Page 39 of Devil in Disguise
She didn’t say, “Harlan Kristiansen’s about to become my stepfather. It’d be pretty squick to go around wearing his number.” She also didn’t say, “It’s my boyfriend’s jersey.” Why not? Maybe because she didn’t want to be defined by somebody else up here, or to be something as weird as an NFL player’s girlfriend. She wanted people to knowher.That was why she said instead, “I like the big numbers. And my mom and I moved to Portland this spring for her new job, and to be with her boyfriend.”
“Oh. So not actually as much of a hick as me. Farm boy here.”
“Nah. Still a hick. And that’s exactly what I guessed. Wheat farm, right? And I’ll bet anything you were on the football team.”
He grinned. “Well, yeah. I wasn’t any good, though. You’re right about the wheat, too. Also barley and lentils and garbanzo beans. Guess you know how Ispentmysummer. The only sure things in life are death, taxes, and harvest.”
She laughed. Then, because she didn’t want to seem pathetic, like they had to keep on being nice to this girl who didn’t know how to go away, she said, “Well, I’m hanging it up.”
“You can come play games in our room for a while, if you like,” Avery said in his quiet way. “If you’d rather.”
“Thanks, but I’d better go on. See you guys tomorrow.”
“You bet,” Fletcher said. “And hey. You should come with us and check out the Rec Center. They’ve got a wicked climbing center.”
“You mean like rock climbing?” She kicked the “not being pathetic” idea to the curb. “That would be awesome. Don’t I need shoes or something, though?”
“You can rent them,” Avery said. “And I have an extra harness.”
“Your harness isn’t going to fit her, dude,” Fletcher said. “Look at her.”
Avery got that flush over his cheekbones again, but all he said was, “I had it for somebody else. It’ll fit her.”
“How much does it cost to rent the shoes?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” Fletcher said. “A few bucks? Most people buy them, though. Renting climbing shoes is kind of nasty.”
She thought about how much climbing shoes would probably cost—she was betting on “hundreds,” just because most things you wanted turned out to cost hundreds—and about going out for coffee afterwards, because they were bound to want to do that, too. She thought about that job application, how she’d made a budget a long time ago, and it hadn’t included climbing shoes. How little Voodoo Donuts had paid, and how much everything in her shrank from the idea of asking Harlan to help pay her college expenses. And then she remembered his hundred bucks.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not.”
* * *
On Sunday morning,she didn’t go to the Rec Center again, even though climbing had been amazing. That was because she had a job.
The good thing about food service? They didn’t exactly put you through a grueling battery of tests before they hired you. If you screwed up, they just fired you and got somebody else. “And of course,” she’d texted Annabelle the day before, “the ‘asst mgr of Burger King’ title carries its own special cachet.”
After a riveting five hours of refilling food bins, wiping down tables, and loading dishwashers, which, yes, she knew how to do without getting fired, she took the path back to the dorm at a run and was grateful to find the room empty. She needed a shower, and she only had twenty minutes until Owen’s game was on.
She came out ten minutes later wrapped in her towel, and Sydney said,“Excuseus.”
Dyma peered through the narrow space between the bathroom and the wardrobes. Oh. Cassandra was there, too, plus two guys.
“Whoops,” she said, doing her best to grab her clothes out of the wardrobe while still clutching her towel. The towel started to slip, and she pulled it up in the nick of time, gave up on selecting an outfit, and took Owen’s jersey off its hook. The towel slipped more, then came undone altogether, and she clutched it to the front of her body, laughed, and said, “Well, hi, everybody. I’m Dyma.”
“Yeah,” one of the guys said. “You sure are. Logan.” The other guy just stared.
“Excuseme,” Sydney said. “Bathroom?”
“Yep,” Dyma said. “Going.” She more or less backed in there, slammed the door behind her, pulled on the jersey, and gave a mental shrug. Less than tenminutes to kickoff now. She’d sneak out and grab some real clothes, and then she’d get her laptop and head down to the lounge with her earbuds to watch. She wished she had a big screen to watch on, but it was hard to find that unless it was in a bar, and she couldn’t exactly go to a bar.
Wait a minute. The Rec Center had TVs. She could put on workout clothes, head over there, run on the treadmill or something, and watch. Perfect.
Oh, no. She was becoming Annabelle. Turning into a jock. She had to text her that. That’d make her laugh, and Dyma suspected she was feeling pretty lonely.
She opened the door quietly and started to head out, then heard Cassandra’s voice and stopped.
“Pretending to drop her towel, so she could show off her body,” she heard. “And that stupidfootballshirt. Like she thinks it’s cute to wear something way too big for her, because she’s just such an adorable tiny little thing. And football? Seriously? You know she only likes it because she thinks guys like it. She doesn’t even realize that the educated world has moved on! It could at least be soccer or rugby or something. She’s justembarrassing.”
