Straddling the Line - By Sarah M. Anderson Page 0,31
look at Josey, expecting to see the same sentiment on her face. Instead of appreciation, she had her hands on her hips and was giving him the look.
“What?”
“Saturdays are the best days, huh?”
“Were. Past tense.” Her toe began to tap. She wasn’t buying it. “Okay, so Saturdays are still the best days, but that’s because of the band.” She still didn’t look mollified, so he added, “Recently, though, Wednesdays have begun to look up.”
“You can be quite charming when you want to be, you know.” He couldn’t tell if she meant that as a compliment or not. Then her eyes cut to someone behind him.
He braced himself for another confrontation—who was going to call him wasicu now? But instead of a glowering Indian, a blondish boy who was maybe fourteen stood behind him in a full pout.
“Jared? What’s up, buddy?” Josey’s voice took on a soft, motherly tone as she stepped around Ben and went to the kid.
“They’re calling me it again.” The kid was way too old to sound like he was on the verge of crying, in Ben’s opinion. “The girls won’t even talk to me.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Josey put her arms around the kid’s shoulders and gave him an awkward squeeze. “We discussed this. You can’t let them get to you.”
“What?” When Ben spoke, both the boy and Josey looked up at him like they’d forgotten he was there. “What’s the problem?”
“Tige and his gang call me a half-breed,” the boy said as he rubbed his nose on the back of his hand. “No one likes me.”
“That’s not true. Seth likes you.”
“That’s because he’s your cousin. The girls all laugh at me.”
Ben could not stand here and watch this kid cry. It wasn’t dignified. Josey might be trying to help, but she was in serious danger of smothering the kid with pity. “Look, Jared, right? You’re going about this all wrong.”
The kid looked up midsniffle. “Huh?”
Ben grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from Josey’s misplaced sympathy. “You want girls to like you, right?”
The kid shot Josey a terrified look. “Yeah?”
“Then you’ve got to be someone they want.”
“But I’m—”
“Doesn’t matter what you are or aren’t. Girls want what they can’t have. You’ve got that wounded, sensitive thing down, but whining like a baby about how no one likes you? You’re killing any mystery. You,” he said, poking the kid in the chest, “don’t go to them. You make them come to you. You don’t give a damn if they want to be your friends or not.”
“Language!” Josey scolded behind him.
Ben kept going. “You don’t need anyone, okay? You’re better than them, and you know it. Everything you say and do should convince people it’s true. Look, I know what it’s like when people expect you to be this or that and you’re not any of those things.” Boy, did he know. “But you can’t let them define you. You have to define yourself. That’s how it works.”
The kid looked less terrified and more confused. “But won’t that make girls like me less?”
Was it possible that Ben had been this clueless back when he was a squirt? Lord, he hoped not. “Once girls think you don’t want them, they’ll be curious—why don’t you want them? What’s your secret? If you’re doing it right, they’ll get it into their girl brains that you should share your secret with them, because only they can take away your pain. Girls like a challenge.”
For a second, the kid brightened up, but then his face fell again. “But I’m—”
“No buts. And you’re what, fourteen?”
“Fifteen,” the kid said with a flash of anger.
“Hey—that was good. Keep that anger. Drives girls wild. And what about that— Who was it, Josey? The one who’s father made the drum?”
“Livvy?” The look on her face was one of pure horror.
Ben ignored the horror. He was actually having a little fun. “Yeah. She was cute. What’s wrong with her?”
The boy rolled his eyes—something he’d clearly practiced. “She’s, like, eleven, mister.”
“Listen, kid,” Ben said, trying not to smile. “Give her a few years. Some girls are worth the wait. Until then, watch some James Dean movies and practice being the lone wolf, okay? Pick a few fights, take up a dangerous hobby, stop doing that to your hair,” he said, waving to all that styling gel, “and for God’s sake, stop sniveling. Chicks don’t dig wimps. They dig bad boys.”
The kid had definitely stopped sniveling. “You really think it will work?”
“I don’t think. I know. When you know who