Page 25 of I Would Stay Forever
To nobody’s surprise, all the girls that had previously been on the team made the cut again this year, along with three new freshmen and one sophomore.
“Will your practices always be Tuesdays?” he asked as I started pulling books out of my locker and stuffing them in my bag.
“Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays,” I said. “Which reminds me, what time is your football match next Wednesday?”
He put on an exaggerated American accent as he responded, “You have to call it soccer here.”
I rolled my eyes but laughed. “You knew what I meant. I have a group project meeting after my volleyball practice and I can’t decide if we should try to have it at the house or if it will be easier to just stay at school until your game.”
“Pretty sure it’s at six but I’ll double check,” Sebastian said. He leaned against the locker beside mine, crossing his arms. I was pretty sure I heard a couple girls down the hall audibly swoon. I rolled my eyes and focused on my locker again, grabbing a claw clip to put my hair up. “But speaking of timing, we need to talk about Ainsley and Imogen.”
My face scrunched up in confusion. “How is that speaking of timing?”
“We can’t rely on Mum and Dad to pick them up from school anymore, so we have to figure out a schedule.”
I slowly dropped my hands back down to my sides and stared at the class schedule I’d taped up to my locker door as if it would somehow solve every problem in my family. Because of my parents’ bizarre work schedules, one of them was always home when we finished school, so they could drive us home or to our various extracurriculars. Most of the time, I caught a ride with one of my friends anyway, but Ainsley and Imogen relied on our parents being able to pick them up. It hadn’t been a problem the past few days because sports and clubs hadn’t started up yet, but starting next week, we would all be needing to go home at different times.
“What days do they have to stay at school late?” I asked Sebastian. I assumed if he was coming to talk to me about this, then he already knew what we were working with.
“Imogen’s easy enough—she’s only here on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” he said, counting it off on his fingers. “Ainsley has swim practice on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays—but the problem is she has dance on Mondays, Wednesdays, andFridays, so on the overlap days, she has to go straight from here to dance.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and rested my face against the cool edge of my locker door, mentally mapping out a calendar for myself. I’d told Dean we could work on our project after his football practice on Mondays and Wednesdays, which meant I’d be completely useless in getting Ainsley to her dance practices for the next couple of weeks.
“How about if I deal with Imogen and you deal with Ainsley?” I asked, my forehead still pressed against the door. “Imogen being here after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays already aligns with my volleyball schedule, so it should be good. Would that work or does it conflict with your soccer practices?”
“Her swim practices end at the same time as my soccer,” he said slowly, sounding like he was trying to piece it together in his mind. “I’ll have to let Coach know that I need to be off the field in time, but then if I shower quickly, I guess…” He trailed off and when I glanced over, he was running a hand over the side of his face, looking as exhausted as I felt. When Dad left, the last thing on my mind was how it would affect our schedules. I’d been so worried about everything else, I hadn’t thought of this at all.
“Maybe I can move about my group project meetings,” I said. “They’re supposed to be on Mondays and Wednesdays, but I bet he could?—”
“No,” Sebastian interrupted. “Don’t move around stuff for school. You need good grades this year for university. It’s more important than my stupid soccer practices.”
“Your soccer practices aren’t stupid,” I argued. “And besides, it’s more important to you than my History of Warfare class is to me. I mean, what kind of class even is that?”
Sebastian studied me with a small frown. “You’re in History of Warfare?”
“Mm-hmm.” He was still frowning, so I added, “Is that a problem?”
“No, it’s just…” He shook his head. “Dean’s in that class and he didn’t mention seeing you in it. I was just surprised, but I guess he didn’t notice you.”
Even if the class had been big enough for me to get lost in the crowd, I probably would have been a little offended by him not noticing me or thinking I was important enough to mention to Sebastian, but the fact that he sat next to me made it so much worse. I opened my mouth, ready to tell him that Dean was actually the person I’d been talking about when I mentioned my group project, but the words died in my throat as I wondered if maybe there was some reason that Dean hadn’t said anything.
Should we be keeping this a secret? It wasn’t like we were doing anything wrong. I couldn’t see any reason that Sebastian would be mad that we were sitting next to each other in class or forced into doing a project together. But maybe Dean knew something I didn’t. Maybe there was some reason that this was supposed to be a secret.
So instead of telling him, I said, “I guess I’ll go find Imogen then.”
Sebastian gave me a tight smile that looked like a very stressed person’s best attempt at happiness. Things had been looking up this week, but now, he was backsliding into the state he’d been in for much of August. I wanted to do everything in my power to take that stress off his shoulders, but I knew there was only so much he would let me help with. Sebastian wanted to take care of us all, not just Ainsley and Imogen, and as much as I reminded him that we could be a team, he went about most of his life alone. I was sure the only reason he’d come to me about this was because he knew there was no way for him to be able to help both Imogen and Ainsley, and I had the means to help withmy new car. It was a small thing to be able to take off his plate, but I guess it was something.
fourteen
“And then Leahcame over and started running her hands all over his chest,” Zoey said, rolling her eyes. She took a long gulp from her red solo cup and shook her head. “Seriously, are there no boys left at this school that haven’t been claimed?”
I choked on my own drink. “Claimed?”
“You know,” Zoey said, waving a hand around and accidentally slamming it into the living room wall. She was standing at the corner of the dark room, wedged between the wall and the couch that Molly and Paige were sitting on. “Girls always call dibs on guys.”
I shook my head and took another sip of my drink, this time choking on it just due to the taste. It was a disgusting concoction of cheap alcohol mixed with Diet Coke, neither of which were drinks I loved on their own and I definitely hated together. Every time I came to a party, I promised myself I wouldn’t let Zoey or Paige make me a drink because I was convinced neither of them had a sense of taste, but it kept happening anyway. Today, I blamed Molly, who dragged me upstairs the moment we got to the party because she needed to touch up her makeup. It took us forever to find a mirror because there was an insane line for the bathroom, so by the time I got back downstairs, Paige alreadyhad two cups in her hand and shoved one of them straight at me, telling me to drink up.
“Wait, I’m confused,” Molly said. Well, more like yelled. There was music playing and people talking all around us, but nothing so loud that warranted the way she was yelling at the top of her lungs. That was just a side effect of her drinking. “Which one is Colby and why does Leah think she owns him?”
