Last Stand Read online

  Last Stand

  Niki Burnham

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  About the Author

  Also by Niki Burnham

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  I am, without a doubt, the luckiest guy in the entire West Rollins High School junior class. Here’s why:

  I have (almost) talked my parents into ponying up half the cost of a car.

  I made the cross country team.

  I have an extremely gorgeous girlfriend, Amber.

  She is also stacked.

  She’s totally into me, quirks and all.

  I have a shot at becoming first chair sax, which means I’d look straight across the room at the first chair clarinet…who is almost certainly going to be Amber.

  I scored Mr. Daniels for Chemistry. Hello, easy A.

  Of course, such a list requires clarification. First, I realize that for many people, making a sports team is a given. Not for me. Because participation in sports furthers my quest to maintain a bare minimum level of social acceptance—a tough thing when you’re the class brain—this is an event that causes great frivolity and rejoicing. When no one is watching, of course.

  And on the “stacked” thing? Yes, I understand it’s a totally sexist thing to say. So shoot me. They’re THERE. No one—male or female—can help but notice. If I were truly sexist, I’d have put it first on the list.

  I met Amber DeWitt in kindergarten when we were at the same station—the water balloon toss—on field day. I didn’t really notice her, but she claims that I told her I thought her striped shoelaces were cool. I’m not so sure. If I did, it would’ve been because she specifically asked me what I thought. Spontaneously complimenting a girl on her shoelaces isn’t something I’d do. Plus, we’re talking kindergarten. No way was I more interested in some girl’s shoelaces than in the chance to lob water balloons with no repercussions.

  The first day I do remember Amber clearly was in second grade. I was at Britton Field, waiting for my Little League game to start. She was sitting in the bleachers watching the end of her younger brother’s T-ball game. She hopped off the bleachers, walked over, and leaned against the fence with a hand on her hip, watching me and my friends toss the ball around in the grassy area outside the left field fence. She had one side of her face all squinched up and her eye was closed.

  I asked her if she had something stuck in her eye and wanted us to go find her mom or something. She had bruises on her legs and a couple of scabs like she’d fallen off her bike, so I figured she was a klutz and did something to herself climbing off the bleachers and was standing there hoping we’d get a grownup to help her with her current injury.

  Her face went red. She stopped doing the squinchy thing and mumbled that she was fine. A minute later, she went back to the bleachers and left us alone. I chalked it up to weird girl behavior and didn’t think about it again.

  Last year, after we’d been together for about seven months and we were sitting in those same bleachers watching her little brother playing shortstop on his traveling team, she admitted to me that she’d been trying to wink at me that day. She said she’d wondered for the longest time whether I’d known what she was doing and was being mean, or if I was simply clueless, but nice. She kissed me and told me she was glad to realize I’d just been clueless but nice.

  I was a total sappy dork and told her I couldn’t believe it took me eight years to get a clue and ask her out. It wasn’t like I was asking out tons of other girls—and none at all until about seventh grade, when I learned pretty fast that it’s not fun unless you know for a fact they like you already—but that sappy statement earned me an even better kiss later, when we weren’t sitting in view of Little League parents.

  Now that it’s the first day of junior year, and the one year anniversary of the first time I ever kissed Amber, I’m hoping a little of that sentimental stuff earns me even more mouth-to-mouth gratitude. Not that I’m a scumbag who only wants you-know-what from a girl. Amber expects the sap and the kissy stuff that follows. Who am I to deny her?

  “Hey, Toby!”

  I look over my shoulder, through the crowd in junior hall, trying to see Griff. Griff Osterman’s been my best friend since we were seated together in first grade, so I’d recognize his voice anywhere. A moment later, he emerges from behind a knot of seniors with a huge smile on his face. His dark brown hair juts in every direction at once. In an effort to maximize his sleeping time, Griff clocked his morning routine last year. He told me it takes him exactly ten minutes to take a leak, brush his teeth, shave (right), and put on his clothes, then eight minutes to get from home to school. He decided to give himself two minutes of cushion when setting his alarm clock, just in case.

  When I asked where deodorant and flossing fit into his twenty minute routine, he shrugged.

  Girls don’t seem to care, though. He makes disheveled look billboard-model cool. Jerk.

  “I’m wiped, man. Didn’t get back from Texas ‘til yesterday morning,” he says once he reaches me. “My parents were stupid enough to want to drive instead of fly. So how’d cross country tryouts go?”

  “Fine. Hot.” I set my sax case on the floor. Can’t wait to get the thing into one of the band lockers so I don’t have to schlep it through the halls. “It was in the high nineties all week.”

  “I meant how’d it go for you, dumbass.”

  I almost died from heat exhaustion. I shrug. “Made it.”

  “Sweet.” He says it as if it’s no big thing. Of course, he made the team without even attending tryouts. He was one of our top runners last year (yes, as a sophomore) so when his mom explained to Coach Jessup that Griff would have to miss tryouts to attend an out-of-state family wedding—and that they’d be gone the entire week—the coach didn’t care.

  Told him to have great time and watch out for the bridesmaids.

  “How’s Amber?” he asks. “I think I saw her maybe twice all summer.”

  “You’re not the only one.” I step sideways to let a group of gum-cracking senior girls walk by. “She was working fifty hours a week at Friendly’s. More, sometimes. Made good money, though.”

  Griff looks past me and grins. “Yeah, and she put some of it to good use. Damn, she’s smokin’ in that shirt. It’s gotta be new, ‘cause I’d have noticed that.”

  I turn to see Amber threading her way through the hall, eyes focused right on me. Be still my heart, ‘cause Griff is right. She looks frickin’ fabulous. She’s wearing a pair of loose, cocoa-colored shorts that hit just above her knees, and a short-sleeved pink T I’ve never seen before, one that shows off her assets, but in a casual way that makes you wonder if she realizes just how well-fitted a top it really is—at least from a guy’s perspective. I elbow Griff. “Eyes to yourself.”

  “Like you could stop me. Catch you at lunch?”

  “Sure.” He says hi to Amber as he passes her in the hall, then looks back and mouths a “hot damn!” to me. I ignore him.

  Junior hall runs along the back of the main building. One side is lined with lockers, and the other with windows that start at waist height and go all the way up to a very high ceiling, so there’s tons of sunlight in the morning. As Amber approaches, I decide that the architect must’ve been thinking of exactly this moment when he designed those windows, because the way the light is streaming in behind her makes her dark hair look like it’s ringed with a halo.

  Hot damn? Oh, yeah. But not in the do-me-baby way Griff thinks. There’s something ethereal and fragile about her, something that makes me want to take care of her, yet at the same time always has me questioning deep down ins
ide if she’s for real. That’s what makes me think hot damn.

  She stops a whisper away from me, nearly kicking my sax case. “I have something for you.”

  “Yeah? I have something for you, too.” I lean in to kiss her, but she giggles and pushes on my chest with one hand.

  “That’s not what I meant, dork boy. “ She eases her camo backpack off her shoulder, unzips it, then pulls out a gift wrapped in sparkly silver paper. “I know I should wait ‘til after school, but I’m dying to see what you think. Happy anniversary.”

  “You didn’t have to get me a present.” Even though I got her one. I’m not the total dumbass Griff says.

  “Open it already!”

  I hike my backpack further up my shoulder and take the gift. I prop it on the windowsill and she cuddles in beside me, watching as I start to unwrap. Within seconds, I see the cover of the book. Correction: The Book. Capital T, capital B.

  “Hour by Hour: The True Story of the Alamo,” I read aloud.

  “You didn’t buy it for yourself already, did you?”

  I shake my head. It came out this past Saturday; I know because I’ve been waiting for it for months.

  “Oh, yay!” Her arm is around my back, just at the top of my shorts. I can smell her perfume. Or shampoo. I’m never sure which, but it’s delicious. I’ve missed that smell. Lately, she’s reeked of old grilled cheese and dried-up ice cream. Eau de Friendly.

  She says, “I know it’s the kind of thing you love—famous last stands and all that. Keira said you’d been talking about getting some Alamo book, and the woman at the bookstore told me this one is brand new. The guy won a Pulitzer for his book about Pancho Villa, so I figured that even if this wasn’t the right Alamo book, you might like it.”

  “It’s exactly the right Alamo book.” I’ll have to remember to thank my sister later. I turn so Amber and I are hipbone to hipbone, right there against the row of windows. “Thank you.”

  “Happy anniversary, Toby.”

  The warning bell for first period rings, but I just smile at her perfect, freckled face and kiss her. This time she kisses me back.

  Yep. I’m officially the luckiest guy in the building.

  Someone yells at us to get a room. Amber pulls away, but she’s still smiling, and it’s the same lovesick-happy grin she had at the beginning of the summer, on the night we almost did it. Capital I and T. The night before she started her incarceration at Friendly’s. “Time for band, I guess.”

  “Yep. Let’s go.” She gives me a final kiss, then slides her hand into mine for the walk outside and across the quad to band.

  Man, I am glad to be back at school and done with summer. I need my Amber.

  • • •

  During sixth period American History, I feel a vibration in my pocket just as Ms. Lewis finishes going over page three of the mind-numbing seventeen page class syllabus. I wait until her back is turned, then pull out my cell phone. Careful to keep it under the desk, I read the text message from Keira:

  know you’re in class but stewie sick…daycare called…need to pick him up then take him to doc. pls pls pls cover for me for hour or so after practice? appt at 4:45 will try to be fast…will pay you.

  Crap. I’ll have to go straight from cross country to the coffee shop, which means no time for homework if I want to go to Amber’s later. But if Stewart’s sick, I gotta help. Mom still doesn’t get the difference between a cappuccino and a latte. Plus, Keira feels bad enough about having to live at home; asking Mom or Dad to fill in for her at the coffee shop would border on self-torture. Under the desk, I text back an okay. Between classes, I text Amber to tell her I might not be able to make it over tonight, that my sister needs help.

  I slide into seventh period just as the bell rings and hope like mad that Amber’s not too pissed.

  • • •

  “Toby, you so rock,” Keira says as she whips off her green Fair Grounds apron. She looks twice as tired I feel, and I just finished a three-mile run.

  I hope I don’t look that wiped at twenty-two.

  “I have ten minutes to pick up Stewart from daycare or they charge me an extra fifty bucks. They can only keep him so long once it’s determined that he’s running a fever.”

  “Go.” I slip the apron over my head then wave her toward the door. Thankfully, it’s slow at this time of day—just a few people huddled over laptop computers, coffee already in hand—because I haven’t showered yet and therefore have no desire to interact with customers. Hopefully the smell of freshly-ground coffee beans will disguise my stink until she gets back.

  “You’re the best,” she says, grabbing her car keys and purse from under the register. “I should be back in time to close up at six. It’s probably another ear infection. They can diagnose that and get me medicine fast.”

  “Really, it’s no problem.” Especially since she promised to pay me, which brings me that much closer to automobile ownership. If it stays quiet, maybe I can get some of my American Lit reading out of the way, start on Trig, and still try to meet Amber. Not that she’s acknowledged my earlier text.

  I check my text messages one more time. Finally, a reply:

  no prob. catch u later…A.

  Yep. She’s pissed. Otherwise, there’d be a ‘love A.’ at the end. I start to dial, then remember that she stayed after school to get a jump start on some work for her Model U. N. class. I hang up, deciding it’s better to call when I know I can talk to her, not her voice mail, and tell her I think I can get to her place tonight. I should probably bring her something from the coffee shop as an apology gift, just to cover my bases.

  Unfortunately, within ten minutes of Keira’s departure, I’m overwhelmed by the entire junior varsity volleyball team, who all decided to grab iced coffees post-practice. When Keira shows up at five minutes after six, with Stewart crying in the crook of her arm, I’m only halfway through wiping up the tables and have read exactly zero pages of The Great Gatsby. The volleyball girls left black mystery sludge on the table nearest the TV, and I’m trying to soften it up with a wet rag. Soaking is the solution to all messes, isn’t it?

  “I can get that, Toby,” she says.

  “And put Stewart where?”

  Keira glances down at Stewie, who nestles in closer. “You have a point.”

  My nephew loves me like crazy—who wouldn’t love good ol’ Uncle Toby, the guy who sneaks you pieces of French fry when your mom’s not looking?—but when Stewie’s sick, he’s all about Mommy. He’ll scream like mad if she sets him down or hands him off to me now.

  I use my fingernail to pick at the edge of the black stuff. Don’t those girls care that they made a mess on such nice tables? Keira shopped forever to find them, hoping to give Fair Grounds just the right combination of comfort and class. It hacks me off when people have no respect for others’ property.

  “So what’d the doctor say? Another ear infection?” The kid’s only eighteen months old, and he’s had six or seven already.

  “Yep. And strep.”

  I stop working on the table and look at Stewart. His cries have settled down to hiccups now that he knows his mom’s going to keep cuddling him. “Isn’t that pretty serious?”

  She smoothes his hair back from his forehead and smiles at him. “Nothing modern drugs can’t cure. Problem is, no daycare for a couple days. They won’t take him back until he’s fever-free for twenty-four hours so the other kids don’t catch it. Of course, daycare’s probably where Stewie got it, but whatever.”

  I go back to chipping away the table gunk. The soaking must’ve worked, because it peels off in one big, sticky strip, like frozen maple syrup, leaving the table unmarred. “So what are you going to do about the shop?”

  “Beg one of the morning people to pull a double shift. I can’t keep Stewie here with me, even in his high chair. Don’t want to expose customers or staff, you know?”

  “What if they can’t do it?”

  “Close up early for a couple days.” She says it like it’
s no big deal, but I know it’s a huge deal. She’s open from four-thirty in the morning until six in the evening. She has two people who come in and work the early half of the day, while she’s giving Stewie his breakfast and getting him to daycare, but she’s always here from eight ‘til six—and all by herself after two, when the lunch rush ends. If she has to close at two for a few days, it’ll hit her profits hard. The afternoon guys—the ones with the laptops—can nurse one coffee for hours, which is how Keira handles the shop by herself then with no problems. But boy, do the laptop folks spend money. They’re the ones who buy the fancy coffee mugs, take home bags of shade-grown organic coffee by the pound, or grab a dozen muffins on a whim to take back to the office. The stuff with good profit margins.

  I go behind the counter to rinse out the rag in the sink. “I could try—”