“Always.”
Taller than Mason, and with a square head, jaw, and shoulders, Wade Zimmerman is a big block of a guy. He has decent skin, cropped hair, and white teeth that are mostly straight. His nose is a touch crooked, which would add to his appeal if he didn’t love to tell the story of how he broke it getting bucked off a mechanical bull… well after eight seconds, of course. Girls who like chauvinistic pigs—or maybe even grown women who like young guys—might find Wade attractive. I, on the other hand, do not.
My crap radar goes off the second we walk in the door. Wade is wearing—I am totally not kidding—a sweater-vest. Not a sexy J.Crew sweater-vest; an old-man politician sweater-vest.
“Lovely to see you again, Daisy,” Wade says as he offers his hand to me to shake. I fight the urge to roll my eyes or pretend to be British when I answer.
“Good to see you, too,” I mutter.
“How are you enjoying your new school?” he asks. Why does he have to talk like he’s forty-seven?
“It’s fine,” I say. “What’s with the Porsche?”
“Oh, you like it?” Wade asks. “It was a birthday gift from my parents.” Shrugging, he adds, “It gets me to and from practice.”
“Funny,” I say, not thinking so at all. Instead of pointing out that he’s the cockiest guy I know, I ask about his license plate: “What’s FP?”
Wade chuckles loudly—literally, it sounds like “Ha, ha, ha, ha!” because I guess he’s not even himself when he laughs—then explains the hilarity.
“It means Franchise Player,” he says. “It’s the nickname the other players have given me for my skills as a quarterback. It simply means that I’m a valued member of the team. It’s all in jest.”
In jest?
Wade tries to appear embarrassed, but there’s nothing remotely flustered about his expression. All that reads there is pride.
Overconfidence.
“Cool,” I say, not really thinking so, but trying to be nice because Mason asked me to.
After a few more pleasantries, scones, and one too many stories about scouts coming to see Wade play, I’m shown into the Zimmermans’ first-floor office to mess around online while Mason and Cassie go to work. I log on and check my email: no reply from Audrey. Trying not to obsess too much about it, I switch over to Anything Autopsy and blog about sensible versus nonsensical cars for teens, then do a “she said” reply to Megan’s diatribe about the newest YouTube pop sensation. Just as I’m hitting publish, Mason puts a hand on my shoulder.
>Only when I’m faced with the possibility of another move do I realize how much I want to dig in my heels.
Only then do I realize just how much I want to stay.
It’s after one AM when I begin to boot up my snail of a computer. I can’t very well take sleek spy technology to school, so, unlike the computers that Mason and Cassie get to use, I have a few-years-old laptop that’s as heavy as a boulder and as loud as an airplane on takeoff.
Our small, independent hotel has a weak Internet signal, so between that and my grandma’s microprocessor it takes forever to get online. After it connects, I log in using my password, which Mason makes me change every month. When my IM program pops up, I check for Audrey’s username—QueenMcKean—to see whether she’s online. There’s no little green dot; she’s not.
I sigh and switch over to my email account. I open a new message and begin typing Audrey so her address autofills.
To: [email protected]/* */
Subject: random night
Hey Aud,
How’s this for weird: I’m writing from a hotel room in Kansas City. My parents were planning to come for the weekend and leave me alone in Omaha but, at the last minute, changed their minds. They must have watched a movie about a teenager who throws a party the second her parents leave for vacation and rethought their decision. Not that I’m like that.
Hey, sorry again for that thing with that girl tonight. You seemed sort of out of it on the way home: are you mad at me for something? I mean I know I made us leave early but I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. But if I did something, I’m sorry.
Anyway, thanks for the fun night and tell Matt the same. And okay, fine, I guess hiding behind my computer screen I can admit that I do sort of like him. A little. Hope that doesn’t make you want to upchuck. But you said my dad was hot so I guess now we’re even.
Daisy
I hit send and watch the email move from my outbox to the ether. Then I scoot off the bed, retrieve pajamas and toiletries from my bag, and walk to the bathroom to get ready to go to sleep. When I return, despite it being the middle of the night, I’m disappointed to find that there’s no reply. Audrey’s emailed me later than this, and now I can’t help but wonder whether she really is mad at me for some reason.
I crawl under the overbleached sheets, wired on soda and adrenaline, confused.