Page 9 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

CHAPTER 3

Eight years ago, Lukas Spikonos had burst into Sam’s life at a time when it really couldn’t get to sucking much more. Yet from the very first time she’d ever laid eyes on him, she knew he was big trouble.

Senior year, she’d been in love with Reggie Reid, the quarterback, like every other girl in the class, but her first love was Johnny Depp, (which proved she probably had a thing for bad boys all along). Maybe that was why she first noticed the handsome mechanic who’d fixed the fender on her Grandma Effie’s car that she scraped when she pulled in a little too close to the garage. When she’d gone into the shop to pick it up, she didn’t hear a single word he said about the car because she was too busy blushing and having a heart attack.

Even from the brief glances she’d allowed herself out of the corner of her eye, she saw he was a remarkable boy, with pitch-black hair worn a tad too long (although he was kind of going for a tough, Goth look, and it was probably dyed), skin that looked tanned even though summer was long past, a black T-shirt, and skinny jeans that showed off his lean form. He was older, twenty-one she’d guessed, and although he was thin, he was filled out in a way that made him look more like a man than a boy.

But the thing that got her was his eyes, which were big and brown, the color of strong rich coffee. And the way he looked at her! Lordie, no one had ever looked at her that way, with unabashed, unhidden desire. Henoticedher, in a way that was totally different from any of the boys her own age.

“There you go,” he said, handing her back Effie’s credit card and oh, wow, their fingers grazed. He had such fine hands, with well-trimmed nails. Each finger displayed a different hammered silver ring with some sort of symbols she’d never seen before. As if all that wasn’t enough, his smile sealed the deal. When this guy smiled, she swore, the angels held their breath. It was beautiful, the slightest bit imperfect, and a little bit wicked. And it sent tingles scattering like fairy dust all over her body.

After that, Sam tended to notice him on her evening walks home from the craft store, where she worked until it closed at seven. Under the cover of darkness, she would see him leaning up against Clinker’s bright red garage doors, one sneakered foot braced up against the brick, watching. Always watching.

She felt his eyeballs searing into her as she passed, but he never waved, never called out. Just stood there with his glowing cigarette or with his hands buried in his pockets.

This perplexed her. Had she imagined the smoldering stares? Why wouldn’t he talk to her? She’d gotten enough attention from boys to know she was pretty enough and thanks to all her brothers, she had a fairly good window into how the male mind worked.

Still, he was everything she’d been warned against from the time she was a baby. Ane’er do wellis what Effie would call him. A slacker, most likely. A blue-collar kid with a penchant for trouble. Not for her.

“Walk home with me tonight,” she’d begged Jess one winter evening.

“Yes, he is staring at you,” Jess confirmed. Then shot her own hand into the air and waved.

Mortification flooded through Sam. “Jess, I swear,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

“Oh, chill,” Jess said. “Look.” She tilted her head toward Clinker’s.

Mystery Man was waving back. And smiling. And oh, that smile was like kindling, igniting Sam’s body into flames.

“He’s hot,” Jess said. “You have to talk to him.”

Yes, he was, and she wanted to. If only she could figure out how.

Weeks had gone by and nothing. He hadn’t sought her out, or called her. In fact, she rarely saw him standing outside anymore when she walked past Clinker’s. But she still got goose bumps, as if he were watching her from somewhere deep inside the shop, and she did subtly check out all the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of him working.

Once when she went to see an old movie at the Palace, he was there, sitting by himself in the back. He’d stared at her so hard that one of her girlfriends poked her in the ribs on the way down the aisle. Their gazes locked, and she slowed enough that her friend bumped into her from behind. She waved as she passed—of course she did! Because by this time she was dying to see him. Wanted to sit with him and talk with him and know who he was. All he did was nod casually in her direction, nothing more.

Then The Incident happened, and all her teenage worries and dreams—small and large—disintegrated, blown away like wisps of smoke on the wind.

“Don’t do it,” Sam said to her friend Amy Chan over lunch one day in the cafeteria.

“What, are you kidding, Sam?” Jess chimed in. “She hasno choice.”

The CCs, The Country Clubbers, as they called themselves, the most popular, beautiful kids—and also the cruelest—were causing trouble. Monique Martin, the head of the pack, was all long, gorgeous hair and thick lashes and a pretty smile—attributes wasted on a mean girl. She asked Amy to a) do their calculus homework and b) let them cheat off of her on the upcoming test. Or else.

“Or else what?” Sam asked.

“Or else they’ll get to my sister in Special Ed,” Amy said. “They can make her life hell. I don’t know what else to do.”

“Turn them in,” Sam said.

Amy shook her head, no doubt remembering that another one of their friends, Pete Rosenblum, had found his dad’s pickup keyed all down the side and his tires slashed last month after he refused a similar demand about physics. “I’m just going to do it.” Amy was terrified to tell Mr.Malone, their principal, for fear of the repercussions if she turned them in. It was the perfect bullying scenario, and Sam had no clue how to help.

Sam worried about Amy, but she had her own problems. It was fall of senior year, and she was applying to art schools, working at the craft store, and polishing her portfolio. She was putting the final touches on a portrait project she’d been working on for weeks, which she’d planned to enter as part of a scholarship competition to help her get into her dream school, RISD. She had a great shot. Her art teacher, Mrs.Kissinger, said she did.

She’d applied for every art scholarship she could find, because on the wild chance she got in someplace fancy like that, her family wouldn’t have the money to send her. She hadn’t even told them she was applying to art school. Her brother Brad didn’t want her to be an artist. There was no money in it, he said. She had to be practical. Get a business or teaching degree, something useful. He’d always thought health care was a great profession.

After all, Effie was a nurse and her Grandpa Rushford had been a beloved town doc. But ever since Sam had passed out after seeing her brother Ben get hit in the head with a soccer ball (so that both of them landed in the hospital at the same time), she’d crossed that off her list.

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