Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,16
limped down the beach. The script had me … Oh, hell. The script had me crying in front of her because it hurt so bad. That kiss had to have been a hallucination. There was no way she’d want to get with me voluntarily after this.
When we stood up, my nose had stopped bleeding, so I didn’t have to squeeze it shut. As we passed some girls, they stared after us. I thought they were just gawking at the dumbass who’d performed his own facial reconstruction, but then a short girl with a pixie haircut called out, “We’ll wait for you by the car if you’re not back by four, okay?”
The girl was looking right at us and there was no one else around, so I guessed they were her friends. She had cute friends, ones I had never seen before. She had to be a freshman, and considering the number of hot girls in that group, a popular one. But the weird thing was, instead of answering, she just kept on walking toward the lifeguard stand.
“Hey, Tar! We’ll wait for you! By the car! Okay?” Pixie called out, a little louder, her voice an octave higher with desperation.
The angel just swung her head back and called over her shoulder, “Fine!” then muttered under her breath, “Whatever.”
Okay. Didn’t know what the hell that was about. They seemed nice enough; some of the other kids nearby reenacted my trip as I walked past them, but one of her “friends,” a tall girl with crazy black hair, called after me, “Take care of yourself.” I really couldn’t think about it, though, because I was beginning to feel light-headed. I blinked a few times, hoping I didn’t lose consciousness from the blood loss.
“Don’t feel bad. I’m a little bit of a klutz myself,” the angel said brightly. I knew she was just saying that to be nice, since her every movement was done with the grace of a ballet dancer. Even when I’d pulled her out of the way of that truck, she’d looked good. I noticed some of my blood had gotten on her bare shoulder, but I felt awkward rubbing it off. In my half-assed state I probably would have grabbed her boob. Sadly enough, that would have been, like, the most action I’d ever gotten from a girl. “And who needs cross-country anyway?”
The script had me completely mute, trying to think of something to say. Finally, I put a sentence together. “You know, you don’t have to be nice to me.”
“What do you mean?” I noticed she had a little accent, one I couldn’t place. Not the annoying kind, but the kind that melts hearts.
“I mean, just because I helped you today. It’s okay.”
“Oh, I know.”
“So, what? Is it Be Nice to Dorks Day or something?”
She laughed. “Are you a dork? You’re not a dork.”
I nodded. “I am. Ask anyone. I don’t have a single friend at the school.”
“That’s not true. You have me.”
“You can have any friends you want. You already have a lot of them. Don’t think you need me. Go be with them. I’ll be fine.”
“Oh, yeah … those guys.” She motioned to the cute girls on the boardwalk and screwed up her face. “Fake, fake, fake. They want things from me. I try to get away from them and they just follow me. It makes me so sick. You don’t, though.”
I tried to figure out what she meant. Just what did people want from her? She seemed to like hearing me tell her to get the hell away. I’d heard girls liked it when guys treated them like crud, something which boggled my mind. I didn’t want to find out that she was one of those stupid girls, so I just said: “It depends on what you have. I accept monetary donations.”
She laughed. Whoa. I’d never said anything that made a girl laugh before. “Do you live around here?” she asked.
“Um. Yeah. Seventh.”
“Oh. I’m in the Heights.”
The Heights was about two or three miles away from Seventh. “That was a long run you were taking this afternoon,” I said.
She shrugged. “Five miles or so.” I was just trying to understand what lunatic would run that far, before tryouts, at the hottest time of the day, when it was over ninety degrees, when she said, “I run because it helps me think. I kind of have a lot to think about.”
I nodded. Couldn’t argue with that.
We reached the lifeguard stand, and I hadn’t cried yet. I was