"I'm sorry!" I'd bumped into the girl's back with my tray, and she slowly turned around, balancing hers on one hand, the other cupping her hip.
"An apology from a hotshot underclassman," she declared, smug. "Well, someone knows his place. Thanks, hon."
My face flamed - I didn't like her tone, and her beauty offset me...but, yet, I couldn't just walk away. She had the same bone-china complexion and thick, swingy, black hair as Jesse's good friend Krysten Ritter, or Death of the Endless from his Sandman comics card deck, and her blue-grey eyes were smudged thickly around the lashes with dark violet pencil.
"How do you know?"
She pursed her lips - pretty lips, small, washed with ruby, and sparkling.
"That you're an underclassman? Because I haven't seen you around before...maybe last year, but..." She crossed her legs at the ankle, one slender, fishnet-wrapped limb over the other, and tapped her chin, remembering. I was doing a bit of thinking, too. Why did she even care? Was I being flirted with? Then....
"I think I've seen you before," I chanced. "Don't you play girls' tennis?"
Her mouth popped open wetly in surprise.
"And why would you be watching...girls' tennis?"
"Because," I said, shifting closer to her, and cheering inwardly when she didn't pull away, or splash her cream of mushroom soup in my face, "I play boys' tennis."
Her lips fell even lower.
"Yeah - you're that hotshot freshman - sophomore now - on varsity. Wicked serve. Coach brags. It's...Mark?"
"No, Max."
She smiled, and sidled so close the bewitching scent of her filled my nostrils. I could feel her skin - smooth, shimmery, white - against my arm.
"Willow Brennan."
"MAX!" Cole was standing on his chair, and the lunch aide was giving him fiery glares, but he just had to turn around and smile at her, with a shake of the shaggy, styled chestnut hair that brushed his crooked jawline. She knew he was one of the good guys, with his preppy J.Crew button-downs. (Cole was a blue-and-white stripes guy, and I wore lighter colors because they looked good with my perpetual tan. I'd inherited Dad's golden good looks, and the dark blonde hair was sort of a mix of both of their blonde and semi-blondness but the deep green eyes that looked lit from within even when I was upset beyond words were Mom's only.)
Cole was almost a better comeback story than Jesse had been (he still goes down in People magazine's list of Greatest Returns, but that may be because Carter Greenwood is finally editor-in-chief, and Jesse was her first love back in first grade, but if that's not it....Every year he's still alive is a miracle, considering how sick he once was.) He's gone from scrappy street kid to rich, polished, born-again-Christian (and sophomore class president), and the only residue it's left behind is the jaw, broken by a drug dealer with a grudge and never healed. The guy is also my doubles partner for Varsity tennis, so it's safe to say that if I can trust him with a game, then I can trust him with my life. Do I take this a little seriously? Maybe, but a guy needs a wingman, and a true-blue dude who will stick by you is few and far between. All my life, the example of eternally lasting friendship - Jesse and Dominic - has been held up to me, and I've always wanted it. When Cole and his almost Justin-Bieber (who is about as old as my parents, and so over) hair arrived, I took the potential opportunity that came along...and we've been inseparable pals ever since.
"Well?" he arched an eyebrow, subtle and suave even in his desperation to know the story.
"She's a junior, she plays tennis...and she was talking to me." It seemed unreal.
YOU ARE READING
Lost Sheep
Teen Fiction(sequel to Karissa) Max McCutcheon is the kind of boy parents would have no problem with letting their daughters date. He's heard almost all his father's wild stories, and sworn - for everybody's sake - that they would never become his, too. Then he...
