Last Stand Read online

  “Depends. What’d you bring to eat?”

  “Turkey on wheat, applesauce, string cheese. Oh, and a bag of Skittles.”

  “Okay.” She zips her backpack and hefts it over one shoulder. “But only if you actually let me write up my Chemistry. And you share the Skittles.”

  “Deal.” Relieved that I brought lunch today, I fish the brown paper bag and Coke money out of my locker, then walk beside her through junior hall and down the stairs to the library.

  Ginger’s one of those people you don’t much notice at school. She’s decent-looking, with light brown eyes, clear skin, and brown hair that’s usually in a ponytail. She plays basketball during the winter and runs track during the spring, but doesn’t stand out at either sport. Her grades are good enough for honor roll, but not top of the class. In other words, she’s the kind of person you like to get paired with on a group project, because you know she’ll have good ideas and will do the part of the assignment she promises to do, but she won’t take over and boss everyone around, either.

  You have fun with her when she’s around, but she’s not someone whose absence you notice right away when she’s out.

  After we pass the sign at the library entrance that demands no food, no drink, and no headsets, we scoot past the librarian, then through the reference section to see if my favorite table is occupied. It’s near the back, behind most of the stacks, so we can hear people approaching long before they see or hear us. Luckily, three of the four seats are empty—Griff’s in one, working on the Trig homework he has due in an hour—so we grab two of the empty seats.

  Ginger surveys Griff’s food—she has a serious peanut allergy that resulted in an ambulance ride when we were in fourth grade—then takes a seat. They joke around while she takes out her notebook, a soynut butter sandwich, and a Diet Coke. We all get to work pretty quickly. I finished everything I have due this afternoon, but figure if I get a head start on Gatsby, I can go to Amber’s after cross country and get things back on track.

  Twenty minutes in, Ginger excuses herself to go to the restroom. Griff watches her leave, then whispers. “Things screwed up with Amber today?”

  I play dumb and pretend to keep reading. “Huh?”

  It’s not like I eat with Amber that often—she usually eats with her girlfriends and saves her after school time for me—which makes me wonder if I look that obviously upset or if Amber’s been talking. Griff isn’t the most observant guy on the planet.

  “Let’s see,” he says, putting a finger to his temple like he’s straining to think. “You’ve been moving in slo-mo all day. I haven’t seen you two groping in the hallway for at least twenty-four hours, and, hmmmm…I saw her talking to Connor Ralston in the hallway before school. Standing about yay close.” He holds his thumb and index finger two inches apart.

  So he’s more observant than I thought.

  “He flirts with her whenever he sees her,” I tell Griff. “Still wants to own her or something.” Both statements are true, but could Connor’s timing suck any worse?

  “Oh. Well, who wouldn’t with that rack?” Griff goes back to his Trig, but the silence between us is uncomfortable.

  “What?” I finally ask.

  Griff exhales, then puts down his pencil. “Look, I’m telling you this because I’m your friend. But the flirting wasn’t one-way.”

  My ears heat the way they always do when I’m embarrassed, meaning my face is going to be the same stop sign color as the library carpet within seconds.

  Griff glances behind me, making sure Ginger’s not on her way back yet. “You two having a fight?”

  “Sort of.”

  “About?”

  I cannot talk to Griff about this. He might be my best friend, but he’s also a horndog, first class.

  “She asked you a favor and you said you didn’t have time,” Griff guesses. “Or you were two minutes late meeting her and she threw a hissy and said you must not love her.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “You wanted to do the wild thing after she got you that nerdy history book and she said no.” A grin slides over his face and he puts the back of his hand to his forehead. In a mock feminine voice, he adds, “Oh, Toby, baby, I have such a headache!”

  “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

  I think Griff’s soda’s going to come out his nose, he’s trying so hard to keep his laughter under control. When he recovers, he starts to say something else, then pauses, studying me. “Holy shit, Toby. Is that it? Oh, man. I’m sorry I—”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Your bright red cheeks tell me otherwise, dumbass.”

  It sucks that he knows me so well. I set down Gatsby. Not like I can focus on it, anyway. “All right, fine. But it was the other way around,” I whisper after making sure no one’s in hearing range. “And keep it to yourself!”

  Griff fake-bangs his head against the table. Ginger’s going to be back any sec, so I kick him under the table and tell him to cut it out. He looks up at me and rolls his eyes. “Miss D-Cup wanted your scrawny bod—which is shocking enough in itself—and you turn her down? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Maybe I respect her, all right?”

  “It doesn’t sound like she wants your respect.”

  “Griff—”

  “Okay, okay. So what happened?”

  Now that he’s serious, I decide it’s safe enough to give him the ten-second rundown. He sighs. “That’s rough. But you know, it sounds to me like she just got her ego bruised.”

  “Well, that’s what I thought, too, but then she was ignoring me in band this morning. And what’s with her flirting with Connor? Assuming that’s what she was doing and it wasn’t just him, of course.”

  Griff makes a face. “I can’t help you with that. Maybe you should ask Ginger. She can give you the girl point of view. And you know she’ll keep it in the vault.”

  “No way.” It’s bad enough I mentioned it to Griff, and he’s my best friend. Amber would be mortified if I confided in another girl.

  “Just ask her. She’s coming through the stacks.”

  I hear footsteps behind me, then Ginger slips into her seat. “Ask me what?”

  I glance at Griff, then at Ginger. I gesture toward her notebook. “How long are you planning to make your chem writeup?”

  “Daniels said he wanted three or four pages to answer all the questions.” She grins. “I wouldn’t bother going longer. You know Daniels, he’s an easy A. Hit three pages and you’re golden.”

  “Cool.” I wrote five. Not that it’s important.

  Griff leans back in his chair, just out of Ginger’s peripheral vision, and mouths, “Loser!”

  Chapter Four

  At three a.m., I pull a pair of mesh shorts over my boxers and pad down the hall. Stewie’s crying and, once again, I’m awake while Keira and my parents snooze in total ignorance. This despite the fact that cross country kicked my tail today and I stayed up later than usual waiting for Amber to return my call.

  Make that two calls and a text message. Not that it’s important.

  It’s a wonder I’m ever alert at school.

  I push open the door to his room. He’s cuddled in the corner of his crib wearing nothing but a diaper, chewing the arm of his stuffed monkey and staring at his Thomas the Tank Engine nightlight.

  “Hey, little guy. What’s wrong? You feeling bad?”

  When sees me, he cries harder, like he can’t believe he’s finally being rescued from his prison. I lean over the edge of the crib and muss his hair, then stroke his forehead. He doesn’t feel warm. “It’s okay. Tell Uncle Toby.”

  He snuffles some more—for effect, I think—then manages to tell me he wants out of the crib because he’s cold.

  “Well, that happens when you yank off your clothes.” He’s gotten good at unzipping his one-piece footie pajamas and removing them. It’s his way of protesting bedtime. It never works, but he keeps trying. Keira says we’re lucky he hasn’t figured out how to
take off the diaper yet. That thought helps me put the perpetual jammie-stripping into perspective. I pick up his jammies from the corner of the crib and realize they’re soaked.

  Gross.

  I toss them toward the door so I’ll remember to take them to the wash, then put both hands over the edge of the crib. “C’m’ere.”

  He stands up and waddles a step closer so I can haul him out. Luckily, he’s big enough now that I don’t have to wrestle with him on a changing table anymore; he stands still so I can change him right there in the middle of the floor, easing off his old diaper and stuffing it into the Diaper Genie, then taping the tabs on a fresh one.

  “Stay right there and I’ll get you some clean jammies, okay?”

  I pull another pair out of the dresser drawer and turn to put them on him, only to see that he’s wandered over to the nightlight and is reaching out to touch the bulb.

  “No, Stewie!” I grab for his hand. “That’s a big owie.”

  “Owie!” he giggles, as if he knew it all along and was simply baiting me. Wily kid. At least he’s not whining about his ear infection or strep. Keira told me at dinner that he was feeling better already, though he needs to keep taking his antibiotics for several more days.

  I wiggle him into the clean pajamas without much trouble, but he’s less than enthusiastic about getting back into the crib when I try to put him in there. Balancing him on one hip, I lean over and feel the sheet to make sure it’s dry. No dice. I fumble in the drawer for the backup one, then remember he wet the crib last night, too. It’s probably still in the wash.

  “You wanna sleep with Uncle Toby, kiddo?”

  He responds by letting his head fall against my shoulder, then nestling in under my chin.

  Keira’s going to kill me for bringing him into my bed. She’ll say I’m letting him manipulate me, but whatever. He’ll fall asleep faster with me than he will in the crib—which I’ll have to remake, assuming I can find a clean sheet—and I’m all for taking the path of least resistance, especially if it means more shuteye for me.

  I carry Stewie down the hall and put him on top of my bedspread, making sure he has plenty of space, then put pillows between him and the edge of the bed to keep him from rolling off. He never has, but I worry. The kid sleeps in a crib for a reason. He needs to be caged.

  “I have exactly the thing to put you to sleep,” I tell him, sliding in next to him as I reach for the book on my nightstand. “Let’s learn about Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. They were brave men who fought in a famous battle a long time ago.”

  I smile to myself, picturing Griff hiding his face from Ginger while calling me a loser. Sometimes, maybe being a loser is the honorable—the right—thing.

  • • •

  “You did a great job yesterday.”

  Amber jumps at the sound of my voice coming from behind her, just as I knew she would. It’s quarter after seven Thursday morning, and the halls are virtually empty since school doesn’t start for another twenty minutes. Normally, Amber doesn’t get to school this early—she tends to cut it almost as close as Griff does—but I figured if she wanted to avoid me, she’d want to get her things out of her locker and escape junior hall before I got here.

  Today, I’m not letting her hide. Somewhere around four a.m., I had an epiphany.

  “Toby!” she says on an exhale. “You surprised me.”

  “Sorry.” I won’t tell her I didn’t mean to, since I did. “I read the book.”

  She blinks. “The Alamo book? All of it?”

  “All 422 pages.” The book put Stewie to sleep, but not me. I couldn’t stop turning pages. When I finally read the last paragraph and closed the book, I lay in bed, wide awake, listening to Stewie’s even breathing and thinking.

  I make sure Amber’s totally focused on me, then say what I’ve been mentally rehearsing for hours. “Anyone who knows me well enough to buy that book as a gift should know that when I tell her I love her, I mean it. And she should know that when I say no it doesn’t mean I don’t want her.”

  “Toby….” She crosses her arms over her stomach, then looks down at the floor. Since when did I make her uncomfortable? She only ever got this way with me when she talked about Connor, in the days before the two of us hooked up. And usually it was when she was too embarrassed to tell me about something that’d happened between them, like some dumb fight over who she’d been hanging out with after school or about when he was supposed to call her.

  “I know you’re upset about the other night, Amber. But I don’t understand why you’re this upset.” So upset she might’ve been confiding in Connor about me before band yesterday.

  Yikes. There’s an awful thought. Where the hell did that come from?

  “Look, Toby, it’s not you. It’s me.”

  It occurs to me that this is the exact phrase I avoided using night before last, specifically because I knew it’d upset her if I said it. Before I can respond, she meets my gaze, and any hesitancy she might’ve had before, when I first approached her, is gone. “I just need some time to figure things out.”

  The trickle of people behind me is turning into a stream, their chatter about classes and parties and sports increasing in volume. I hate that we’re discussing this here, where even our body language is likely to generate gossip. It’s simply the way of things at West Rollins. On the other hand, I sense that if I let her walk away now, she could be gone for good, and I don’t think either of us wants that.

  “I’ll give you whatever time you need.” I lean in, so my mouth is closer to her ear. “But it would be a lot easier if I had a clue why. We’ve been together a long time. I didn’t realize you still had things to figure out at this point.”

  Someone brushes my shoulder as they pass by, presumably on the way to their locker. Amber shifts, her gaze taking in who’s who behind me. “I’m supposed to be meeting Christy Daggett to go over our German assignment. If I don’t go now, she’s going to wonder what’s up and come looking for me. Plus Beels will murder me if I’m late to band twice in a row. Can we meet up after school?”

  “Sure.”

  “Parking lot, right after. I have to do some research for Model U.N., but I left my folder in Meghan’s car. We can talk while I grab it. Meet you by the doors in senior hall?”

  I nod, then give her a quick kiss. She kisses me back before hurrying off, so I take that as a good sign. Even better, I see Christy walking toward her, carrying a notebook and looking flustered. At least I know she was early for a reason, not simply to avoid me.

  This’ll blow over. I know it. No more drama, everything back to normal.

  The hand on the oversize clock hanging from the ceiling jumps from 7:25 to 7:26 as I head toward my own locker.

  Who am I kidding?

  Amber’s always been a drama queen. Independent, smart, and a hell of a clarinet player, but a drama queen. Never about me—not before this—but judging by all the drama she had with Connor, and the way she revels in telling me all the details about what’s going on with each of her friends, well, there’s no telling if it’ll blow over.

  For the first time, it occurs to me that maybe it’s okay if it doesn’t blow over. I love her like mad, but the way we were last year. When we were going through the day-to-day routine at school. Cuddling at football games, hanging out and playing Trivial Pursuit with our friends like the dorks that we are. Before Sophomore Blast. Before Friendly’s, before our anniversary.

  When I get to my locker, Ginger’s standing at hers, hanging up her coat. I smile hello, empty the contents of my backpack into the locker, then grab my books for second period Spanish so I can go straight there after band.

  “Work things out?”

  I pause and frown around my locker door at Ginger. I almost didn’t hear her over the clanging locker doors and the knot of girls standing nearby gushing over someone’s new purse.

  She shuts her locker and takes a step closer to me. Her hair’s clipped back over both ears today. Cute. “With Amber,�
� she clarifies. “I assume everything’s okay?”

  “Griff’s voice carries, huh?”

  One side of her mouth quirks into a grin. “Yep. No one else heard, though. The stacks were empty other than the three of us.”

  “That’s a relief.” I play with the strap on my backpack, but stop when I realize it probably makes me look like I’m not-so-relieved about what’s going on with Amber. “Doesn’t matter though. Everything’s fine.”

  “Good. Didn’t mean to butt into your business by asking, but you’re a nice guy. Don’t want to see you hurt or anything.”

  I smile and thank her, but have to wonder: When girls say this, do they realize it’s not a compliment? No guy wants to be told he’s “nice” because it translates to, “You’re worthy of my friendship, but not hot enough to be going-out material.” It’s doubly bad when it comes from someone who’s pretty average herself, like Ginger Grass, because if she thinks I’m a “nice guy” it means I’m pretty much invisible to girls who occupy the higher social strata.