T is for...he's a TOTAL jerk (Grover Beach Team #3) (3 page)

“So, um, what position do you play? Quarterback?
Pitcher?”

Nick angled his head as though he was trying to figure out what language I was currently speaking. “Quarterbacks are for football. And we sure as hell don’t have a pitcher. I’m the goalie.”

“Oh.” So he probably stopped a ball with his face once, thus the chipped tooth. I resisted asking about it and instead pushed the plate with the fish toward him to let him do the dissecting. “I can’t handle dead animals. Gives me the chills.” Even now a shiver made my hair stand on end.

Nick had no problems with the dead fish. He sliced into it like it was a warm bun.

After Science, I battled my way through the crowded corridor to U.S. History, and then further on to English, where I found a seat next to the girl from Science class with the wavy brown hair and glasses. Her name was Susan Miller, and she turned out to be really funny. We had to write a poem about any fruit we liked, and she titled hers
Ode to My Banana
. I’d just taken a sip from my Coke while she was reading out the poem, and when everyone barked with laughter, I snorted Coke through my nose. Yeah, I could be so attractive when I wanted to be.

Susan also had Math with me, and since she’d heard my introduction four times today, she took it into her hands to introduce me to two of her friends before fifth period; Simone Simpkins, who looked like a Norwegian model in super-tight clothes and with perfect blond curls, and Liza Matthews. Both girls seemed very nice, even though Liza didn’t say much. She seemed to study me for a really long time.
Awkward. The fact that she was one of the couple Tony had talked to in the café on Saturday made me doubly uncomfortable.

“You’re Cloey Summers’ cousin, aren’t you?” she finally said, tying her long brown hair up in a high ponytail.

“Um, yeah. Is that a problem?” After the incident with the busboy, I wasn’t sure.

“Seriously?
Cloesetta is your cousin?” Susan blurted and shoved her metal-rimmed spectacles farther up her nose. “I would have never guessed that. You’re so…down to earth.”

Everyone laughed.
Me the loudest. Most of all because she’d called my cousin Cloesetta and I had no idea why. “Yeah, she’s a little…eccentric. I’m living with her and her family until my parents move back to the States in four months. I don’t remember her being that snobbish from when we were younger.”

“She’s like—the Barbie clone,” Simone said,
then pointed a thumb at Liza. “Her words, not mine. But she does have a rep at this school, and not a very nice one, if you get what I mean.”

Oh, I totally understood.
Took me only five minutes with Cloey to figure that out.

After
Journalism, the three girls pulled me along into the cafeteria. It was nice to have someone I could sit with during lunch break. Normally, it took me a few days to make friends at new schools. Today was different. I really enjoyed the girls’ company. And in the cafeteria, I also saw Nick again. He sat at a long table with a few other athletic guys. His red hair stood out from them all. I waved at him as we passed them, and he smiled.

“You know Frederickson?” Liza said into my ear as we lined up to get our lunch.

“Yeah. Finnish broke the ice.” I grinned at her over my shoulder, then ordered a thin slice of pizza, table water, and a cherry lollipop.

Simone grabbed half a pizza, and Susan and Liza each got themselves a hamburger with fries. I followed them through the room, wondering where we’d sit. My mouth fell open when we steered toward the table with the hunky guys, but I closed it quickly.

“Hey, Finn Girl,” Nick said and pulled out the chair next to him with his right foot for me. “How’s your first day going?”

I set my tray down and lowered into the pink vinyl chair. “Better than expected.” I smiled,
then bit the corner of my pizza.

He stared from his loaded tray at my lollipop. “Is that all you’re going to eat?”

“She’s short. She doesn’t need as much as you, Frederickson,” someone said behind me. The layer of ice in that voice made me hunch my shoulders, and the pizza got stuck in my throat. I didn’t need to look back to know who it was.

Tony walked around the table and slumped into the seat between Liza and Simone,
then he leaned in to Liza with his cold eyes on me. “And why’s
she
sitting with us?” A moment later, he grimaced. “Ouch!”

Liza grinned at him. “That was for being an idiot.”

He flashed his teeth at her in the parody of a smile. At the same time, the tall, black-haired boy I had seen with Liza in the café came up behind her. He pulled playfully on her ponytail, leaned down, and pressed a kiss on her neck. “Why are you kicking my best player, Matthews?”

Player?
Did they all play soccer like Nick?

Liza briefly closed her eyes and smiled, obviously enjoying the caress. Hot damn, who wouldn’t? The guy was sexy as hell.

“Because he deserved it,” she replied when he swung his leg over the backrest of the seat at her other side and sat down.

“Hey, what’s your problem, Tony?” Nick chuckled around a mouthful of fries,
then shoved more of them in his face.

Tony met my gaze across the table. I wondered if he’d rather sit in a different corner of the room right now. Just why did he hate me? It wasn’t like I had
leper
tattooed on my forehead or something.

With a sigh, I put my pizza down, having lost my appetite. I wiped my fingers on the white paper napkin, leaned back and said, “The problem is that I’m Cloey Summers’ cousin.”
Whatever that meant to Tony.

Everyone at the table stared at me for a couple of seconds. Even Nick glanced at me sideways. “Oh. Is that so?”

I nodded.

“You don’t look like her.”

Now I laughed, glad I hadn’t just sipped from my drink. Spilling water through my nose in front of them all was the last thing I wanted. “Yeah, we’re not made from the same sperm, you know,” I told Nick, rolling my eyes and shoving his shoulder.

“But Sam’s going to live with Cloey’s family,” Simone stated with a sympathetic look as she fed a grape to a guy with a blond
mohawk next to her. “In the same house for four months.”

“Ooh, that’s bad,” said the boy who’d kissed Liza’s throat, not looking up from picking the pickles out of his cheeseburger. “Hey, Alex, pass the ketchup.”

Simone’s boyfriend sent the bottle skating across the table to our end, but another burly guy caught it and started pouring the mess all over his spaghetti.

“Ew, Sasha, leave some in the bottle, would you?” Liza wrestled the ketchup from his hands and gave it to her boyfriend, who squeezed the rest of the sauce onto his burger.

A moment later, Nick made me jump in my seat when he shouted, “Hey, Al, get your sexy ass over here for a sec!” I tracked his gaze across the room to a slim, tall girl with hair as black as mine, only it reached to the waistband of her pair of bell-bottoms and not just to her chin.

She put her tray down at a table surrounded by girls only, then headed over to us. “Hi, guys, what’s up?”

“Are you still looking for members for your team?” Nick asked.

Ugh.
Cheerleader. I clamped down at my molars, wishing he wouldn’t do this right now. One glance at me and the girl would decide that cheerleading and I were not compatible.

“Yes. We finally convinced Liza to join us, but we’re still short of
two more. Know anyone?”

It was so funny how suddenly both boys left and right from Liza looked at her with dropping chins. The tall one with the black hair flashed a half-smile, mouthing, “You did?”

“I only said that I’d check out the training,” Liza said quickly. Then she grinned cynically over her shoulder. “Thank you, Allie.”

“Oh, you’re so going to cheer for me, baby.” Her boyfriend nibbled at her ear.

Liza shoved him away like a cuddly puppy and laughed. “Go eat your burger, Hunter.”

Nick rested his arm on the backrest of my chair. “Al, this is Sam Summers. She just moved back to the States, and I hear she’s good at dancing.”

Alyssa Silverman smiled, leaned over the table, and held her hand out to me. Her long hair fell forward and almost into Tony’s food. He brushed it aside and back over her shoulder, then he gave Nick a death glare, which Nick didn’t notice, because he was looking at me. Yeah, Tony could make you feel totally welcome, whatever you did.

“Nice to meet you, Sam,” Al said as we shook hands. “What kind of dance?”

“Um, crisscross, really. I’m a little into everything.”

“Sounds cool.
If you’re interested, we can take a look at what you can do. I have PE next period. Any chance you’ll be there?”

I quickly recalled the schedule I got from Mrs. Shuster this morning and nodded.

“Fantastic. See you guys later.” She waved and hurried back to her friends.

Oh wow. This was new. I’d totally expected her to embarrass me in front of them all with some off comment about my unruly appearance. But she seemed cool with it.

“This is awesome,” Susan snickered and clapped her hands. “Liza and Sam will both be cheering for us.”

“I don’t see what’s cool about that,” Tony muttered, and I knew he meant me.

I decided to ignore him and instead raised my brows at Susan. “For us? Don’t tell me
you
play soccer?”

“Co-ed team,” Liza explained. “Your cousin is on the team, too. Didn’t you know?”

“I haven’t talked to her much since I came back. So, no, I didn’t know. And this is totally crazy. My cousin playing soccer.” I shook my head. “Are we really talking about
Sorry-I-can’t-type-on-a-keyboard-because-I-could-break-a-nail
Cloey?”

Oh my God, what was that? Did Mr. Cold and Furious actually let a smile slip? Well, if he did, he was fast to bite it down.

“Yeah,” Hunter said. “And she’s really good, too.”

Now Liza lowered her
chin, but she cast him an annoyed look. I wondered if she was unhappy about that fact. Maybe I could ask her about it later. And then some more about Tony.

While everyone was eating their meals, I ignored my pizza,
unwrapped my lollipop, and stuck it in my mouth. The cherry taste unfolded on my tongue as I sucked it hard. Delicious. I sighed.

When Susan quirked her brows at me behind her glasses, I pulled the sucker out with a flick and pointed it at her. “These are the best things in the world. I haven’t had one in eight months.” I stuffed it back in my mouth and rolled it into one cheek with my tongue.
“Mmh, so good. I could live on them and nothing else for the rest of my life.”

“She’s like you with your cheese crackers,” Liza said and elbowed Tony playfully in the ribs. “Only that she doesn’t put mayo on that pop.”

Mayo on a pop? What was she talking about?

Tony gave Liza a look equally as cold as he’d given me when he’d joined us. “She’s not like me.
Most of all because she’s short. And that’s also why she shouldn’t be on the cheerleading team.”

His chair scraped on the linoleum floor as he rose and carried his tray away. Moments later, the double doors swung closed behind him.

“I don’t get it. Why does he hate me?” I slumped down on the low bench in the locker room and kicked off my boots.

“Don’t mind Tony,” Liza said, a compassionate expression on her face, as she started to unbutton her jeans and pulled her gray Mickey Mouse sweater off over her head. “He’s just a little allergic to the name Summers right now.”

“Yeah, I figured that out. So what’s the big deal? What’s Cloey got to do with him?”

Liza’s mouth quirked to one side. “Simply put, he liked her, then he slept with her last summer, and she dumped him the same night.”

“Holy shit!”
He had been with my cousin? My eyes were probably wider than saucers right now. Had Tony been in love with Cloey? That was somehow hard to believe after the way I’d seen him talk to her. He had been stone-cold, without any affection—just like he was around me.

Lost in a daze, I saw Liza angling her head. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Sure.” I cleared my throat. “I just didn’t think that Cloey would turn into that sort of bitch. Now I understand why he doesn’t like to hear our name.”

“Yeah, but there’s more to the story,” Simone said and sneaked an arm around Liza’s shoulders. The girls looked at each other and Simone started to grin.
“Right?”

Liza sighed, and that was when Susan took over. She really loved to talk. “The thing is
, Liza was in love with Tony like forever. But he didn’t notice. Or maybe he did, and he just didn’t have the guts to tell her he loved her, too.”

So he had been in love with Cloey
and
Liza? The thought of it gave my chest a funny squeeze. Well no, it wasn’t funny. Strangely enough, it felt annoying. I didn’t want to be the only person in the world he hated.

“But one day,” Susan went on, taking no notice of my sudden unease, “Ryan Hunter came along and stole Liza from Tony.”

Liza laughed. “He didn’t steal me.” She glanced my way. “Didn’t have to. I went of my own free will.”

“Yeah right, after the two guys fought over her.
In her bedroom.” Simone made an awed face.

Tony got in a fight over Liza? She seemed nice enough to have guys lining up for her, and she was beautiful, too, in a very natural way. Suddenly, I envied her a little. If I hadn’t cut my hair and looked a little more like her, Tony might find me attractive, and then he wouldn’t be such an ass around me. Boys didn’t behave like jerks around the girls they found pretty.
Right?

But why in the world would I even bother? He was just one stupid boy getting on my nerves. I could ignore him. It shouldn’t be that hard.

I slipped into my sneakers and tied the laces, looking up at Liza. “Ryan Hunter is the guy from lunch, right? So he got you, and Tony is pissed?”

“Nah, he isn’t pissed.” Liza slipped into a white tee, and so did I. When her head emerged from the collar, she said, “Tony is cool with how things are. We’re still best friends.”

“Only that he doesn’t get to sleep in your bed any longer.” Simone snickered, and Liza swatted her on the shoulder.

Simone skipped off with Susan behind her. Liza and I followed and I asked with a strange edge to my voice, “Tony used to sleep in your bedroom?”

“Yep. For years. We did everything together. It was just so normal for us.”

“Did you kiss him?” I bit my tongue. Dammit, I didn’t want to ask that, and I wasn’t even interested in the answer, so why the hell did it slip out?

“No, not really. He kissed me. Last summer. But only once, after I’d fallen for Ryan. Why do you ask?” She paused and flashed a Peppermint Patty smile. “Are you interested in Tony?”

“God, no!”
And that was that. I strode a little faster into the gym and hurried over to Simone and Susan, who were chatting with Allie by the rings.

All three grinned at me as I approached them. That gave me an eerie chill.
“Up to something?” I asked. Yeah, they definitively were.

“Simone just pointed out your perfect height,” Susan said.

“My perfect height?” My voice had gone dry. No one had ever put it like
that
. And the fact that these girls had made me very uncomfortable. “Perfect for what?”

Allie stepped forward and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You know how cheerleaders do those choreographies where they toss a girl in the air and catch her again?”

“Nuh-uh. No way!” I slipped away from her. “You’re not going to throw me in the air like a bouncing ball. You can throw Simone. She looks like she’d enjoy that.”

“Simone is a good dancer, but she’s a coward,” Allie said and immediately got a shove on her shoulder.

“I’m not a coward,” Simone blurted out. “I just don’t trust you guys.”

“Oh, great.
But I should?” They must be kidding me. “And why don’t you trust them, anyway? Don’t you do this all the time?”

Allie rubbed the back of her neck, wrinkling her nose. “What exactly did Nick tell you about our cheerleading team?”

“He didn’t say anything. Just that you’re cheering for soccer boys. And girls,” I quickly corrected after a glance at Susan, who for once wasn’t wearing her glasses. “Why? Is there something wrong with your team?”

“No. We’re cool. We’re just not professionals is
all.”

“What do you mean?”

“We sort of thought it fun to cheer for our boyfriends,” Simone chipped in. “At soccer, you don’t normally have cheerleaders, but the guys liked it when we came to their games and did some amateur dancing during breaks. So we started to watch some really cool cheerleading movies and tried to copy their moves.” She jumped and threw her left leg in the air, waving her hands like she was holding pompoms.

“You want me to do
that
, too?” Liza said and cast Simone a mocking grin.

“Yeah, throw your leg up, Matthews. I’m sure Hunter wants to know what you’re wearing under your skirt.”

“Hunter will find out after the training.”

Everyone laughed at that. Only I pulled a quizzical face. “Um, is there a deeper meaning as to why you’re calling your boyfriend by his last name all the time?”

Liza shrugged. “He started it.”

“Yeah, he never calls her Liza,” Susan told me.

“Never?”

“No. When he doesn’t call her Matthews, he calls her…
baby
.” At the last word she lowered her voice to sound really deep and grumbling. Too funny. I slapped my thigh as I laughed out loud.

Since Allie had said they cheered for their boyfriends, I got curious. “Who are you with?” I asked her.

“She’s with no one,” Simone said and smiled. “Yet. But she’s working really hard on Sasha Torres. You saw him at our table at lunch.”

I lifted my brows at Allie.
“The one with the short brown hair? Really?” Oh my God. Did she know how he ate his spaghetti? I guessed not, or else she might have reconsidered. Or maybe not. He was hot, like most of them.

Allie flushed a sensational pink. Heck, she
was
working on him.

“Does he like you, too?”

She shrugged one shoulder, but a smile crept onto her pretty face. “I hope so.” Then she cleared her throat. “Anyway, we should see what you’re capable of before Miss Trent blows her whistle.”

I looked
in the same direction she did and saw a middle-aged woman in sportswear marching into the gym and straight for the equipment closet. She held a small silver whistle between her teeth but didn’t blow.

“Okay,” I said. “What do you want to see?”

“Can you do back flips? That would be so awesome,” Susan said.

I couldn’t do that in a jumping version, but from my ballet lessons I had annexed some really cool agility, so I bent backward until I touched the linoleum floor behind my heels, then moved my weight onto my arms, and lifted my legs one after the other over in a
cartwheel to stand upright again.

Their mouths sagged open. I grinned. They surely hadn’t expected this, and I knew how impressive that move could look.

Susan pulled on her hair, her eyes really wide. “Shit, this was amazing.”

Allie nodded. “I say if you have just a hint of feeling for rhythm, too, you’re in.”

“Cool.” I didn’t know if I should be happy now or find a toilet and flush myself. Then again, any dancing was better than no dancing, so I tried to smile.

“We’ll do some choreo training tomorrow afternoon,” Allie told me. “Come out to the soccer field after school,
then you can meet the rest of our team and decide if you want to join us.”

“Okay. As long as I don’t have to date a player to be accepted, I’ll come.”

Susan laughed and looped her arm around mine. “I can be your date.” She had adopted that deep rumbling voice again and dragged me to the rest of the students who’d started doing some warm-up stretching.

Miss Trent let us choose a game for today’s sports lesson, and we all voted for volleyball,
the only ball game I was really good at.

After sports, I got my things together and hurried back to the main building to find the room where I was supposed to have my last lesson, Animation & Visual Effects. I had been looking forward to this period all day.

I slipped through the door with the ring of the bell and slid into the empty seat closest to the teacher, a woman in her late thirties wearing a nice floral dress and heeled sandals that clacked on the floor as she walked over to me.

“You must be Samantha Summers. Welcome to AVE,” she said in a low voice, and we shook hands. “I’m Caroline Jackson. Mrs. Shuster told you what to bring to this class?”

I nodded and opened my portfolio of sketches that I had drawn during the past week. “I have the charcoal portrait of an old woman, and the animated antagonist. What troubled me a little was the baby in motion, because we don’t have any babies in our family, and I prefer to draw from live models. But I found something on YouTube to work with.”

“You’re inventive. That’s good.” Miss Jackson smiled. She studied each of my drawings for a few seconds. “Your pictures are
quite professional. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I heard a new student would be joining, but now I see you definitely have talent and belong in this class.” She cast me an approving look. “At the beginning of each lesson, I like to discuss the projects of two or three students with the rest. I’d like to start with yours today, if that’s fine with you.”

“Sure,” I said, but immediate tension knotted my stomach. I knew I could draw. I just didn’t know how good the others were and where I fitted in with my talent. But then, Miss Jackson seemed please with my sketches, so I breathed deeply and forced myself to calm down while she clipped them on the blackboard.

The class began analyzing my
Baby in Motion
first, and there was really not much to critique for them. They liked the
Portrait of an Old Lady
even better and pointed out that I had done a fantastic job with the wrinkles and deep lines around her eyes. That was when I finally relaxed in my chair. I had passed their critical examination.
Whew
.

Finally, Miss Jackson moved to my last artwork, the
Animated Antagonist
. It was a three-layered sketch of a spaceship captain, who was swinging around with a lightsaber in his hands and shoving his dark-purple cape back over his shoulder. To my eyes, it was perfect. I’d worked for ten hours on this particular move. Everyone seemed impressed, and a small smile crept to my face.

Until a low mumble from the back of the classroom pulled me out of my euphoria.
“God. What a baby face.”

The suppressed laughter of a few guys followed. The hairs on my arms rose. I didn’t want to turn around, but I felt my upper body slowly twist in my seat, until my gaze fell on the cold eyes of Anthony sitting in the last row of the room.

“Mr. Mitchell, is there anything relevant you want to add about this work?” Miss Jackson said loudly.

He tapped his lips with a forefinger, deliberating for a couple of seconds,
then he said, “Actually, yes.” He cut me a brief glance that displayed his delight at getting the chance to rip me to pieces through my work.

I wrapped my arms around myself.

“While the motion of the antagonist and the straight-up composure, as well as the hunky body, may work with a bad guy image, the artist totally messed up the facial expression. She clearly seems to have an obsession with dimples, which we already got to see in pictures one and two, and the baby-blue eyes of this antihero could have been sketched in a meaner, more furious way. Samantha Summers’ antagonist may scare the shit out of Winnie the Pooh, but that’s it, I’m afraid.”

The entire class burst out laughing. I wanted to cry. My face burned like I’d been staked in the sun for
ten hours.

Miss Jackson pulled my sketches off the board and handed them to me. “Thank you very much for your analysis, Mr. Mitchell,” she said in a sarcastic tone. “Why don’t we look at your work next?”