The Bookworm Next Door: The Expanded and Revised Edition (5 page)

              It started small.  A tiny little rumor that one of the football players was dating his cousin.  Kyle Goldman thought nothing of the rumor against him for several reasons.  He didn’t know who started it, he didn’t have a cousin, and he’d decidedly been too busy to even seriously consider dating anybody. 

              Occasionally somebody caught his eye.  Quiet and mousy Grace Chandler more often than most, but there never was enough time in the week to do anything about it.  Sometimes flashy and loud Jennifer Matheson would gain his attention and he’d fantasize about bringing her home to meet his father.  The idea of bringing loud and crude Jennifer Matheson home to meet his father thrilled him.  She was somebody who would drive his perfection-seeking father crazy.

              Then he’d remember his class ranking, the unspoken rivalry between Taylor, Jennifer, and himself – unspoken on his side – for valedictorian, and his struggles with Geometry.  Algebra had been easy, but those geometric angles certainly gave him a headache.  Acute.  Perpendicular.  Supplementary.  Maybe even a migraine if they could be stress-induced.

              Everything, except math class, was going along nicely until his English Teacher, Mr. Burns, decided to assign a writing assignment.

              Clearing his throat – something he did before every announcement he made – Mr. Burns made certain that he had everybody’s attention.  “Today’s writing assignment is for you to write three hundred words on how you met your best friend.  I’ll pair you off later so that you can peer edit your paragraphs.”

              All around him scratching pencils started as person after person went about the easy task of describing how they met their best friend.    Only two people remained motionless, and even soon she started writing. 

              Kyle was left with the realization that he didn’t really have a best friend. 

              Grace sighed.  She’d been watching Kyle ever since he smiled at her during their freshman year.  They’d had a few classes together, but she doubted he actually noticed her.  But, with all of her observations she knew one undeniable fact: Kyle had no best friend. 

              Taking a deep breath, she thought about when she first met Delilah.  It hadn’t been the bookworm to make the first move.  Naturally that had fallen on the more outspoken Jennifer.  During their freshmen year the outspoken tomboy had practically pulled Grace out of their shared class and into the lunchroom.  Without a second thought the tomboy told Grace that she would be sitting with them from now on instead of over at the table where the obnoxious Taylor had been hogging most of the space with his display of textbooks and notebooks. 

              Nobody had volunteered to befriend the girl until Jennifer.  Nobody dared.  They had no desire to get on Amanda’s bad side.  The problem was, even a year later, Grace had no idea what she had done to get on Amanda’s bad side.  She hadn’t tripped into the now Senior on the first day on purpose.  Somebody had tripped her. 

              But she remembered Jennifer making the introductions, of Delilah recognizing Grace from another class, and then the three girls settled in to eat and study. 

              Their dynamics changed the day that Amanda dumped lemonade on Grace’s head.  Jennifer had fearlessly confronted Amanda while Delilah pulled a stunned Grace out of the line of fire and into a nearby locker room.  “My sister has shampoo in her locker,” she assured the sticky girl.  “We’ll wait for Jennifer in here and then I’ll go get it.” 

              After weeks of hiding in the shadows and avoiding her tormentors, Grace broke and told Delilah the entire story.  How at home she was frequently helping her parents out with her multitude of siblings and often overlooked because she was capable of taking care of herself unlike her seven-year old youngest sibling.  Sometimes she acted more like a parent than her own parents, but that wasn’t verbally acknowledged. 

              Even the car she would get on her sixteenth birthday would be used as sibling transport.  No, quiet Grace was often overlooked and she was used to it.  Hoped for it on occasion.

              Except for the rare times when Kyle Goldman looked her way. 

              Finally, Grace started to write, 
I wish I could say that my best friends saved my life when I first met them.  Instead, they saved my soul. 

              Closing her eyes, Kelly Johnson wondered why she was still friends with Aimee Kirkland.  It made no sense.  In only a couple of weeks Aimee had gone from blindly following her sister’s demands to creating some of her own. 

              Aimee was a force to be reckoned with and not in a good way.  She was mean and Kelly was concerned what it would mean if she broke away from her friend. 

              Any time Kelly complained about one of Brady’s girlfriends, Aimee was already in action, had broken the lock on the locker – Kelly didn’t want to dig too deep and find out how – and would have destroyed some valuable assignment or item belonging to the girlfriend in question.  It didn’t take much for the girlfriend to start looking in Kelly’s direction before breaking up with Brady. 

              Nobody wanted to deal with the crazy sister of their significant other.  Even more so when the sister’s best friend was vying for the crown of Mean Girl with her own sister.  

              Kelly kept waiting for Brady to look in her direction, but she also knew that he was slightly overprotective of his sister.  The feeling went both ways. 

              Every now and then she would have the same dream – more like a nightmare – of running across the road when she was thirteen.  It was right before the end of her eighth grade year and one of the last games during Brady’s freshmen year.  She had raced across the road after the game – a win – in celebration of the pizza that Brady had wanted after the game. 

              Somebody thought that ignoring the speed limit signs and speeding down the side street next to the school was a great idea.  Kelly had looked both ways before running across the street, but this car had come out of nowhere. 

              The next thing she remembered, with a jolt as the impact of Brady’s body slamming into hers, was the cries of warning as people called out about the car.  The crunch of Brady’s dominant arm echoed in her dreams as he had twisted to keep from landing completely on her. The broken bone had kept him from playing the rest of the season and had ruined most of his summer plans, including life guard training at the community pool.

Everybody there that day knew that Kelly would not have survived an impact with the car without Brady’s rescue. 

              Her hero worship made sense.  She loved her brother, wanted him happy, but did not want him taken away from her.  She just hoped she’d be able to stop Aimee if Brady ever found the right person. 

              “Earth to Kelly,” the sickeningly sweet voice next to her repeated.  Aimee was seconds away from tapping her feet. 

              “Sorry,” Kelly automatically apologized.  “I was thinking about a stupid English assignment Mr. Burns had assigned.”  She knew exactly how they had become friends, but she was wondering why she was too scared to leave. 

              The lunch dismissal bell for the third lunch shift saved Kelly from having to answer Aimee’s question about what Kelly had written for the second period assignment. 

Kyle’s saving grace when it came to the Best Friend assignment was when the lunch bell sounded.  Mr. Burns was always in a hurry to get to lunch – having the last lunch shift was rough – and told them to finish up the assignment as homework. 

              Looking down at the blank page in front of him, Kyle let out a sigh.  He could write about his father.  The man was the closest thing to a friend he had, even if he acted like a drill sergeant. 

             
Every morning starts off with a mile run
, he reflected as he put his things away.  Would that make a decent start to his paper?  He’d have to get it started at lunch if he wanted to be able to reach the assigned word count. 
And every evening ends with me up way too late working on homework assignments that I couldn’t finish during lunch. 

             
No, that wouldn’t make for a good paper
, Kyle finally decided. 

              But that day something changed for Kyle as he settled into an empty lunch table.  With his lunch tray on one side and a notebook on his other side, he looked up when he noticed another tray being set next to his. 

              “Hi!” the new guy started, “Name’s Wesley Pitts.  You look like you need a friend.” 

              “Kyle Goldman,” he responded, “and I think you might have perfect timing.” 

              During most lunch shifts the Geography teacher/football coach would send a note to the other football coach who was monitoring the cafeteria. 

              This time he sent Aimee.  Catching her attention and causing her to hesitate for the first time since her mother’s announcement the night before was her half-brother.  Textbooks surrounded him while the new kid sat down in the seat next to him.

              Carefully, she looked for similarities between the two of them. She looked over at where Amanda was sitting with the senior cheerleaders and looked for similarities between her and her sister. 

              Aimee saw the blonde and brown hair, the shape of the eyes, the athletic ability of her half-brother.  She saw what she had gained from her jerk of a father and from her home-wrecking mother.  Several past rumors that previously didn’t make sense suddenly did.