Chapter Three Part One

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CHAPTER THREE

The next morning I actually woke up on time.
 During breakfast Mom actually spoke to me directly.
 Which, as I’ve mentioned, doesn’t happen very often.

“Maelie, I know we’d agreed that I’d take you to school every day, but I really enjoyed the time in the car with Dad taking me. Plus you know I dislike driving anyway, so you get the car all to yourself. It’s still my car, but you have free use of it. Just don’t crash it or anything.”

“Sure Mom. Hey, Saturday night the school is having a…”

“Honey, we need to get going,” Mom said to Dad, who had his nose in the paper. He set it down, and patted my shoulder on his way to the garage.

“Oh and Maelie, you’re going to love it, we’re going as a family to camp at Pikes Peak Friday night! Won’t that be exciting? I just know you’ll love it. Bye bye dear!” Mom said, closing the door behind her.

She didn’t even know she’d just been redundant.

Well, if we were only camping on Friday night, I would still make it to the dance on Saturday. That would make Danny happy at least.

I drove to school listening to country music again, thinking this would probably be the norm for the year. I parked and looked over my schedule again, making sure I knew where I was going. First period choir… yes.

Choir is a great way to start a day off, did you know that? If you begin with choir, the whole rest of the day goes well. Singing just makes people happy. Sing in the shower, or in the car, or while you walk… seriously, try it sometime, it’s great.

On my way from Choir to Math, I saw Ryan in the hall, talking to a group of guys I assumed were his friends. Our eyes met for a split second and he smiled at me. One of his buddies noticed him looking at me and elbowed him teasingly. That made me smile more than singing had, and I made a mental note to ask Danny what he knew of Ryan Houston.

I made it through the first half of the day relatively unscathed, receiving only one homework assignment. Finally the bell rang to dismiss me from P.E. I showered quickly, and made my way to the cafeteria to find Danny’s window again. Even though there was a line, I waited.

“The usual?” He asked when it was my turn.

“You bet,” I said smiling.

He handed me a bottle of water, and a basket of fries with a slice of pepperoni pizza on top, then said, “Where are you sitting today?”

I shrugged, “Same place I guess.”

“Cool, I’ll be out in a few minutes. See ya!”

I walked away shaking my head. He was funny for a freshman. I sat and ate, not wanting to pull out a book. I was too set on talking to Danny. After ten minutes he joined me saying, “Sorry, they asked me to take trash duty today last minute. Don’t worry though, I washed my hands.”

I laughed a little awkwardly, trying to think of a way to bring up the subject I wanted to discuss. Then I saw Ryan across the room sitting with that same group of friends plus more, laughing and tossing a baseball from one to another. “Do you know those guys?” I asked Danny, pointing to Ryan’s group.

He craned his neck to see who I meant. “The baseball team? Yeah, I know a few of them, why?”

Ignoring his question I asked, “Which ones do you know?”

“Well, there’s Blake Larson, he’s that tall one with brown hair; he lives on my street. The blonde one is Jason Ingram, he dated my sister – he’s a jerk, totally not worth your time.” I held back a laugh; he knew exactly why I was asking. “Um, and the only other one I know the name of is the black haired guy; that’s Ryan Houston – the ‘local catch’ according to my sister.” He leaned back in his chair and said, “Are you uh, interested in any of them?” He wiggled his eyebrows at me flirtatiously.

I felt my face warm a little. “Maybe I am!” I said defensively. “So I will act upon your recommendation: who would you set me up with?”

He immediately took on a pensive look. I was relieved he didn’t seem to be thinking of saying himself. Hopefully we’d covered that subject fully enough yesterday.

“Of all the guys I know, or have heard of, Ryan has always sounded like an awesome guy. He’s not perfect,” I nearly argued that point, “but he’s one of the nicest guys in town. I’ve never talked to him, but he seems really cool.” He shrugged, “The rest of them are average I think… except for Jason, he’s no good.”

I nodded with understanding. “Good to know. Not that I’ll be making any moves, but I figured since I respect your opinion I ought to ask.”

“Well, you should watch out for Ryan’s girlfriends though. I’ve heard that she’s a beast. I also heard – all rumor, ok? – That he’s only dating her for show, because she was so persistent. Telling her he’d date her was the only way to get her to stop stalking him. Now, she gets the title of ‘Ryan’s girl’ and he sees her less often than he did before they started dating. They’ve been that way for three years… I think he’s probably tired of it by now, but he can’t let her go until he finds someone else to replace her with; otherwise she’ll just start stalking him again, ya’ know?”

I eyed him suspiciously, “You seem to know a lot more about Ryan than you let on at first.”

He focused his eyes on his food, “So? Everybody knows that story; public knowledge.”

“Danny…”

He looked up, sighed, and mumbled something.

“What was that?” I asked.

“He’s my brother.”

“What? Why didn’t you just say that?”

He fiddled with his fork for a minute before explaining. “We share a room. I was awake when he got back from the college last night. I asked him about his day, he said he ‘ran into you’” he held up his fingers to make quotation marks, “twice, and I told him I’d met you during lunch. We talked for a while and I could tell he thought you were cool. I guess I figured…” he stopped.

“Figured what?” I pressed him.

“I figured if I was too young to be your type,” he smiled while he said it, so I knew he wasn’t offended, “that I’d rather see you with my brother than anyone else.”

Wow. I had not been expecting that. Now that I knew, it made perfect sense that Danny and Ryan were brothers – they were both nice, charming, funny, smart guys. I was willing to bet that their parents were awesome.

“Thanks Danny.”

He shrugged, “That’s what little brothers do… I think.”

Hold it, that was an odd thing to say…“What do you mean, you think?”

“Oh, well Ryan and I are both adopted. Our parents can’t have biological children, so they adopted us and our sisters. I only joined the family a few years ago, so I’m still getting used to being a brother, ya know?”

“No way, I was adopted too, but as a baby.”

“Really? Cool! Ryan is the oldest, and he was adopted as a baby too. I got really lucky to get him for a brother – he’s the best. You’ll like him.” He smiled and wiggled his eyebrows again.

“Are you telling me to hit on your brother?” I asked through my laughter.

“Yes! Yes, that is exactly what I’m telling you to do!” I nearly fell off my chair I was laughing so hard. Then he started whispering, “No, seriously, Maelie, if Stephanie sees that Ryan is really interested in someone else, she won’t stalk him after he breaks up with her. You’ve got to get Ryan to really like you, before he breaks up with Steph.”

I felt like I was being given a mission impossible tape… “your mission, should you choose to accept it…”

I sighed and said, “You’re for real?”

“Completely,” Danny assured me.

Oh dear... what was I getting into? I sighed.
“You have my word that I’ll do my best.” I promised.

“YES!” Danny stood so fast his chair shot out from under him and scraped along the floor, drawing the attention of most of the lunchroom. I covered my mouth to keep from laughing out loud, before looking across the tables and seeing Ryan watching me. He waved and smiled… and I melted.