Shattered Ties(6)

I hadn’t been able to tell her that I had no desire to attend college. Art was my thing, and I’d found my calling when I picked up a tattoo gun my freshman year in high school. For someone who had no formal training, I was damn good at it, too.

I’d spent the past two years working at a local tattoo shop. I was the slave boy since I obviously wasn’t old enough to do tattoos legally, but I’d learned a lot from my boss, Rick, and his guys. I had hoped that after I turned eighteen and graduated, I could get an internship there, so I could be fully licensed. I knew now that it was never going to happen. This trailer-park kid was going to end up going to college like all the respectable kids.

I knew my mom would be disappointed if she found out all I wanted to do with my life was tattoo. She would see it as staying where I was in life, and she wanted so much more for me. My dad had left when I was only a few years old, and since then, she had worked her ass off to provide for me, so I could go out into the world and prove myself. And in her eyes, that meant going to college. I hated the idea of college, but I knew I would go just to make her happy. I’d worked hard in school, so that maybe, just maybe, I could snag a scholarship. There was no way that I would let her take out loans to put me through school.

I’d finally given up this morning, and I’d driven the twenty minutes to my new school. I was here for her and her alone.

Of course, when I pulled in, the first person I’d seen was her. I didn’t even know her name, but I’d remembered her just like it was yesterday when she had sat in the sandbox and told me I was trash. I should have thanked her really. She had been the first person who showed me what the world was really like.

She still looked the same, only older. Even at six, she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. Her eyes were a deep shade of green, and her hair was a light strawberry blonde.

On that afternoon, my mom had decided to take me to the really nice park across town to celebrate the end of kindergarten. I had looked up to see her sitting by herself in the sandbox, and I had wanted to go play with her. She had looked so lonely and sad, and I had been determined to cheer her up.

Instead of being happy to have someone to play with, she had cut me with words no six-year-old would ever know to say. I was trash. I didn’t belong there. I’d toughened up after that. At six years old, it had become clear to me that the world was not a nice place to live in, so I should be ready for whatever it threw at me.

I pulled myself back to the present as I followed Emma down the aisle to sit with her friends. I had purposely stopped to talk to her outside this morning, hoping that she would remember me. Of course, she hadn’t, but I had been shocked at how nice she was then and again in our first period. I had expected a stuck-up bitch, but instead, she had helped me, and she’d even been friendly to me. I wasn’t sure if I liked that. I had always portrayed her as a villain in my mind, and without it there to make me see reason, I couldn’t help but notice again just how beautiful she was.

She was obviously an athlete of some kind. Her body was toned, and she had been blessed with a figure most girls could only dream of. The skin-tight shirt and shorty shorts she was wearing today did nothing to hide it, and I found myself wanting to see what was underneath. I blamed my damn teenage hormones as I tried to get a grip on myself. This would lead to nowhere, so I needed to get my head back into the game. I was here to get good grades and hopefully a scholarship, not stare at Emma’s ass like I was doing right now.

“Hey, girls. This is Jesse. Jesse, this is Vanessa and Andrea. They’re both on the cheer squad with me,” Emma said as she sat down.

So, I was right about her being an athlete. It was obvious that cheerleading had done wonders for her.

I walked around her desk and took the one next to her. “Nice to meet you.”

They were both staring at me like they wanted to eat me alive, and it took everything I had not to roll my eyes at them. I wasn’t interested in their type, so they really didn’t need to bother undressing me with their eyes. However, it did seem I was interested in one girl like them even if I didn’t want to be.

I kept glancing at Emma as I pulled a notebook from my bag and set it on my desk. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and looked up just in time to see a guy sitting down in the chair on her other side.

“Good to see you, Emma,” he said as he looked over at her and smiled.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or punch him in the face when Emma blushed as she told him good morning. It was obvious that she had a thing for this guy and that should be reason enough for me to leave her alone.

“Hey! This is Jesse. He’s a new student,” Emma said as she introduced me.

I nodded my head in greeting. That was all this guy was going to get.

“Nice to meet you, Jesse. I’m Todd.”

Again, I nodded but said nothing as I stared straight ahead at the chalkboard at the front of the class. I wasn’t interested in making friends here.

Any friends I had were back at my old school, and even there, I had very few. I wasn’t the most sociable person, and it took a lot for someone to gain my respect and trust. Besides the guys at the tattoo shop, I could count on one hand the number of people that fell into that group. Most of them were kids who lived in the park with me, including my best friend, Andy, and his sister, Ally.

I had to admit that I missed the guy. We’d grown up in the park together, and I thought of him more like a brother than a best friend. I usually tried to stay out of trouble, but he was always the first one to dive into it, and I was often found guilty by association. We and the other boys we hung around with were branded by most as the troublemakers in school and in the trailer park. It didn’t bother me though because it meant that most people left me alone.