Page 2 of Dare to Dance
1
Kross
The rolling greenlawn of Greenridge Academy spanned both sides of the private high school. I drove down the winding road that led to the large campus of buildings scattered around the property.
“Boy, does this bring back memories,” my brother Kody said from the passenger seat.
Some memories I didn’t care to remember. Kody and I, along with our brother Kelton, had spent our sophomore year at the academy. Everyone at Kensington High thought we’d been shipped off to a military school. Greenridge was far from military, although the atmosphere had sure seemed like it at the time. Regardless, our old man had been furious about all the fights we’d been in at Kensington High during our freshman year. The final straw had been the fight with Kade’s enemy Greg Sullivan. Kody and I had beaten the boy to a pulp.
“So, is this guy good?” Kody thread his fingers through his thick black hair.
“We’ll see.” My boxing coach, Jay Crandall, sent me to Greenridge to check out an up-and-coming boxer who just happened to be a student there. I wasn’t exactly jumping up and down for joy to revisit the place, but I wanted to get paid. While I built my boxing career, I was working for Jay at the gym, helping to train and coach members.
I parked in a visitor’s space, studying the century-old structure that was the anchor of the campus. The graying stone façade reminded me of a castle, complete with two corner towers, red pointed peaks, and a large portico. The beauty of the campus wasn’t the main building but the surrounding mountains, the dense trees, and manicured rolling lawns that seemed to go on for miles, lending a cozy feeling to the property. The environment was a stark contrast to the cold classrooms and sterile halls of the school and dormitories.
The year I’d attended was a time of firsts, lasts, good, bad, and everything in between. But mostly, I’d been angry with my father for disrupting our lives, for separating us from Kade and our barely lived in home in Ashford, Massachusetts, only to move us into a dorm that felt like a prison.
The double wooden doors of the main building burst open, and students filed out as though someone had disrupted a hornet’s nest.
“Best part of this school was being close to Mom,” I said as we watched the throng of students disperse in all directions. Mom had been in a mental health facility not far from the school.
Kody unstrapped his seatbelt. “I thought for you it was Ruby Lewis.”
“I guess.” Back then, Ruby had been a refreshing ray of sunshine. The moment I laid eyes on her, the anger I held firm slipped to the wayside. We bumped into each other after school one day, not paying attention to where we were going. I’d been reading a text from Kade, and she’d been looking for her keys in her purse. I tried to speak, but my tongue wouldn’t move. All I could do was stare at her like a boy who had just discovered girls for the first time. Maybe I had. Up until the tenth grade I hadn’t paid much attention to girls. I didn’t care to. Girls had always chased my brothers and me, probably because they thought triplets were hot or something. They ogled at us and giggled when they passed us in the halls at school. After a while, I got tired of all the attention, especially if the girls interrupted our conversations. That was a norm for girls during lunch in the school cafeterias. But Ruby was different, shy, not to mention beautiful with her shiny auburn hair, porcelain skin, and blue-green eyes. As cheesy as it sounded, I seriously thought I had run into an angel.
“Whatever happened to her?” Kody asked.
I inhaled the air of the truck, which was stinky thanks to Kody’s burps of garlic and onions. “Not sure.”
We’d dated for five months before I had to move back home to Ashford. Then I lost touch with her. Actually, I ignored her repeated calls. I’d gotten spooked when she told me she might be pregnant.
My old man had explained the birds and the bees to all us boys. “Protection,” he’d said. “Not only to prevent pregnancy, but sexually transmitted diseases.”
I’d heard him, but I hadn’t listened. Ruby and I got caught up in the moment. Even though she later conveyed to me that she’d finally gotten her monthly girl thing and wasn’t pregnant, our relationship changed, or ratherIchanged. It was as if that one incident had been a wake-up call to real life, and I hadn’t been ready to deal.
Kody nudged me. “Are you taking a trip down memory lane?”
I chuckled. “You could say that.” I opened the door of my truck. “Let’s go.” I didn’t need to think about Ruby, although I had wondered over the years, and more lately, how she was doing. Part of me wanted to apologize for being a dick. Another part of me wanted to see her. She had to be more beautiful now.
The cluster of students quickly dispersed as Kody and I started for the path behind the school that led to the gym.
Kody stabbed a thumb toward the main entrance. “Aren’t we supposed to check in at the office?”
“Are you still obeying school rules? You’re not in high school, dude.” The last thing I wanted to do was run into teachers who might remember us. Kody and I hadn’t been good students that year.
Kody fell into step with me. “Worried about Mrs. Munoz?”
“I made amends with her. Remember? I wrote I was sorry a hundred times for calling her a witch in Spanish. You concerned about Ms. Sharp?”
“I do want to apologize again.”
I raised an eyebrow. Mandy, Kody’s girl, had died a few months before we started at Greenridge. So Kody had more of a chip on his shoulder than I did. “You don’t think she’s forgiven you for breaking her nephew’s nose?”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t if I was her. But I do remember she was hot.” His grin was mischievous. “It’s only been four years. I believe she’s probably, what, twenty-seven now?”
If she were still teaching there, I wouldn’t mind seeing if she was still curvy with long legs and shapely breasts. “Are you into older women?”
“Dude, they know what they want. Besides, they’re not up for a serious relationship.” Most of the girls screaming his name at Rumors when he sang and played the guitar were college age, and most were on the hunt for a steady boyfriend.
