Shot Through the Heart (6 page)

“Please tell me you’re kidding.” Tessa’s still taking a huge course load to make up for the disaster that was her freshman year. Her grades and attitude have shown a complete turnaround—she’s been on the Dean’s List the last two semesters—so a distraction named
Maaaatttt
is the last thing she needs.

That she’d throw away all her hard work for a guy makes me cringe inside. Even Josh, with his laid-back attitude toward school, has never put the rest of his life on hold to sequester himself away with a girlfriend.

“Nope. Mom’s trying to convince her that it’d be smarter to pursue it after she’s graduated instead of trying to work hundreds of hours of training into her schedule right now. Of course, when Mom said that waiting would give Tessa time to be certain it’s what she wants, Tessa accused Mom of being unsupportive and of hating every guy she’s ever dated.”

“Shocking. And I suppose Tessa called because she’s asking Mom and Dad to pay for this training?” My guess is it’s not free, and since Tessa didn’t work last summer—she was making up classes—she’s not rolling in cash.

“Ding, ding! Better yet, it’s the boyfriend who does the training and gets the money.”

No wonder Mom’s hands are balled into fists under her desk. Tessa truly lives on her own planet. As Josh starts up the stairs toward his bedroom, I say, “If a miracle occurs and Mom gets out of there before I get home, can you tell her I had to run out and I’ll be back soon?”

“Sure. Where are you going?”

I shouldn’t feel weird telling him, but I do. “Connor’s. He offered to give me his AP Chemistry notes from last year.”

Josh pauses on the top step. “Really? Why you?”

Typical older brother. “Why
not
me?”

“Dunno.” Josh opens the Cheerios box as he talks, making me wonder if he’s going to dump his open soda down the stairs, lose control of his backpack, or both. “Did you ask him for them, or did he offer?”

“He offered. Just tell Mom I’ll be back soon, all right?”

“I already told you I would.” He wrestles with the Cheerios liner, unwilling to wait on his cereal until he’s in his bedroom. “So did Connor call you out of the blue and offer? Or was this at school or what?”

“School. I saw him when I was outside chem class and he offered.” I wrinkle my nose at him. “What’s with the twenty questions?”

“Nothing. I’m just surprised he’d give ‘em to you no strings attached. He got an A. Higher than mine, even. There are people who’d love to get their hands on his notes. Like, he could use them to get girls if he wanted.” He scans me from head to toe. “By that I mean a
real
girl.”

“Gee, thanks.” Guess that blows my theory that Josh might’ve been trying to set us up. Apparently, in my brother’s eyes, I’m not even good enough to borrow Connor’s class notes.

“Not all guys are like the ones Tessa dates,” I remind Josh. I can’t keep the snark out of my tone as he gives me a dismissive flip of the hand and turns away. “Some do things strictly out of the goodness of their hearts. Even
your
friends.”

“And how would
you
know about what all guys are like?” Josh calls over his shoulder before closing his door on my response.

I bite back a nasty response, then storm toward the garage.

He has a point.

•  •  •

I arrive at the end of Connor’s street a full five minutes early. Appalled at the idea of looking overeager, I blow by, circling the block to burn time before returning to pull into his driveway exactly two minutes late.

I turn off the car and exhale. There’s absolutely no reason to be nervous. It’s not like I’ve never been here before, and it’s not like Connor’s really interested in me, despite the odd hints I’ve detected. I’m picking up AP Chemistry notes. Nothing more.

My neurosis is all Josh’s fault. Telling me I’m not a
real girl
.

“Imbecile,” I grumble to myself before stepping into the driveway. At the same time I close my car door, the front door of the Strabinowski’s house opens a crack. Was Connor watching for me?

“Hurry,” he hisses as I climb the curved stone steps of the white two-story Colonial. Just when I reach the top, I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Squirt gun sniper.

Connor waves me inside while using the door as a shield. Once I’m standing in the front hall, he pushes the door shut and leans back against it. “Heard a noise from my bedroom window about five minutes ago. I figured it was you and looked outside, but it was Joe Delano climbing the fence on the far side of the yard. Didn’t want you to get soaked.”

“He can’t shoot at you if you’re standing inside the house.”

He gives me a one-shouldered shrug. “Doesn’t stop him from making an attempt if he thinks I might step out on the porch. Jimmy was eliminated this morning, so Joe’s desperate. He might risk a bad shot.”

“Great news for you and Josh.” Not so much for Joe. “Thanks for the warning.”

“I’m nothing if not chivalrous.” Connor pulls aside the lace curtain covering the thin row of windows alongside the front door, studies the yard for a few seconds, then lets the fabric drop back into place. “All I can say is that he’d better not hit my mom when she gets home from work or he’s going to regret it.” He gestures toward his bedroom. “Come on up. I’ve been going through my notes. I think I have everything.”

I kick off my shoes before following him upstairs. His walls are a light gray, almost blue, and the decor is different than I remember. I haven’t been in his room since I was in fourth grade, when Tessa, Josh, and I stayed with the Strabinowskis for a long weekend while our parents were out of town. Tessa was on the phone with her friends all weekend while Josh, Connor, and I built a tent out of sheets in his bedroom. The walls were a sage-y green then. Where there used to be a giant Red Sox team poster over the desk, there’s now a bulletin board and calendar listing all his soccer practices and games, homework projects, and school events. There are autographed Tim Wakefield and Jon Lester baseball cards under glass on a narrow display shelf over his bed, but otherwise, the room is pretty spartan. Everything’s put away. The dresser and desk aren’t cluttered up with photos, trophies, or knick knacks the way Josh’s are, and there’s no sign of granola bar wrappers or pretzel carnage. The navy bedspread is completely smooth, as if no one has sat on it all day, and it’s neatly folded over at the top, right where it meets the pillows, the way you see in photos of nice hotels.

Does he always keeps he room like this?

Connor crosses to his desk, waving for me to take a seat on the bed. As much as I want to look around to see what other changes he’s made to the room, I keep my focus on the papers Connor’s flipping through in a large black binder.

“How far have you gotten?” he asks.

I envision the atomic sketches on Mrs. Wheeler’s whiteboard today. “We just started the unit on chemical bonding. Today we covered the differences between ionic and covalent bonds.”

He flips backward through his notes, then sticks a paper clip on the edge of a page and hands me the entire binder. “Marked it. My guess is that she’ll cover everything in the same order as last year. The syllabus she gave us is at the front, so you can check. How’d you do on the atomic theory and structures exam? You’ve already had it, right?”

I glance at the notebook page he clipped, then scan the pages immediately before it, which contain the information we’ve already covered. His notes on atomic theory might be better than mine, which is saying something. “I got an A…barely. I studied really hard, but the test was tougher than I expected.”

To my surprise, he looks impressed. “If you got an A on that, you’re in good shape. It’s one of the hardest all year. There’s one on thermodynamics that’s killer. I think it’s in April or May. I got a low B, even though I studied for days.”

“Ouch.”

“Lucky for me, I had high enough scores on my other work to balance it out. It screwed up a ton of people’s grades that quarter.”

He sits beside me on the bed and reaches for the binder, opening it across both our laps. He turns to the back section and pulls out a set of stapled pages covered in red ink. “Here it is. I have all the corrections on it, so that should help when you’re studying. Maybe you can avoid making some of the mistakes I made.”

I look over the exam, partially in dread—it looks impossibly complicated—and partially in admiration. There’s tremendous detail in the notes down the side of the page. Best of all, the handwriting is legible. “This is amazing, Connor. I can’t believe you saved all of this.”

One side of his mouth twitches, as if he’s embarrassed. “You may discover you don’t need any of it, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt you to have it.”

“Are you kidding? This is unreal.” I turn so I’m facing him. It feels comfortable here, sitting with Connor like this. I know it shouldn’t be—we’re in his house alone, in his bedroom—but talking about school is familiar territory for me. Safe. “I promise I’ll give it all back to you at the end of the year. If you end up taking any chemistry courses in college, you might want it.”

“Maybe.” A small laugh escapes him. “Of course, I might see my first college chemistry syllabus and flip out when I realize that a year’s worth of Mrs. Wheeler’s class is like a week of college.”

“I doubt it’ll be that bad.” If it is, I’m not sure I can handle it.

“Hope not. My mom keeps telling me that I’m going to love college and that the classes won’t be that much harder than high school, as long as I study. She says the students who complain loudest about college being hard are usually the ones who ditch classes or don’t have good study habits, but I’m not sure I believe that.”

I ease the thermodynamics exam back into its binder slot, then glance at Connor. “If it makes you feel any better, my parents say the exact same thing, that if I study in college the way I have in high school, I’ll be fine.” I carefully close the binder to ensure all the papers are secure. “I have to admit, as much as I like Eastwood High and all my teachers, I’m looking forward to choosing my own classes and focusing on the subjects I really love.”

“Me, too.” He shifts beside me on the bed. I’m about to get up and walk to the door, since I don’t want to overstay my welcome, when he asks, “Why do you study so hard, Peyton? Whenever I’m at your house, you have a book open or you’re at the computer. Not because you’re horsing around watching videos or reading messages from friends, either. You’re actually working.”

I frown. “Same reasons anyone else studies, I suppose. I want to do well.”

“But why? I mean, you’d do fine without studying as hard as you do. But you’re willing to spend an extra hour on a project just to get one or two more points. Not many people do that.”

When I shrug, he elbows me. “C’mon. You’re avoiding the question. Do you know what you want to do eventually? What you want to study in college?”

I can’t tell him. He’ll think I’m joking.

A wicked smile spreads across his face. “Let me guess. You want to be President of the United States.”

“Very funny.” But only slightly more ambitious than what I really want to do. Keeping vague, I say, “I’d like to study engineering.”

“Really? What kind?”

He actually knows there are
kinds
? On the rare occasions I’ve mentioned my plans to my friends, an embarrassing number of them assumed “engineering” has something to do with running trains. I watch his expression as I say, “Aerospace.”

He doesn’t laugh. Instead, he looks happily surprised. Before he can comment, though, the phone on his nightstand emits a two-second buzz. I gesture toward it. “You have a text, I think.”

He lets out an annoyed grumble as he stretches for the phone. “I should check in case it’s my mom.”

After eyeing the screen, he grimaces, then punches a couple buttons, reading aloud as he types, “Sharing chem notes w Josh’s sis. Will ttyl, ok?” He hits send, then says, “Sorry, chatty friend. But since I ignored an earlier text, I didn’t want to be rude and ignore another.”

“I assumed it wasn’t your mom you were ttyl’ing.”

He returns the phone to the nightstand with a lopsided grin. Then, as if we weren’t interrupted, he asks, “So you want to work on airplane design? Or maybe for a defense contractor or NASA? That would be so cool. “

I can’t help but smile back when he says something I want is cool. “It’d be a dream to work for NASA. If I can manage it, I’d like to minor in astronomy. It’s a long shot, but if I work hard enough, who knows?” I glance down at the chemistry notebook in my lap. “Of course, everyone and their brother wants to work for NASA, so I’m trying to take things one step at a time. I’m hoping my grades will stay high enough that I can get into MIT, since that’s my first choice school, or maybe the Air Force Academy. Not sure if I’m cut out for the military, though. The physical fitness tests might do me in.”

He doesn’t say anything, and I instantly wonder how conceited this all sounds to him. I probably should have kept my mouth shut, same as I always have on this topic.

“What makes you want to study aerospace engineering? It’s not exactly common.” His voice is low and relaxed. If anyone were standing outside his room, they’d have a tough time hearing him.

I shrug off the question, but he pesters me to answer. Since I don’t want to sound like too much of a science dork, I simply tell him how much I’ve always been fascinated with space. “When I was in fifth or sixth grade, I saw an IMAX show at the Museum of Science on the Mars Rover. I was so blown away that I actually asked my parents to take me again.”