SWAY (Part 1) (4 page)

7

I was in English class looking through a list of books I could choose from to write a paper on, secretly hoping to find one I’d recently read, when an aide came in and told my teacher that I was needed in the office.

“What’s this about?” I asked, once we were in the hall.

“Don’t know,” he mumbled.

He walked me to the senior pod before stopping. “Wait here. I’ll be right back,” he instructed.

Seconds later, the boy returned, closing the door behind him. “He’ll be right out,” he said with zero enthusiasm, or a hint of a clue. “Who?” I questioned. I wasn’t expecting anyone. I thought I was needed in the office.

When the door opened, I gasped.
“You!
You
pulled me out of class?” Ryan turned to the office aid and bumped fists with him.

“Thanks, man.”

“Sure, just don’t let her get me caught.” The guy casually threw his head in my direction. My mouth popped open, releasing an offended rush of air. “Shhh,” Ryan told me as he twisted my body to face the exit, and then nudged me forward from behind.

Once we were through the doors, I looked to Ryan for an expl
anation. He didn’t offer one.

“Come on, we don’t have much time,” he said, grabbing my hand.
“For what, exactly?” I asked sharply. He ignored the question, still not bothering to look at me, wasting the irritation I had on display for him. 

Once my brain realized I was holding Ryan’s hand, I shook mine loose and shoved it into my pocket. He still didn’t look at me, just co
ntinued walking, looking straight ahead as he passed me, and then disappeared around a corner.

I followed him. I don’t know why. I should have been running in the other direction. Ryan leaned back against the rusty, brick wall behind him and looked at me for what felt like an eternity, silently assessing me. Watching as my expression adjusted, becoming less irritated with him because he seemed ner
vous.

My eyes skimmed Ryan’s face, taking in every part of it, noticing the stress above his unsure eyes, his slightly cinched brows, and the slim crease in his forehead. His mouth was full of indecision, as if considering how to speak the words he wanted
me to hear, how to form them and shove them out into the universe.

Ryan’s lips parted, allowing a small sigh to escape, som
ething I assumed he wished I hadn’t heard. The seconds ticked by as we stood silently hypnotized by one another. I imagined he was mingling thoughts of me with his secret intentions in his mind as his mouth twitched at the corner for a moment, which he fluidly stopped before it could become more than that. 

This boy definitely wasn’t the Ryan I knew.
He
was narcissistic and seemingly always playing some sort of game, or trying to embarrass me. I couldn’t read his mind and the look on his face was incomprehensible to me. I wished he would just say something. That he would tell me what he wanted. Then the bell rang.

Ryan’s eyes pulled away from mine, but I continued loo
king at him, becoming aggravated with his silence as my eyes raked over his motionless features. I glared at him for a moment, informing him that this was his last chance to spit it out. He offered nothing, which instantly forced my aggravation into anger.

I wanted to know why Ryan had pulled me out of class o
nly to remain silent once he had my full attention. I wanted to know what he wanted, which made me a little mad at myself. I shouldn’t have cared. I wasn’t supposed to care, but I hadn’t seen that side of Ryan before. He seemed almost vulnerable, which piqued my curiosity, but I wasn’t going to beg him to tell me. I exhaled hard, and walked back to the building alone.

I thought about Ryan’s stunt the remainder of the day, which had to have been the point—to get me thinking about him. What he didn’t know was that I didn’t need any help in that d
epartment.

After that day, Ryan seemed to disappear. It had been a
lmost a week and a half and I hadn’t seen him at school at all. I would have been lying if I said I hadn’t wondered why. I dreamt up theories, attempting to figure out what he’d been trying to accomplish that afternoon.

I finally decided it was a trick designed to leave me so curious and confused that I would break down and call him to d
emand a reason for his actions. I laughed out loud.
I was so much smarter than that
. There was no way he could fool me into breaking my rule. I was not calling him.

Pam had instructed me early on that I should never call a boy first. She said I might go crazy waiting on one, because boys don’t a
lways get in the biggest hurry when it comes to things like that, but if a boy really wanted to get to know me, he would definitely call. I just wasn’t sure her theory would apply to this particular boy.

***

I had only seen David three times in five weeks. We never spent much time together, but this was a new record. It never bothered me before because I had Justin, but now he had Eve and she was getting
all
of his attention.

Because of that, and Lindsay’s lack of a boyfriend, she and I had been together a lot more than usual. When I was with her, I had to make a conscious effort to watch my mouth. She always blurted out whatever she was thinking and those thoughts were sometimes riddled with curse words—an apparently contagious habit.

She would laugh at me and say, “Those words don’t have the same power coming from your well behaved, good girl mouth.” I couldn’t help it, I didn’t say them much, unless I was around her, and I guess they did sound a little funny coming from someone with so little practice spewing them. 

Lindsay and I were getting ready to go see David’s band play. They were good for being a bunch of teenagers, except for the drummer who was, like, thirty-two. I didn’t care for the a
tmosphere in the places they played. They were tiny and full of cigarette smoke and people who looked as if they’d just crawled out of a manhole or come from a lingerie store that specialized in leather and metal studs.

Lindsay was trying her best to get me to change my outfit. She thought what I was wearing was boring and too simple for g
oing out. I crossed my arms and shook my head no.

“There’s no way I’m wea
ring that.”

“Oh come on,” Lindsay whined, bent at the knees, slouc
hing as she begged. She was trying to talk me into wearing a black spandex, off the shoulder bodysuit with an equally tight silver clasped belt, and disastrously high-heeled wedge shoes.

“You do realize that you’re trying to dress me like Sandy in the finale scene of Grease, right?” Lindsay laughed, glancing at the items laid across her bed.

“Shit, it does kind of look like it now that you mention it. No disrespect to Sandy, but I was thinking that David might like it if you showed up looking a little slutty.”

I snorted. “You look slutty enough for both of us.” Lindsay grinned, flattered, taking a deep bow, ma
king me laugh.

She was wearing thigh high boots with five-inch heels and fis
hnets, a black, skintight halter dress with a chunky, gray, chain link belt around her waist, and matching earrings. She had stained all of her hair black cherry red and crimped random pieces all over. She always wore a lot of makeup, but tonight her eyelids were covered in silver glitter shadow, her mouth with metallic pink lipstick. She looked like 1985 had puked on her.

I wore a red tunic of Lindsay’s, and a pair of multi-colored heels. She thought my jeans were fine, but that’s because I bought them when we were shopping together, and she’d picked them out.

David had reserved a table for us near the front of the stage. He was finishing sound check when he spotted us. Smiling, he jumped down and hugged me, kissed my cheek and told me I looked nice, and then turned to say hello to Lindsay.

“Meeeooow,” he yelped, winking at her.

“Thank you.” She winked back, then shot me a look that said,
I told you he’d like it.
I rolled my eyes.

“I gotta get back, we’re about to start.” David quickly kissed me again and vaulted himself back on stage.

Before they began to play, David announced to the crowd that I was in the audience and pointed me out so everyone could get a good look. I imagined this was meant as a warning for the groupies to lay low until I was gone because of our agreement.

David played his guitar and slung his sweaty hair around du
ring the show, which made the girls in the place go nuts. It was pretty sexy. The only reason I was seeing him was because of my physical attraction to him. I should have been bothered by the way some girls acted around him, but I didn’t feel the tiniest bit jealous.

“I can’t believe you won’t have sex with him,” Lindsay said as she watched David in a trancelike state. “He is freakishly hot—especially when he’s doing that. I don’t know how you stand it.”

I ignored her lusting. I didn’t care. I’ll admit the whole bad boy thing had an exciting edge to it, and David was hot, but
something
was obviously missing. I mean, he was my boyfriend and I was the only girl in the room who didn’t want to go home with him.

8

I decided it was time for me to leave when Lindsay began throwing everything in her closet onto the floor, squealing about how unorganized it was. Everything looked plenty organized to me, and I’d already helped her rearrange her bedroom furniture, so I wasn’t sticking around for the closet project. She’d probably be two days putting it all back together.

By the time I got inside my house, the phone was ringing. I cas
ually answered expecting to hear Lindsay begging me to come help her hang everything back up, but it wasn’t her.

“Annie?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, it’s Ryan.”

I was stunned. Not because Pam had been right, but because I hadn’t expected
he
would call. It didn’t seem to be his style.

“Ryan Mullins,” he said carefully, when I didn’t respond. “I fi
gured you weren’t going to break your rule.” His tone was sweet and soft, coercing me to speak graciously, instead of snapping at him, or demanding to know how he’d gotten my home number.

“I never break that rule,” I breathed.

I heard him smile. “You’re not going to hang up on me, are you?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I’ve been trying to get to know you and you’ve been making it hard on me.”

“How exactly have I made an
ything hard on
you
?”

“You just have.”

“Oh,” I gasped. “You mean because I haven’t allowed your

stunts
to go to my head?”

“Stunts, huh?”

“Yeah, you know, all of your premeditated schemes. You followed me into the girls’ locker room, broke into my locker, wrote your phone number on everything I own—including a body part. But I imagine you thought I would be grateful that
Ryan Mullins
noticed me. You’ve stalked me around school, pulled me out of class for no reason I could figure, other than to aggravate me, or trick me into calling you. I haven’t decided which yet. Then there was the time you cornered me in the gym so you could feel me up and leave me standing by myself when you were done. Any of that sound familiar to you?” I asked, pleased I had gotten it all out.

“You got felt up in the gym? It’s too bad I missed that,” Ryan snickered.

“Oh, so that wasn’t you, or do you just not remember which one I am? You know, 5’6”, wavy brown hair, brown eyes, but that’s probably too general of a description for you,” I huffed. “I imagine it’s kind of hard keeping all of us straight. Are you sure you called the right girl?”

“I’m positive I called the right girl, and I wasn’t feeling you up. I was flirting—trying to persuade you to do what I wanted,” Ryan a
nswered smoothly.

“I’ve never been flirted with so aggressively before.
Hopefully you’ve learned that I don’t respond well to that particular brand of persuasion, which is just good old fashioned manipulation, by the way. And just so you know, for future reference, that junk does not work on me.”

“Wow,” Ryan paused. “You sound annoyed.”

And he sounded elated. “I’m not annoyed. I just want to know what you want from me. You never seem to be able to spit it out. It’s beginning to feel like I’m part of some game you’re playing in your head. Some sick way for you to entertain yourself. So please, just tell me what you want from me.”

Ryan was silent for a long moment. I wondered if he regretted calling. I’d been a touch abrasive with him and anticipated that I might be the one ge
tting hung up on.

“Come out with me tomorrow night,” he finally said.

“What?” I automatically answered.

“I want you to go out with me tomorrow night,” he clar
ified. Once it sunk in, I wanted to laugh. “Have you ever even asked a girl out before?”

“Yeah.”
He seemed insulted by the question at first, but then he laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry, but you did ask me to
tell you what I want from you
and that’s what I want. For you to go out with me tomorrow night.”

I bit my tongue over that little comment. The guy had a fantastic way of pushing my buttons. “Why would you want to go out with me? You barely know me.”

“First, I wouldn’t say that I barely know you. I pay a great deal of attention to you,” he said softly. He was right about that. Until this week, he had paid all sorts of attention to me. “I know more about you than you think, Annie.”

I smiled again. Honestly, I liked the way he watched me, and had recently missed it.

“Secondly, I find you very interesting. I’ve never met a girl like you before. Most girls will do just about anything to get my attention.”
That was the definitive truth
.

“Yeah, well, hopefully they don’t all go about it like Ashley Ca
rpenter,” I mumbled.

Ryan laughed. “Not always, but I have encountered some pretty creative girls. I’ve seen some…
interesting things
,” he admitted, a hint of a growl in his throat.

For some reason that set me on fire.
Ryan sounded like he’d enjoyed those
interesting
things
. “Well then,” I raised my voice. “Why don’t you go find one of those girls to harass?”

“Because they’re not nearly as much fun as you are.”

“Ha!” I scoffed. I seriously doubted it. I also imagined he had no idea he was barking up the wrong tree if he was looking for a
fun
time, because I wasn’t it.

“You don’t think those freshmen girls running the halls with your phone number on their palms are fun?” I bet he didn’t think I knew about that, but I’d been paying a great deal of atte
ntion to him, too.

“That’s harmless. They like it when I notice them. It makes them giggly.”

“Well, it makes me vomity,” I scowled.

Ryan laughed. “You know, you’re the only girl I’ve ever offen
ded with the phone number thing,” he said, seeming truly mystified by my adverse reaction.

“I wasn’t offended. I just don’t want to be one of tho
usands.”

“Trust me,” he breathed. “You’re not.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re the
only
girl that didn’t call.”

“Humph.” I didn’t know what to say to that.

“So—?” He was waiting for an answer. “What do you think about Saturday night?”

“I can’t,” I answered firmly.

“Why not?” Ryan asked, sounding genuinely wounded. I wasn’t sure how to answer that question and began feeling panicked. The truth is, I was deathly afraid of getting involved with Ryan, of getting hurt or being used. I couldn’t tell him that, though. Also, I didn’t know if I could deal with other girls constantly vying for his attention.
Or their
creativity
.

Before I could answer, Ryan laughed. “Oh yeah, I forgot about that boyfriend of yours.” As if he had just
remembered I had a boyfriend. “David.” I stated, my tone making it sound more like a question. It seemed I had also just remembered that I had a boyfriend, because David hadn’t occurred to me as a reason to say no.

“Where did you find that guy anyway?  Does he even know what year it is?” Ryan snickered.
A hair joke
. How original.

“
He
is none of your business,” I snapped.

“You don’t see him very much.” 

“You don’t know,” I argued.

“I told you, I pay attention to
everything
you do, Annie,” Ryan whispered. His words made me shiver, but I couldn’t let it faze me.

“And I told you, Ryan, I’m not interested.” He didn’t allow my words to faze him either. “I know that you are. Your heart told on you, remember?”

“That was fear you were feeling. I didn’t know what you were going to do to me in that dark corner,” I defended.

“Fear is the last thing that was. And you know it.” 

“You’re deluded,” I accused.

“You’re just mad that I know the truth,” he fired back. “You like me; you’re just too chicken to do anything about it.” Ryan was right, but there was no way I was going to cop to it. I decided not to argue with him, chicken reference or not. I would only lose.

“I said no, okay,” I told him, exasperated by his attempts to sway me.

“Because of your boyfriend?”
Ryan asked, unconvinced.

“Look, I need to go. I have stuff to do.”

“At ten-thirty on a Friday night?” he snickered, knowing I wasn’t going to be doing anything other than going to bed.

“Yes, at ten-thirty on a Friday night, and uh, I’m actually su
rprised you were able to sneak away to call me. Don’t you have a harem waiting for you somewhere?”

Ryan laughed. “You have an interesting sense of humor.” I hadn’t missed that he didn’t answer the question. I breathed hard into the phone allowing him to sample my frustration, which amused him.

“Okay, I won’t keep you from whatever it is you need to do, but,” he whispered, “there is one thing I would really love to know first.”

“Fine,” I agreed, exhaling hard.

“Do you and David braid each other’s hair?” Ryan was laughing before he’d finished the question. I hung up, miffed that I had allowed him to get over on me.

***

It was unusual for Justin not to go straight to Eve’s on his free afternoons, so I was surprised when he asked me to go monkey suit hunting with him. He’d asked Eve to prom and needed to reserve a tux.

I was standing next to Justin’s truck, waiting for him to come out when Ryan spotted me. He changed direction instantly, and walked t
oward me. I wasn’t in the mood for his antics, but I was a little excited that the mere sight of me had stopped him in his tracks.

“Hey Annie,” Ryan said. I glared at him. He nodded, u
nderstanding my attitude, but ignored it. “I want to apologize for what I said the other night.”

Something about the way Ryan smiled at me was off. He wasn’t sorry at all. He was only trying to keep from alienating me. I smiled back while mulling over how I would play it.

I decided to take the high road and accept Ryan’s apology without giving him any grief. “It’s fine. It
was
a little funny, actually.” Ryan’s eyes brightened as his smile widened then retracted, rearranging his face as he desperately tried to keep from laughing. His reaction caused me to change my mind about the grief.

“You really do pay attention, don’t you?” I marveled, stepping closer to him, methodically looking him over. Ryan’s eyes
narrowed, that smug smile fading.

“David and I play with each other’s hair all the time,” I
revealed, locking my eyes on his. “Do you know what I love most?” I animated the next part, revealing my answer in a gravelly voice. “When he twists his fingers until they’re tangled in, and then pulls.
Hard
.” I released an over exaggerated sigh, and then gave Ryan my version of his devious little smile.

So
, I hadn’t quite made it to the high road, but he’d practically begged me to circle back. This thrilled him. Ryan shot an excited smile back at me, keeping his eyes, full of wonder, focused on mine. I would have given almost anything to know exactly what he was thinking. Then Justin appeared.

He was cautious as he approached Ryan and me because of the intensity of our position. I didn’t care if we had to stand there all night; I was not looking away first. This also pleased Ryan. He smiled wider, nodding, contented with how I’d just handled him, before turning to greet Justin.

“What was that all about?” Justin asked, once we were on the road.

“Nothing, really.
He likes to play games. I obliged him a little is all.”

“I still don’t want you getting mixed up with him.”

“I can handle him,” I chided. Justin whipped his head from the road to look at me. “That doesn’t sound like you’re going to keep your distance.”

“Watch the road!” I demanded.

“I’ve got it, Annie. Just stay away from Ryan Mullins. He’s trouble.”

“I’m not interested in getting involved with Ryan Mu
llins,” I snarled. I thought I was telling the truth, but wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

“I don’t want you to get hurt. He’s a player, and you know what guys like him are after.” I knew exactly what Justin meant and that was my biggest fear about getting involved with Ryan. I was afraid he only saw me as a conquest, or a challenge, because other girls made it so easy for him. There was really no way I could be sure, which was why I’d said no when he asked me out. It had nothing to do with David.

I asked Justin what he was planning for Eve on prom night. He knew what I was doing and gave me a look to prove it, but allowed me to change the subject anyway.