Shark Bait (The Grab Your Pole Series) (3 page)

“Oh. Yeah, hi. My name’s Paul,” he said awkwardly.

He looked embarrassed and then his face flushed even brighter when someone over by “the blue stage” yelled, “Hey new girl! Be careful, Paulitis is contagious!” and a new chorus of vicious laughter spewed forth.

I was trying to screw up my courage to holler some suitable profanity mixed with a nice string of one hundred dollar words from my extensive vocabulary at the offending crowd, but I should’ve heeded their warning instead. As we shuffled ahead, I hooked the toe of one of my sandals on a crack in the pavement and pitched forward. I would’ve for sure done a very graceful faceplant but a hand firmly grabbed my arm to keep me from flying to the ground. I was so grateful to him that I was about to throw my arms around Paul’s neck and hug him in front of God and everyone—including the disdainful gaggle of teens that would condemn me to the bottom of the social barrel for sure if I did. I turned to face him and realized with a sizzling jolt of over-active and under-used hormones, it wasn’t Paul who was deserving of my intended, full-body expression of thanks.

WHOA.
Insert choice expletive here_____, because I got nothin’. In fact, I consciously told myself to close my mouth and then I surreptitiously checked my chin for slobber.

“Hey Paul, you forgot this back there,” the most gorgeous real-life guy I’ve ever seen in all my fifteen years and nine months of life said, brushing against me and causing my skin to tingle as he handed a beat up Isaac Asimov paperback to Paul. Honestly, I imagine that’s what a lightning rod might feel like when it’s struck.

I’m gonna take a minute here because you seriously need to understand how magnificent this guy is. He’s tall—like probably
at least
6’2”—super tan, and he has sort of long, sun-streaked, light brown hair that’s kind of a layered mess, so I’m thinking surfer right about now. This makes sense because he’s got a ridiculously powerful physique, but not bulky like a football player’s. His chest is really wide and he has well defined arm muscles. And just so you know, I can totally see the outline of his pecs and six-pack abs through his supremely well-fitted H
2
O Polo team t-shirt. To top it off, he’s got these amazing, sparkling, cerulean blue eyes that are fringed with thick lashes. Truthfully, I’ve never seen blue eyes like his. I mean he’s
YU-UM-MY!

“Hey, thanks Tristan,” Paul said, shoving the book under his arm and looking around us to see if he’d dropped anything else.

“No problem, man,” Tristan (OMG!) called over his shoulder as he casually walked away from us, going up and over the blue stage, across the lawn, down a ramp to the lower quad, and out of my most-excellent boy stalking sight.

Other than keeping me from falling, Tristan completely ignored me. But I’m good with that, because hey! He touched me!! I’m chanting that and doing a happy dance in my head when I suddenly thought; damn. Now I really wish Jillian were here. She’s totally the go-to girl if you need some reconnaissance done. Since she’s not, I’m obviously going to have to fend for myself. So, I focused the kaleidoscope of my Tristan tunnel vision enough to take note of the fact that he waved a lot and called out a bunch of “Heys” to people before he disappeared. No one razzed him when he helped me either, or even when he was talking to Paul.

Hmmm…a smokin’ hot guy who’s both popular
and
nice? When I get home I think I’ll check the weather channel to see if they’re ice-skating in Hell. In the meantime, I decided to walk with Paul a bit further and tried my best to covertly learn information about Tristan without sounding like a complete lovesick puppy.

“That was pretty cool of him...you know, returning your book and stopping me from falling and everything,” I said as an opener.

“Who? Tristan?” Paul asked, looking at me like I was from outer space.

Hellooo? Alien life form to Paul... YES, Tristan! Did you see anyone else save me from being completely mortified? I didn’t. I also noticed you didn’t help me either. Thanks for that by the way. “Yeah, whatever his name is,” I answered, inwardly rolling my eyes with my sorry attempt at nonchalance.

“Oh. Yeah, he’s okay I guess. He can be real jerk sometimes though,” he said absently. I was getting the feeling Paul was really uncomfortable talking to a girl. His eyes kept darting all over the place like he was trying to avoid looking at my face.

“What do you mean, a jerk in what way?” Damn it, I am
not
going to let my only source of Tristan Trivia get out of dishing up some goods that easy—Jillian would never let me live it down if I did.

“I dunno. He’s usually pretty cool to me, but only because we’re cousins.”

Oooh…jackpot! I have a
blood
relative to pump for information. “That’s the only reason he’s nice to you? That sucks.” Just as I suspected...Hell is still warm and toasty.

“Well, I guess he’s not bad if he’s on his own or if you’re a girl… I just don’t like his friends and the popular crowd he hangs with. Most of them are real assholes,” he explained, still looking around.

“Are you guys the same age?” I’m thinking, jeez Paul, you’re like Fort Knox with the info, buddy. Then I thought it might be my dreadful lack of skill in giving the third degree with subtlety. I also mentally thanked my dad for not providing a Y chromosome in the making of me.

“No, I’m older. He’s a junior,” Paul returned with a modicum of smug self-pride. His eyes lit up when a kid with red hair, who’s wearing—I’m so not kidding about this—a pocket protector in his plaid button-up shirt, came running towards us. “Hey, I gotta go. Eric and I gotta go over some homework and the bell is gonna ring any time. See ya around,” he said and took off at a trot towards the P.P.P.K.—Plaid Pocket Protector Kid, otherwise known as Eric.

Well alrighty then. At least I got some kind of information out of the vault that is Paul. Tristan, my beloved, is a junior, which, I’m afraid, puts him firmly out of reach for me. I think. I don’t actually know for sure, I’m just guessing. Add this to the rapidly growing list of things I’ve never had to be concerned with before.

I sighed and headed into my first class of the day. Much to my substantial disgust, it’s geometry. That damned bell went off just as I walked through the door and what did I do? Yes, that’s right…I squeaked, and jumped about two feet off the ground. I dropped my backpack, too, which made a loud
thunk!
sound and caused about thirty heads to snap around to stare and snicker at me. Fabulous. While I’m at it, I might as well resign myself to having been inflicted with “Paulitis.” I wonder if the school nurse can inoculate me with a shot or something so I don’t catch any other social disease.

After calling the much-evil kind of attention to myself in geometry, I made it through the rest of my first four classes without incident, happy to discover my new illness apparently runs its course rather rapidly—I’m thinking it probably needs constant exposure to cause permanent damage. I even made plans to meet up with a girl named Michele and some of her friends at lunch. She seems nice and is in my second period history class as well as my fourth period biology class. And although Michele’s moving to Sacramento next month, I was excited about having made a friend on my first day. I was patting myself on the back for that and looking forward to the thirty-minute parole for food when I walked into my honors English class early. I stuttered to a stop and looked around, thinking I had the wrong cellblock (whoops, I meant to say “room”) because big, overstuffed pillows in five distinct groups were in place of desks. Thank God I’m early because if I’m in the wrong place, I want ample time to find where I should be…I can
not
be late to an AP class. That would reflect really poorly on me.

“Excuse me. Hello, I’m Cameron Ramsey. Is this Mrs. Henderson’s AP English class?” I politely asked the teacher. She’s an older woman with a kind and gentle face, and although her gray hair was pinned up in a bun, wild strands had come loose, as if they refuse to be tamed by something so prim and proper. I immediately liked her.

“Yes it is. I’ve heard wonderful things about you and it’s a pleasure to have you join us. Do you like Cameron or do you prefer being called something else? Oh and please call me Dora. I don’t care to stand on ceremony in my class,” she said with warm sincerity.

“Oh, okay. Thank you. Um, I don’t mind Cameron, but everyone usually calls me Camie.” How very cool is she?!

“Alright, Camie it is. I have you in a group over here... That makes the last gathering a nice even number. As with ceremony, I don’t care for groups of three...someone always gets inadvertently left out,” she told me as she led me over to a group of pillows against the wall facing the door. Occupying one of the pillows already was a really pretty blonde girl with gorgeous green eyes who was wearing sunglasses on the top of her head and her hair in a ponytail. When she finished rifling through her backpack and looked up, Mrs. Henderson briefly introduced us. “Kate, this is Camie. She’ll be joining you and the boys. Please be kind enough to let her follow along in your book until I can dig up another copy.”

“Hi Camie. I’m sorry Dora, I must’ve left my book at home so we’ll both have to share,” Kate told the teacher like being unprepared for class was no biggie.

“Alright, the boys should be here soon, maybe they’ll have remembered to bring theirs,” Mrs. Henderson responded, unperturbed.

What the heck? This
is
a college-prep class, isn’t it? I mean I imagined this would be a more rigorous course, but as I considered the unexpected carefree atmosphere, I thought maybe I was wrong. I plunked down next to Kate as the rest of the room’s cushions were quickly occupied, and just when that godforsaken bell rang, “the boys” sauntered through the doorway, laughing, and coincidentally, making the phrase
Holy fucking shit!
instantly leap to my mind.

Yeah, yeah. I know I said I don’t swear and I seem to be doing it a lot today, but cut me some slack…I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. And you SO have to give me this one, because Tristan—
MY
Tristan—was one of “the boys” and he was headed straight towards me.

“Hey Katy, who’s your friend?” The—
not
My Tristan—guy inquired.

Still chuckling about whatever he and his friend had been previously laughing about, Tristan essentially ignored me again,
but
, the other guy, who I could kiss for doing this and who’s also pretty darn cute, sat down next to Kate;
which
means
…my future husband had to sit on the pillow next to me! Mental happy dancing ensues…

“Jeff, this is Camie. She’s new and you know how much it’s been bugging Mrs. Henderson that we have three people in our group, so, we get her,” Kate told him in a round about way of introducing me.

“New, huh? I don’t remember seeing a new girl on the roster during my office-aid hour this morning,” Jeff said more to Kate than to me.

I was kind of getting tired of being treated like I’m invisible so I spoke up and said, “I am new, but my full name is Cameron.”

“Ah…okay. You’re a sophomore, right? I thought you were a guy,” he said and laughed at his mistaken assumption about my gender.

Tristan’s ears pricked up when he heard sophomore and he quickly looked me over before laughing about the guy comment and going back to studiously ignoring me.
Oh, be still my beating heart...
I thought to myself in my best sarcastic southern belle impersonation, feeling annoyed. “Yeah, unfortunately I get that a lot,” I said with a touch of attitude.

I really like my name, but I hate when people don’t take the time to notice that I AM A GIRL!! I’m even bulging out of my 34B cup to prove it! Anyway, you can imagine I’m not all that enamored of “Dear Jeff” anymore. And okay, so I’m not feeling the love from Tristan right now either. Maybe he’s just shy? Yeah, let’s go with that.

“Yeah, I bet. At least you don’t
look
anything like a guy…or a sophomore,” Jeff said with a flirtatious grin, his eyes focusing on my boobs a moment longer than they should have.

That’s better, I thought, assuming the ogling was either meant to be an apology or a compliment. Beggars can’t be choosers and I’ll take it either way.

Kate slapped his arm and in a tone that sounded like she was scolding an errant child, she said, “Quit being an ass.” That behavior and the physical similarities between the two had an idea forming in my head, but listening to their conversation proved more interesting and therefore I gave my full attention to it. “Do you have your book? I can’t find mine and Mrs. Henderson still has to get one for Camie.”

“Uh-uh. Besides, I’m not staying. Hey Trist, I’m outta here but that chick, Teresa, wanted me to give you her number again…she thinks you lost it. See ya at practice,” Jeff said and leaned across Kate and me to throw a folded piece of paper at Tristan. Then he got to his feet as a messenger handed a yellow slip to Mrs. Henderson.

“Man, you’re such a douchebag,” Tristan told him, crumpling up the note and throwing it back.

The gods must be in one fantabulous mood, because that blessed piece of paper then bounced off Jeff and landed right on the other side of little ol’ me. I couldn’t even dream up everything that happened next. Oh and Jeff—bless his heart—is now back in my good graces. Here’s why:

Jeff deviously grinned at Tristan and waggled his eyebrows in suggestion, like he was insinuating that either the placement of the note, or the information contained therein gave Tristan some sort of much-desired opportunity. Then he left us to make his approach to the teacher’s desk.

“Is he ditching the rest of the day?” Kate asked Tristan across me with a look of irritation on her face.

“I guess, but if he gets caught again, he’s gonna get booted off the polo team,” Tristan answered as he put his hand on my bare knee and leaned across my lap to pick up the wrinkled paper. YES!! Although I
am
hyperventilating now...

“Well-uh! You’re the team captain and his best friend…
you
should be talking him out of doing this crap,” she said, like she was charging Tristan with criminal negligence while at the same time, watching him carefully.