The Boy on the Bridge

Just thinking about the delivery I got this morning and then picturing his face makes me cringe a little.

Not a good look, Anderson. What the hell were you thinking?

As if summoned by my thoughts, Anderson shows up at my locker while I’m putting away books. He has an easy breezy smile on his face when I look at him—unthreateningly handsome, that’s Anderson Milner. He has chestnut brown hair with dark bushy eyebrows, bright brown eyes and angular features. He’s a little taller than me, and right now he’s wearing his new black and crimson letter jacket, even though it’s way too warm to be wearing a jacket today.

My gaze gets stuck on the jacket.

I don’t love that Anderson is on the football team because a lot of Hunter’s old buddies are also on the football team.

Prior to the flower incident, I worried that as soon as we started back to school, Anderson would get a crash course in whatever Hunter told people to make them treat me like a leper. Several times I imagined him approaching me halfway through the first day, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck and avoiding my gaze as he made up some excuse to dump me so his new friends wouldn’t hate him.

Wait, maybe he still will. Should I ignore the flower incident and wait for that?

Deciding to feel him out, I paste a half-assed smile on my face and greet him back. “Hey. How was practice?”

The guys on the team have been coming to practices already before the school year even began so it’s not like Anderson is just meeting the team today, but there’s a good chance none of them knew he was dating me… and that probably won’t last long. Everyone knows everyone’s business at this school, I swear.

“Rough.” Anderson leans against the locker and smiles at me despite saying that. “The quarterback we’ve been practicing with got dropped to second string. Some new guy was there today, and you’d think if someone joins the team late they’d have to hang back and catch up to us, but I guess he must be good because Coach rearranged everything to accommodate him.”

“That sounds annoying,” I murmur sympathetically, jamming my chemistry book into place and closing my locker door.

“Little bit. I’m in a better mood now that I get to see you, though,” he says, pushing off the locker and moving closer to me.

Prior to this morning, that comment would have been sweet and maybe I would have smiled at it. Right now, though, I’m afraid he’d find a smile encouraging, so I keep my reaction muted as I hug the books I need against my chest and slowly take off in the direction of my first class.

Anderson falls into step beside me, looking over at me with a mild frown. “Hey, is everything okay?”

Dread weighs on me. I’m not going to be able to put off the conversation and just see if he dumps me first. “Um, not really. Look, I feel like a jerk saying this because the flowers were a very nice gesture, but it was… I don’t know, a little much? And the necklace… the necklace was a lot much, and the note you sent along with it—I don’t know, Anderson, that’s so not like you. I was really put off by it, to be perfectly honest.”

Anderson is still walking beside me, but he’s scowling in absolute befuddlement. “What are you talking about? What flowers?”

I frown at him. “The… first day of school flowers you had delivered to my house this… morning? You didn’t send me flowers,” I realize slowly.

Anderson’s dark eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “First day of school flowers? Is that a thing? Was I supposed to send—? I’ve never heard of this.”

My frown deepens. I look down at the ground in thought as I walk. “You didn’t send the flowers.”

“No.” I can feel his anxiety, but I’m too preoccupied trying to figure out what’s going on to really pay much attention to it. “Maybe your mom’s boyfriend sent her flowers?”

“No, there was a card. They were meant for me.” I stop walking for a moment, searching the crowded halls for another letter jacket.

Maybe it was a prank. Maybe one of the assholes Hunter called friends sent the flowers and it was a mean-spirited gesture. I’m a little murky on their motives, though. While there are some mean ones—Mark Poplowski in particular, and his name does start with M—they aren’t intelligent enough to come up with something deeply diabolical, and I can only think of a couple ways this makes sense.

Scenario one: clueless dumb jock ordered by Hunter to make my life hell while he’s gone sends me flowers on the first day of school with messages I interpreted romantically, but meant to intimidate me with them. Let’s make this year memorable could mean, “We’re going to make your life a living hell this year.” The message about wanting me to know who I belong to could have meant, “We own your ass.” Maybe I interpreted them as possessive by mistake because they accompanied roses which automatically made me think romantic suitor, but then… if this is the motive, this is a lot more effort than these guys have ever put into making high school miserable for me. Up until now, it has mostly been about isolating me and ignoring me; Valerie has been evil, but the guys have never actually been aggressive with me.