3
Summer before sophomore year
Ashleigh
Victory!I’d finally done it. I’d talked my father into letting me attend high school. I’d been tested and was eligible for all honors courses. I had my course list and I was already getting ahead in reading for AP English. And I was going to take French.
Classes didn’t scare me. Homework didn’t scare me. The only thing that made me nervous was how the other kids were going to react to the new kid. Who wasn’t really new.
It wasn’t like people didn’t know who my father was, who I was. Our estate in this town was well known. But this would be the first time anyone local was really going to interact with me. Most likely the other kids would think I was a private school dropout. Because that’s where the exceptionally wealthy in this town sent their kids. I wanted nothing to do with private school. I wanted something more real.
“You think they’ll like me?” I asked Marc, who was at the side of the pool testing the chlorine levels. He must have been okay with the result of the test because he didn’t add any more.
“No. You’re a freak.”
From my position on a float in the middle of the pool, I swept my arm out and splashed him.
“Hey,” he said, wiping the water out of his eyes.
“This was your idea,” I reminded him. “You told me to get a life. You need to be supportive.”
“Have you met me?” he snapped. “I don’tneedto be anything.”
“Is it going to be weird with me at school with you?”
He dove into the pool then and surfaced close to my float.
“Ash, I’m not even going to know you’re there. We’re going to have a totally different schedule, different classes. We’ll be in different wings of the building. So don’t think…”
He trailed off.
“What? Don’t think what?”
He pulled himself up and rested some of his weight on my float, dipping it enough so I could feel the cool water rushing in, but I didn’t mind. He didn’t get this close to me very often. Today I was wearing a barely-,there powder blue bikini. My chest was filling out, as were my hips a little, although I would never be considered curvy.
Did he notice? He never looked at me in a way that made me feel like he noticed. But I always thought it would take only one moment. One spark where he would finally see me like I wanted him to see me.
“Don’t think what?” I pushed when he didn’t answer.
He sighed. “We’ve been over this. We’re not friends when we get to school, Ash. We’re not going to sit together at lunch or anything. I’ve got my crowd I hang with. You’re going to have to find your own crowd. You get that, right?”
We weren’t friends? We’d known each other for five years. Had lived next door to each other for five years. I’d hung out with him, played with him, sat with him in his worst moments. Had been there for him when he was so sick George almost took him to the hospital. I ate dinner with him and George any time my father was out of town. They were more my family than my father was.
I was in love with him and he didn’t think we were even friends?
I pulled the verbal knife out of my chest and considered what he was doing. What he always did when it came to me. For whatever reason, this time I called him on it.
“You’re lying.”
“Ash—”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going to get in your way at school if that’s what you’re worried about. But don’t sit here and tell me we’re not friends. We’re more than that and you know it.”
I pushed him hard to dislodge him, but when he didn’t budge, I dove off the other side, swimming to the edge of the pool, climbing out slowly. Putting as much sway as I could into each step.
Turning to him, I could see that his eyes were pinned on me, watching as water ran down my body. I wrung out my hair and our gazes held so he could see my truth.
“I know you, Marc Campbell. Don’t think I don’t.”
