five
Rett
HIS LAUGH WAS BEAUTIFUL, Rett thought. Calum’s nose scrunched up, lips stretched into a smile. Something she hadn’t yet seen. She’d come close that morning, she knew as much, but his scowl had immediately replaced the minute twitch of his lips. But there he was laughing just because she said something that wasn’t even funny.
Kellie Marie’s head swiveled around, and Rett watched her friend crane her neck to see what was going on. Calum noticed, falling silent in an instant. She hated how easily he closed himself off. Never before had she met someone as aloof, in self-inflicted isolation, as he kept himself. As she watched him glower at the desk, Rett made a vow to herself.
She would get him to open up if it killed her.
Calum stuck by her side as she led him through the hallways to the gymnasium. His long, pale fingers clenched around the strap of his backpack, and he held his head up high. He looked as proud to be an outsider as he was two days ago, when he’d first stepped foot into Oak Creek High. Only Rett could now see a bit behind his facade: He wasn’t nearly as unaffected as he pretended. It bothered him that he was there.
She hadn’t been surprised when she walked into his bedroom the day before and saw him on the bed. He made no secret of how he felt about the town, and she understood why he would hide away. Even with acting like it wasn’t a problem, gossip could get to the best of a person. Rett wished—not for the first time in her life—that rumors weren’t a way of life around Oak Creek.
“You made him laugh.”
Rett’s brows rose toward her hairline at Sofia’s accusatory tone and turned to face her friend. “Well, hey to you, too.”
“Cut the crap, Rett. How’d you make him laugh?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and it was the truth. She had no idea why he laughed at something so unfunny. She certainly hadn’t meant it as a joke.
“Well, he sounds ridiculous,” Kellie Marie sniffed as she sidled up to the girls. “He’s cute, but his laugh is horrible.”
“I think it’s nice,” said Sofia, frowning.
Rett sighed and pulled her gym shirt on over her head. Her stomach churned, tightened. She knew that when Sofia said someone was ‘nice’, it usually preceded interest in said someone. She would most likely ask Calum to go steady by the end of the week. Something hot reared its head in Rett’s chest.
Clearing her throat, she turned away from the locker and forced a smile. “Okay, can we talk about something other than Calum please? We’ve talked about him enough since Miss Georgie said he was comin’.”
“Is someone jealous?” Kellie Marie’s face split with a smile, and she nudged Sofia. “Looks like you got competition.”
Rett spluttered, protesting, “I’m not jealous. Y’all are just annoying.”
Sofia threw an arm over Rett’s shoulders as the trio made their way to the door. “Don’t worry, Rett. You can keep him. I have my eye on someone already.”
“When’s that ever stopped you before?”
Rett rolled her eyes and ducked away from Sofia. Kellie Marie’s question ignited the typical argument between the two, and Rett did not want to be in the middle of it. She stayed out of the squabbles as much as possible—she had better things to do with her time. As the girls exited the small hallway from the locker room to the gym, Rett’s gaze caught on Calum sitting in the bleachers. He’d changed into the uniform, which took her by surprise. He had worn his jeans and tee the last two days, but there he was in the customary shorts and T-shirt. She bit her lower lip when he smiled at her.
The smile vanished as quickly as it appeared, but it had existed in that second.
She hurriedly turned back to her friends and their conversation, which had shifted from Sofia’s relationship status to the party Darren was hosting in the field on Saturday. Even as Rett agreed she’d put in an appearance, she wondered what it would be like to feel Calum’s thin lips on hers.
Oh, boy.
Rett found out on Friday that Calum had kept the robot baby stuffed in his bag, only pulling it out on the bus to school. Rett frowned—what if something had happened to the thing, and they failed Child Development? She didn’t want to have to go to summer school for one credit. Her plans for college would be gone. Poof, out the window. He rolled his eyes when she said so,and she rolled hers when he told her to stop worrying so much. She reminded him he had more to lose if he failed.
Dark circles lingered under his eyes, and his lips tugged downward. No subtle smile that morning, only scowling. She placed the doll on the seat between them and hoped the thing wouldn’t start crying in any of her classes. It wouldn’t have been the first time lessons were interrupted, but Rett always felt the same mortification other students did when they took Child Development. Now it was her turn to feel something other than secondhand embarrassment.
The reason Calum was so exhausted became clear by the end of the day: The doll cried every hour, and once, there was nothing she could do to shut it up. She nearly threw it at the wall in anger as everyone stared at her. It was only Miss Reynolds’s exasperation that kept Rett from losing her temper; the teacher let her escape to the hallway with the ‘baby’ so it would stop disrupting class. Rett didn’t even have the patience to walk with Calum to their classes, opting to take the robot outside out of earshot of anyone else.
Calum fell asleep against her shoulder on the bus ride home, and Rett did everything she could to not wake him. He didn’t stir even as the vehicle bounced and rocked as it barreled down the road. He smelled like something earthy, spiced. She liked it.
The crying continued well into the afternoon. The evening. The night. Rett sat on her bed and reached for a pillow, placing it over the doll’s face. The door opened, and Eliza poked her head into the room.
“Everything okay, honey?”
Rett glared at her mother and said through gritted teeth, “I’m never havin’ a baby.”
