“
Hey, wait up.” I heard him
call. “Don’t I even get to walk you to your car?”

I didn’t slow down, but it only took
him a moment to catch up with me.

“
Do you always bolt for the
door at the last bell?”

“
You aren’t going to turn
out to be some kind of stalker, are you?” I said with feigned
terseness as I struggled to keep from smiling.

He didn’t answer as we dodged through
the crowded halls and headed outside. He still wasn’t talking as we
came out into the sun-filled mayhem of teenagers going either
toward the bus line or the parking lot. I was starting to think I
had actually hurt his feelings when I snuck a quick glance at his
face. He caught me looking.

“
Maybe,” was all he
said.

I pulled out my key as we got close to
my VW. Even though it wasn’t new, I had to retain just a little bit
of the freedom that I once took for granted.

“
Maybe what? You have a
little bit of stalker in you?” I managed to put a tiny bit of a
teasing edge back into my voice, but on the inside I felt like it
was pointless. There was no way that I was going to get involved
with a guy in Pensacola when my whole life was a couple hundred
miles away.

“
VW Bug. Cool. Whoa, I am
impressed,” he added as I opened my door and toss my books to the
passenger’s side.

“
It’s five years old,” I
retorted, sitting down in the driver’s seat. “Nothing impressive
about that, not like that gorgeous Z you have sitting over
there.”

He reached over me and wiggled the
shifter. “No, I don’t mean your car. I mean that it’s a
stick.”

“
Oh,” was all I could manage
as he had put himself practically in my face to reach inside. He
must have sensed that I was a little uncomfortable over the lack of
personal space because he backed off to an almost respectable
distance as he simply leaned toward me from the door
frame.

“
Most chicks can’t drive
stick,” he finished.

“
My first car was an…” Oops.
I’d said a little too much. How many cars could a seventeen year
old girl have been through? “I mean this is my first car—and, yep,”
I said waving my hand over the shifter like some ditsy game show
hostess, “It’s a stick.”

“
Mines a stick,” he smiled.
“You could actually drive it sometime, if you’d like. If you think
you can handle it.”

I was trying to keep the smirk from
rising to my lips. I wanted to tell him that I’d been trained in an
evasive driving school that specialized in survival, stunt and
anti-terrorist driving tactics. I wanted to see him plastered to
his passenger’s seat when I dropped the gears and spun his car a
hundred and eighty degrees and then smoked his tires off as I
reached speeds that were hardly legal for the Autobahn. I sighed as
I thought about my gun-metal Porsche 911 sitting in storage on the
other coast. “No, I don’t think I could handle it,” I finally
said.