Page 24 of Dirty Liars
My feet plant firmly on the grass, and I glare up at him with all the force I can muster. “What is it you want, Astor Hawthorne? Don’t you think you’ve done enough already?”
I couldn’t help it. That’s all Teddy and not one little bit of Sadie. I’m not sorry one bit.
He only cocks his eyebrow slightly and tilts his head as if he’s thinking about something and didn’t hear a single word I just shouted at him.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asks out of the blue.
I blanch and stare up at him. I can’t believe he just asked me that. I know that I must have heard him wrong, because that is the absolute last thing I expected to come out of his mouth.
“What?” I ask, knowing that I have to have misunderstood him.
He takes a step towards me and keeps his eyes locked on mine. I feel tethered to him, unable to get away.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he repeats himself. “It’s a simple question.”
I’m astounded. I have no idea why he’s asking, and I know I don’t trust him at all.
“That’s none of your business,” I answer shortly, and storm off. I make sure to clip him with my shoulder on my way, just to get back at him a bit. He says nothing, and I scowl all the way to the stairs at the edge of the quad that lead inside the building. I don’t look back until I reach them, but when I do Astor is still standing there, hands in his pockets, watching me.
Blair isn’t in detention, but that’s no matter to me. The longer I can stay away from him and the others, the better. Mr. Davis seems a little put off, but he still makes me clean all the whiteboards and organize the textbooks he has stacked along the outer walls. I try to shut all other thoughts out of my head, but Astor’s sudden odd behavior keeps wheedling its way back into my thoughts.
New gossip seems to have taken over by the next morning, so I start to let my guard down a little until Astor gives me the usual, cold stare when I walk into English Lit. There’s no sign of his slip up yesterday, which only makes my mind turn over faster. This has to just be another one of his games, but I can’t think of what it could be.
The thought stays nagging in the back of my mind until I’m in math class some time later. I’m spacing out, my eyes trained on the last of the bees buzzing outside the window when my thoughts are rudely interrupted by the sound of my own name.
“Sadie!”
It takes me a second to register that it’sme, I’m Sadie. I straighten up, just realizing now that I might have started to doze off a little with my head resting in the crook of my arm.
The teacher is standing over my desk. He picks up my packet of worksheets and starts flipping through it.
“Ah, I see you’ve gotten a little ahead of yourself,” he says, turning over more of the pages. That’s an understatement. The packet he gave us was supposed to cover the rest of the semester, and I’ve already finished most of it. He squints at one of the pages, and looks back up at me with a look of pleasant surprise spreading over his face. It’s an odd look for a teacher who I’ve never seen do anything but glower. “I see you must’ve studied over the summer. Good work.”
“Teacher’s pet,” Wills says, poorly disguised as a cough.
The teacher glares at him and slaps the papers back down on my desk.
“You could take a page out of Miss White’s book here, Mr. Stryker.” He looks at me for a moment, and then claps his hands. “Sadie is going to help you. You can’t seem to keep your mind on the numbers, and she can’t keep her mind on the class … so this is a win-win for everyone.”
Everyone except me and Wills.
I glance over at him, a sinking pit in my stomach. Wills just glares back, his hand forming a tight white fist under his desk. This is going to be just great.
Wills is surprisingly quiet as I try to start helping him, and even though his jaw works uncomfortably and he won’t meet my eyes, he’s actually listening. Whenever he starts getting frustrated, I stop and wait for him to figure it out before I move on to the next step. Soon, he isn’t even clutching his hand under the desk anymore.
I look over his work once more before the end of class, and I’m surprised that he actually got most of it right. He tries to keep cool, but he can’t hide the way his eyes light up at my praise.
“You know,” he says, “I’ve had tutors before, but they always made me feel like an idiot.” He glances shyly at me, and then quickly away. “Thanks. For not … doing that.”
I smile at him. I can’t help it. He might be a bully and a jerk when we’re doing anything else, anywhere else, but in this room, at this desk, at this moment, he’s actually being genuine. I’m not going to let it pass unnoticed.
“No problem,” I say with real gratitude. It’s nice to be appreciated, especially by someone who has been so awful to me up to now. I’m so swept away by the moment that I forget I’m supposed to hate him, and add, “Besides, you aren’t an idiot. You just have strengths that lie … elsewhere.”
Wills gives me a smile, and then much to my surprise, lifts his hand and closes his fingers around a thick strand of loose hair by my face. He slides his fingertips down it slowly, and then pushes it behind my shoulder. It’s such an intimate touch that I don’t know how to respond to it at all.
With a half-smile he nods at me. “Maybe it’s worth keeping you around after all, Sadie.”
For one second it feels like we’re actually friends, and it’s so bizarre that I don’t know how to respond.
