Читать книгу Just Try to Stop Me - Gregg Olsen - Страница 27

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Elan sat on the nearly deserted bleachers overlooking South Kitsap High School’s athletic field. He’d just completed four miles on the South Kitsap track, trying to keep his head on the run, instead of on Amber Turner. It was no easy task.

There was something very special about her. She was a little beyond his reach. Maybe a lot.

He didn’t have the kind of confidence that some of the guys had. He’d never really had a serious girlfriend. Never really had a girlfriend at all. The last time he took a girl anywhere was on the reservation, when he squired his dumpy cousin, Millie-Ann, to a school dance. It was a mercy date for Millie-Ann, but it felt a little that way for him too. Maybe a practice run for when he had the nerve to ask out a girl.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to get a girlfriend; he just hadn’t been able to summon up the nerve. He’d been unsure about how his Native American heritage would play in a small, almost completely white, town like Port Orchard. He wondered if the fact that he’d been living with his Aunt Birdy would keep him out of the hunt for a girl—who wants to hang out with some guy whose aunt cuts up dead people all day?

Amber Turner didn’t seem to mind any of that in the least. She’d gone through all her school years in South Kitsap. She seemed bored with the same old, same old. She wanted to know what it was like living on the reservation (not great, but not terrible either), how it was living with a forensic pathologist (she’s nice, but a little bit of a control freak) and if he’d been to any of his aunt’s autopsies (God, no).

It was as though he’d been plucked from obscurity; from the anonymity of no longer being the new kid at a very big high school, to a guy with a girlfriend.

“Want to hang out at my place?” he asked when Amber found him on the bleachers. “My aunt’s out running errands or something.”

She smiled. “Sure. I’ll drive.”

“That’s good, because I don’t have a car.”

“How’d you get here?” she asked.

“I ran,” he said.

* * *

When he saw his aunt pull up in her familiar Prius, Elan jumped up and went outside to help her unload groceries.

“Amber’s here,” he said.

Birdy stooped to pick up one of her reusable shopping bags from the backseat. She shifted it into Elan’s outstretched arms.

“Really?” she said, with mock seriousness. “Should I leave?”

Elan scooped up a second bag of groceries. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked.

She shut the car door with her hip. “Yes. Kidding, Elan. And really, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to be alone with a girl.”

“Nothing’s happening.”

“Well if it does . . .”

“We’re not having this conversation,” he said. “You know I’m not a virgin, Aunt Birdy.”

Birdy looked right at him. “I didn’t need to know that, Elan.”

“Well, I don’t care,” he said. “I just didn’t want you to think I was some loser and that I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Like you said,” Birdy sighed. “We’re not having this conversation.”