While I inhaled deeply—guess I was kinda hungry—Dax took his seat, but no notice of me.
That’s okay, Dakota. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen…
“Hey, Dakota,” I heard a voice whisper from behind.
I froze. Had I imagined it?
“Dakota?” he said again.
Yes. Not only had he spoken to me, but he also knew my name. Yes! Yes! Yes!
I slowly turned my head over my shoulder and tried not to tremble. Or drool. Or say something dorky. “What’s up?” Nailed it!
His brown eyes were even more magnificent up close.
“Do you have a pen? I forgot mine,” he whispered.
Pen. He wants a pen.
“Sure.” I pulled one from the front pocket of my backpack and handed it over. And then it happened. He smiled at me. Actually smiled. Even his little dimples made an appearance.
Freeze image in brain. Die happy now. I felt no shame—zero—admitting that I took this as an omen from the universe. Change was indeed comin’ round that mountain. My life was on its way to perfection.
I smiled back and turned toward the front of the class, knowing that I looked like a giant grinning moron, but I didn’t care. Dax Price had smiled at me and knew my name.
Still remaining on my high school bucket list was to face that horrible, evil cheer-cow the next time she messed with me. I didn’t know when it was coming, but it was coming.
~ ~ ~
“Do you like this one?” Mandy looked at the price tag and then held up a satin purple top with ribbons on the back. Her brown eyes twinkled with mischief. Or was that the smugness of victory? I was finally at the mall, letting her pick out clothes for me. A first.
“I’ll try it on.” Normally I didn’t wear purple—sorta looked weird with my red hair—but I was in a super great mood. After homeroom, Janice had taken off, and I didn’t see her the entire day.
“So, how was your dad’s?” I asked, shuffling through the black skirts a few racks away. I didn’t get how Mandy could become so excited about shopping in such a large, well-organized department store. Where was the victory in that? Going to a thrift store or even one of those small, funky boutiques was way more fun, like going on a treasure hunt.
“Okay.” She shrugged. “Like usual, he spent most of his time at work. I read. That was about it.”
“At least you got to see him every night. That’s good, right?”
“I guess,” she replied, with stark disappointment. But in all honesty, Mandy had it way better than I did. I was lucky to see my father once a year, although we did Skype a couple times a month. His photography and modeling agency kept him traveling constantly, hopping from one exotic location to the next and then back again to his main office in the UK, where he was originally from. He had his business before marrying my mother, an ER nurse. Ironically, they met while he was in San Francisco on a shoot after he really got shot. Wrong place at the wrong time, except that he ended up in the hospital and met my mother. I liked to think it was fate.
Not so fate-tastic was that every year since I could remember, he threatened to quit the on-location assignments or sell the company to his right hand man. But every year, he kept going. “We need the money,” he’d say. Or, “We’ll never be able to send you to college and retire.” After the age of twelve, I began to understand that he kept working because he wanted to. It wasn’t that he didn’t love me, but he loved his job more. When I became older, however, I felt sort of thankful he wasn’t around so much. Simply put, I loved him, but there were things about him that seriously pissed me off. Things I didn’t want to think about.
And how my mother got by? Who knows? I guess she was too busy to feel lonely since she spent her days at the hospital. And being a nurse meant she rarely made it home at a reasonable hour, which is why I spent more time than I should’ve with a nanny or at Mandy’s house while growing up.
“So how about your spring break?” Mandy asked, trying to brush her dark hair out of her eyes while balancing a giant heap of clothes on her left arm.
“Other than listening to Aunt Rhonda lecture me ten times a day about the value of youth and how I’m spoiling it by buying into the media’s narrow perception of beauty and that she’d give anything to have my ass, rack, and skin? Oh! And being set up with her friends’ snobby sons who wanted nothing to do with me?” I shrugged. “I guess it was fine.”