The Square root of falling: A Brazos High Novella Read online

  This is it. I really hope I’m not about to be murdered.

  Then the guy steps closer and I can see his face. Relief hits me first, but then anxiety comes rushing back ten times harder than before. Maybe a murderer would have been easier to deal with right now, than the guy standing in front of me.

  Jake.

  Fourteen

  Jake

  I didn’t recognize her car at first. Anytime I see someone stranded on the side of the road, I’ll stop and see if I can help them, so that’s what I was doing. To my surprise, the stranded motorist is Jules, the girl I’ve been thinking of nonstop since I saw her with Trevor.

  “Hey,” I say, walking up to her. She’s staring at me, quite literally like a deer in the headlights, her eyes squinting.

  “Jake?” she says, shielding her eyes from the bright headlights of my truck. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just going home,” I say.

  “Why so early?”

  I shrug. No need to tell her I left because if she wasn’t at the party, I didn’t want to be there either. “Are you okay? How’s your head?”

  “Oh, my tire is flat,” she says, looking back at her car. “I didn’t get in a wreck or anything so my head is fine.”

  I lift an eyebrow. The flat tire is obvious—it’s the first thing I saw when I walked up. “No, I mean… your head? Your headache? The reason you left the party early?”

  “Oh!” she says, eyes widening in recognition. She flattens her palm to the side of her head. “Yeah, it still hurts. Not too bad, though.”

  That was weird. It kind of makes me think she doesn’t have a headache at all. But I don’t know why she would lie about something like that. Maybe inviting her to the party was a bad idea. I wish I had just gotten the courage to ask her on a real date, just the two of us somewhere romantic without people like Trevor around.

  “Let me help you with your tire,” I say. She already has her trunk opened, and I lift up the bottom flooring panel and remove the spare tire.

  “I have a YouTube video,” she says, holding out her phone. “I found one for my exact type of car so it has step by step instructions.”

  I smirk. “I know how to change a tire… I don’t need a video.”

  She looks sheepish as she puts her phone away. “Okay. Well, thanks. I really appreciate this.”

  “I’m happy to help,” I say as I unload her spare tire and set it on the ground. “Oh… that’s not good.”

  I kneel down and look at the spare. It’s a standard donut that comes with the car, not a full size replacement tire. And it’s just as flat as the tire on her car. This thing has probably never been serviced since the car was purchased over ten years ago.

  “What’s wrong?” Jules says. She kneels down beside me, bringing the sweet scent of her perfume with her. She looks at the spare tire and then back at me. “It’s flat.”

  “Yep,” I say with a nod. I stand back up and put the spare back into her trunk. “There’s no way this tire would work. It’s too flat. Looks dry-rotted.”

  She sighs. “So what do I do? Call some kind of tow truck or something?”

  “Getting a tow is expensive this late at night. I’d wait until the morning and then it’ll be a lot cheaper. But that’s only if you want to leave your car here overnight. I’d be happy to drive you home.”

  Her lips slide to the side of her mouth as she considers it. “Well, if I take my purse with me, then there’s nothing valuable in here. Do you think it would get vandalized?”

  I look up and down this long country road in the middle of nowhere. “I really doubt it. This is a pretty good town and people take care of each other here.”

  “True,” she says. “That’s why my parents love living in a small town. Okay, I guess I’ll just leave it. I tried calling my parents but they’re asleep. I don’t know what else they’d expect me to do in a situation like this.”

  “At least I’m here and not some creepy stranger,” I say with a smile.

  She smiles back. Every time she smiles back at me, I can’t help but feel those butterflies in my stomach. It makes me all stupid inside.

  In a good way. A very good way.

  “Thanks,” she says after she grabs her purse from inside her car. She locks the doors and then slides the purse over her shoulder. “I guess we can go now.”

  I have the urge to open the passenger door for her, but then I realize that giving a girl a ride home when she’s stranded on the side of the road is definitely not a date, and not a time for me to be some kind of hopeless romantic. I let her get her own door and I climb into the driver’s seat. “Where to?” I ask as I drive away in the direction her car was going before she got a flat tire.

  “Head toward the high school,” she says while she stares at her phone. The screen lights up her beautiful features and she’s so gorgeous it’s hard to keep my eyes on the road.

  The high school is only a couple miles away, and it’s also in the direction of my house. We ride in a comfortable silence for a few minutes, the radio playing softly in the background. It’s not until she points up ahead and says, “Turn right at Glenrock,” that things get weird.

  “Glenrock?” I say, just to make sure I heard her correctly.

  She nods. I turn down the street, which is the entrance to my own subdivision. She points to the left. “Take the second left.”

  I turn, and she directs me to her driveway. I park and look over at her. “You know this is two streets away from my house, right?”

  Of course she knows… she’s been to my house. But that’s not why I’m asking. I’m asking because just earlier today she told me it wouldn’t make sense for me to pick her up and drive her to the party. She said we lived too far away from each other. But clearly, that was a lie.

  And now she knows that I know she lied.

  She bites her lip. “I’m… sorry.”

  “Why didn’t you want me to drive us to the party?” I ask.

  She looks at me for a long moment, and each second that passes makes me feel worse, not better. Then she takes a ragged breath. “I don’t know,” she says, reaching for the door handle. “But I have to go.”

  And then just like that, she leaves. I watch her walk up to her front door and slip inside her house, leaving me here in a driveway that’s just a few seconds away from my own, wondering why the girl of my dreams lied and told me she lived far away.

  Fifteen

  Jules

  The moment I get to my bedroom I burst into tears. How could I have been so unbelievably stupid? I lied and left the party early just to get away from boys and then Fate swooped in and said, “No Jules… you don’t get to sneak out of this party on a lie. I’m going to reveal your lies to everyone because I hate you.”

  Thanks a lot, Fate. You’re the worst.

  How could I have been so stupid? Ugh. I drop onto my bed without bothering to shower or brush my teeth because I’m so disgusted and sad and humiliated that none of those basic hygienic things matter to me right now. I can’t believe I told Jake where I lived when I knew I had lied to him about it. I guess I thought I could have kept up this lie forever, because I was never supposed to crush on Jake and I definitely never should have hung out with him. If I had done what I was supposed to do and kept him at arm’s length, kept him as a random guy at school that I didn’t care about, then he’d never have discovered where I lived.

  If I was smart, I’d have given him directions to Abby’s house and just pretended I lived there. If I was smart, I wouldn’t have gone to the party at all, and then I wouldn’t have seen Trevor, either.

  Being smart would have saved me a lot of heartache.

  I’m on my bed staring at the ceiling for another hour when the tears finally start to fade away. Now I’m just humiliated but no longer crying, so I guess that’s an improvement. After wiping away my tears, I go take a hot shower and think about what I’m going to do with myself. There’s no way I can go back to math class on Monday. I s
traight up lied to Jake and told him I lived far away when I knew I lived within walking distance. How do you come back from that?

  A little voice in my head tells me that this is exactly why I swore off boys this year. They’re just too complicated. You can’t like them because they’ll hurt you. You can’t avoid them because you’ll end up embarrassing yourself. I am just totally screwed no matter what I do. I can’t believe I thought for just one second that I could get through this year of school without any boy drama.

  I don’t know how I fall asleep, but eventually I do. When I wake up in the morning, my dad is calling my name in a frenzy. He’d woken up and went outside to get the newspaper only to see that my car wasn’t in the driveway. Then he panicked and thought I hadn’t come home. He and my mom give me this huge lecture about how it’s incredibly important to tell them if something like that happens… and then I told them to check their cell phones. They saw my many messages and missed calls and then apologized.

  All the parental drama keeps me occupied for about ten minutes, and then I’m once again back to being humiliated about what happened with Jake last night. Dad takes me to the tire shop to buy a new tire and then we drive out to where my car was left overnight. Luckily, no one messed with it, just like Jake and I had assumed. I help my dad change the tire out and then I drive home feeling nervous and awkward and ten kinds of mad at myself for getting into this mess. How am I supposed to face Jake again?

  I told him a pretty big lie about living far away. I used to think I was at least semi-smart, but now I can’t think of any possible explanation that would explain why I told that lie, at least not an explanation that doesn’t embarrass me. I could claim temporary amnesia. Or temporary insanity. But it’s not like he’d believe any of that. Jake knows me pretty well after spending a few weeks of class with me. Crap.

  By Sunday night, the only plan I have is a pretty stupid one. I fake sick.

  Mom believes it and lets me stay home on Monday. Then again on Tuesday.

  But by Wednesday, I think she’s onto me. She sits on my bed in the morning, the back of her hand pressed against my forehead. She frowns. “You don’t have a fever. And your skin isn’t flushed. You look fine.”

  “I feel terrible,” I say, snuggling deeper into my blankets.

  “Oh yeah?” Mom crosses her hands over her chest. “What are your symptoms?”

  Uh oh. I should have thought of that before faking sick. She didn’t question me the last two days but now she’s giving me that classic Mom Look and I know I’ve tested her trust a little too far. Outside, a crack of lightning zaps through the sky and the morning sunlight is shadowed by dark storm clouds.

  “My throat hurts,” I say, adding in a wince for good measure. “And my head hurts. Everything just hurts. Maybe it’s the flu.”

  Mom laughs. “Nice try. Go to school.”

  “Mom!” I whine as another loud boom of thunder fills the air. “It’s about to rain outside!”

  “So I suggest you bring an umbrella.” Mom shakes her head. “I know a faker when I see one. Go to school or you’re grounded. Rain or not.”

  With that declaration of awfulness, she leaves. I climb out of bed and get dressed, moving slowly and with all the eagerness of a sloth. My stomach hurts. Mr. Casey’s class is the first class of the day and I have no idea how I’m going to face Jake. I haven’t even read the last two Snapchat messages he sent me yesterday, but I’m guessing they have something to do with asking why I wasn’t at school. I can’t face him. Not after what happened between us. I still don’t have a good excuse.

  The sky is almost pitch black from storm clouds, and it keeps lighting up with streaks of lightning and the boom of an occasional thunder, but luckily, it’s not raining yet. As I walk into the high school, I realize that maybe I don’t need an excuse. Maybe I can just run away. Not literally, of course… but figuratively. I could be somewhere else instead of Mr. Casey’s first period math class. Then I could just go the rest of my high school life carefully trying to avoid Jake Johnson forever. Should be easy, right?

  Instead of meeting Abby and getting a coffee, I walk to the counselor’s office. Mrs. Baker is sitting at her desk sipping her own coffee when I walk in.

  “I need a schedule change,” I say.

  She sets her coffee cup down. “Good morning to you, too, Miss Minuti. Why do you need a schedule change?”

  “I feel that—my schedule would be better if—” A sudden alarm goes off, interrupting my stuttering reply while I tried to think of an excuse to change my schedule. It sounds a lot like a fire alarm, only slightly different. Mrs. Baker stands up, eyebrows pulled together.

  An announcement comes over the speaker a minute later. “Please disregard.”

  “That’s weird,” Mrs. Baker says. “I know the weather is bad but…” She glances out the window in her office, where the rain has finally unleashed itself onto the parking lot. Then she looks at me. “Wait here.”

  She steps outside of her office and stops short, looking at someone who is just to her right, but hidden from my view by the door. “Why are you here?” she says.

  “I want to change my schedule.”

  Chills prickle over my skin when I hear Jake’s voice. I haven’t seen him in a few days but I’d recognize his voice anywhere.

  “Wait in my office,” she says as she walks away.

  I brace myself as Jake enters. His eyes widen as he steps into the small office and sees me sitting here in one of the two chairs across from Mrs. Baker’s desk. He stops short, his hand reaching up to scratch the back of his neck. “Hi,” he says.

  “Schedule change?” I say.

  He nods. “You?”

  “Same.”

  He sits in the chair next to me and looks out the large square window behind Mrs. Baker’s desk. “Are you trying to get away from me in first period?”

  “Are you trying to get away from me in first period?” I say in rebuttal.

  Jake looks over at me. His eyes are filled with a sadness I didn’t expect. He looks truly hurt, and now I feel even worse for lying to him, avoiding him, and then trying to get my schedule changed.

  “Jake… I—”

  The lights go off.

  Sixteen

  Jake

  Everything goes dark. And silent. The lights didn’t just go out—all of the power did, and now the hum of the air conditioning and the soft sound of Mrs. Baker’s computer running have all been silenced, leaving only Jules and me sitting here, alone, quiet, and bathed in the darkness of the cloudy stormy sky outside the window.

  “I’m sorry for whatever I did,” I say over the lump in my throat. “I never meant for things to be weird between us.”

  “No, it’s my fault.” Jules exhales. “I’m sorry I lied to you about where I lived,” she says, her voice the only sound in the room. She’s all shadowy across from me, but I think she’s looking my way. “I shouldn’t have lied to you and I’m sorry.”

  “Can I ask why you lied?”

  She’s quiet for a minute. “It’s not because of you… like… it’s nothing you did. I’m just—I just…” She sighs again. “It’s just all me. I did it for reasons I can’t tell you and trust me, if you knew, you’d laugh.”

  Another loud alarm pierces the air, making us both jump. Mrs. Baker rushes back into her office looking flustered. “Good, you’re both here,” she says. “The halls are a madhouse since class hasn’t started yet. They’re putting everyone in lockdown so I need you two to stay here.”

  Jules and I exchange worried looks. An announcement crackles over the speaker in the ceiling: “Attention Brazos High School. We are under a tornado warning. Tornadoes have been spotted in the area, and we need to shelter in place. Please go into the nearest classroom immediately.”

  The lights flicker on and then back off again. There’s a soft glow from one of the emergency lights in the hallway, which illuminates Mrs. Baker’s blonde hair. “You two stay here.”

  “Isn’t that
window kind of a safety hazard?” I ask.

  Mrs. Baker stares at it and then shrugs. “Maybe. Get on the floor, use my desk as a shield. You’ll be fine. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  And then she closes her office door, leaving me here with the girl I’m crushing hard on, alone in a dark office.

  Jules and I drop to the floor, our backs pressed up against Mrs. Baker’s large wooden desk, which separates us from the window on the opposite wall. I can barely see her to my right because the room is too dark. Every few seconds, a bolt of lightning will flash across the sky, lighting up the room for a split second.

  “Well this is romantic,” I say sarcastically.

  Jules doesn’t say anything, which makes my stupid joke feel ten times stupider.

  “I guess we both don’t have to leave Mr. Casey’s class,” I say, trying to make some kind of conversation because sitting here in a dark room with Jules while the weather alarm goes off is the most awkward thing ever. “I’ll see if I can change classes and you can stay that way your schedule doesn’t get messed up.”

  “I’ll change classes,” she says. “I’m the reason we’re in this mess, so there’s no need for you to mess up your schedule.”

  “I don’t mind,” I say. A flash of lightning bursts through the room and I can see her face for just a moment, looking right at me. “Or… we could just stay partners?”

  “Wouldn’t that be weird?”

  I shrug. “Not if we don’t make it weird. I mean… we’re friends, right?”

  She exhales. “You are really, really nice, Jake. I’m sorry I lied to you. I really am. You’re cool. We should be friends.”