Page 3 of Between Never and Forever
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1
15 years old
“Hey.”Savannah steps in front of me and kicks dirt onto my clean tennis shoes. “Lemme see your math homework.”
I flick my eyes across the street toward my house. My mother’s face is peeking through the gray curtains of our front window, watching the bus stop like she’s started doing ever since my bike got stolen and I had to stop riding it to school. I glance back at Savannah, but I don’t speak. Her eyebrows scrunch before she looks toward my house and sighs.
“You’re such a weenie, Cooper,” she grumbles loudly, making the other kids at the bus stop laugh. My ears heat, but I still don’t talk to her.
Savannah rolls her eyes and takes a dramatic step away from me before crossing her arms over her chest and setting her attention on my house. She doesn’t break her stare with my mother until the school bus pulls up in front of us.
I step onto the bus and make my way down the aisle until I reach the seventh seat from the front, then I sit on the hard bench. Savannah drops down next to me, shoving my shoulder with hers and slinging her backpack to the floor between her feet.
I hate the bus. The seats are uncomfortable, and it always smells like feet. The only okay thing about taking the bus is Savannah.
“Gimme your math homework, Weenie,” she taunts with a smirk. I roll my eyes and pretend to be annoyed, but I open my backpack anyway.
“You really should stop copying my work, Savannah. You’ll never learn how to do it on your own,” I tell her flatly as I hand her the sheet of paper.
Savannah snorts. “Why would I wanna learn how to do this crap?”
She scribbles the equations from my worksheet onto hers, changing the answers to a few so she doesn’t get them all correct. She does this every time. She’s been doing it since fifth grade. I asked her once why she didn’t just copy my work exactly as it is to get the better grade, and she said it would be too suspicious if she suddenly started getting As.
I’m a C student, Weenie. Gotta stay a C student.
I didn’t bother pointing out that the math she had to do to make sure she would always get a C was proof that she could be an A student if she wanted to be. She’d have just slugged me, anyway.
I wait quietly as she finishes copying the work, then she hands it back to me and I put it back into my backpack. She doesn’t say thank you. She never does.
“You goin’ to The Pit tonight?” I feel my cheeks warm as I shake my head no. “Oh, right,” she says wryly. “I forgot.”
She didn’t forget. She just likes to give me crap about it.
“I wouldn’t go there even if I didn’t have youth group, Savannah. That place is lame.” I try to sound confident even though I’m not.
“You’re lame.”
She’s such a brat. I shake my head.
The Pit is a place out of town where kids race their cars and bet on fights and drink beer. It’s mostly juniors and seniors, some college kids who come back to visit and some who never left, but Savannah started going last year when we were in eighth grade. She’s always sneaking out of her house. One of these days, she’s going to get herself into some real trouble. Or, at least, that’s what my mother says. It makes me nervous for her.
I glance quickly at her before swinging my eyes back in front of me, then forcing myself to sit up a little taller.
“You can always come with me, you know. To youth group, I mean. You might like it.”
Savannah barks out a laugh.
“Oh, I bet your momma would love that one.” She screws her face up in disgust and changes her voice to imitate my mother. “That girl istrouble, Leviticus!Trouble, I tell you. She’ll corrupt you with the drugs and the curses and her demon woman breasts!”
My lips twitch, and a laugh catches in my throat. I try to hide it, but Savannah sees, and her smile stretches wide over her face. When she continues, her voice is higher pitched, and her southern accent is thicker.
“You stay far away from that devil girl, Leviticus! Oh, my poor heart! I cannot handle the thought of that girl sullying you! She is dirty, and you are my sweet, sweet angel boy. I mean it, Leviticus Matthew Mark Luke John Cooper! You keep your distance from that evil Savannah Shaw!”
I bump Savannah with my shoulder and shake my head with a laugh.
“That’s not my name.”
