PRIDE & PRINCESSES: A Pride and Prejudice (type) of teen story (Sunrise High #1)

An Unexpected Kiss (chapter sixteen)

Chapter 16

An Unexpected Kiss 

     The day before the scheduled meeting, something truly unexpected happened which made me question my devotion to Mark.

     It had been a long afternoon of rehearsing and I left the auditorium to water my parched throat. Outside, I encountered the adorable Joel Goodman again.

     He grunted “hello” with a confident smile as he walked down the empty hallway past me. Joel had been kept back a year, after his parents “home schooled” him. They travelled through Europe, like gypsies, after their connection to Mark’s  parents went bust. Joel’s wild, black hair was all spiky from some hairdressing show and his rangy, blue jeaned hips had a studded belt around them. His sister (who was a model agent) paid him three hundred dollars to slum it in an LA show the previous week because she ’d  had trouble finding extra “young, dangerous types.” She  could’ve asked Mark and Jet as well. Their combined attitudes would have been perfect for the catwalk. 

     At least that’s  what Brooke whispered to Freya who told Teegan who told Mouche who told me. Joel got whispered about a lot. He was considered hot but a little dangerous and I was secretly thrilled that our relationship had developed from monosyllabic to the next level -  basic conversation and meeting up during rehearsal and detention “time-outs”. 

      We’d become friends but so far I’d never involved him in the Boy-Rating Diary.

      Without realizing it, I had been letting Joel hang out with me when what I really should have been doing (maybe) was dating him, even if Mrs Jones dictated his unsuitability. He was kind of bad. I didn’t  have to ask Joel what he was doing here in the hallway again. I knew.

     Joel had been suspended. His jeans hung low and you could see the top of his boxers and the bottom of his ripped torso peeping out from beneath his plaid shirt. His muscular arms carried a more than usually heavy bag, full of the contents of his locker. 

     We paused at the drink vending machine. Suddenly he stopped and turned around to acknowledge me.

     “Hey, Tuesday Girl...”

     As I told you, he was kind of smart. It’s just that, as punishment for attempting to take a photograph up Miss Holland’s skirt (Miss H was our music teacher), he’d been assigned to hang out with a different “high achieving” student every day for a month during ninth grade.  After that, he got the “dangerous” rep. Today, the rumor about Joel’s suspension (for setting off the school smoke alarms “unintentionally”), had been posted on the Princess’s webpage. Thereafter it had multiplied like swine flu. I was not completely unaware. 

     “Hey Pheebs...come here, there’s  something I wanted to say to you before I go on vacation...”

     “You can say it from there...”

     “Why, because I’m such a bad influence you have to keep your distance?”

      “Of course not,” the truth was, I admired his reckless abandon.

      I moved forward but not too close.

      He stopped and looked at me like I was soda in a fountain. He paused momentarily, then spoke.

     “You were my favorite,” he said in a deeper than teenage rebel voice.

     “Your favorite what?”

     “Day of the week. We usually met on Tuesdays.”

      This gave me an idea.

     “Mmm...Can you put that in writing?”