Love Edy (23 page)

Another day of Edy not noticing Wyatt began.
On the first day of school she wore this billowing white sundress
with spaghetti straps that lifted and accented perfect cleavage. A
fuss was occurring on the sidewalk. It appeared that the twins
wanted her to change. Edy flipped them off and climbed in the car
with Hassan.

Up to this point, Wyatt had had little
control over his encounters with Edy. From the last day of school
to the first of their sophomore year, her every moment had been
scheduled so as not to coincide with him. While he didn’t think it
purposeful, it certainly
felt
as if it was. But a new school
year had arrived and with it his day to see and spend time with
Edy. Excitement stuffed itself in his mouth and threatened to
inflate, carrying him off on a horizon of anticipation. He would
see her in an hour, maybe two. Better still, the moment when Wyatt
would reveal Hassan for the deceiver he was drew close. The thrill
of anticipating
that
could undo him. So, Wyatt set off to
school with enthusiasm in his step, whistling a feisty tune the
whole walk there.

~~~

Mrs. Applebaum, Edy’s new homeroom teacher,
was a short, pallid woman with heavy-lidded eyes and deep curves,
despite the presence of a waspish waist. She was young, no more
than thirty, and had a watery, brown gaze that flitted about,
unable to sit still. When Edy entered the class, Mrs. Applebaum
pointed to a chair in the center.

“There,” she barked.

“Assigned seats? Really?”
Welcome to
first grade.

Mrs. Applebaum turned to the dry erase
board, already on to something else. With a sigh, Edy marched for
her chair.

“Nice pair, Edy. I see you caught on that
they grow by fondling,” Shane Mitchell said.

She stopped just as he guffawed in that
obnoxious way of his, doubling over and wild with the spectacle.
But he had no idea how absurd he looked, wedged in the second seat
of the second row, knees knocking wood in a desk-chair combo too
small for the basketball team’s starting center. “Yeah. Well, from
what I hear, fondling doesn’t grow much on you.”

A collective roar was let out from the half
dozen present, just as heat crept through Edy’s cheeks. Why had she
said it? Lord knows she had endured Shane Mitchell’s crassness
since grade school. Never had an outburst been warranted.

“Nice one,” Chloe said from her seat in the
center.

“Thanks,” Edy said.

They hadn’t spoken since their walk home
with Wyatt. Now that she felt a little saner, an inkling of remorse
tickled her.

“If you’re done with your acceptance
speech,” Mrs. Applebaum said, “I’d recommend you take your
seat.”

Of course.

Edy dropped into her assigned chair behind
Chloe and went to work getting organized. She had six A.P. Classes,
including human geography, which sounded absolutely nonsensical.
But her mother had insisted on it. Homeroom with Mrs. Applebaum
would be followed by calculus with Hassan, then environmental
science with no one in their right mind. Edy thought to compare her
schedule with Chloe’s, which no doubt would have things like drama
and art, if for the sole purpose of living vicariously.

“Oh no,” Chloe whispered.

Lawrence Dyson ambled into the room, three
inches taller than memory served and rippling with muscles.

“There,” Ms. Applebaum said, pointing to a
seat up front near Shane.

Lawrence chuckled and dropped down behind
and to the right of Edy.

“Edy,” Chloe said, stiff as her head tilted
just so. “Tell your friend not to even
try
talking to
me.”

“Okay,” Edy said. “But—”

“Edy, tell
your friend
that paranoia
is the first sign of drug use,” Lawrence said.

Chloe whirled around. “I am not
paranoid!”

Edy lifted a finger. “Personally, I would
have denied the drug use—”

“Shut up, Edy!” Both cried.

Edy looked from one to the other. “Have you
guys had some sort of fight?”

Chloe faced forward in a huff. Lawrence
rolled his eyes. “Moron,” Lawrence said.

“Slut,” Chloe hissed.

Mrs. Applebaum inflated blowfish-style and
sputtered as she weaved down the aisle, thick hips bumping empty
desks wayward. She stopped in front of Lawrence. “What
is
your name?”

He sighed. “Dyson. Lawrence Dyson.”

A hoot of cheers rang out from a far section
of classroom, no doubt praise for the previous season or
predictions for the next.

Mrs. Applebaum opened her mouth and shut it
before hastening to the front of the room, bumping desks at double
speed in her rush to snatch paperwork from her desk. “You’re not on
my roster. You don’t even belong here!”

“Sure I do,” Lawrence said.

She stared at him, trembling, furious with
her disbelief. “If you don’t leave, I’ll call security,” Mrs.
Applebaum said, eyes wetter than ever.

Lawrence grabbed his backpack and reached
inside. She jumped as if she were expecting a weapon. With a
half-smile, he pulled out a sheet of paper, printed with a
signature at the bottom.

She glared at it as if expecting it to coil
up and hiss. “What
is
that?”

Lawrence held it out but said nothing.
Eventually, Mrs. Applebaum snatched it.

Edy turned to Lawrence.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Letter from the principal. They hijacked
her homeroom and decided to put a bunch of football players in
there. Good for team moral, they say. Whatever can bring home a
second championship.”

Edy pursed her lips. “Special
treatment.”

Lawrence shrugged. “Not special.
Deserved.”

Mrs. Applebaum looked up from the letter,
face doughy and devoid of color. Meanwhile, a crowd crammed at the
entrance—a pressing mass of swollen and chiseled out boys
interspersed with what had to be the rest of the class. People took
any old seat, jocks at the back, geeks at the door, students
funneling in to line the walls.

“No, no, no!” Mrs. Applebaum cried. “We will
not
have chaos! We will
not
have mayhem!”

She rushed forward, only to get swallowed in
the procession, absent in a wave of confused faces. Edy imagined
the scene a microcosm of the world, as the bigger, stronger kids
pushed through to choice seats and the smaller, kinder ones looked
around in wonder. Hassan got through, of course, and found a seat
toward the back on Edy’s left. To her surprise, Wyatt found one on
her right.

“Edy,” Wyatt said. “I’ve been trying to call
you. I—”

Mrs. Applebaum jostled her. Apparently,
she’d found a system to combat the chaos, one that required her to
bustle up and down the aisles, rudely demanding names and using
Lawrence’s letter to insist people go to their proper place.

Edy twisted to see past her rump and caught
a glimpse of Wyatt’s arm before Mrs. Applebaum ushered him out. She
went through the class that way before turning to the hall. In the
end, the room looked drastically different.

“It’s like a team meeting in here,” Chloe
said. ‘Yuck.”

Every guy in the room was a tenth grader and
player on the football team—Hassan, Lawrence, and Kyle were
included, every girl like a random fill-in for normalcy. Except it
didn’t quite work.

Mrs. Applebaum gave up on the assigned
seats, stopping instead to survey her class. Jason Mann, team
quarterback, was hovering over Kendra Robinson, openly begging in
his hundredth attempt to win her back since cheating. Onlookers
booed her. Meanwhile, Tommy Kent and Kelly Lighthouse made out in
the back, as Liam Williams shouted into his cell. Reggie Manning
was up and Crip-walking again, undeterred by the gobs of paper that
flew his way. Finally, Hassan, Lawrence, and the rest of the boys
were arguing viciously over a play from last year. When Kyle went
to the dry erase board in an effort to illustrate his point, Mrs.
Applebaum rushed to the hall and screamed for security as if she’d
been molested.

“Well,” Edy said to Chloe. “This ought to be
an interesting year.”

~~~

It wasn’t until third period that Edy saw
Wyatt again. She took a seat toward the front of the room, and,
when he entered, watched him take one next to her.

He stared forward momentarily, fingers
drumming on the surface of his desk.

“Wyatt?”

He turned to her, mouth flattened. “What the
hell, Edy? You haven’t had a word to say to me since Hassan got
naked for you.”

A collective gasp stole the air in the room.
Fiery embarrassment choking her, Edy attempted to survey the
damage, only to find everyone staring straight back at her.

“Wyatt, I—” She shook her head. There was
nothing to say. Nothing that wouldn’t feed the rumor mill further,
nothing that would make the moment go away.

“I’m sorry,” she said, which sounded like a
confession on further thought.

“Whatever.” He faced forward again.

Edy slumped down in her chair. God, they’d
come off as some overwrought love triangle. She hadn’t even denied
Wyatt’s accusation, and in high school, that was the same as a
confirmation. She needed a hole to sink into and a good friend to
shovel dirt on top. Never come out again, that good friend would
tell her, for the rest of your short, short life.

~~~

Edy saw Hassan just after fourth period,
when she slipped her human geography book into her locker, closed
the door, and found him standing behind it. Hassan leaned against
the metal slab next to hers, arms folded, and winked.

“So. I hear we’re official now.”

“Yeah.” There was no way to explain it, so
she didn’t bother. “Sorry.”

“Does that mean you don’t want to have my
baby?”

“What! I never said that!”

He grinned at the furious way she stammered.
Around them, people slowed.

Hassan glanced over his shoulder, leaned
forward, and switched to Punjabi.

“
You never said what? That you didn’t
want to have my baby or that you did?”

Edy stared at him, too confused to answer
his question head on.

“
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think
you were coming on to me,”
she said and flashed a nervous
smile.
“Bad idea, right?”

“And if I was?” he said in English. “Then
what?”

Then I’m all in if you are.

Edy swallowed, heart pulverizing her ribcage
with the thought. Somewhere, anywhere, she’d find a stray bone of
sensibility left in her. Not by looking at those fire-lit eyes, or
the lip he bit until it blazed. She’d look at her books, think of
her future, and focus on more than fairy tales.

Except, she stared at him. And he stared
right back, assessing, weighing, drinking her up as if thirsty for
every drop. She felt the tug, always his irresistible tug, and felt
she might plummet without moving a muscle or taste his smile, well,
because. That last thought brought an inferno to her cheeks, stoked
when he brushed fingers to her face.

“Think of me,” Hassan said and headed off to
class.

Edy’s heart went into retirement. It packed
its bags, headed for the door, and flat lined at the exit.

The last class of the day, seventh period
was American History, antebellum era to present. On approaching the
door, Edy spotted Lawrence standing outside it with Kyle. With a
few minutes to spare, she decided to join them.

“I don’t know where the twins’ll go,”
Lawrence said. “And I’m tired of people asking me.”

Edy frowned. Matt and Mason were seniors,
blue chip players already neck deep in the college selection
process. Despite playing on a mediocre team for their first two
years, they’d been among the top defensive players in the state,
coveted by some of the best teams in the country, which meant going
south. Edy wished they had options closer to home.

“Everyone knows where they’ll go. Georgia’s
come sniffing, end of story,” Kyle said.

The University of Georgia was the alma mater
for two generations of Dysons. A few years ago, the school retired
his father’s number. A flicker of irritation crossed Lawrence’s
face. It deepened till Edy followed his gaze.

Talk of Georgia wasn’t the problem. It was
Wyatt.

“Edy.” He stepped up to her, with his back
to Kyle and Lawrence. “We really need to talk.”

“No,” Lawrence said. “You don’t.”

She shot him an impatient look.

“You put her on blast in front of the whole
class and now you want a private audience?” Lawrence said. “Get
lost before I smash you.”

Edy gave Wyatt a once over. Red blotched his
cheeks and rimmed his eyes. She took a step to one side and shot
Lawrence a silent warning. He raised a brow but said nothing. Wyatt
came to her, shifting his back for the illusion of
confidentiality.

“What is it?” she said.

“I’m sorry. For what I said and for the way
it was taken. I know you wouldn’t give yourself away so cheaply
just because a guy is good with a football.”

“Wyatt.”

“Sorry. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“All right. Then thanks, I guess.”

She wasn’t sure if it was much of an
apology, or even if she deserved one. As far as she was concerned,
people took his words the wrong way, as people liked to do in high
school.

“All right?” Wyatt said. “Is that really all
you have to say?”

Edy blinked in surprise. His hostility had
blindsided her. Wasn’t it her name stuffed into everyone’s mouth on
the first day of school? “I, uh, don’t know what you want from me,”
she said “Or why you’re being so loud.”

He touched her arm, delicately as if afraid
she might break, fingers brushing. “Edy . . .”

There was something too intimate about that
touch, too foreign, too not Hassan. She flinched. “I should go. I
have class.”

He grabbed her by the arm. “A second. I only
want a second to—”