Chapter Ten Julia
CHAPTER TEN
“I don’t trust anyone who eats while wearing white. That kind of arrogance is annoying as fuck.”
—Remington
Julia
“Is that text from Damion?”
Damion the Evil, who’s making my head want to explode?
Yes!
I looked up from my phone to see Jasmine and Donovan standing in front of my locker, watching me with matching smirks on their faces.
“Um…”
I didn’t really know what to say. They seemed nice, but could I trust them?
With no other choice, I responded, “It is, but I have no idea how he got my number; I swear I didn’t give it to him.”
“It’s Damion Rutledge,” Jasmine said. “If he wants something, he gets it.”
Is that his motto or something?
“Really?” I hated that I wanted to know more about what he was like. I was positive the truth would make me trust him even less than I already did, but everyone’s attitude about him made me curious. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“Just that he’s one of those guys who, like, lives by his own rules,” she said, as if that explained it.
“Yeah,” Donovan agreed with a nod. “We’ve all gone to school with him since kindergarten, so we know him, but he’s still got this mysterious thing about him. You can’t ever be sure what he’s going to do or say.”
“So does he get into a lot of trouble?” I asked, not wanting to seem too interested but feeling like I needed to know whether or not he came with a warning.
“I mean, he’s gotten into trouble, sure, but he’s not really considered trouble, if you know what I mean,” she said. “He used to get in the occasional fight, and most people think of him as a rebel, but he also comes from a good family and gets good grades. It’s more of an attitude thing.”
I had no idea what any of that meant.
How bad is he—how bad??
“Are you interested?” Jasmine asked, crossing her arms and tilting her head. “In Damion? Because he usually doesn’t date girls from Gardenwood, so the fact that he’s talking to you and showed up at your house on your first day has everyone fascinated.”
Nooooo.
The last thing I needed was attention like this.
Talk about a nightmare.
The only thing worse would be people knowing I desperately needed their rebellious boy to help me with my abysmal math skills.
“I mean, I don’t even know the guy—”
“Oh my God, what if he asks you to the season?” Donovan said in a squeal.
“Damion would never do the season,” Jasmine said, shaking her head. “That is so something he would mock.”
I said, “What exactly is the—”
“But his mom’s in charge of planning this year, and he’s a senior,” Donovan said to Jasmine. “So you never know. His parents might make him.”
“Ooh, true,” Jasmine said, looking excited by the thought. “I’d do anything Quinn Rutledge said—he’s got that stern-daddy thing about him.”
Donovan made a face and said, “Gross.”
“Is the season like homecoming?” I asked. “Like a prom kind of thing?”
“Oh, you sweet summer child from a foreign land, this is absolutely not like homecoming,” Jasmine said with a laugh. “It’s more like prom on crack.”
“Times a thousand,” Donovan added. “Think of the Met Gala and a slew of pre-parties leading up to it, and you’re closer to the truth.”
“Are you serious?”
That sounds insane.
“The ball is on Halloween night, and it’s the most formal of all balls,” Jasmine said. “It’s magical.”
“Imagine being whisked away to the gala by someone wild and unpredictable like Damion Rutledge,” Donovan said with a smile. “I’ve got butterflies just thinking about it.”
“Dear God,” Jasmine said with a giggle. “That is a dizzying thought.”
“Dizzying” and “unpredictable” were far better words than “magical.”
Because the idea of a magically romantic event with a guy—any guy whatsoever—sounded completely nauseating to me.
Seriously.
The one thing Will had taught me was that no matter how solid or trustworthy a dude might seem, the simple truth was that that he wasn’t.
Trustworthy.
No one was worthy of romantic trust.
NO ONE.
Because if Will Malone, the boy I’d known and loved since the fifth grade, my first kiss and first dance and the guy who’d cried actual tears when I had appendicitis sophomore year, was capable of waking up one day and deciding he wanted to rip out my heart, every single human male was also capable of the same violence.
And I wanted no part of that ever again.
So these girls might see Damion as someone hot and mysterious, but I only saw him as a guy.
And I had zero interest in those anymore.
Add to that fact that Damion was an enormous jerk, and all he became was a very attractive means to an end.
My evil tutor.
“Well, I barely know him,” I said dismissively, wanting to shut down any ideas they might have about me and Damion and the season.
It was one thing to let them assume he might be interested in me, but it was another thing altogether to let them think the season was a possibility for us. “So I’m not dizzy at all.”
I was still reeling from the bizarre day at school when my brother and I walked into the kitchen and things got even more strange.
“What exactly is going on here?” Liam said as he stopped short to stare at the scene in front of us.
I nearly ran into his back when he froze, but I totally understood his inability to move forward as I stared in disbelief.
My parents looked ridiculous.
My father was wearing white shorts with a white polo neatly tucked into them, he had the cleanest white sneakers I’d ever seen on his huge feet, and there was a white baseball cap on top of his head as he stood in front of the sink, doing a dance move that might’ve been the Charleston.
As if this weren’t strange enough on its own, my mother stood on the other side of the room, also fully clad in white from head to toe.
A white sweater, white pleated skort, white sneakers—she was all in on the whites, and Bernard appeared to be tying a white ribbon around her low ponytail while she hummed whatever song my dad was dancing to.
“Did aliens abduct my parents and they’re trying to fool us with replacements?” Liam asked as he went straight for the fridge. “Because no one who has ever met Clint and Shawna will believe that this is them.”
“Right?” my dad said with a laugh, pointing to his waist as he stopped jamming. “I’m wearing a belt with shorts, so life doesn’t make sense anymore. I told you I look ridiculous, Bernard.”
“You look exactly the way you are supposed to look, Mr. Lowell,” Bernard said with a calm smile, unfazed. “Distinguished.”
“Like a cotton ball,” Liam added. “Or a very distinguished Q-tip.”
“What is happening here with the whites?” I asked, scooping up Clank.
“We are now officially members of the Gardenwood Athletic Club,” my mom said, sounding in awe of that fact. “I actually had a tennis lesson today, and your dad worked on his putts with the golf pro.”
“Grab me a pop,” I said to my brother, then asked my mom, “Did you like it? The indoor golf and tennis?”
Golf and tennis weren’t things my parents had ever really been involved in. Like, my dad golfed occasionally in outings with friends, but he didn’t do it with any athletic intentionality.
He was a Busch Light kind of golfer, in it for the beer, not the birdies.
“I actually did,” my mom said, sounding downright perky. “And I met a couple of ladies from the PTA who were surprisingly nice and are going to be working on the ball planning with me.”
“Ball planning?” Now my mind was good and truly blown. My incredibly practical mother was involved in this ball nonsense? “Are you talking about the season, Ma?”
She nodded and looked excited. “It’s so over-the-top I can’t even believe I get to help organize it.”
What is happening to my life?
“These ladies’ faces were pulled really tight, so I don’t trust them further than I can throw ’em,” my dad added.
Which made my mom giggle. “Just because they don’t age doesn’t mean they aren’t good people.”
“I didn’t say they aren’t good people. I said I don’t trust them,” he said. “The guys I met on the putting greens were the same way. Nice enough, but smelling too much of cologne and hair product to be trustable.”
I wanted to mock him, but somehow that seemed like maybe a decent way to filter trustability.
“How was school today?” my mom asked.
Awful, terrible, the stuff of nightmares.
The whole everyone thinks I’m talking to Damion thing had me feeling very unsettled. Coco and the Skins—good band name—definitely hadn’t seem pleased.
“Good,” Liam said, tossing a can of Diet Coke to me before grabbing the box of leftover pizza slices and carrying it over to the table. “Classes are good, people are good, everyone thinks Jules is being chased by some guy named Damion—all good.”
LIAM!
“What?” my mom said on a gasp, as if the idea of a boy being interested in me was downright impossible to believe. Her eyes were huge when she asked, “Is this true, honey? Who is Damion?”
My parents had been concerned about my unwillingness to move on after the whole Will thing, so needless to say, she looked thrilled by the news.
Also, she said the name “Damion” with a breathlessness, as if it held magical possibilities or something.
“Yeah, who is this besotted student,” my dad said, looking down at his belt and adjusting the tiny buckle, “and do I need to show him my gun collection?”
I rolled my eyes. “I doubt he’s going to be scared off by your collection of Revolutionary War–era weaponry, so definitely no, and also they’re wrong. He’s not chasing me; he’s my tutor.”
“Oh, that’s the tutor’s name—Damion,” my mom said, her breezy words belying her eyes as they narrowed thoughtfully on my face. “It’s still going well?”
“Yep.” I nodded. “It’s fine so far, but no one knows he’s my tutor because of the confidentiality thing, so that’s why people are assuming he’s into me.”
“Well, that’s nice,” she said. “That it’s discreet. Not that there’s anything wrong with having a tutor.”
“No, I know,” I said with an eye roll. “It’s fine.”
But I felt the eyes of the kitchen upon me all of a sudden, and I wondered if everyone in the room was thinking about the tutor and wondering if there was any shot of him succeeding.
After the first meeting with Mr. Green, my parents and Bernard reassured me my test scores weren’t going to jeopardize our fortune.
But I didn’t believe them.
Because something in my dad’s expression when I mentioned it, the way he hadn’t quite met my eyes, made me think it worried him, too.
Did I actually have the power to ruin the dream for all of us?