Page 1 of Personal Foul
CHAPTER ONE
Charity
Oh my god. How much longer is this going to last?
Isabelle still hasn’t managed to secure a date with Andrew Maloney even after dragging me around chasing after him for weeks. Game night at his teammates’ apartment, group hangouts in the campus coffee shop, the sports bar a few blocks away, a party over the weekend …
And now a group study session in the library.
I’m honestly not sure what she sees in him. Sure, he’s attractive enough. But he barely gives her the time of day, and because of that, she always wants me along so she doesn’t feel so isolated when he’s surrounded by his friends.
I couldkind ofunderstand if he were one of the football team’s star players. That kind of social clout isn’t something I chase, but I know some people find it worthwhile. Iz has never struck me as that type either, but my point is that it would make some kind of sense.
Andrew Maloney’s just the second-string tailback. I know this, as well as the positions of his friends, from Isabelle poring over the team stats online. His friend Liam Gardner is a second-string running back. And Dylan Thompson—ugh—is a second-string safety. I have no idea what a tailback or any of the other positions are or do—though I imagine a running back runs—but those are apparently all necessary positions for football. And I know that second-string means none of them are starters.
But for whatever reason, Isabelle is smitten.
This afternoon she texted me from the library and asked me to meet up with her. Silly me, I thought we were going to study. Instead, she positioned us at a table near Andrew and his cronies—including the loathsome Dylan Thompson—and proceeded to pretend to be studying something before loudly ‘noticing’ him. Which is obviously the whole reason for us to be here at all.
“Oh my god! It’s Andrew!” she exclaims to me. Leaning toward him, she says, “I was just going over my notes for art history. Are you studying too?”
I try my hardest not to roll my eyes. And I don’t know if he doesn’t realize how staged all this is or if he likes that kind of thing, but this ‘study’ session turns into all of us going to the campus coffee shop together to hang out. “It’s a more comfortable place to study,” Andrew claims as he stands next to our table to extend the invite.
The five of us crowd around a four-person table. I’m sandwiched between Isabelle, who’s claimed the corner next to Andrew, and Liam. Dylan’s opposite me, and I keep trying to look anywhere but at him.
Isabelle and Andrew are ostensibly discussing art history, which they’re apparently both taking for their gen ed arts credit. And must be where Isabelle developed her crush. It’s not like we go to football games during the fall semester. And in the two and a half years I’ve known her, she’s never tried to date an athlete.
She, like me, is an English major. We’re book nerds who spend most of our time in the library. Or at least, we did. She usually goes for the guys who’ll compose poems to read at the annual open mic poetry night. She’s even working on the campus literary magazine this year. I figured she’d go after the editor. He’s exactly her type—a senior, slim, cute, has dark hair, a goatee, and striking blue eyes. I mean, sure, he’s a little pretentious, but that sort of goes with the territory.
Where did this sudden obsession with football players come from? And why have I been dragged into it?
More importantly, how can I escape?
I glance at Liam, who gives me an awkward smile, which I return. Conversation with him petered out about ten minutes ago. And you couldn’t pay me enough to willingly talk to Dylan.
Well, maybe. But it would be a lot of money, and the only one here likely to be able to afford it would be Dylan himself, who’s unlikely to pay me for my conversation for the same reason I don’t want to talk to him in the first place.
We don’t get along.
Well, I guess that’s not entirely accurate. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by my presence as much as I am by his.
In fact, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even remember me.
We went to the same high school—Skyline Academy in Seattle on the other side of the state. It’s where the Seattle area’s wealthy elite send their offspring.
The problem is, I never fit in there.
I didn’t grow up part of the wealthy elite, so I was snubbed from day one.
It didn’t start off that bad. When I arrived that first morning of my freshman year, it was clear I was the talk of the first period class, since they’d all been going to school together their whole lives. Anyone new was usually a transplant from somewhere else, and they assumed-slash-hoped it would be somewhere more glamorous like a boarding school in Europe.
When they found out I grew up in the suburbs and attended public school, any and all interest in me immediately dried up. And what interest I got more often took the form of pity, because I didn’t get to spend Christmases skiing in the Alps as a child or whatever.
According to the kids at Skyline, growing up in a normal, middle-class suburb and attending public school meant I grew up “poor,” and as “new money” I just couldn’t possibly ever fit in.
The worst, though, was when I showed up at school to find garbage bags full of clothes piled around my locker. Mia Ellis, the queen bee of our year, sauntered up and told me she’d organized a clothing drive for me. “I know most of it is last season, or even a few seasons old,” she’d said, her voice dripping with fake sympathy, “but at least it’s better than your discount store fits.” With a smile as fake as her sympathy, she’d brushed an imaginary piece of lint from the shoulder of my school uniform that was identical to hers, turned, and walked away while the gathering crowd of students giggled behind their hands.
Dylan was there, front and center, grinning and shaking his head like it was all a grand joke.
