Freaks of Greenfield High
By Maree Anderson
Chapter Fourteen
Tyler was in the bathroom, trying to get his hair to behave, when Caro cornered him. After she'd quit laughing at his efforts and restyled his hair to her satisfaction, she said, "When're you going to quit feeling sorry for yourself and give her a chance?"
"Don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, come on. Don't give me that. You barely speak to Jay. And when you do, you're so terribly polite it's like you've got Miss Manners shoved up your butt. You even made her partner Matt in Bio. Which I gotta say, is just plain shitty, because even though Jay's a freaking genius with computers and stuff, she hasn't a clue how to deal with guys like him. Quit being such a moody a-hole. Jay needs us. She needs you. And she needs to know you're on her side."
Tyler stared at his reflection, thrusting out his chin to check for eruptions. There were none, of course. Hadn't been since Jay had somehow healed that zit on his chin. Wow. Freaking amazing what a cyborg could do for a guy.
"She's got you on her side, Caro. She doesn't need me."
Caro vented her frustration with a gusty sigh that dragged Tyler's reluctant gaze to hers. She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling in her signature gesture of not-so-mock despair. "She's hurting, Tyler. Real bad."
"That's crap and you know it. She's a cyborg. She can't hurt."
"And you know it's not crap. Jeez! She's all confused because feelings, and this girlfriend-boyfriend stuff, are all Greek to her. But do you cut her a break? No. Of course not! You tell her you're still her friend but do you act like her friend? No. Of course not. Noooo, instead you make like an angry ex-boyfriend, like she's played you and broken your freaking heart. It's pathetic! What am I going to do with the two of you?"
She scrubbed her hands through her immaculately styled hair, grabbed a couple of handfuls and yanked. Hard enough for her to blink and twist her face into a pained grimace. "Look, Tyler, I know you're upset but Jay can't help what she is. And regardless of what she is, she really likes you. So why can't you just—"
"What?" He whirled to confront his sister. "Be boyfriend and girlfriend? Get married? Live happily ever after in a nice house with a white picket fence, and have little Terminator babies? Yeah, like that's a possibility." He turned back to his reflection, trying to ignore her slack-jawed dismay at his OTT reaction.
Crap. He might have over-played that one. Caro wasn't stupid. If he wasn't careful, she might actually suspect the truth: He wanted so badly for Jay to be human that it hurt.
He stared into the mirror with a truly pathetic attempt at mess-with-me-at-your-freakin'-peril eyes. "Get real, Caro."
To his dismay she didn't take the hint. She palmed his shoulders. "Listen up. Jay's in trouble."
Tyler's stomach flip-flopped and finally settled with a sickening lurch. "Well, duh. She's a cyborg and bad men want her."
"Quit being obtuse."
"Obtuse. Now there's a big word. You been reading Mom's word of the day calendar again, huh?"
"Tyler!" She dug her fingernails into his shoulders and shook him so hard it snapped his head back on his neck.
"Ow!" He glared at her in the mirror's reflection. "Quit shaking me."
"I'll quit shaking you when I've shaken some sense into you, and you stop being such a smartass and hear me out!"
She was mega-serious. She meant it. And Tyler couldn't keep up the pretense that he didn't care deeply about Jay any longer. His shoulders slumped beneath her grip. "What's happened?"
"Do you remember that tracking program she ran? The one that was tracking IP addresses of the people who'd viewed the clip?"
"Yeah, I remember."
"One of them wasn't local."
His stomach lurched again. He swallowed, trying to work some moisture into his suddenly dry mouth. "So?"
"So, it was suspicious. Jay did some further digging and she says the guys who're after her have tracked her down. They'll be coming for her. Soon."
Tyler's world came to a screaming halt. His heart galloped. "What's she gonna do?"
Caro didn't say anything.
"Is she gonna run?"
She released him and headed for the door.
"Caro! What's Jay going to do?"
"Ask her yourself," his sister said. "You owe her that much, at least."
~*~
The morning dragged. Even art class failed to hold much pleasure. Tyler found himself sketching Jay's face, trying to capture her essence—that part that was uniquely Jay. And wondering what it meant when he couldn't quite manage it as well as he'd like.
"Excellent work, Tyler."
His art teacher's voice made him jump.
"May I?" Mr. Sands took possession of his sketchbook before Tyler could protest, and examined the drawing more closely. "Is she someone you know?"
"Uh, yeah. She is."
"The eyes are truly stunning. The way she's staring out from the page...." Mr. Sands held up his sketch, waving it to catch his students' attention.
Tyler scrunched lower in his chair and thought seriously about crawling under his desk.
"I want you all to take a look at Tyler's sketch," Mr. Sands told the class. "See the way he's used different techniques such as crosshatching? And that slinky stroke we talked about last week, to get this dark shading here and here? And the way he's highlighted the eyes so the face seems to leap from the page—excellent technique!" He droned on, ignoring the titters from a couple of girls who'd recognized the subject of Tyler's portrait.
Good going, dude. Way to feed the gossip.
Tyler groaned. Was he a complete idiot? Only saving grace was, Caro couldn't draw to save her life, so she wasn't in this class. If his sister ever copped a look at that sketch she'd be on his case big-time.
When his teacher returned his sketchbook, Tyler studied the drawing. He wasn't inclined to agree with the glowing assessment. Beneath his critical gaze, Jay's face appeared soulless, almost inhuman. Which of course she was. And seeing the truth of Jay leaping out at him, so starkly captured in pencil lines and smudges on a page, scared him.
Scared or not, the truth didn't stop his stupid heart and head from liking her thatway. It didn't stop him from dwelling on how he'd practically stopped breathing when she'd kissed him, either. Or how she'd looked that time in the cafeteria—stunned and pleased and very vulnerable—when he'd glanced back and caught her touching her lips after he'd kissed her. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw her. And, in his mind at least, it was easy to tell her how he felt about her. And show her. By kissing her... properly, this time.
How pathetic was that?
How pathetic was he?
He growled to himself. And scowled a mind-your-own-freaking-business scowl at the guy sitting in front of him when he turned around to check whether Tyler had morphed into a wild animal.
Tyler brooded for the rest of the class. When it was over, he ripped the page from his sketchbook. And as he left the room, he tossed it in the trash.
By lunchbreak, his head ached from trying to work it all out. He couldn't handle going to the music room and working on his songs. He dragged his feet to the cafeteria and ran the gamut of whispers and nudges before plunking his butt in a seat at the back.
His own choice, of course. He could have sat with Em and the other girls from his team. Caro would be there, too, avoiding Vanessa and Shawn. And pretending to ignore Matt, who had apparently decided Caro was still worth pursuing and sat at her table every lunchtime. But that would also mean Tyler sitting with Jay, confronting his feelings for Jay, trying not to give in to Jay's mesmerizing, too-sad, totally miserable gaze.
That would mean telling her how he felt for real. And he wasn't ready for that. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
He rummaged in his bag for his packed lunch and unwrapped a bologna sandwich. He choked down a single bite, gave up and packed it away again. He ignored the sticky, grungy tabletop, and laid his aching head atop his arms, tuning out the rest of the world.
Someone placed a hand on his shoulder.
Tyler jumped at the sheer unexpectedness of the touch. His head jerked up and his wild-eyed gaze met Jay's electric blue one.
"May I join you, Tyler? Please?"
"Uh. Sure!" His heart tripped and that warm feeling he got whenever she looked his way infected his brain, driving away all good sense. He shook it off, tore his gaze from her face, even managed a shrug. "Whatever."
She slid into the chair next to him and maneuvered it sideways until she sat angled toward him. Even though Tyler kept his gaze strictly front and center, he knew she was watching him intently. He felt it—felt her, her closeness. Her need.
"What do you want?" he finally asked, unable to bear the silence any longer. He thought his voice sounded strange, hoped it didn't sound laden with all the hurt he was trying so desperately to hide. But if he hadn't pulled it off, he hoped she didn't notice.
Shit. Who was he trying to kid? This was Jay. Of course she would notice. Hopefully, she would be too polite to acknowledge it.
"I want to ask you a favor," she said.
Oh no. No way. He opened his mouth and a bunch of crap he didn't mean spewed out. "Sure. Anything. We're friends, right? And friends do favors for each other."
"Are we friends, Tyler?"
He slanted her a quick, assessing glance. Huh. Just as he'd thought. It was a sincere question. And it deserved a sincere answer.
"Sure." He scraped a piece of dried food from the surface of the table and flicked it away with his fingernail. "Sure we are."
"Mmmm. I might not be human, and I might not know all there is to know about friendship, but somehow I doubt we are friends."
God, she sounded so sad. Tyler dared examine her face. And he didn't turn away, not even when he spotted the hope lighting her eyes—hope that he was going to dash to itty bitty irretrievable pieces, because he couldn't bring himself to be completely honest with her.
He could hardly tell Jay that he really liked her—maybe even more than liked. Not that he could possibly know what love felt like, 'cause he'd only recently turned seventeen. But if love was feeling like total crap when Jay wasn't around, if it was feeling like his entire world brightened when he caught the merest glimpse of her in a hallway, if it was feeling as though he wasn't truly complete without her, then—
OMFG.
He couldn't be.
"Are you all right, Tyler? Is something wrong?"
He tensed all his muscles to keep from shaking. "No! And of course we're friends, Jay. What else could we be?"
What else, indeed.
"You've sure got a crap way of showing it," she muttered.
"What did you say?" She'd sounded so human, so almost Emma-ish, that Tyler couldn't quite credit his ears.
Maybe a bit of Em's smart mouth was rubbing off on Jay? Horrible thought. He suppressed a shudder.
"Nothing," Jay said. "Look, Tyler, I'm planning on leaving soon because of—" She seemed to recollect she was in a public place and lowered her voice. "You know why. But before I take off, I wanted to throw a party—a farewell party. Caro's idea, of course."
He snorted. "Of course. Any excuse for a party. But won't that be dangerous? I mean, if these people are looking for you, wouldn't it be better to, like, disappear in the dead of night?"
She grinned. And her expression was so mischievous, so normal, it warmed him... and almost made him forget what she was.
But not quite.
"That's the beauty of Caro's plan," she said.
"My sister actually came up with a plan? Whoa. Frame it and hang it on the wall. Wonders will never cease."
Jay gave a bark of surprised laughter. "I've missed your way with words, Tyler." Some of her joy seemed to dim as she swept her gaze over him. "I've missed you."
"Oh, come on." He tried for a scoffing tone. He thought he pretty much pulled it off, too. "We've only known each other for a short time. And it's not like we were dating or anything. It's not like we—" he curled his fingers into little pretend speech marks "—brokeup."
"Seems that way to me. You go out of your way to avoid me, you barely speak to me at all, you won't look me in the eye." She tapped her temple with a forefinger. "Classic after break-up behavior, according to my databases. And haven't you heard the gossip around school?"
"I refuse to listen to gossip," he said.
She quirked an eyebrow. "Yeah. Riiight."
Whoa, she really was beginning to sound like both Caro and Em. "Fine. What gossip?"
"Thought you didn't—"
"What. Gossip?"
She smirked. Actually smirked! "You really sure—?"
"Spill," he said.
"You asked for it. Word is, you really did convince me to blow you in the boys' bathroom. And I was totally into you, but you're just, like, a coldhearted a-hole who doesn't give a crap about me now you've gotten what you wanted. So you've given me the brush-off. And now I'm pining. 'Cause you're, like, sooo totally hot, I'm just gutted and I can't get over you." She scratched her head, frowning. "Did I get it right? Uh, yeah, that was it. Kinda."
Tyler's jaw sagged. "You have got to be freaking kidding me."
Jay's mouth curled into a smug smirk. "Yep."
He couldn't help his burst of laughter. "You got me good. That was totally Caro-worthy."
"Yep. Your sister has definitely been influencing me—in a good way, I hope. Evidently I don't sound quite so nerdy and uptight, now. Did I really sound uptight before?"
He bit his lip, trying not to smile. "A little. You were a bit too, um, polite before. But I didn't think too much of it until I found out, uh—"
"What I am?"
"Yeah. What you are."
"Mmmm." She nibbled her lower lip, processing that statement. "Well, I'm hoping what I've learned will help me integrate myself into human society a bit more efficiently next time."
Next time. Tyler's heart plummeted to his toes. He didn't want to think about Jay finding another home. Another school. Another boyfriend.
He pretended to fumble in his bag for a non-existent something. God. He really had it bad.
When he'd composed himself, he asked, "What was that favor you wanted?"
"I'm having the farewell party at my place tomorrow night. Cover story is, my uncle rang, and he's had a job offer that's too good to turn down. So he's staying on to finalize the arrangements while I—"
"Throw a huge party and trash the joint? Sounds like something Caro would come up with."
Jay snorted. Another of those very human-like mannerisms. "I was going to say, while I pack up and arrange to fly out and meet him," she said. "I thought it was a pretty sound plan, actually. Believe me, Tyler, it won't be long before the people after me come sniffing 'round, asking about me. And let's just say, some kid throwing a farewell party while her uncle is out of town, isn't quite so suspect as a kid who disappears without trace in the middle of the night and sets the entire town fluttering with dire predictions about her demise. Throwing a party is hardly something a cyborg would be likely to do, is it? With any luck, my pursuers will arrive in Snapperton, immediately verify I'm not here and leave without bothering anyone."
"Here's hoping. Not that I'd tell them anything, anyway."
She reached over and squeezed his hand. And kept hold of it. "If they ask, tell them the truth."
"And what truth would that be?"
"That you don't know where I've gone. Don't volunteer any other information. And for your own safety, don't admit you know what I am."
A chill stroked his spine. This wasn't a game. This was real. And things could get nasty. "I'll be okay. I'm a pretty good actor."
"Yeah," she said. "You are. And you fool most people, too. But beneath that I-don't-give-a-crap façade, there's someone I care about very much. So please, if you spot any strangers asking questions about me, keep a low profile. Be safe, Tyler. Promise me?"
"I will."
He felt himself flushing beneath her concerned gaze. He'd never had much of a problem with blushing until she showed up. "About that favor," he said, as much to distract himself as her.
"Oh yeah. The favor. So, I'm having this party Saturday."
"Yeah, I kinda got that," he said.
"And I'd kinda like you to come. As my date."
~*~
Copyright 2011 Maree Anderson
www.mareeanderson.com