quickly produced a tray loaded with lean meats, fruits, and vegetables. Usually, I’d be pickier, but I needed to get away from Ray and his imposing presence.
I slammed my tray on the table next to Callie’s best friend, Carson, and dropped into my seat.
“Whoa,” he said. “What’s wrong, Ging?”
“Do you know Ray Sadler?”
Carson shrugged his muscled shoulders. “I know of him. He doesn’t talk much.”
“Let’s just say you’re lucky then,” I grumbled, grabbing a carrot stick and crunching into it.
“Boy, I can’t wait to hear this,” Carson said.
Jordan put her tray next to mine, and then the other girls came as well.
“Okay,” Zara said, “you and Ray have some serious sexual tension going on.”
My eyebrows flew up, and I sputtered, “Sexual tension? Are you crazy? More like ‘I want to smack him’ tension!”
Jordan looked confused. “You’ve been talking about how cute he is ever since that party at the beach, and I saw him checking you out when you went to talk to Mr. Davis this morning. I don’t understand what happened.”
“Apparently he thinks Ripe is an indictment on his way of life—which is probably animal abuse.” I shook my head, feeling sick. “Seriously, what could be wrong with wanting your food to be produced a better way?”
Carson shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, all I know about farming is what I learned on that second-grade field trip to the dairy. Maybe there’s more to it than we think?”
Him sticking up for Ray just made me angrier. “If everything farmers do is okay, why is ‘organic’ even a thing?”
Callie reached across the table and put her hand on my arm. “It wasn’t nice of him to treat you that way. Maybe we can do some research and see what the deal is?”
“Maybe.” All I knew was I’d be learning more from Google than I ever cared to know from him.
Seven
After school, I went home and got to work on my homework, starting first on coming up with three creative ideas for the video. I hated to admit it, but Ray was right. I needed to think outside of the box.
After brainstorming and writing down a few, I got busy on my trig homework and then finished up my reading assignment.
“Supper’s ready!” Mom’s muffled voice came through the door.
I closed my worn paperback copy of In Cold Blood and started toward the kitchen. The twins sat at our long oak table with highlighted play books open in front of them, and Cori held an icy water bottle in both hands, still wearing her practice clothes.
“Hi, sweetie,” Mom said to me and set a plate of steamed asparagus on the table next to a plate full of grilled chicken breasts.
Cori turned to me, then faced the table again.
“Hey.” I sat down next to her and asked, “Rough practice?”
“You have no idea.”
I laughed and grabbed the stack of plates to start passing them around. “You know, videography doesn’t require any running.”
“Just wait,” she said. “Someday you’ll be chasing after someone for a video, and you’ll wish you had Coach Adkins screaming at you to run lines.”
I shivered. “That sounds like torture. Pretty sure a doublewide director’s chair will do just fine.”
She glared at me. “Stop.”
I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. She was so sensitive about how I referred to myself. My weight was nothing other than a size to me. It had no bearing on who I was.
Mom sat at the table with us and began dishing herself a plate full of vegetables and chicken. With how healthy she ate—and had us eat—it was a wonder we were fat at all. She said her great-grandparents were farm workers, and they needed to be stout for all the hard labor they did. Now we just got the extra-wide hips and shoulders for nothing. Well, except Cori, who was an absolute beast at basketball.
“How was your day?” she asked no one in particular.
“Good,” the twins answered in unison.
“You can stop the chanting,” Mom said. It was cute for their auditions, but they definitely took it a little far. “I want to know. Tarra?”
She shrugged. “Good. Except that boy in school keeps calling me Annie.”
I rolled my eyes. Would the insults ever change?
“Do I need to call the principal again?” Mom asked.
She shook her head. “No, I told him when I got my film deal, he’d be jealous of my millions.”
I laughed out loud, and Mom sent me an admonishing look. “We need to be humble,” she said to Tarra, then lowered her voice and