Reckless (40 page)

“You’re missing the point, Brandon.” I nearly growled when I said it, but tried to keep my voice calm.

“And what point is that?”

Could I tell him that Kamiko had a crush on him? Would that help, or make things worse? Screw it. “She likes you, Brandon.”

Brandon smiled. “I could tell,” he said way too confidently. Jerk.

“So why were you so mean?” I demanded.

“Like I said, I was trying to help her out. Steer her in the right direction.”

“What, away from you?”

“No,” he smirked. “Toward the galleries that will embrace her.”

“But you’re the one she wants embracing her. You, Brandon. Not the gallery. Don’t you get it?” I glared at him. Did he not realize what a jerk he was being? Guys were all the same.

 
He smiled that irritatingly handsome smile of his. “I do, Samantha. But the problem is, I’m interested in you…” he leaned forward and put his hand on my cheek.
 

I had been sitting on the edge of my chair, so I slid back into it all the way, trying to escape. Brandon followed. His nose was inches from mine. I couldn’t slide back any further in the chair unless I literally crawled over the back of it.

Brandon continued in a low voice, “…not her—”
 

Suddenly, Brandon’s smile froze. He straightened up stiffly and slipped his hands in his pockets. “Oh, hey, Kamiko,” he said flatly.

I whipped around, practically falling out of the chair. Shit! How long had she been standing there? Judging from the tears in her eyes and the way she ran down the hall sobbing, I would guess long enough.
 

From where Kamiko had been standing, I’m sure it looked like Brandon was about to kiss me, but Kamiko wouldn’t have seen the grimace on my face.

“Kamiko!” I shouted. “It’s not what you think!” But she was already pounding down the stairs. She probably hadn’t heard me. If she had, I feared she didn’t believe me. I stood up from the chair, about to run after Kamiko. “You’re such a jerk, Brandon!”

He frowned. “Why, because I’m not interested in her?” he scoffed. “Is that a crime?”

“No! But…” I sighed heavily, “…you’re still a jerk!” I ran after Kamiko, but stopped halfway down the hall. I ran back to grab her portfolio off the top of the desk. I glared at Brandon as I picked it up.

“What?” he asked defensively.

I eyed the show catalog Brandon had taken out for Kamiko. I didn’t know if she was going to care, but I snatched it for her, just in case.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs and the gallery floor, Kamiko was gone. I ran out the front doors and onto the sidewalk. I looked in both directions, but I didn’t see her anywhere.

It was getting dark, and quite a few people walked up and down the sidewalks. There were shops everywhere, and four-way intersections at both ends of the short block. She could be anywhere.

Crap. I walked to where my car was parked. Maybe she’d be waiting there. Nope, there was no sign of her when I reached my VW.

I dialed her on my phone. No answer.

I left a message, “It’s me. It’s not what you think, Kamiko. Brandon was putting the moves on me. He surprised me right before you walked in, I didn’t have time to react. I’m totally not into him…” I almost added that I was with Christos, but I suspected that reminding her I had an awesome boyfriend shortly after stupid Brandsome had thrown her heart in the garbage was a bad idea. “…and I’m really sorry about how Brandon was treating you.” I wasn’t sure if saying that made things worse or better. I ended my call, afraid my message wouldn’t do any good. Sigh.

Over the next hour, I called Kamiko three times while waiting at my car. She never answered.
 

Maybe she called Romeo for a ride? I called his phone, but he didn’t answer. Moments later, I got a text back from him that said,

in class. call u later.

Kamiko probably hadn’t contacted Romeo. If she had, he would’ve mentioned it in the text. I hoped. Was she taking a bus back to campus? It was five miles back to SDU. For all I knew, she was going to walk.

I felt terrible. I hoped she wasn’t going to stay mad at me. If anyone, she should be mad at Brandon.

I sighed heavily.

How did guys always manage to ruin everything?

I waited another thirty minutes and called Kamiko twice more before leaving.

I went back to campus to her dorm room. Her roommate let me in the suite and told me Kamiko hadn’t been to the room.

Where was she?

I couldn’t wait around. I had to be at the Grab-n-Dash in twenty minutes.

Crap!

SAMANTHA

I made it to Grab-n-Dash with a minute to spare. The lull in customers that greeted me was a stark contrast after my drama over the last two hours.
 

The first thing I did was try calling Kamiko again. I felt terrible. I worried she thought I was trying to steal Brandon from her. But that didn’t make sense. She knew I was dating Christos.

No matter how many times I called, Kamiko never answered. I was worried about her.

When the customers started coming in, I did my best to put Kamiko out of my mind and focus on my work.

An hour later, my ongoing exhaustion hit me like a brick. I could barely keep my eyes open during customer lulls, and when it was busy, I felt wired and delicate, like a fragile glass version of myself.

Every night, I still went through job websites unsuccessfully and never got enough sleep. I was starting to wish the math tutoring had panned out, but no luck there either.

I knew Grab-n-Dash wasn’t a long term option. Not only was it physically tiring, but it was emotionally draining as well. There was this depressing quality about it I couldn’t identify. Maybe it was the fact that I knew being a convenience store clerk wasn’t the sort of job my parents would be proud of. They’d probably chuckle and tell me they’d told me so.

Eye roll.

I wondered how long I could keep up my pace with four classes and two jobs. Could I maintain it through the end of the quarter, until Spring Break?
And
keep my grades up? What about Spring Quarter after that? Would a week’s rest from classes be enough to rejuvenate me?

I feared it would not.

At the moment, the only thing keeping my tired eyes open was the hot-dog odor wafting off my neon-urine uniform shirt. No matter how many times I’d washed it, the smell wouldn’t go away. I’d begged my boss for a new one several times.

His response was always the same, “It’s not in the quarterly budget,” he’d say sarcastically while his prickly eyebrows caterpillared over his glasses.

Silly me. I’d forgotten that Grab-n-Dash was a Fortune 500 company with very tight margins to maintain if it hoped to meet shareholder expectations on a quarterly basis.

So I diligently hand-washed my uniform shirt nightly, air-dried it from the walkway balcony railing outside my front door every night, and stuffed it in a garbage bag when it was dry to trap the smell. Every morning, I prayed I’d wake to discover that someone had stolen my shirt off the railing, but I think the criminals were smarter than that, as were the homeless people who had minimal standards to maintain when it came to personal odor.

Hot dogs.

Yeah, I was never eating one again.

The front doors bing-bonged as Eminickle, my favorite illicit twelve-year-old Lothario, walked into Grab-n-Dash with his posse, 2 Small Crew.

“What up, girl,” Eminickle said. “You sure look foxy today!”

I smirked down at him. I think he was just shy of three feet tall. Perhaps shorter. And that was standing on his tiptoes. Was he really twelve? Maybe he was six?

“Hey, Eminickle,” I said.

“You know you call me dat cuz you know I’m yo number one playa,” he said suavely.

“Um, no? I think it’s because one is your shoe size.”

“Oh, snap!” his buddy to the right said. This buddy had red-hair, freckles, braces, and wore a T-shirt with an eight-bit Space Invader on the front.

“Come on, girl,” Eminickle said, “let me be your baby daddy!”

“Get her, dawg!” his other buddy said. This one had big glasses and a Jew-fro. His t-shirt had a picture of a rabbi holding a pair of six-pointed throwing stars of David, posing like a ninja, above a logo that said “Jew-Jitsu.”

They were harmless.

I would never tell them how much I thoroughly enjoyed their friendly visits. They were a pleasant distraction from the regular customers.

Eminickle and his crew raided the candy display and filled ICEEs at the machine before bringing their treasured treats up to the counter like they held golden jewels and silver chalices in their hands.

I rang everything up.

“I got y’all covered, boys,” Eminickle said generously, pulling out his velcro wallet to pay. It had an Angry Birds logo silkscreened on the outside. He handed me a ten dollar bill, which covered everything.

I made him change and slid it over the counter.
 

He lifted up the remaining dollar bill and held it out to me. “For you, girl, because you is so damn fine.”

“Save it for milk tomorrow at school,” I sneered.

His buddies cackled.
 

“Down in flames, dawg!” Space Invaders said.

“A’ight, I get it,” Eminickle said to me confidently. “You playin’ hard to get. But I can tell, I’m growing on you.”

“Like a zit,” I said.

His friends erupted with laughter.

“Any time you wanna
pop
me, girl,” Eminickle winked at me, “and I
know
you know what I mean… you let me know. A’ight?”

“Gross!” I don’t know how, but he made zits into sexual innuendo.
So
not hot. Sigh.
Kids today.
I rolled my eyes at the three of them. “Don’t you guys have homework to do?”

“See you next time, foxy momma,” Eminickle winked as he and his buddies walked out.

I waved sarcastically and rolled my eyes.

Once Eminickle and 2 Small Crew were gone, my tiredness set back in.

I eyed the coffee machine. Did I need a fourth cup?

No, caffeine wasn’t helping. All it did at this point was make my hands shake and my eyelids quiver.

I checked the clock on the far wall. Yup, it was running backward.

I really needed to find a different job.

Chapter 20

SAMANTHA

As mid-terms neared, I felt the crushing weight of looming disaster hovering over my life. Not only had my friendship with Kamiko gone off the rails, but my grades were falling into the crapper as well.

On the plus side, Oil Painting was most likely an A. Professor Cogdill was a great teacher, and very supportive. Check.

Sociology 2, on the other hand, was looking like a solid B. Not what I wanted. My parents wouldn’t be happy about anything less than an A. Unfortunately, Professor Tutan-yawn-yawn kept putting me to sleep, no matter how hard I tried to focus. The energy drain from my two jobs wasn’t helping.

History was heading toward a C. That freaked me out. I hadn’t had a C since junior high. Maybe I could pull it up to a B by the end of the quarter, but no hope of an A. Groan.

Figurative Sculpting was a wild card. I needed to actually go to Bittinger’s office hours to find out exactly where I stood.

I wasn’t looking forward to a friendly visit with the Bitchinger.

Luckily, her office hours were not on the same day as classes. Maybe she wouldn’t be so bitchy without Hunter in the room making gaga eyes at me while ignoring her.

I walked across campus in the morning and into the Visual Arts building to her office. I’d made sure to arrive well before her posted office hours. I wanted to be waiting on
her
, not the other way around. I needed all the advantages I could get.

As I hoped, she wasn’t there.

I slid down against the wall and pulled out my sketchbook to doodle while I waited. I almost started cartooning her, but I knew I’d get carried away and she’d walk up at the exact moment I finished an insulting picture of her.
 

I could see the cartoon in my mind. Marjorie would have a sour look on her pretty face and the body of a mangy dog from the waist down. She would be sitting behind a little roadside stand, waiting for the next willing idiot to come along and pay for her unique brand of cheap grief. The signage scrawled on the front of the stand would read:

“Insults and Aggravation. 5¢.”

“The Bitch is In.”

With a grin on my face, I started drawing Doggy van Peltinger. I couldn’t resist. Maybe I needed to be a cartoonist.

Of course, that was the moment Marjorie Bittinger chose to walk down the hall. My drawing would have to wait. I stuffed my sketchbook in my book bag and stood up.

“Good morning, Miss Smith,” Professor Bittinger said as she pulled a ring of keys out of her purse and opened her office door. “I assume you’re here to inquire about mid-term grades?” She smirked.

“Um, yeah.”

She walked into the office and dropped her bags behind her desk. I sat down at one of the chairs in front of her desk. Her office had very clean, precise decoration. Three small pedestals along the wall had bronze sculptures of heads on top of them, each one of a different handsome young man. I didn’t recognize any of the people, but they were all very well done, and the men looked super-sexy. “Are those heads your work?” I asked.

“You mean the busts?”

“Yeah.” I guess that’s what they were called.

“Yes.” Still standing behind her desk, she rifled through a folder, looking for something. Maybe she’d find some social niceties inside, because I could tell she’d forgotten to bring hers with her this morning. A moment later she tugged out several sheets of paper and slapped them on the desk. “Your file.”

How did she manage to make me feel like I was sitting in the Principal’s Office, about to receive a bawling-out for in-class antics? Detention or expulsion to follow?

Marjorie sat down and slid a pair of reading glasses onto her face. Even in glasses, she projected an elegant beauty. Why was it that people’s insides and outsides could be so poorly matched?

Marjorie flipped back and forth between two pages, reading, flipping, reading. She pulled off her glasses, folded them up, and put them away before lacing her fingers primly on top of her desk. “Currently, your grade is a D.”