Scarlett White (12 page)

Pissed now, Scarlett opened her window to tell whoever the dumb bunny was to get off her lawn and beat it. But as soon as she opened the window to tell this to the idiot below, another rock came flying out of nowhere and
BAM!
Right on target: the rock slammed right into her forehead.

Scarlett, who was a brainiac at science, knew that she should fall backwards. And that was exactly what had happened. The hard rock bounced off her head—she knew there would be a large bump on her forehead from it—and Scarlett tipped backwards. Her instincts forced her arms to try and catch her fall even though she knew that was worse because she could end up breaking one of her arms—if not both—instead of just earning the bruise that would come without a doubt from the hardwood floor of her bedroom.

But her arms didn't break the fall. It was actually the corner of her wooden bed that broke her fall. She actually didn't remember feeling any pain because as soon as her head made contact with the hard wooden corner of the bed, she was out cold.

It was dark when Tristan woke up. He couldn't believe that he had fallen asleep in his car. He couldn't believe that he had actually waited for Scarlett. He had never spent this much time trying to get a girl out of his head. He normally didn't have one particular girl in his head for over an hour. He wasn't a manwhore or anything, but he didn't spend a lot of time with only one girl. Maybe a couple of days or so, but nothing more than that. Scarlett had been nagging at his brain for over an entire week so far, and he really needed her gone. So, he had decided to confront her. And even though his first three attempts had been complete failures, he figured that if he bombarded her at her own house, that his plan would be completely bulletproof. She couldn't avoid him here. At least, that was what he hoped.

Tristan got out of his car and carefully shut the door behind him. He stood still for a second and stretched out his aching muscles, trying to loosen them up from the long, stiff, uncomfortable nap he had just had. Tristan pulled his arms over his head and then grabbed each ankle, working his limbs and easing the ache from inside him. Finally he twisted his sore neck to each side and heard six satisfyingly loud pops as air bubbles in his neck were destroyed by his bones. He shook his entire body, trying to wake himself up, and then headed over to Scarlett's front porch.

It was only then that Tristan thought to check what time it was. Maybe Scarlett was already asleep. He looked quickly at his watch. 12:01 a.m. Damn, he didn't realize he had fallen asleep for so long. It had been over seven hours since he had first arrived at Scarlett's house. The entire house looked completely quiet from the outside, but Tristan had wasted all day here, so he wasn't about to just give up and leave empty handed. He was going to talk to Scarlett even if he had to shake her awake himself.

Tristan made it to the front door and knocked loudly. He knew that her father was dead—there had been some huge fiasco about it back in eighth grade, but he couldn't really remember the details all that clearly—so he knew that she lived with her mother. He only hoped that her mother was a heavy sleeper and didn't wake up at twelve in the morning to find some random boy on her doorsteps. That would be completely awkward, and Tristan didn't even want to think about what he would have to come up with to lie about to Scarlett's mother.

But to his great relief, her mother didn't open the door. And to his great disappointment, Scarlett didn't open the door either. Nobody opened the door. Maybe they couldn't hear him. Tristan looked for a doorbell to ring, but couldn't find one. Well, maybe that would be a pretty damn stupid idea anyway. Maybe ringing the doorbell at twelve a.m. was one of the dumbest things to do when he was trying to have a civil conversation with a girl. Then again, maybe trying to have a civilized tête-à-tête with a girl at midnight wasn't the brightest crayon in the box either. But, as he had thought earlier, he had spent too much time here to back down and leave without trying to get through to Scarlett and defend his case—though Tristan really didn't know what he was defending. He had never done anything mean towards Scarlett, so he didn't know why she hated him. But that was why he was here. He wanted to find out. Well, actually there were two things that he wanted to find out: A: he wanted to know why Scarlett despised him so much; what he had apparently done to her in the past, and B: what she had been hiding from him on Friday.

Their first, short conversation popped back in his head again for about the fifteenth time:

"
No, sorry, I have to go...somewhere this weekend," she had said.

"
Where?" he had asked.

"
Somewhere. Now, I have to go..."

Where had she been going that she had stood up the most popular, most sought after guy at school? Her rejection only made him want to talk to her more.

Finally Tristan gave up on entering through the front door. He circled back around to the front of the house in the yard. He looked up and saw the television on in one of the windows on the second story of the house. He only hoped that this wasn't Scarlett's mother's room. Well, he had to take his chances.

He looked around the not-so-perfectly manicured lawn and found just what he needed: a small, little, unkempt garden that had a few flowers and a lot of weeds growing out of it. But that wasn't what he was interested in. He saw a bunch of small pebbles lying scattered around the dirt of the garden. Perfect. He smiled to himself as he walked over to the garden and picked up a few of the pebbles. These would make a perfect object to tap at the window and get the attention of whoever was up there. Scarlett or her mother.

It was just a good thing that he was perfect at aim. Thank God for being a quarterback on the varsity football team. He looked at the small, round rock in his hand and then back up the window. He brought his arm back with the rock firmly in his fingers and then swung, releasing the rock just at the right time and height to hit the window square in the middle of the pane of glass. Yes! He had made the perfect shot. It was loud and hard, but not hard enough to actually break the glass. He didn't want to end up paying for a new window. That would cut into his money for college.

He waited a few minutes, hoping that someone would open the window and let him inside. It was beginning to get really cold out here. And the wind wasn't helping all that much with the lack of a jacket. Man, he wished that he had on his leather jacket. He never got cold in that thing. When no one opened the window, he threw another rock at the window and waited for a full five minutes before he began throwing rock after rock, just hoping that someone would eventually wake up and let him inside.

And then after about the sixth rock that he had perfectly aimed at the window had flown up there and made contact with its target, the window opened, but Tristan couldn't stop his already winding arm as the seventh rock soared up at the window and hit the person right in middle of the forehead.

"Shit," Tristan whispered as he heard a small yelp escape the lips of the girl he had hit. The small noise gave Tristan just enough sound and pitch for him to recognize his classmate, Scarlett White. He had hit her exactly on the head. Oh, God, this was not the way he had planned for this night to go. Actually this entire day had gone completely wrong. And then he heard something that he had been dreading as soon as the rock made contact with her head. A loud bump as her body hit the floor. But then there were two loud bangs as if her body had hit another hard object and then bounced onto the floor. What was worse was when she didn't get back up.

Oh, God.

He didn't know what had happened. He couldn't believe he had just done what he had. Why had he done it again? Why did he
need
to talk to her right now? Why couldn't he wait until tomorrow morning again? What had he been thinking again? Oh right, he hadn't been thinking at all. The entire idea of throwing pebbles at Scarlett's window was completely and utterly stupid.

Tristan was stuck to the spot in the middle of the front lawn for a quarter of a second and then he began to run. He didn't care if her mother was sleeping. He didn't care if what he was about to do was breaking and entering. He was breaking and entering for a good reason. There was an unconscious girl upstairs, and nobody knew that she was up there losing blood at this very moment except Tristan, so he felt obligated to break into her house and rescue her.

Tristan only hoped that when he revived Scarlett, she wouldn't remember anything about how she had gotten there. He hoped that this night wouldn't make her hate him even more. He had only been throwing rocks up at the window because he wanted to clear things up with her, not because he wanted to knock her out cold by hitting her in the head with the rocks from her garden.

Tristan ran up to the front door and began banging on it with his shoulders, alternating between his right and left shoulder, so he wouldn't be too weak for the next football game, but he soon realized that this wasn't going to work. The door was too strong and thick for him to bust it open with only his body. He was strong, but obviously not that strong. Then he saw a side pane that was constructed fully of glass.
Well,
Tristan thought,
let's just hope that they don't have an alarm system built in.

Tristan brought his fist back and quickly punched the glass. Some of the glass cut into Tristan's knuckles, but he ignored the little bit of pain. He reached his hand into the broken glass pane and carefully unlocked the front door and opened it. He quietly, yet quickly, entered the front hall and passed through the living room. He heard a process of alternating breathing and snoring and turned to look at a passed out woman lying sprawled on the couch. Her mouth was hanging open with a little bit of saliva dripping down her lips. Tristan concluded that this must be Scarlett mother, but didn't stay long enough to find out because he ran up the stairs and found the room that had the window which he had been throwing pebbles at in order to wake someone up. He still couldn't believe how stupid he had been, but again he didn't have enough time to think about his rash and unthinking actions.

And that was when he saw her. She was lying on the floor with her scarlet curls flayed around her head. Her eyes were gently shut, and her thick eyelashes fluttered against her cheekbones. Tristan would have thought she looked adorable sleeping, but she wasn't sleeping. She was completely unconscious on the floor. And what scared him the most was the long cut on her forehead where blood was dripping down her head and landing on the floor.

Chapter Seven

Oh, shit!
was
the only thought that ran through Tristan's mind as he looked at the motionless form on the ground. In any other case, Tristan would have thought Scarlett looked hot. She was wearing a pretty tight T-shirt with the Plain White T's on it and short, black, cotton, Sophie shorts. But right now was not the time to be looking at a girl's body. Right now was time to take action, but Tristan couldn't make his feet move any farther. He was stuck to the spot with shock. Tristan stood immobile, glued to the spot with fright, as he looked down at Scarlett who was completely unmoving on the floor. Other than the occasional movement of her chest, Tristan could see nothing that would notify him that she was okay. She wasn't moving. Her eyes were still. Only her slow breathing made Tristan's chest loosen just a little bit with relief. But then he spotted the blood pooling around her head and became frantic again.

What do I do? What the hell do I do?
Tristan thought frantically. He knew the fall shouldn't have killed Scarlett, but it had probably injured her. Worst case scenario was that she would have amnesia. Best case scenario was that she would walk out of this with only the small cut on her forehead to remind her that this had happened.

Finally his feet began to move as if not by his own accord. He quickly walked up to Scarlett's body and bent down to examine the damage. She had lost some blood, but not too much. He had to do something. But what was he supposed to do? He needed to slow the blood that she was losing. He needed to put pressure on it. The cut wasn't too deep. He hadn't thrown the rock hard enough to cause any serious damage. He had only thrown the pebble lightly mainly because he hadn't wanted to break the window. He still couldn't believe that he had actually hit her in the first place. What had he been thinking again when he had decided to throw rocks at her window again? When had he decided to play Romeo in a super clichéd reenactment of 'Romeo and Juliet'?