The Bookworm Next Door: The Expanded and Revised Edition (3 page)

              “Hey!” David interrupted.  “I haven’t had sex with Aimee.”

              Delilah snorted, “Not far from it if Aimee takes after her sister.”

              “Look!  You’re the one who pushed me away in favor of a stupid book!” he flung his arm in the direction of her bookcase.  “You can’t obsess over those books just because your mother left.  You can’t abandon everybody to mope in your own little world filled with fictional characters!”

              “Don’t tell me what to do and how to react!”

              “Don’t be such a bitch!”

              They stood nose to nose and he couldn’t resist kissing her.  It only lasted a few seconds before she pushed him away. 

              “Don’t,” was all she said before backing away.  “Just leave me alone.”

              Looking around the cafeteria, Delilah wondered, not for the first time, where to sit in the crowded cafeteria.  David had taken to eating with his new girlfriend and Will.  She doubted that he’d even noticed that most days she was eating alone.  Delilah spent that time reading a book or studying.  Algebra One was kicking her butt despite all her extra study time.

              The books were easy to pick out.  While
Pride and Prejudice
would always hold a special place in her heart – she hoped one day she’d have a love like Darcy and Elizabeth – there was still other books written by Austen for her to try out.  While her mother tended to read the books to her daughters at least once a year, Delilah had never taken the time to actually read them. 
Sense and Sensibility
was a struggle, but she was making progress on the book along with working on her classes. 

              That day, one of those days that would forever change things, Delilah had her math notes spread out around her as she struggled with that day’s homework assignment.  If she was going to spend time alone at lunch she might as well make those lonely twenty-five minutes productive. 

              With her head buried in a book she barely noticed the tray being set down next to her.  “Hey,” a slightly familiar voice said.  “I’m Jennifer Matheson.” 

              Looking up, “I know,” she smiled.  “Delilah Davis.”

              “I know,” Jennifer repeated.  “I’m in your Algebra class.  You look like you are struggling.” 

              Shrugging her shoulders, Delilah took a moment before responding.  “A little.  I’m not good at math like you are.”

              “I’m not that great,” Jennifer downplayed, mentally comparing herself to one of her older brothers. 

              Looking shocked, Delilah took a minute to decide what her response was going to be.  “In the sixth grade,” she finally settled on saying, “we had a math test.  Mrs. Hunter had gotten the sixth grade and eight grade tests mixed up and unknowingly had given us the wrong test.  You were the only person who passed that test over material we had never seen before.” 

              Shaking her head, “That C still taunts me.”

              “It’s not like it counted against us.”

              Drawing out her response, Jennifer looked at Delilah, “That’s true.”  Taking a bite from her burger, then talking with her mouth full – a habit she’d picked up from her brothers, among others, much to her mother’s disappointment – she made an offer, “So, do you need help or not?”

              Looking over at her new ‘friend’, Delilah nodded her head and started asking questions about what she couldn’t understand from class.  After a few minutes algebraic formulas were starting to make better sense thanks to Jennifer’s explanations.

              “Where were you sitting before?” Delilah asked when the lunch bell rang. 

              Pointing to a corner near where David and his new friends were sitting, “With my brother, Drew, and some of his band friends.”  Making a face, “It was horrible.  You’re actually doing me a favor.  Just,” Jennifer paused, “one thing.  I have a bad habit of repeating certain words my mother would rather I didn’t know.  I blame my brothers.” 

              Laughing, “It doesn’t matter as long as I don’t have to sit alone and suffer through this stuff anymore,” Delilah pointed at the textbook before grabbing it. 

              Slowly, “You have been warned.”  Jennifer wondered if her new friend knew what she was getting into, but she also recognized that Delilah needed a new friend.  She had witnessed David’s public desertion the day before. 

On the rare occasion David would look over at Delilah's lunch table he would notice that she looked happy - if her smiles at Grace Chandler were any indication.  He wondered about how they met.  

He’d witnessed Jennifer marching over there a few weeks before.  Aimee had been annoyed that David had been paying more attention to the tomboy who had the habit of cussing like a sailor when teachers weren’t around.  He only knew that the girl could run, if her consistently placing in the Top Ten at the Cross-Country meets was any indication.  Some of the Juniors haven’t even placed in the Top Ten during three years of running!

But Grace Chandler…sweet and shy Grace Chandler.  That was a mystery. 

They had English I together, but he didn’t know if the girl had ever spoken a word other than, “Here,” during attendance.  He did know that she was the oldest of...actually he didn’t know how many she was the oldest of.  Every time he saw a Chandler sibling, the next oldest being two years younger than Grace, it appeared to be a different sibling with the exception of the one set of twins he’d seen Grace herding into the playground one afternoon.  He knew she had a backbone – he’d witnessed it with her siblings – but couldn’t figure out why she shied away at school. 

              He had tried to remember Grace from middle school or elementary school, but was entirely possible that Grace had gone to the local Catholic school that hosted kindergarten through the eighth grade. 

              “Why are you looking at Grace Chandler?” Aimee asked him, snarling Grace’s name.  “What’s so important about that klutz?”

              “I have a class with her.  That’s all,” David answered.  Pausing, “What’s wrong with her?”

              “What isn’t?” Aimee murmured.  “How about how she tripped over her own two feet during our first day and dumped her lunch tray all over a Junior?”  She left out the part where the Junior in question had been her sister and that Amanda had chewed Grace out.  Now whenever Grace saw Amanda she’d hurry off in another direction in hopes of avoiding the upper classman. 

              Will Cooper, not knowing when to shut up, finished the story.  “Didn’t she accidently dump her tray on your sister?  Amanda crewed that girl a new one.  After a few minutes Grace was sobbing after some of the things that Amanda had said.”  He looked over at where Grace was sitting.  “I felt sorry for her, but some of Amanda’s friends held me back from going over there.”

              “She’s a nobody,” Aimee dismissed Will’s concern.  It was a direct parrot of something her older sister had said.  “Somebody has to be held up as an example.” 

              Those words troubled David.  Why would somebody need to be held up as an example?  “What did she do to deserve it?”

              “Did you see her clothes?” Aimee waved her hand as she made her point.  Part of her worried about how she was sounding; she didn’t sound at all like the old Aimee but like something her sister had sculpted.  Most of the time her words mimicked something her sister would say.  It bothered her.

              Last year she would have been wearing the exact same thing.  Clothes didn’t matter to her.  They still didn’t except as a means of keeping Amanda off her back and keeping David’s interest. 

              Amanda had pointed out that Aimee needed to get herself in position to become the leader of her class before somebody else had taken the job.  Somebody needed to be the prettiest and most popular female.  And she needed a male counterpart. 

              Looking over at Kyle Goldman’s table, with the other freshman football players, she briefly wondered if she should have focused on the golden boy instead of the dark headed one sitting right next to her.  “Will, why aren’t you sitting with the other football players?”

              “The table is already full,” he answered, shoveling the rest of his burger into his mouth.  Aimee was not the same Aimee as she had been last year and it worried him.  He didn’t understand her chase for popularity or why she kept using him in that pursuit.  Making the decision to watch after her was a no brainer. 

              David looked at everybody else sitting around them.  A few of the freshmen cheerleaders were busy chatting about their cheer routine.  A few other freshmen football players were on the other side of Will, so neither boy could figure out why it mattered which table Will was sitting at during lunch.  The freshmen football players frequently rotated where they sat. 

              He’d preferred sitting next to Will anyway.  While he didn’t know what Aimee was like in middle school, he did know that Will couldn’t have changed too much from the eighth grade to now.  David had encountered Will during travel ball and while the guy was rough around the edges and a bit liable towards suggestion, he knew that Will wasn’t all bad. 

              A muffled scream caught his attention.  Grace was standing up, covered in something – probably lemonade – and crying.  Jennifer was getting up and into the Junior’s face.  “Why the hell would you dump a drink on somebody’s head?  What did she do to you?”  She didn’t notice that a few of the Junior’s friends were moving closer to the bully. 

              “Oh, you made me miss it,” Aimee whispered, standing up along with the other cheerleaders at the table.  “Amanda told me she was going to do that.”

              Will and David turned and looked at the girl.  “Your sister purposely poured that drink on Grace’s head?” one of them unbelievingly asked. 

              “What’s wrong?  Sometimes somebody has to learn her place.”  Aimee repeated her sister’s words from when Aimee had asked Amanda what the purpose of bullying Grace was.

              They’d been dating for six weeks and David had no clue about how mean Aimee could be.  “Grace is a sweetheart.  Why would she need to be put in her place?”

              Once again parroting her sister, Aimee answered him, “Grace isn’t one of us.  She needs to know that and so do the other lesser freshmen.”

              Looking back to where Delilah and her new friends were sitting, David caught his neighbor’s eye.  Without a second thought, he’d wondered if Aimee had seen him being nice to the shy girl – not everybody dealt well in unfamiliar settings – and sent her sister after Grace. 

              Confirming his suspicions, “She isn’t worth your time,” she mumbled. 

              Turning to Aimee, David made a sacrifice of himself.  He suspected that Delilah was going to be her next target.  “I won’t break up with you right now if you call your dogs off of Grace and everybody else at that table.”  He knew that Aimee needed him for his friends and for homework help.  She’d be failing English I already without his help. 

              Turning and blinking at him, “Or what?”

              “Or you’ll fail English and get kicked off of the squad.  You won’t even be able to play softball.”  He left out the fact he’d take all of his friends with him and she’d be left with Kelly. 

              Holding out her hand, Aimee agreed to his terms, “Deal.” 

              He just didn’t have to approve with what he had just agreed to. 

              Sobbing in the girls’ locker room, Grace waited for Delilah to get back from her sister’s locker.  Her new friend knew that Charlotte – a sister – kept shampoo and a blow dryer in her locker just in case she needed it during or after theatre. 

              She didn’t know that Delilah had been waylaid outside the locker room door. 

              “What do you want, David?” Delilah asked, holding up a bag with the needed supplies for him to see.  “I have somebody waiting in there to get your girlfriend’s sister’s lemonade out of her hair.”

              “I have to tell you something,” he insisted. 

              “I don’t care what you have to tell me,” she huffed.  “You could have prevented this.  Just tell your girlfriend to leave Grace alone.”

              “I did.  I had to make a deal with the devil in order to get them to leave Grace, and you, alone.” 

              Turning towards her former best friend, “But David, it’s too late.  Grace has been bullied for weeks now, ever since the first day of school.  She’s been trying so hard to blend into the background just to get them to leave her alone.  Grace is afraid of her own shadow in these hallways.  I’ve seen her around her siblings and she’s outgoing and funny.  I’ve seen her around Jennifer and me and she’s interesting. But as soon as Amanda Kirkland or Aimee comes around she’s cowering and refuses to make eye contact with anybody.  And you are just now doing something about your crazy girlfriend?”

              “I didn’t know,” he weakly mumbled, wondering how he had missed all of it.  “I just found out about the bullying today.”

              “Too little, too late,” Delilah glared at him before disappearing into the one place he couldn’t go. 

              Announcing to her friends, “Someday I’m going to make David William Carver regret everything.”  Pulling the shampoo out of the bag, she smiled at Grace, “But let’s get you cleaned up first.”