These Thorn Kisses (St. Mary’s Rebels 3)

So of course they aren’t very popular with the students here. And for good reason, because guidance counselors can be mean and intimidating. They can be unfairly strict depending on who you are assigned.

But my guidance counselor is genuinely nice.

She only started mid-year last year but she’s helped me a lot ever since. She’s encouraged me to apply for art schools and she diligently works with me on my applications. And she said that if I continued down this current path, I might screw up my grades and recommendation letters, thereby screwing up my chances of fulfilling my dream.

So I need to be careful.

I agree with her. I need to focus on my college applications and my goals and forget about this madness.

The only problem is that the man I’m trying to move on from is everywhere.

Every. Where.

Since he’s the new soccer coach — Coach Thorne — the first place I have to see him at is practice.

The next two practices are much like the first one.

Where Coach TJ is the one who talks, and the new coach — him — simply stands there either with his arms folded across his chest or behind his back and watches everything critically.

He only deigns to speak when one of the girls screws up massively. And even then in grunting monosyllables.

It actually has become a game for us, the girls. Who will screw up the most and collect the most grunting one-words. So far Poe and a couple of other girls are in the lead. While I’m at zero. And I’m sure it’s not because my soccer skills have magically improved.

He just doesn’t say anything to me.

I don’t even think he looks at me.

I mean, after what I did in his office — you know, the thing at the end — why would he?

Can I draw you?

These are my words. I can’t believe they came out of my mouth though.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Again.

All I know is that in that moment it was a compulsion. A deep, gutting need of my artistic heart and my desperate soul.

But anyway.

He said no, obviously.

Well, he kicked me out of his office and slammed the door in my face but I got the message.

And now just like him, I try not to look at him either.

Especially when he also stops by the cafeteria every day.

Every day at lunch, he shows up at our table to see Callie. To check up on her, see how she’s doing. He also brings her all the things she’s been craving lately, or at least been able to keep down. Which are mostly greens – kale, lettuce, arugula.

During such times, I try to keep my head down.

I try to focus on my lunch, my ink-stained hands in my lap, on my wrinkled mustard-colored skirt.

I even ignore how Poe always flirts with him. Or is the first to engage him in conversation. Which he responds to politely but with his usual aloofness. Then comes Salem with all her soccer questions. These, he answers with a little more interest than his responses to Poe.

“You’re wasting your time,” Callie sing-songs one day when her brother leaves. “He’s not interested in you.”

“And how do you know that?” Poe asks.

“Because I know my brother,” Callie says proudly. “He is good. He’s moral. He has principles. He will never ever look at a girl who’s a student in a way that’s less than appropriate. In fact,” she says and looks around the cafeteria, “I should probably tell everyone this. Like, stop giggling and blushing when he comes around. He’s never going to be like, ‘oh my God, you’re really pretty. Let me have you. I don’t care that you’re a teenager and my student.’ Especially if that student is my friend. He’s super particular about that. The rest of my brothers are animals. They don’t care about the code or whatever. But not Con. My oldest and sweetest and also scariest brother is too morally responsible to do any of that.”

Callie is right.

Her oldest brother would never look at any of the St. Mary’s students in a way that’s less than appropriate. Not that I want him to look at me in a way that’s inappropriate — I do not.

But whatever.

It doesn’t matter.

I have other things to worry about.

Because he not only is everywhere during school hours, but he’s also here before them.

Just like he shows up at our lunch table every day, he also shows up at the soccer field. Way before classes start and the campus is buzzing with students.

And on that soccer field, he goes for a run.

Every day.

The only reason I know this is because I’m the first girl to wake up at St. Mary’s. I wake before everyone else, usually an hour or two before, and go outside with my sketchpad. I have a spot that I usually sit at, under this tree on the soccer field, and sketch in peace before the day begins.