Chapter Eight Summer
Chapter Eight
Summer
He’s already shown me all my other classrooms for the day. It’s unlikely that I’m going to remember how to get to them, but I have a little better understanding of the layout of the school.
When I hesitate, Rowan quirks a brow.
“Come on, Lindsey. It won’t be so bad.” He steps into the room, and I clutch my notebook to my chest and follow him into my first period class.
“Rowan!” someone calls from the back of the room.
I’m staring straight ahead and not looking around at my classmates, but I can see people waving and looking at him as we pass. He goes all the way to the last row and takes a seat. I finally glance up at one of the twins. He smiles back at me.
“Summer, right?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Eli.” He leans back in his chair and kicks one foot out and keeps grinning at me.
Rowan takes the seat next to him, and I take the one in front of Rowan. I don’t look at anyone else, but I can feel their stares. I have a big ole “New Kid” sign taped to my forehead.
“Hello, everyone. Welcome. Find a seat and we’ll get started shortly.” The teacher greets us as the time on the clock above his desk indicates one minute until the hour.
It’s then that I finally let myself look up from my notebook, just in time to see Amanda and Sophie walk into the room.
Amanda’s expression tells me everything about how she feels seeing me here.
She might have started including me at practice, but I’ve been under no illusion that we were going to be friends. This pretty much confirms it.
My stomach sinks as she looks away and takes a seat in the front row. Sophie’s mouth pulls into a tight line as she pauses, looking right at me, then sits beside her friend.
The air around me is thick with tension. I glance down at my mood ring, unsurprised to find it a mixture of green and blue. Confused and anxious. That sums it up nicely.
I have no idea why Amanda insists on hating me so much.
Does she really think I’m going to give my old teammates all the Frost Lake strategies and set plays?
And even if I did, would it really matter?
So much of soccer comes down to skills and decisions during the game.
One opportunity leads to another and another.
Or the same thing for mistakes. One mistake can cost a possession and then a goal.
You can only plan so much. She knows that as well as I do.
Mr. Hayes is talking and I’ve blanked out. Great way to start the new academic year. He grabs a stack of papers off his desk and hands them to the people sitting at the front of each row. The papers move back as he continues to go over what the class will cover this semester.
The papers stop three seats in front of me when the guy looks back and realizes the seat is empty.
There’s no one in front or on either side of me. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but it feels as if everyone is giving me a wide berth.
My face heats. The last thing I want to do is draw attention to myself by raising my hand, but I need a paper. Ugh.
I start to lift my right arm at the same time Rowan taps me on the shoulder. I swivel around and he’s holding out a paper to me. Relief washes over me.
“Thanks,” I whisper and turn back around.
“Mr. Hayes, I didn’t get one,” Rowan calls from behind me.
I glance back and he winks.
The rest of the class goes by without incident. Mr. Hayes is a fun teacher. He cracks jokes and doesn’t mind when people talk without raising their hands. I don’t add to the conversation, but the jovial mood around me loosens up some of the nerves I’m feeling.
When the bell rings, I let everyone else head for the door first. Rowan takes his time, lingering with me.
“You survived,” he says. His notebook is tucked in his hand at his side. He is the picture of casual, academic indifference.
“Barely.”
“Do you remember where your anatomy class is for next period?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, far more confidently than I feel.
“Are you just saying that so I won’t be tempted to walk with you across school?”
“What? No.”
He narrows his gaze and his smile pulls wider. An unexpected laugh leaves my lips.
“Good, because I’m going the opposite direction,” he says.
We stop outside the classroom, off to one side of the busy hallway.
“I’m not going to thank you again,” I say to him. He keeps saving me. It’s starting to feel redundant.
“Not necessary. I like being your Frost Lake High tour guide.” He takes a step away. “See you at lunch?”
“Yeah.” I nod, then turn in a half circle trying to get my bearings.
Rowan fights a laugh, then points in the direction I need to go. I lift a hand in a wave and then head off, hopefully toward my second period.
* * *
Anatomy has a completely different vibe than my first class. Mrs. Gideon is like seventy years old and talks quietly and in a monotone voice as she reads the syllabus word for word.
My third period is literature and composition. It’s a small class of about thirteen people, including MJ. We have assigned seats and aren’t together, but knowing she’s here puts me at ease.
Next is lunch. MJ walks with me and I drop off my stuff at my locker, then we do the same at hers.
“Fair warning that most of the food is terrible,” she says as we get in the back of the line.
“I’m not very hungry anyway,” I admit.
It’s the same sort of stations we had at Oakley. A salad bar, hot food—which today is a choice of hamburger or veggie burger with soggy-looking fries, and then a variety of purchase options like chips or cookies. I grab a veggie burger and fries and snag a bag of Doritos for later.
“Most of the soccer girls sit together,” MJ says once we have our trays of food.
She leads the way as I’m wondering what the Oakley lunchroom looks like this year.
I text with Charlotte and Jill every day, but we haven’t had a chance to really talk.
I bet they’re sitting together right now.
What I wouldn’t give to be there with them.
The table is right next to a table filled with boys’ soccer players. Not surprising, but I’m still startled to see Rowan again. He waves, and I smile despite myself. He’s kind of impossible not to like—and I should know because I’m trying my best to dislike him.
MJ sets her tray down and tells people to scoot to make room for me.
“Hi,” I say tentatively as I slide into the bench seat. Across from me are two juniors, Posey and Regina. And to their left, Amanda and Sophie.
The table is already filled with chatter.
MJ joins their conversation in that effortless way only she seems to do.
Girl cliques are tricky. Most of the girls on the team have one or two friends they stick to.
Everyone except MJ. She bounces from person to person and gets along with everyone.
She’s a little like Rowan in that regard.
I look over to his table. He’s sitting with Vaughn and Austin, plus their girlfriends, and either Eli or Eddie. I still can’t tell them apart.
Rowan looks up like he can feel me staring at him. He says something to Vaughn next to him as he stands and then he’s coming my way. He sets his tray down next to mine.
“Are you eating for two?” I ask, eyeing up the extra servings. Two hamburgers, lots of fries, two bags of chips, and a cookie.
He lets out a laugh as he sits. “The lunch ladies love me.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” I ask with an eye roll.
We’re close, his arm and leg brushing against mine, as he settles in next to me.
“How were the rest of your classes this morning?” he asks.
“Fine. Yours?”
“Good. Or, you know, as good as school gets.” He opens a second chocolate milk carton on his tray.
It’s unnerving having him this close. He’s so comfortable in his skin. Or maybe it’s just that all of this is new for me, but he’s known this place and these people for years.
“I like your rings,” he says as I try one of the fries. It’s as cold and soggy as it looked.
“Thanks.”
I flex my fingers out in front of me and try to see them like he does.
My mood ring on my left pointer finger, a gold band on my left thumb, a pink heart on my right middle finger that Charlotte got me and Jill last year for Christmas, another gold band—this one smaller—on my right ring finger, and an S ring on my pinky finger.
“Are you going to Rieger’s party tonight?”
I drop my hands back to the table. “Who is Rieger?”
Rowan sits tall and glances around the lunchroom. “Mariah Rieger. She’s a senior basketball player. I don’t see her, but she’s great. You’ll like her.”
I nod. The problem, in general, isn’t that I won’t like her. It’s that people aren’t really liking me so far.
“So you’re going?”
“Probably not.”
“Why not? Everyone will be there.”
“Not if I don’t go.” Although I doubt I’m considered “everyone” by most people’s standards.
“You should at least stop by and say hi.”
“I guess that means you’re going.”
“Rowan never misses a party,” Amanda says from my right side. The conversation at the table has died off without me realizing it, and everyone is looking at me and Rowan.
“That’s true,” he says, but I feel the shift in him. He’s tensed up under Amanda’s scrutiny.
“You should come, Summer.” Amanda smiles at me so genuinely—or at least it appears that way.
“Yeah, maybe.”
She stands with her tray, still aiming that smile at me. “See you at practice.”
She leaves, followed quickly by Sophie.
“Yikes,” MJ mutters under her breath. “That was awkward.”
“Awkward?” I ask in reply. She seemed…nice.
MJ tips her head to the left, her gaze darting toward Rowan.
It’s only then I realize Amanda totally snubbed Rowan. Oh god. It hadn’t even occurred to me. No wonder he came over here to sit. He was probably hoping she’d talk to him, and instead she ignored him.
When I look over at him, he’s staring down at his lunch. A pang of pity hits me square in the chest. For a guy who looks so happy and carefree 99 percent of the time, the moments he doesn’t are hard to witness.
“Are you okay?” I ask him as conversation around the table picks up again.