Rebel at Spruce High (Spruce Texas Romance #5) - Daryl Banner Page 0,33

Harvard-destined son and progeny? A disgrace, you and your hooligan friends!”

I think I was the hooligan friend to which his father referred. Everyone always thought a certain way about me because of my look—lip ring, band shirts, spiky hair, torn jeans, chains … I always gave people the impression that I was up to no good. But most of my troubles came from just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have a strange skill in bringing out peoples’ worst, it turns out. I’m like a demon of mischief, inspiring it everywhere I go.

Half of my attire—including said lip ring—was left behind in New York. My parents made sure to figuratively scrub me clean like a dirty dog before we stepped foot here in Spruce. I guess they didn’t want me tracking in any mud … into a town that’s full of mud from one end to the other. But who would I be to question my parents’ logic, other than their trouble-wreaking son?

“Don’t relive it,” my dad tells me suddenly, as if he knows where my mind just went. “You have a fresh new start here.”

Yeah, I keep hearing that. Fresh new start. New faces. On and on my parents keep insisting, yet still I’m haunted by the roaring of a car engine, my spoiled friend’s laughter, and the sound of crunching metal that ended my life up there—that precious BMW squishing its face into that hearse’s ass.

There’s a pun somewhere in there I’m too exhausted to find.

It’s a miracle I’m still alive.

My father says a few more gentle words, finishing with, “We love you, son,” at the door, then leaves me be. I always marvel at how he has to say “we”, as if all too aware how seldom my mom says it herself.

It’s after midnight when I put away my drawing pad, take a hot shower, then drop onto my bed. Sleep doesn’t come easy. The moon is perfectly visible through the window, bathing me in pale light, and I can’t stop thinking about Toby. I saw him peering at my notebook with curiosity, and the way his lips subtly parted in awe as he took in my drawing.

Yeah, I caught him looking at me changing in PE, too.

I notice the way that boy notices me …

And the thought of his eyes on my body has my heart racing.

I slip a hand down the front of my shorts. We’re in the locker room again. He keeps looking at me. I sneak a look at him. And in the privacy of my imagination, our bodies crash together, nothing there to stop us. His hands fumble for my chest, my hands lock around his back, and when our lips touch, we become one.

That’s when I realize having Toby for a friend would be the worst idea in the world. I would never keep my hands off of him. Toby Michaels would be the end of me.

05 | TOBY

I blink, peer up at the clock in wonder, then lean around my computer monitor. “What day is it?”

Kelsey pops her head over the other monitor. “Friday. Why?”

“It’s … It’s Friday already?”

“You’re so scatterbrained, Toby. Hey, are you done with your practice layout yet? Mine sucks.”

This first week of school has flown by so fast. I click in a few places with my mouse, resize one talk bubble, change out a font, thicken the border on a picture, then give up. “Mine sucks, too.”

“So does the play. Did you hear what play Ms. Joy picked for our fall production?”

“Nope. Which play? The Scottish Play?”

“Worse.” She leans even farther around her computer, nearly falling out of her chair. “It’s a script from a former student of hers who’s off at some fancy Drama Academy studying playwrighting, and it’s a super lame love story called ‘I’ll Always Remember Seaside’ and it’s so nauseatingly hetero, Toby. Like, barf-hetero.”

“Hmm. Ms. Joy wouldn’t have picked it if it didn’t have some kind of merit.”

“Or else she’s phoning in a favor,” she retorts with an eye-roll before peering back at the door to our closet of a room. It was left open by Ms. Reyes’s departure ten minutes ago. “Where is she?”

“No idea. Doubt she’ll be back. She ditched us yesterday, too, remember?”

Kelsey sighs. “I’m itching to get to the theater early, anyway, to be honest. To see who auditions for this terrible play. Should we just, like … go right now …?”

“We still have seventh period,” I remind her.

She shoots me a look. “Yeah,