Some Kind of Normal

He flashed that smile again. The one that had charmed Miss Harmon back in eighth grade. “Your favorite Elton John song.”

“Oh.” That was an easy one. “Blue Jean.”

He frowned for a moment. “You mean David Bowie?”

“No. Elton John.”

“Got it, ‘Tiny Dancer.’”

“Yes,” I nodded. “That’s it, from—”

“Almost Famous,” he finished for me.

Had he always looked this intense?

“What?” he asked. He smiled again and I thought that on a scale of one to ten, his smile was a total eleven. “You’re into the classics. That’s cool. Didn’t picture that.”

“Really. What exactly did you picture?” Shoot. Did I really want to hear this?

“I don’t know. PBS and that Jane Austen?”

Okay. First off, I was impressed that he knew who Jane Austen was, and secondly…he knew who Jane Austen was!

I dropped my eyes, because I was pretty sure that my cheeks were as red as the roses planted just outside the library. Trevor Lewis wasn’t anything like what I thought he’d be. He wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t arrogant. He wasn’t slow or weird.

He seemed pretty normal to me.

You know, for a guy with tattoos and blue hair.

Mrs. Henney, the librarian, chose that moment to clear her throat, and it startled me. I snatched my hand from his.

Trevor Lewis made me nervous. I wasn’t exactly sure why, and I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time thinking about it. Besides, I had way too much on my mind. I needed to put this into perspective. Trevor was my excuse to be out of the house all summer. A guy I was tutoring. A distraction maybe, but nothing more than that.

“I have to go.” I stood up, nearly knocking over my chair while Trevor reached for his book and laptop.

“I’ll drive you home.”

“No.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Did I do something?”

Taking a deep breath, I shoved my free h

and into the front pocket of my jean shorts. “I’m meeting Hailey at the pool.”

“Cool.” He closed his laptop. “Let me give you a lift.”

“No really,” I replied. “I want to walk.”

“Not gonna happen.” He was standing now. He nodded toward the door. “Let me drive you to the pool. I don’t mind.”

Not gonna happen.

The words echoed in my head, but it wasn’t Trevor’s voice I heard, it was my father’s. And they’d been knocking around my brain for three hundred and eighty-three days now. They were three words I was trying to forget. Three words he’d spoken to someone. A someone who wasn’t my mom. A someone I was trying to forget.

Something broke inside me. Something hot and heavy and mean. Something that pressed into my chest and made my eyes smart with unshed tears. Great. If I cried in front of Trevor Lewis, I just might die.

“I said that I wanted to walk, Trevor. Do you need me to speak slower? What part of that don’t you understand?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to snatch them back.