The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,10
steering in the direction I looked.
But Jaxon got a good look. He rolled down his window and scooped a handful of change from Mom’s parking meter fund in the glove compartment, which he’d yanked loose.
“Wait, what are you doing?” I squawked.
Jaxon didn’t answer. He was too busy chucking the coins out the window with his trusty pitcher arm.
PING! PING! PING-PING! His aim was impeccable, showering the black Dodge with currency. My heart raced as I peeled around the first street I could take on my right. In the distance I heard the Dodge screech to a halt, but I’d already created some distance. If I weren’t the one driving, my eyes would have been squeezed shut. My shoulder muscles clenched to my ears from the trauma.
Zach wiped his brow with the cuff on his sweatshirt. Exasperated, he groaned at Jaxon, “You owe Nate a buck fifty. At least.”
Jaxon opened his wallet and pulled out two ratty bills. “Nice reflexes, Nate. All those driving games and that quick karate shit you do all the time came in handy.” He dropped them in the cup holder on top of the wig. “Keep the change.”
Sweat trickled down the sides of my face as I pulled into the one open spot in the Clyde Hill lot, between a Lexus SUV and Tesla sedan. “Okay, assholes. Get out.”
“Thanks for the ride.” Jaxon fussed with his hair in the window’s reflection while I locked the car.
Zach mumbled something, maybe a “thank you.” Not much of a talker, that guy. I gave him a head nod in return.
The parking lot on the south side of campus was closest to the senior hallway. The brand-new “coming soon” STEM building was also nearby. Sometime after the holidays, the headmaster would cut the ribbon to unveil state-of-the-art computer labs and science facilities, the best in the nation, thanks to the generous corporate endowment from Digitools, Inc., the largest, evilest tech behemoth in the world that happened to be headquartered in downtown Bellevue. Half of the kids at my school had parents who worked there.
At the school’s side entrance, Peter Haskill the Fourth and his preppy gang of other Clyde Hill legacy bros leaned on the brick wall, chatting about how some guy from an opposing soccer team “deserved that punch to the face.”
Pete Haskill. The Fourth. Clyde Hill Academy legacy. Captain of every varsity team sport offered. And the guy at school who frequently asked me how my karate skills were coming along and would then do some fake-ass karate chop on my neck, yelling, “Bruce Lee, ha-yaaa!” He’d done it for so many years I didn’t even flinch anymore, and lately he’d ended it with a friendly hair muss. Back in junior high, he used to ask me to teach him Korean curse words, but my third-grade Hangul vocabulary couldn’t offer him much on that front. I stopped going to the weekly half-day Saturday language classes because I had too many other activities. Something had to go. That something was Korean.
He also joked a lot about my skid status, meaning he did all the laughing, and I took the brunt of his “jokes.” Other than this infrequent, ignorant, slapstick racism, he never targeted me, and his friends left me alone too. He wasn’t a horrible guy to me, all things considered. He could be worse for sure—I’d seen him do worse—but that didn’t mean he was a good guy to any of us scholarship kids. On a ten-point asshole scale, he was pretty up there. Pushing above the seven or higher range, into real assholedom.
Pete’s boys moved toward the door, creating a bro barrier. Jaxon and Zach squeezed through the body fortress with no altercations.
But Pete stepped into my path when I tried to pass. “Hey, Nate. How’s it going?” Most guys at our school called other guys by their last names. But my last name was Kim, and that made me sound like a girl. Thanks to bro courtesy, guys just called me Nate.
I stopped and gave him a half wave. “Hey, Haskill, good I guess?” My voice cracked.
Jaxon and Zach turned around to see if I needed any help. I waved them off. They went ahead