Ella's Twisted Senior Year(2)
All of the buzzing in my back pocket was from April, my best friend. I grin as I read through her messages.
April: Dude, are you dead?
April: Because with the way Ms. Graham is acting in here, EVERYONE IS DEAD.
April: Okay, now you’re not answering. How’s that end of the school holding up? You better not be dead.
She’s in History, stuck in one of those windowless classrooms. I type out a reply as the stench of sweat and rubber running shoes fills the hallway.
Me: Still alive. Unless I’m a ghost and haven’t realized it yet. Will report back if I can walk through walls.
I look up and find the source of the stench came from the boy’s locker room. Ugh. I try to hold my breath as they file past, mostly ignoring the coach’s demands to pick a spot on the wall and sit down.
People shuffle in and around, talking and sharing images of the tornado that have already hit social media.
I bring my knees up and rest my hands on them, blowing out air to get my hair out of my face. I don’t exactly have a ton of friends at West Canyon High School and the ones I do have aren’t here.
A black and red Nike shoe steps on my purple chucks.
“Hey, sorry,” some guy says from way above me.
I look up and my sarcastic reply lodges in my throat. Ethan Poe stares back at me, his expression probably a mirror of my own. I mean how else do you look at someone who was you best friend until eighth grade and then became your sudden and absolute enemy?
Of course, I had the stupid crush on him, so maybe he’s not looking the same way that I am. Maybe his surprise is just that, not ten kinds of other emotions all rolled into one.
Like, we used to be best friends.
And, damn he got hot.
So hot.
“Ella, hi,” he says. His jaw muscles flex into what I guess is supposed to be a smile. “I didn’t mean to step on you, sorry.”
I shake my head to clear it of thoughts about his cuteness and the size of his biceps that pop out of his PE-issued tank top like they’re trophies on the display case. I fake a casual shrug. “No worries.”
He turns and kicks someone’s backpack away from me, sliding it down the hallway. “Mind if I sit here?” he asks, but he sinks down to the floor before I answer.
He smells like sweat and cinnamon and I hate that it’s kind of sexy. Ethan’s dark hair matches his eyes, in that both are perfect. He’s always smelled like cinnamon due to his obsession with Big Red gum.
I draw in a deep breath and look at my phone in my lap. April hasn’t texted back, but I can sure as hell pretend that I’m busy talking to someone.
Ethan nudges my shoulder with his elbow. “So what’s been up?”
I glance over and he grins, showing a set of perfectly aligned teeth that are so different from the crooked seventh grade smile he used to give me all the time. His skin has cleared up, his jawline filled out. He’s about twenty feet taller and although I pretend he doesn’t exist ever since the Embarrassing Nightmare in the Summer Before Eighth Grade, I know as well as everyone else that Ethan Poe is a popular jock now.
He’s not the same kid who was my best friend next door, the guy I crushed on like a maniac and the only one who knew all of my secrets.
As he stares at me, waiting for an answer to his simple question, I realize he doesn’t want to know any of that. He doesn’t care that my life fell apart after he had his friend tell me he thought I was a creepy stalker. He’d probably laugh if he knew how hard it was for me to make new friends in eighth grade when I’d spent my childhood only caring about him.
“Things are fine,” I say through a tight lipped smile.
“Cool,” he says with one of those head nod things that guys do so well. The lights flicker and the roar of the approaching tornado suddenly fills the air. The creepiness of it all makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I know we are safe in here, but the wail of the tornado is frightening, so much so that even the loud joke-making jocks down the hall have all gone silent.
Sirens wail in the distance and I recognize the sound as the city’s disaster alarm. I shudder as goosebumps prickle over my skin. There’s a loud crashing sound, followed by screeching and scratching like there’s a million trees brushing against the roof. The wail of the tornado is like a battle cry of Mother Nature, a restless monster who is dying to get it all out of her system.
“Damn,” Ethan says, breaking the silence around us. “That sounds wicked.”
I nod, gripping my phone in my hands. “I hope my car is okay.”
His brows draw together. “I didn’t even think of that. My truck better be okay, too.” He shakes his head, running his fingers over his eyebrows. “I just got the thing.”
He says it like I don’t know. Like we don’t live next door to each other and I would have no idea that he started driving the brand new, fully loaded Ford King Ranch truck on his seventeenth birthday. It’s so shiny and blindingly red that it’d be impossible to miss it.
The Poes are loaded and this used to benefit me a lot as a kid. They’d take me on vacations and trips to Sea World. They’d buy two of every pool toy so I could have my own. My heart tightens and I look away. I am not in the mood to remember my life before Ethan Poe became too good to be my friend.