Last Stand (8 page)

“I’m shocked.” He smacks me on the back. “Meet me here at the lockers and I’ll run the gauntlet with you.”

• • •

Griff’s his usual laid-back self when we get into line for lunch, doing a great job of making it look like the two of us are jabbering away about something interesting and are oblivious to what’s happening around us.

“Not so bad,” he says, discreetly surveying the room. “No one’s paying much attention to you. They’re all looking at Little Miss He Done Me Wrong.”

My back’s to Amber, but I saw her when I came in. Couldn’t miss her. She’s wearing her favorite purple V-neck top, one I once told her makes her look fabulous. I meant her eyes at the time, since I was kissing her when I said it, but it also highlights her other assets big time. (So to speak.) And she knows it. “Holding court, huh?”

“Yep. The usual minions are gathered at her table. Meghan, Christy, the whole group. And Annabelle Gatskowsky is at the front of the lunch line waving for them to save her a seat. She has another girl with her. Another band type, I think.”

“Hmmm, wonder what they could all be talking about?” Yep, that was sarcasm in my voice.

Griff smiles, then adds, “Oh, and don’t look now, but Connor Ralston and a couple of his friends are sitting down at table behind her. She’s pretending not to notice.”

“Great.” I wonder if part of her hooking up with me was to get back at Connor. For someone with no regrets, she sure doesn’t seem to have him out of her system. I bet Griff’s right. The flirting before band was probably two-way.

Griff mutters, “For a girl with a broken heart, she sure seems to be loving all the drama and attention.”

And that’s when it hits me. Serious déjà vu.

“What?” Griff asks, catching my eye. There’s concern in his voice, but to his credit, he still looks like he’s Mr. Casual. “What’d you see?”

“Nothing,” I wave him off. “Just realized that you’ve been right all along whenever you’ve called me dumbass.”

“Well, of course. I’m always right.”

The first time I had lunch with Amber was this week, last year. We’d just gotten together, and everyone in school was speculating about us. Connor was seated a few tables away. Since the two of them had broken up over the summer, most people hadn’t heard about it. Not until school started and Amber sat with her new boyfriend at lunch and the gossip began.

She’d been happy and giggly that day, smiling like I hadn’t seen her smile in months. I’d thought it was because she was happy to be with me, that she’d totally forgotten Connor left her for some other girl. Now I’m thinking she was happy for the attention. What was the term Ginger used?

Attention junkie.

Guess it should be capital A, capital J. Like a syndrome.

We get to the front of the line, skipping the trays and hot food choices in favor of pre-made, wrapped sandwiches, apples, granola bars, and sodas we can carry out. I’m about to pay when the basket of candy calls to me. I grab myself a Snickers, then toss it back in favor of a Twix—no peanuts in Twix—and add a bag of Skittles.

Griff oinks behind me.

“I owe Ginger some Skittles from lunch yesterday. I’ll give ‘em to her at her locker later,” I explain.

I toss the food in my backpack, then Griff and I make a beeline out of the caf. I hear Amber’s cheery laughter as we pass near her table—she’s not laughing at me, but it’s definitely meant for my ears—and decide that Ginger was dead-on. Amber wanted me for the attention and the attention only. It’s probably why she was so insistent about sex. If the relationship didn’t escalate—if I couldn’t meet her demand for increasing doses to feel the high—it meant she wasn’t getting her fix.

If she really wanted
me
, she wouldn’t have thrown her public fit. And she’d wanted it to be public, otherwise she’d have answered my text asking her to meet me at home so I wouldn’t miss cross-country. I know she got it; she’s obsessive about checking between classes.

Of course, if I’d have ignored one of her texts for hours, she’d have been pouty. I wasn’t paying attention to her. I didn’t
love
her if I didn’t jump to answer right away.

“You know, Amber was a lot of work,” I tell Griff once we’re safely out of the cafeteria.

“You’re just now figuring that out?” In a girly voice, he adds, “Toooh-beeee, you’re going to walk me home, aren’t you? Oh, Toooh-beeee, why didn’t you answer my text?”

“No kidding.”

How often did I do things with—or for—Amber because she expected me to, rather than because I really wanted to?

Or worse—spending so much on the necklace I got her for our anniversary. I could’ve added that money to my car fund, but now the necklace is probably sitting in a drawer in her bedroom, never to be worn.

“So how come you never said anything?” I ask Griff.

“Maybe ‘cause you wouldn’t have listened? You were blinded, man.” Griff cracks up. “Probably by her boobs.”

“Gee, thanks.” Good thing the hall’s empty except for the two of us.

“Don’t mention it.”

We enter the library, give the librarian a friendly wave—eat in the library? who, us?—as we pass her desk, then make our way to the table at the back of the stacks.

Ginger’s already there. She looks up from her notebook as we approach and raises an eyebrow. “You two officially stalking me?”

“No way. I was here first yesterday, and the two of you barged in on me,” Griff says. He jerks a thumb in my direction. “And he brought you Skittles. Not stalker behavior.”

“Hand ‘em over and I’ll consider letting you sit.”

I drop my backpack into one of the empty chairs, locate the Skittles, then toss them to her. She catches the bag in one hand and sets them in front of her on the table, then reaches down to the floor to pick up the Diet Coke she hid as we came through the stacks.

“Can’t be too careful,” she says as Griff and I sit. “So how’s your morning been, Toby?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Griff’s voice is filled with snark, which garners him a smile from Ginger.

“Some.” She leans back in her chair and fixes her ponytail. She catches my eye, and it’s clear to me that she not only heard the gossip, she heard everything that went down in the parking lot—including Amber’s slut comment—loud and clear.

“She actually witnessed it,” I tell Griff as he spreads out his lunch. “My most glorious moment.”

“Had to ride in on my white horse to rescue his ass.”

“Well, in a blue Toyota, anyway,” I explain to Griff. “She gave me a ride to Fair Grounds.”

“That’s how you got there at mach speed,” he says between bites of his cafeteria-bought ham and cheese. “I knew you couldn’t run that fast.”

I fake punch him. He smirks, then asks Ginger, “So was it gory? Amber beat the crap out of him and leave him for dead?”

“Just about.” Ginger’s eyes are lit in amusement. “I swear, it was like watching Custer ride across the prairie. He went into the situation with no battle plan and no knowledge whatsoever of the strength of his enemy.”

Griff elbows me. “You’d think a history freak like you would know better.”

“Well, he got out alive and he acted with honor,” Ginger says. “Better than Custer did, on both counts.”

How much do I like her right now? Not just because she called me honorable, but because she knows about the Battle of the Little Bighorn?

“You guys realize I’m sitting right here while you talk about me, right?”

“Yup,” they reply together.

I crack up, then pull
Gatsby
out of my backpack. Have to read the last few pages before class. I haven’t been called on yet, which means I’m due. Just what I need on a day where everyone’s talking about me.

Somehow, though, kicking back alongside Griff and Ginger, I’m feeling no pain. Like I’m looking back at my relationship with Amber from a decade in the future and seeing that I’ve lived and learned.

Griff leans over to two-point his wadded-up sandwich wrapper in the trash can. As he does, Ginger winks at me. No squinching, no posing against a fence with a hand on her hip. Just a straight-up wink.

“So you live to fight another day,” she says.

I smile at her, then reach across the table to steal back a Skittle from the open bag. “You think?”

She yanks the bag away before I can get one, but her lips curve into a smile. “Positive.”

Niki Burnham is the RITA-award winning author of over a dozen novels, including Royally Jacked, a
Teen People
Pick. Originally from Colorado, Niki spent her childhood traveling around the world thanks to her father’s military career. After attending high school in Mannheim, Germany, she graduated from Colorado State University and the University of Michigan Law School. Niki currently lives in Boston. She is also published under the name Nicole Burnham.

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Shot Through the Heart

Scary Beautiful

Sticky Fingers

Royally Crushed: Royally Jacked; Spin Control; Do-Over

Last Stand

by Niki Burnham

Copyright 2008, 2011 by Nicole Burnham

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without express permission in writing from the author or publisher.

Published by Summer Road Press

Cover design by Xuni.com

Ebook design by 52 Novels

Edition: December 2011

ISBN: 978-0-9847069-2-1

For more information, visit

www.nikiburnham.com