Sacred (33 page)

The hallways were stuffy and hot as the school’s antiquated heating system worked overtime in what was shaping up to be one of the coldest winters in our island’s history.
The Young Republicans of America club members were giddy over this “proof” that global warming was just a big myth. On the morning of my return, when I walked through the hallway with Lily, the crush of the students threatened to overpower me completely. It seemed I had more friends than I’d been aware of; everyone wanted to hug me and hear firsthand how I’d been knocked silly on the trail, how Will had found me and rescued me in the storm.

“That’s so romantic!” gushed Katie Ellis, and she eyed Brandon as if wishing
she
could suffer some mishap so that he would have a chance to save her from it.

I found the whole thing embarrassing. I mean, needing to be rescued means that you’ve screwed up pretty bad; I’d miscalculated Traveler and had eschewed a helmet, so it felt like I’d gotten what I deserved. But when I tried to explain this, no one seemed to want to hear it. They just wanted to know if Will had given me mouth-to-mouth.

“Just make up something juicy,” Lily encouraged. She didn’t know that I wouldn’t have to fabricate anything; Will’s visit to my house had been sexy enough to satisfy any of our classmates.

I hadn’t shared with Lily the details of Will’s visit earlier that week. Usually, Lily and I told each other everything. But when she asked about Will, all I said was “We’re back together.” And though she’d screwed up her mouth kind of funny, she didn’t press me for details.

I was glad; it seemed that my time with Will was too precious to risk tarnishing by speaking of it with Lily, or anyone else. My mom had tried to get me to talk about Will too, but
all I said to her was “He and I get each other, Mom.” I could tell she wasn’t satisfied, but I guess the set of my chin was stubborn enough that she knew that was all she was going to get.

Even Andy approached me. He came up to me at the end of lunch when Will and I were walking back in together after eating under our tree. It was cold out there, but it was worth the privacy.

When Andy came up to me, I felt Will’s fingers tighten their grip on my hand. I squeezed his fingers in return, letting him know that I was okay, that he should calm down.

“Hey, Scarlett,” Andy said, completely ignoring Will.

I raised an eyebrow.

He continued, “Umm … I just wanted to say, Scar, I’m glad you’re okay. I heard about your accident. I would have been pretty bummed if you’d have been hurt real bad.”

“Thanks, Andy,” I said, my voice even. “You know, Will found me out there.”

Andy’s eyes shifted over to Will, then down to our interlaced fingers. “Yeah,” he said. “I heard.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re okay.” He seemed to grow bolder. “And, you know, if you ever want to … hang out or anything, you have my number.” He grinned at me, and I felt his eyes take their time roaming across my body before he turned away. “See you later, Scarlett,” he called over his shoulder.

I could feel Will bristling beside me. “Lot of nerve,” he murmured through clenched teeth.

I laughed a little. “Will Cohen,” I teased, “are you jealous?”

“Not really jealous so much as enraged. What gives that creep the idea that he can talk to you?”

The ferocity of his response surprised me. “Will,” I said, “it’s okay. He only wanted to say hi.”

“The only thing that guy should be saying to you is ‘I’m sorry,’ ” Will seethed. “Short of that, he should keep his distance.”

I looked more closely at Will. The tendons on his neck were standing out, and his whole body seemed to be leaning forward, as if he were pushed from behind by a gale I could not feel.

I turned to him and pressed my forehead against his chest.

“Calm down, Will,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”

By degrees, Will relaxed his body. It seemed purposeful, as if it took great effort, but slowly he reined in the anger, the aggression that looked as if it might overtake him.

The late bell rang, startling us. “We’d better go,” I murmured, and Will nodded.

Thursday was Valentine’s Day. Right after lunch I had Chemistry. The boys’ soccer team pushed and shoved their way into the classroom five minutes after the bell, each holding one or two roses to distribute.

Mr. Graham rolled his eyes and pulled off his glasses, pinching his nose between his fingers as he gave up on maintaining control over the class. “Okay, guys,” he said. “Just try to make it quick.”

They spread around the classroom, reading the names on the little tags affixed to each flower. Brandon Becker, who was on the soccer team, laid two roses across my desk. “Pretty popular, Scarlett,” he teased.

Each rose was long-stemmed, with red petals still wrapped in tight buds. Affixed to each stem was a tag. On the front of each tag was my name written in two different scripts, each of which I knew very well.

The first was from Will. I smiled and smelled the rose before reading the note on the back of its tag—
Be mine
, it read simply. I already was.

The next gave me pause. It was addressed in Andy’s hand. After a moment, I flipped its tag over and read what it said—
I’m no quitter
.

I knew what his words meant, even before I registered the reddened, teary eyes of Kaitlyn Meyers across the room, whose desk was bare. But I wasn’t about to let Andy’s ridiculous competitive machismo spoil my thrill over Will’s rose.

I knew I wasn’t a prize to be won. Andy could suffer under his own ridiculous delusions if he wanted to.

Will was waiting for me outside of Drama class. I walked right up to him, roses in my hand, and wound my arms around his neck. “Thanks for the rose,” I said. “I’d love to be your Valentine.”

Our lips touched in the lightest of kisses, but still I was shocked by the force of my body’s response to him.

“Who’s the other flower from?” Will asked as we walked into the classroom.

Before I could answer—before I had time to dissect why, exactly, Will’s question made me nervous—Connell called out from his seat at the back of the class, “Hey, Big Red, I guess the bigger rose is from Andy, right? The Jew gave you the cheap one?” followed by his trademark guffaw.

The muscles of Will’s jaw tightened, though the rest of him stayed unreadable. With the politest “May I?” he withdrew the rose with Andy’s tag on it from my hand, then weaved his way through the rows of desks to Connell’s seat.

Connell was a big guy, bigger than Will, but for some reason he still looked nervous as Will approached. Will didn’t stop until he was right up in Connell’s face; then, he held the rose over Connell’s desk and slowly, deliberately, peeled the red petals, one by one, from the stem, until all that was left was the naked, sad heart of the flower surrounded by the short spiky green leaves that encircled it. Each petal he dropped onto Connell’s desk.

The rest of the class watched silently. Even Mrs. B was watching, the stack of papers that she’d been looking through forgotten.

When the last petal had drifted down to the desk, Will said, “Tell Andy that next time I won’t stop with just the flower.”

He didn’t wait for a response, and he didn’t look at my face as he made his way past me, out the door, and down the hallway.

I was stunned.

Around me, the students began to talk in whispers, and I could tell from Connell’s stormy expression that this wasn’t over, not as far as he was concerned. Connell was like a bulldog—a big, gaping mouth that looked like a smile, but when he got his teeth into something, he wouldn’t let it go, shaking it until it was limp in his jaw.

“All right, everyone, show’s over,” Mrs. B called, clapping her hands.

I fell into my seat, eyes focused on Mrs. B but oblivious to whatever she was saying. All I could picture was Will, his jaw tight, as he peeled petal after petal from the rose.

When Will called me that afternoon, I didn’t answer the phone. He didn’t leave a message, and he didn’t call again. I could feel him out there, the pull of him from the other side of the island. I knew he was miserable. But what he’d done wasn’t okay. As the evening wore on and my initial shock began to fade, I found myself growing angrier and angrier.

That had been
my
rose, regardless of who had given it to me, regardless of how irritating Will might find it that Andy had sent it to me. Will had no right to take it from me and destroy it.

“I think it’s positively romantic,” Lily gushed the next morning while we walked to school. “I mean, it proves he’s willing to stand up for you, right?”

“Standing up for me is fine,” I argued, “but I didn’t
need
any standing up for. I mean, it wasn’t like the rose was about to bite my hand or anything.”

“The rose was a
symbol
, Scarlett,” Lily said, as if I were an idiot.

“I get it,” I said. “But the rose was
mine
.”

Lily seemed to think that this was a technicality. After all, Will’s note had read
Be Mine
 … so I was Will’s, right? In a way, she argued, the rose was actually his too.

This didn’t sit right with me. Not by a long shot. “ ‘Be Mine’ doesn’t mean ‘Be my property,’ Lil,” I argued. “It means ‘Be my Valentine.’ Those are very different things.” I could understand Will losing his temper with Connell. After all, Connell had consistently been a dick to him since the beginning of the year. But destroying my rose? It felt to me that Will had crossed a line.

Lily shrugged. “All I know is, if a guy did that for me, I’d be all over him.”

For Lily, things were pretty straightforward. Any attention equaled good attention.

“If I were you—” She stopped abruptly. There was Will, leaning against the school’s main building as he had been the first day of school, still smolderingly handsome. Today he was wearing his jeans and a thin V-neck sweater to keep away the chill; that day in September he’d worn a T-shirt.

I remembered what he’d been wearing on the first day of school. How lame was that?

“There he is,” Lily hissed at me, as if I didn’t see him. “What are you going to say?”

“Nothing,” I answered. “He owes me an apology.”

“For defending your honor?” Lily sounded horrified.

“My honor wasn’t threatened, Lily … not this time, anyway.”

Lily looked prepared to argue her case further, but Will pushed off from the wall and crossed the courtyard with the smooth, easy grace that made my stomach leap in spite of my anger.

“Hi, Scarlett. Hey, Lily.” There were dark smudges under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept. “Do you mind if I talk to Scarlett privately, Lil? That is, if that’s okay with you, Scarlett?”

I shrugged as if I didn’t care, but of course I did.

“I’ll see you later, Scar,” Lily said, and as she walked away she gestured furiously behind Will’s back, kissing the back of her hand to show me that I needed to forgive him.

“She’s still back there, isn’t she?” Will asked. I could tell Lily’s antics amused him, in spite of everything else.

“Yep.”

“Listen, Scarlett, about yesterday …” Will’s eyes were pleading. “I don’t know what came over me. I was totally out of line.”

“Completely.”

“I was a jerk. I’m so sorry.”

“You should be,” I said, but I was softening.

“I am.” He stepped closer, putting his hands on my arms.

In spite of my lingering anger, I warmed to his touch. I sighed. “You know, Will, I thought you were better than that.”

“I am! I mean, I thought I was too. I don’t know, Scarlett. I just … reacted.” He looked disturbed, as if his own actions confused him.

“Okay, Will,” I said. “I forgive you. Just don’t make a habit of it, all right?”

His smile was reward enough. “Absolutely. Of course not. I swear.”

He took another step closer and we kissed. From her vantage point on the stairs, Lily clapped and hooted at us.

“Oh, Lily,” Will murmured, stepping back from me.

“You should be thanking her,” I told him. “She argued eloquently for you.”

“In that case …” As we walked up the steps toward class, Will smiled at Lily. “Thanks, Lil,” he said, dropping his arm across my shoulders.

“Any time,” she said.

I had a surprise for Will that Sunday. I had him borrow his dad’s Jeep and meet me at the stable. The day was beautiful—bright blue sky, crisp air. When Will pulled into the yard, I had two horses saddled and ready to go.

Delilah was wearing my usual English saddle, and I’d tacked up Bojangles in the heavy Western saddle that sat, dusty and largely unused, in the back of the tack room. Riding Bojangles was kind of like riding a couch, so I figured Will would be fine on him.

As Will crossed the yard toward where I waited with the horses at the cross-ties, I could see that he was nervous.

“Umm … we going somewhere, Scarlett?”

“Yep,” I said, grinning. “Let’s find you a helmet that fits.”

As I tried various helmets on his head, Will said, “You know, Scarlett, I’ve never ridden a horse before.”

It was sweet to see him so nervous. I tried to make him feel better; I said, “I’m really the one who should be nervous. After all, I haven’t been on a horse since I was thrown.”

“Are you nervous?”

“Nope.” The fourth helmet was a good fit. I snapped the strap under Will’s chin. “Ready to ride,” I told him.

True to my promise to my dad, I pulled on my own helmet before leading Bojangles to the mounting block. “Just climb up those steps,” I directed, leading Bojangles in front of them.

Will looked about to protest, but instead he climbed the steps.

“Slide your right leg across the saddle, and hold on to the reins,” I said. “After his first few bucks, he’ll calm right down.”

The look on Will’s face made me burst into laughter. “I’m kidding,” I reassured him. “I’m pretty sure Bojangles hasn’t bucked in the last decade or so.”

This seemed to reassure Will some, because he did as I’d directed and slid atop Bojangles, gripping the saddle horn in one hand and his reins in the other.

I adjusted his stirrups, then led him into the arena. “So, Bojangles ‘neck reins,’ ” I told him. “To go left, just press the rein against the right side of his neck; to go right, press the rein against the left side of his neck. And to stop, pull back and say ‘Whoa.’ ”