Boarding with the Bad Boy [COMPLETE + BONUS published edition]

THE BOARDERS: 15

Lo

Sam and Jared disappear into the hallway, and I'm left behind, my brain spinning on the same question over and over: what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. Tentatively, I lift my fingers to my lips. Sam hadn't touched me there, but the frisson of energy that flooded my body as he leaned in was stronger than anything I've ever felt. I wonder if Sam felt it too. In that moment when he paused, his eyes searching mine, it seemed like he had.

It takes me a full minute to move from my desk. When I finally do, it's on shaky legs. I cross to the mirror that Sam was so focused on when I slammed into the room less than thirty minutes earlier, my fingers drifting from my mouth to my throat. I almost expect to see a mark where Sam's ring ran across my skin, but there's nothing. The girl looking back at me is blushing, bewildered. Has it really been only a half hour since I was so angry I was shoving him and cursing? What is happening to me?

The electric energy that's coursed through me since Sam first stepped into my space starts to dissipate, a gnawing guilt rising in its place. What is happening to me? I've never felt like this before, never flipped from calm to furious to wanting in such a rapid, unbridled way. My mother has though, and that terrifies me. I'm at Remington almost solely to prove that I'm not like her, and here I am, behaving exactly the way she always has.

A nauseating fear rises in my stomach, pushing out any remnants of positivity from Sam's near-kiss. I need to talk to the one person who really understands me, and I need to do it stat. I slip on my running shoes, grab my phone and keys, and head out toward my truck in the boarder lot.

I'm at a quiet park fifteen minutes from campus when I shut off the truck and set out toward my favorite of the many walking paths branching off the trailhead. I don't bother checking with Jill over text before I call. I know that I'll get charged for all the overseas minutes I'm about to load onto my phone, but it's worth it. I need my best friend.

Jill's breathless as she answers. "Lo? What are you doing calling at midnight?"

"Shit, it's 6pm here and I didn't think...are you out?" I can hear loud music and shouting in the background.

"What? Sorry, hold on." Jill speaks in rapid Spanish to someone before the background noise disappears and her voice comes in much clearer. "Sorry about that, Guapa. I couldn't hear a damn thing in there."

"Where are you?"

"Disco," she says simply.

"With..."

She laughs, a light tinkling sound, but doesn't answer.

"Jill!"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm with Guille, all right? I'm letting him corrupt me. I only have tonight, you know!"

It's my turn to laugh. Jill's always been wonderful at meeting people, making friendships that are uncomplicated and easy. But she'll mess you up if you wrong her. I count myself lucky that she stood on my side of the line when Brandon first started to pick at me toward the end of middle school.

Our meeting had been entirely coincidence—she and her dad were visiting Remington as Mr. Ross considered the Spanish job—and I was leaving The Local Scoop at the same time she was entering. Brandon and his new football friends, including Ben Coates (who'd never texted me after that first date), were sprawled across a picnic table outside, and they started to berate me over the new rumor that I was sneaking around with Sara Armato.

Later on I'd learn that Jill had felt like an outsider then too, was nervous about moving from Chicago to small-town Connecticut, about being a faculty kid at a WASP-y New England boarding school. That day, all I knew was that she'd seemed somehow taller and stronger than Brandon when she told him that, just because girls in our class were more likely to kiss me than him, he didn't have the right to spread lies.