Falling for Hadie (6 page)

Once again, everything was my fault. Seriously, I never caught a break.

“Sorry,” I muttered and jammed my hands into the pockets of my shorts. “Well, this has been fun, but I gotta go do some homework. See ya.”

As I left the kitchen, I heard Mom say to Becky in a low tone. “It’s not surprising he hasn’t made any friends yet…”

Before I could hear the rest of their conversation, I slammed the door to my room shut. Even though my new room was still foreign to me, it was the only place where I had refuge from my family.

I’d tried to add my personal touch to my new room—posters of my favorite bands hung from the walls, my clothes and shoes were strewn across the floor—but it was going to take some time to warm up to it.

But a strange room was the least of my worries. At this very second, the thing that was most prominent in my mind was my family.

No matter what I did, it was never going to be good enough for them. It was like I was always letting my mom down, and Becky always had to be her mouthpiece. She took everything out on me like she was my second Mom or something. I didn’t need a second Mom. I just needed my sister, but she just didn’t get it. She didn’t get me.

Sometimes I just wanted to run away, but I had nowhere to go. I’d run all the way to Statlen, but my problems hadn’t escaped me. They’d come all the way to Statlen with me. There was no escape from this. Not ever.

***

In similar fashion, my first week at Statlen High pretty much sucked ass.

After quickly discovering that sitting in the cafeteria drew me too much attention—and allowed way too many girls to approach me and attempt to flirt—I ended up wandering outside to the field and sitting by myself there.

The only problem with that was that Hadie Swinton and her friends were in my direct line of sight and I had to spend the rest of the week at lunch looking anywhere but at her.

It was a lot harder than it sounded. For some reason, my eyes kept finding my way back to her. My mind was trying to be rational, but my damn eyes couldn’t get enough of her.

What truly sucked was that no matter how much you tried to lie to yourself about something, your feelings always spoke the truth in volumes. See, I was trying to stay away from Hadie, and I was doing a pretty good job at it, but I didn’t want to stay away from her. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t intrigued by her, but my smart ass feelings were telling me something else.

I was completely screwed up.

Still, I’d managed to avoid her for the whole week and she’d cleverly stayed away from me despite being my assigned buddy for the week. It was obvious that this bothered her for whatever reason. Maybe she couldn’t handle my rejection of her or maybe she actually cared that I chose to sit alone when it was obvious that I should be in the “popular” group.

Hadie Swinton couldn’t figure me out. Just like I couldn’t figure her out.

And man was I trying to figure her out.

I’d finally come to the conclusion that everyone wasn’t staring at her friends; they were staring at her. Why? That part was still a mystery to me.

For all the time I’d spent at lunch pretending not to watch her, I’d noticed that she seemed, well, pretty normal. She wasn’t wild or outgoing or crazy, so I couldn’t figure out everyone’s fascination with her.

“Hey, loser.”

The grating voice snapped me out of my thoughts and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

“What?” I asked, my tone dry as my sister came to a standstill in front of me.

There was a girl with her dressed in a cheerleading uniform. She had long, brown hair in two pigtails, and was looking at me like she’d never seen a male before. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at her too.

The girl elbowed Becky not-so-subtly, and Becky actually did roll her eyes.

“Link, this is Ciara. She’s one of my new friends. Ciara, this is my brother.”

The Ciara girl fluttered her fake lashes at me and giggled. “Hi, Link, it’s so nice to meet you! Why are you sitting here all by yourself? Come and sit with us in the courtyard.”

I didn’t want to come across as rude but I didn’t get why this girl, who I didn’t even know, was asking me to sit with her.

“Um, no, I’m fine here. By myself.” I put extra emphasis on the last part so she would get that I wanted to be left alone.

“Oh.” Ciara’s face fell at my response. Obviously, she’d been hoping that her charms would work on me.

“I told you my brother is boring,” Becky said derisively, glancing around the field. Suddenly, her entire demeanor changed. “Link, isn’t that your buddy? That Haley girl?”

“Hadie,” I said through clenched teeth, not liking her tone of voice.

“Whatever,” Becky said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Isn’t she supposed to be showing you around?”

I shrugged. “I told her not to bother.”

Becky and Ciara gave each other a meaningful look. Then Ciara spoke, fluttering those ridiculously fake lashes at me again. “You have such good judge of character,
Link
.”

The way she said my name made me want to hurl, but I was interested enough to contain myself.

“Why’s that?” I asked, trying not to seem too eager to know about Hadie.

Becky leaned in and spoke in a loud whisper as though she knew some top secret information. “You don’t wanna know.” I could tell she was bursting to tell me. “Let’s just say that considering her reputation, you don’t wanna be seen with her.”

I blinked several times, trying to clear my head. What the hell did she mean by that? Hadie had a reputation? What kind of a reputation?

“Yeah,” Ciara said, lowering her voice as well, “let’s just say that she’s
easy
.”

It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice into my stomach. I sat there, motionless, waiting for the icy cold feeling to leave me.

Becky and Ciara must’ve taken my silence as something else, because neither of them seemed to notice that I was even more closed off than I’d been moments earlier.

“Anyway, we’d better go,” Becky said, straightening up. “Kance is probably waiting for us.”

“Yeah, we’d better.” Ciara shot me a disappointed look.

“Laters, loser.” Becky waved at me before walking off towards the C building with Ciara, who shot me a final look of longing over her shoulder.

Gross.

It didn’t take my eyes very long to find their way back to Hadie again. I was surprised to find that she was staring at me hard, like she was trying to figure out a complicated puzzle.

When she caught me looking at her, she glanced away quickly.

Obviously, her eyes had issues just like mine did.

Hadie

“Did you hear that Bennett’s still going out with that hoe bag from Penthill High?”

Mariah’s question was enough to force myself to drag my eyes away from Lincoln Bracks and onto my best friend.

We were sitting on the school field during lunch like we always did, and for the last couple of days Lincoln had been sitting out here too. Alone.

He’d seemed pretty uninterested when his sister and Ciara Banks had approached him, and I couldn’t figure out why he was choosing to sit by himself when he could sit with whoever he wanted.

“Ray!” Estella gasped and swatted at her.

Mariah grinned and swatted back. “Wha-at? It’s true. She is a hoe bag. Like she didn’t know that Bennett and Hadie were dating.”

“Like Bennett didn’t know he and Hadie were dating,” Estella added. “So does that make him a hoe bag too?”

“You make a good point, Estella Markson. Ten points for you.”

Estella rolled her eyes and went back to eating her tofu salad. Estella was a strict vegetarian, so she was always eating things that made Mariah gag. Tofu was on the top of Mariah’s gag list.

Lana swept her long hair aside, a look of disdain on her face as she studied me. “I don’t get why he asked you out in the first place. You’re so not his type.”

“Yeah, you’re way better than the standard bimbos he usually dates,” Mariah agreed with a nod. “Plus, you used to be his friend, so he shouldn’t have treated you like a standard bimbo. You deserved way better than that.”

“I kind of get why he’s like that though,” Lana said, taking a sip of her chocolate milk. “If I was that good looking and popular, I’d ditch my friends too.”

The two cousins stared at each other, something passing between them, before Lana glanced away, appearing uncomfortable. “Bennett’s a jerk. You’re better off without him, Hadie.”

I knew my friends were just trying to make me feel better about Bennett, but I’d rather not talk about him at all. It was hard enough having to see him five out of seven days, so listening to a conversation about him, despite it being about his hoe bag ways, didn’t make me feel any better.

I wish there was simply a way to erase the last month of my life. I wish I could wipe Bennett’s kisses from my memory or forget the way he’d take me into his arms and hold me. I wanted to forget the way he’d whisper in my ear and tell me how beautiful I was. Everything he’d done felt like a lie. Bennett’s feelings for me had been a lie. The last month of my life had been a lie.

I didn’t know what part of it, if any, had been real. Except for my feelings for him. They had all been real, and he had thrown it all away for some floozy who’d spread her legs for him and shown him a good time. I should’ve known from the beginning that we wouldn’t work out, but I’d been so jaded by my childhood crush on him to face the truth.

If I hadn’t been so blind, I would’ve realized immediately that we didn’t have anything in common anymore. He was a jock and I was a book nerd. Whatever we’d shared in the past was a distant memory, not enough to keep a relationship going.

So, why had he asked me out? That was one thing my logical mind couldn’t figure out. Had I been another conquest on his list to cross off? It was something I’d probably never know.

Mariah nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! You could do so much better than boring Bennett. I mean, let’s for just one second, appreciate the sexy, new view we have.”

We all fell silent, our heads automatically turning to seek out the solitary figure of Lincoln Bracks lying back on the grass. As much as I hated to admit it, he was really hot, and I hated the fact that I had to admit it to myself.

When I forced myself to look away, I saw that Estella was watching me with sympathetic eyes. My stomach sank, because I realized what she was going to say even before she opened her mouth.

“I went by your locker this morning,” Estella said in a quiet voice. “Did you see what they wrote on it today?”

Lana and Mariah tore their eyes away from Lincoln to stare at me as I nodded, not meeting Estella’s concerned gaze.

Day five of my plummeting reputation had earned me the title of “whore”. The janitor had cleaned off yesterday’s offensive word only for it to be replaced by something worse. They were just going to keep doing it until they found someone else to bully.

“Did you tell a teacher?” Lana asked, pulling out clumps of grass from the ground.

“I told Principal Lawson, but there’s nothing he can do unless someone actually reports who’s doing it, and we know that’s never going to happen.”

“It makes me so mad!” There was ferocity in Mariah’s eyes as she chewed her bagel. “You’re not the one who did anything wrong! Bennett’s the one who cheated on you, yet you get called a whore! How does that make any sense?”

“It doesn’t make sense, Ray, but they don’t care about that. All they care about is that I embarrassed their friend at Kendall’s party by confronting him in front of everyone. His friends were probably the ones who egged him on to cheat on me in the first place.”

“Don’t make excuses for him, Hadie,” Mariah scolded. “He deserved a lot worse than you confronting him at the party. If I were you, I would’ve kicked him in the…”

“Ray, seriously!” Estella bumped her shoulder against Mariah a little too hard and Mariah tipped over. Estella covered her mouth and helped her back up. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!”

Mariah narrowed her eyes and pushed Estella backwards. Before I knew what was happening, my best friends had turned into a pair of pushing, giggling girls. A moment later, Lana and I were somehow dragged into the pushing game which was quickly turning into a tickling match.

Dirt and bits of grass were getting all over our clothes, but that didn’t stop us. It was the first time in days that I had let myself laugh unreservedly.

I could be happy without Bennett. I would be happy without him.

“Um…Hadie?”

Our laughter ceased and I sat up, looking around to find Ashton Summers and Luca Byron standing in front of us with equally amused expressions on their face. In comparison to Ashton’s immaculate appearance, I must’ve looked like I lived on a farm the way the grass clung to my pants and hair.

Feeling my face flush, I hastily stood up and brushed the grass off my clothes the best I could before meeting Ashton’s eyes. “Hey, um…we were just…I’m not even sure what we were doing.”