Jaded (Jaded #1)

“Are you serious? This is what that’s about? Because I bailed on your party?”


“Yes and no.” He sighed and pushed off from the counter, but kept a hold of its edge. He bounced back and forth, doing reverse push-ups from the counter. His arm muscles bulged with each movement.

“I don’t know,” Bryce mumbled with his chin tucked downwards. He looked at the floor. “I just…I don’t know. I’m on edge today.”

“Why?” I was dumbfounded. Yeah. I had bailed on Friday night, but so what? He still got laid. Corrigan said he saw Bryce disappear into a backroom with one of the cheerleaders. And Saturday night, Bryce had been all over some cross-country runner.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “We should go before we get in more trouble.”

“Since when do you care how much trouble we get into?” They couldn’t do anything to us. Bryce was the soccer team’s captain and recruited heavily. The school needed that attention. And I just didn’t care. The school knew that and had given up on me a long time ago. They just wanted me to continue attending school and classes. At least, that’s what their school counselor had confided in me once.

“I don’t, but it’s a big practice tonight. I don’t want my coach more worked up than he needs to be, you know.”

Understanding finally dawned on me and I felt like smacking myself in the head.

This was the beginning of Scout Week. Those same recruiters and more were visiting the school’s teams. They came to the practices, games, and talked with the families.

“Which ones are coming to your practice?” I asked and I saw I was right. A flicker of tension passed in Bryce’s eyes.

I moved closer and slipped my arms around him. I looked up and grinned, “Which ones?”

He hugged me back, slowly, and murmured, “Brown. Stanford. And Florida.”

“And you want Brown, right?”

“Yeah.”

Just then, someone pounded on the door again. It stopped after someone hissed, “Bryce and Sheldon are in there. Ssshh!”

There weren’t any more interruptions.

Bryce chuckled in amusement, but he shook his head a moment later.

A discreet knock sounded at the door and Mr. Sayword murmured, “Uh…Mr. Scout and Sheldon, the principal requests your presence in his office. Please finish your developing as soon as possible.”

Bryce cracked a grin as I laughed.

“We’re almost done, Mr. Sayword,” I called back.

Bryce murmured, his hand at my back as we moved outside, “He seems cool.”

I flashed a grin to my teacher who’d moved back behind his desk.

“Yeah. He is.” I waved to Mr. Sayword as we moved into the hallway.

Before we got to the main office, we both saw Corrigan in the hallway, hunched over an open locker.

“Seriously, dude.” Bryce clapped a hand on his shoulder.

Corrigan jumped around, eyes wide, and nudged the locker shut with his heel.

When he saw it was us, he relaxed.

“Jeez. Don’t do that!” he hissed and opened the locker again. He was on a mission.

“Don’t you ever go to class?” I asked.

“Not if I can help it,” Corrigan muttered.

“Whose locker?” Bryce reached inside and plucked a book out. He opened the cover and read, “Theodore Campbell.”

Theodore Campbell?

I said lazily, “That’s Teddy. I just met him. He’s in my art class.”

“Yeah, well, he’s going down.” Corrigan mumbled as he looked through Teddy’s bag.

“What are you doing?”

“He spray-painted ‘Greco’ on my car. The douche is going down. I’m looking for his keys.”

“Greco? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but it’s on my car,” Corrigan growled. Corrigan never growls. In fact, a serious Corrigan was a rare event.

“What are you going to do?”

“Steal his car and give it to Hoodum.”

“Isn’t that excessive?”

Hoodum ran the local gang. They specialized in the economics of refurbished cars. They stripped cars, stolen or ‘legitimately’ donated.

“He spray-painted my car,” Corrigan spelled it out. “No one does that and gets away with it.”

Fair enough.

“How do you know it was Teddy?”

“Chet saw him do it. He did it when we left school. He’s going down.” Corrigan produced the keys and took off, triumphantly.

“Mr. Scout and Miss Jeneve!” Our names were shouted down the hallway. The principal’s secretary, Mrs. Walker, was irate as she pointed at us. “If you do not get your butts in this office within thirty seconds, you are both expelled from this school.”

Yeah right, but… Bryce and I headed towards the office. I know that I liked to see an irate Mrs. Walker. It was funny to watch.