Even Thistles Bloom, page 4
Someone is late for dinner. Moments later, an old gray sedan parked in front of Cathryn’s house, and a large man with dark hair and skin a shade less pale than Cathryn’s emerged. He grumbled as he unlocked the door—Cathryn must have relocked it—and entered the house.
Todd finished watering, pleased with his new hose. He reeled it in, but Adam was still chatting with the guys. Feeling unsociable, Todd jogged to the dumpster to investigate Cathryn’s fallen item.
He picked up a hardcover book and brushed the dirt off the spine. Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. Cathryn had interesting tastes. Todd tucked the book under his arm and ambled to the front door, but he hesitated. Cathryn had asked him to stay away from her house, but she’d want her book back, right?
“Hey, Todd,” Adam called. “Come here.”
Todd glanced at the door, but if Cathryn’s dad was that strict about being home by dinnertime, he wouldn’t want a pot smoker showing up on her porch. I’ll give her the book in art on Monday.
Satisfied with his decision, Todd joined the guys.
Adam grinned. “Told you I’d make it up to you. Jeremy here invited us to his cousin’s party.” He smacked the shoulder of the guy standing next to him.
“I need to shower first.” Todd gestured to his soiled clothes.
Adam wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, you do.” He turned to the others. “We’ll see you there.”
He took the keys from Todd and drove them home. Their mother would be absent all weekend. With more notice, they could have thrown a party of their own. More notice, and the ping-pong table they’d asked Santa for until they realized his face changed every year and he only brought presents for their mom.
Todd ran the shower extra hot, letting the heat soak into his stiff muscles as the water blasted the sweat and dirt off his body. The relaxation made an early bedtime appealing.
He wandered into their shared room, and Adam threw a shirt at him. Ugh. The party.
“Cheer up, man. You look like someone died,” Adam said.
Todd checked his marigold. “Nope. Still alive.”
Adam chuckled. “You’ve been spending too much time in the greenhouse. Time for some nightlife.”
“I don’t know. I’m wiped.” Todd looked longingly at his bed as he pulled on his jeans and shirt.
“Come on. It’ll be good for you.” Adam grinned.
Todd glanced over his brother’s shoulder. “What’s that?” He pointed to a piece of paper taped to the wall near Adam’s bed. Closer examination revealed it was the picture of their father with his wife and kids, but Adam had added googly eyes and alien antennas.
“Want it for your art class?”
Todd shook his head. He doubted turning his half-siblings into Martians equated “finding their essence.”
“Man, you are in the pits today.” Adam stared at him. “It’s the redhead, isn’t it?”
“What? No.” Is it so hard to believe I’m just tired and want to sleep?
Adam rolled his eyes. “You need this party. Forget Claire. I’ll find you a prettier girl, one who can talk.”
Claire can talk. She spoke better than Noah, but Todd didn’t point that out. Acquiescing to Adam’s badgering would be easier than fighting it. Besides, he might enjoy partying with people who didn’t know about last year.
“All right.” Todd finished dressing, and Adam drove them across town. Of course the festivities were across town. No one nearby invited them to parties anymore.
Loud music blared in Todd’s ears, making him wish for the quiet plants. Adam is right. I’m becoming a hermit. He forced a smile as he followed Adam to the back porch, grabbing a beer along the way. Todd looked around for someone with a cigarette, but no one smoked. He wished he’d brought some Ides of March. Without it, he’d need stronger alcohol than beer to get in a festive mood.
Adam didn’t need chemical help to socialize. He charged into the fray and made himself the center of attention by relating one of his previous pranks. Todd leaned against the railing, nursing his beer. It smelled like Fifi’s wet fur and tasted just as bad. He drank it anyway, downing it quickly so he had an excuse to grab another drink.
A lanky guy stumbled in front of the porch door. Todd weaved around him and hopped over another guy who’d fallen on the kitchen floor. He scooped himself a glass of what he hoped was strong punch, and when he returned to the porch, Adam was waiting for him, a girl on each arm.
“See, ladies. I told you I’m a clone.”
A girl with jet black hair, tanned skin, and boobs that threatened to break out of her shirt separated from Adam and approached Todd.
“Did you really lose your fingers fighting off a police dog?”
Todd shot Adam a glare before lying. “Something like that.”
If Adam noticed the glare, he didn’t react. He tugged the remaining girl away, hands already creeping to her backside.
“Wow,” the dark-haired girl said. She reached for him, but tripped over her heels. Todd caught her, and she giggled. “Thanks.”
Todd righted her, and she gave him a glassy-eyed stare. He thought of the moment he’d met Claire. She’d dropped her purse in a crowd, and its contents had scattered. After he’d helped her up, she’d looked at him as if he’d lifted a boulder over his head instead of handing her lip balm. He hadn’t needed to lie about his fingers to earn her admiration. A random act of kindness had done it.
“Can you take me somewhere less…outside?” The girl wobbled. Evidently, she’d drunk a lot more punch than Todd had.
“Uh, sure.” Todd stabilized the stumbling girl with an arm around her waist and guided her inside.
“I waaaant another,” the girl said.
I don’t think you do. Before Todd could say anything, she grabbed someone else’s punch. In her sloppy attempt to drink it, she dumped half of it down her shirt. As the pink stain spread over her breasts, her face contorted like a toddler having a tantrum.
“I liked this shirt.”
A burly guy bumped her from behind, and she toppled to the floor and burst into tears. Todd glanced around. No one paid her any attention. Was he responsible for this chick just because Adam set them up? Probably. Adam usually arranged for them to date a pair of friends, and girls talked. If he left her on the floor, she’d bad-talk him to all her friends, and then he and Adam wouldn’t find dates at their school ever again. Since they couldn’t find dates at their own school anymore, they couldn’t afford to be blacklisted.
The girl’s sobs stopped almost as quickly as they began. She laid her head on someone’s shoe and closed her eyes. Todd lifted her into his arms, intending to find her a safer place to sleep off the alcohol, but she opened her eyes, ogling him as if he were a swimsuit model.
“You’re strong.”
Todd carried her past a group of card players, but when they reached a less crowded hallway, the girl flipped out of his hands. She tugged his shirt and pursed her lips.
With a clear invitation like that, Todd should’ve already had his tongue down her throat and his hands down her shorts, but his mouth tasted like ashes. This girl, whose name he still didn’t know, was…boring. Needy and boring. He could sleep with her with zero repercussions, but did he want that? He’d always lived in the moment, but his conversation with the guidance counselor got him thinking long term. Did he want to live like a high school party guy forever, cycling through partners like his mom?
Not getting the response she wanted, the girl pressed herself against him, and his body decided to hell with philosophical speculation. Nothing mattered more than getting inside her pants. She kissed him, missing his mouth and catching his chin. He moved to kiss her properly, but he caught a whiff of her perfume. It was the same one his mother used.
Todd pushed her away so fast she fell to the ground again. “I’m sorry.”
Forgetting any sense of responsibility for his arranged date, he shoved through the crowds and burst through the front door. He gulped the chill autumn air, dying for a cigarette.
What’s wrong with me? What sort of idiot turned down easy sex with a beautiful girl? He’d never had this problem. Then he met Claire. No, then he’d lost Claire.
When they’d been semi-dating, she’d been just another girl, albeit more fun than that needy chick. Claire had approached partying with the same intensity as sports—full throttle, no brakes. If you couldn’t keep up, she’d leave you behind. Then she changed. Big muscles and alleged fights with police dogs wouldn’t impress her, not anymore. Todd wasn’t sure what produced the shift, but her newfound confidence suggested she’d found something better than partying. He couldn’t help wanting to be someone she found attractive, even if he wasn’t sure how.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. He smacked himself, hoping to pound some sense into his head. Adam would brand this incident onto Todd’s forehead if he discovered the truth. To save his reputation, he should find another girl to sleep with—one who didn’t remind him of his mother’s neediness—but he couldn’t make himself move. He wished he’d stayed home.
Todd sat on the steps and thought up a convincing lie to tell Adam. Until his brother finished partying, Todd was stranded.
Chapter 6
Oliver—Todd decided he couldn’t bring himself to think of the ridiculous art teacher as “Mr. Martin”—didn’t even acknowledge Todd’s late arrival. The class was already full, apart from a table where Cathryn sat by herself.
“Where’s your friend?” Todd asked as he set his backpack across from her.
“Dentist.” Cathryn spoke so quietly, Todd had to strain to hear her. She gestured to her paper. “We’re supposed to draw how we felt last night on one side, and how we felt when we woke up on the other.” She’d drawn a simple smiley face on both sides.
“They pay him to come up with this stuff?” Todd said as he rummaged through his backpack. He pulled out the book and slid it to Cathryn. “You dropped this the other day.”
Cathryn eyed him warily, but her fingers twitched, and after a moment’s hesitation, she snatched the book and clutched it to her chest. Had she not looked so serious when she’d done it, Todd would have laughed.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She scooted an inch farther away and cracked open the book, but she kept stealing glances at Todd, as if wishing he would leave. With her more dominant friend absent, Todd would’ve thought Cathryn would speak more freely, but the opposite was true. It was as if Minh were her social battery, and without her, Cathryn retreated into herself.
“Just trying to do a good deed.”
She evaluated his statement before speaking. “‘It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.’ Benjamin Franklin.”
“Is that your way of saying you don’t trust me?”
“‘Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.’ Shakespeare.”
“Do you always speak in quotes?”
Cathryn’s cheeks reddened. “I like history.” She buried her nose in her book, closing the conversation. Todd could hear Adam’s voice in his head, demanding he intimidate her so she wouldn’t report them, but he’d rather earn her trust. Drawing out her quirky side had been a good start, but she’d scooted farther away and held the book like a shield.
Focus on art. Todd contemplated his blank paper and considered the day’s assignment. How had he felt last night? Exhausted. One day’s rest after that party hadn’t been enough. After catching his breath, he’d gone back inside and found the girl passed out in the hallway. He’d carried her to an empty room and set her where he hoped she could sleep off her intoxication in peace. Adam had appeared just as he emerged. They’d exchanged knowing grins and driven home without talking, but even the nonverbal lie cost Todd a piece of his sanity.
Oliver’s voice boomed from behind him, praising a student’s “moving visual commentary about the emotional transitional phase of sleep.” Todd scribbled a squiggly line and added a straight line to the opposite side of the page, finishing just as the teacher arrived.
“What do you have here?”
“Uh.” Todd turned to the straight line. “It’s a straight line for when you’re asleep, because you’re lying down.” He flipped the page. “This is for when you’re awake, because your brain is thinking and stuff.”
Oliver tapped his chin. “Exploring the relative peace of sleep compared with the twisted chaos of waking life. Brilliant.” He clapped Todd on the shoulder, but he frowned at Cathryn’s drawing. “I think you interpreted the prompt a little too literally.”
“It’s a happy face, because last night I was reading a book.” She flipped the page over. “And another happy face, because now I’m reading another book.” She held up the volume as if the key to happiness lay within its pages.
“Well, it’s a start, but try to think beyond conventional symbols. Like Todd.”
As soon as the teacher turned his back on them, Cathryn shot him a glare. Todd tried to restrain his chuckle, but it still emerged as a snort. The bell rang, and he zipped out of class.
No matter how fast he moved, passing time never lasted long enough for him to arrive at economics before the next bell rang. Mr. Patel pressed his lips into a thin line and gestured for Todd to take his seat beside Claire.
“We’re brainstorming ideas for the project,” she said. “I d-don’t suppose you’ve come up with any?”
Shit. Between the greenhouse, the marijuana plot, and the party, Todd hadn’t even thought about school.
Claire opened her notebook, as if she’d been expecting that. “We’re opening a restaurant. Sit-down, fusion cuisine, mmmmoderate pricing. I haven’t nailed down a lllllocation yet.”
“Wow, you’ve put a lot of thought into this already.”
Claire shrugged. “I want to open my-my-my own restaurant someday, so I may as well start now.”
“You like to cook?” Why didn’t he know that?
Her green eyes flashed. “No, I like giving people food poisoning.”
“Sorry, dumb question.” Maybe he was too stupid for honors classes. “I think it’s cool that you want to be a chef.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I mean, cooking is useful. The best I can do is put a frozen pizza in the oven.”
Claire smiled. A genuine smile. Claire wasn’t attractive by most guys’ standards—muscular limbs, small boobs, wild hair, and skin that freckled instead of tanned—but she had a great smile and a cute bunny-like nose that wiggled when she laughed. Seeing that smile, Todd’s hope parasite wrapped around his heart and squeezed so hard he thought he might pass out. Then she remembered she hated him and scowled, and his heart returned to a trudging pace.
“We should research the market to find a good location.” She continued talking, but Todd fixated on a stray hair that had fallen out of her braid. He had a sudden urge to brush it away from her face. This weekend, he could’ve slept with a much prettier girl, but in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to tuck that strand behind Claire’s ear. A simple motion, but somehow it felt a thousand times more intimate than sex with a drunk.
His body temperature skyrocketed as he pictured his fingers tracing her cream-colored skin. Would she flinch if he used his left hand? No. She was anything but squeamish, and she’d showed multiple times that his stubby fingers didn’t freak her out. He wouldn’t have to make up some heroic story about how he’d lost the tips with her.
“Todd?”
Todd blinked back to reality. “Sounds like a great idea.”
“You weren’t even listening.” Claire packed up her notebooks.
“No, I—”
“If you won’t t-t-take this seriously, why should I take you seriously?”
The bell rang before Todd could respond, and Claire left with Beth and Saafi. Her words dripped into his heart, a slow poison for his hope parasite.
Why should she take him seriously?
Todd finally figured out a strategy for arriving on time to art. He asked Adam to drop him off near a little-used side entrance. He had to jimmy the lock, which froze his fingers in the chilly mornings, but the effort proved worthwhile. Today he’d arrived before the teacher. Now if I can teleport to economics, I’ll be set.
He sat in what was becoming his usual seat—near the back with the sophomore girls. Though Minh had a sharp tongue, she tolerated him well enough that he didn’t deem moving worthwhile. Still, he was enjoying the quiet before she arrived.
He pulled out a piece of scratch paper, determined to list the reasons Claire should get back together with him, but his rationale so far was pitiful. What could he offer her? Claire had a life plan already. Todd’s plans included smoking weed and avoiding his mother. Claire aced her classes and her volleyball serves. Todd didn’t belong in the honors track and fizzled out of sports. Claire spoke out against bullies, even though she stuttered. Todd teetered on the line between “prankster” and “criminal.”
The more he considered the matter, the more he admired Claire—and disapproved of himself. Maybe Mrs. Moore was right. He’d never amount to anything, much less someone worth dating.
The other students filtered in, but Oliver hadn’t showed his face. Was it wrong to hope for a more sensible substitute, or better yet, a free period to think?
Minh wheeled to her usual place next to him, towing Cathryn behind her by the invisible bonds of friendship.
“How are your teeth?” Todd asked.
Minh’s grin had a knife’s edge. “Sparkling perfection, just like the rest of me.”
Todd snorted. He didn’t know Beth Jones well, but he pitied her. Minh couldn’t be an easy little sister.
“What are you working on?” Cathryn slipped into the seat across from him.
