Page 6 of Little Pieces of Light

Emery

He’s here.

Every drop of blood rushed straight to my heart watching Xander Ford climb the stairs to the school.

Why? How? For a few seconds, I was paralyzed by a storm of emotions, the most confusing of which was relief.

Our time together had imprinted something on my heart, something I thought I’d torn up and threw away, but now it was back.

Xander was back, and he was no longer a little boy.

Tall, fit, with chestnut hair falling over his eyes…

those beautiful, mismatched eyes hiding behind boxy black glasses.

He was dressed like a Bend kid, but his shabby clothes couldn’t conceal how his body had grown up and filled out.

Six feet of lean muscle with biceps that strained against the sleeves of his T-shirt.

Broad shoulders tapered to a slim waist, and his forearms… my God.

He was a nerd. A science geek. A genius who’d already done high school when he was ten . What right did he have coming back now? And looking like that ? I’d locked him up in my heart. Somehow, he’d made an escape.

My best friend, Elowen Blake, nudged my arm. “Oh, new kid. Fresh blood.” She glanced at my slack-jawed expression. “You know him?”

Every minute of my time with Xander seven years ago came back to me in a rush. How comforted and safe I felt with him. How he protected me, made me feel valued. I thought something special had happened between us that day. I thought we’d know each other forever.

I was wrong.

“Why would I know him?” I said, tilting my chin up. “He’s a Bender.”

“Looks like it. Too bad. Nice bod.” Elowen sighed, tossing a lock of ashy blond hair over her shoulder. “What a waste.”

“Who’re we talking about?”

I glanced up at my boyfriend, Tucker Hill. His gaze was following Xander up the stairs, eyes narrowed. Any second now, he was going to recognize the kid he pelted with water balloons all those years ago.

I jumped in front of Tucker and threw my arms around his neck. “What’s your first class? Mine is AP Calc and I’m already dreading it.”

Tucker gripped my waist and walked forward, forcing me to walk backward. “So drop it. You don’t belong in that class with all the nerds and dorks.” He pulled me in tighter, grinding against me. “You’re too hot.”

I stifled the urge to roll my eyes and disentangled myself so I could walk on my own.

But his arm went around me and rested on my hip.

At 6’3” and heavily muscled from years of row and water polo, Tucker was a giant and always draped over me like a lead blanket.

The alpha male showing his dominance over the pack, marking me as his property.

I scoffed nonchalantly. “My dad is making me take it. You know how he runs my life like one of his businesses.”

Tucker did know my dad—his family was at our house for dinner frequently, especially with the election coming up in November.

Tucker’s father was a senator, and my dad really wanted him to be reelected.

Something to do with pollution regulations.

As in, my father’s textile plants kept dumping waste into the ocean, and Tucker’s father kept letting him.

My job was to link our families so that everyone stayed happy.

And nothing was more important than making my dad happy so that maybe, someday, he’d tell me he loved me…

Pathetic, but that didn’t stop me from trying.

Trying so hard, I turned myself inside out until I didn’t even know who I was anymore.

“Don’t stress about calc, girl,” Delilah Winslow piped up. She was Zendaya-levels of beautiful and also the biggest gossip in school. “Since when have you not absolutely killed it, whatever you do?”

“Thanks, babe,” I said, keeping my poised smile firmly in place, like a mask that was so tight I could hardly breathe. “It’s just a waste of time I could be devoting to prom committee or dance team. Speaking of, practice today after school, 3:00 p.m. sharp.”

The four girls in our group who were on the Royal Pride dance team answered back. “Yes, captain.”

“Friday’s pep rally is the most important,” I said sternly. “It sets the standard for the rest of the year. It has to be perfect.”

I have to be perfect. Always.

More murmured assents as we stepped inside Castle Hill Academy. The bell rang, and Tucker bent down to kiss me. I tolerated his wet, domineering kiss that was too much PDA for a school hallway first thing in the morning until he finally relinquished me.

“Later, babe.”

Tucker and his buddies—mostly gymnastics, polo, and crew athletes—strode down the hall. Lords of the school and Tucker their king. My circle of girls—the lionesses of the pride—broke up with promises to meet at lunch.

I navigated the polished, gleaming hallways to the STEM wing of the school.

When I was a freshman, it had taken me nearly a month to map out the Academy.

It was bigger than some universities, with different departments in each wing and a state-of-the-art gym in the center that looked like an Olympic training ground.

I figured Xander would spend all his time in the STEM wing, and I’d only risk running into him going to and from calculus.

Why is he here?

The question wouldn’t leave me. I couldn’t get my racing heart to slow down.

I’d been an expert at playing the part of the Perfect Daughter/Student/Girlfriend, and just one glimpse of Xander Ford put cracks in the facade.

I felt dragged back in time to a perfect afternoon and the last time I’d felt real instead of plastic.

Before I knew that Grant was dead. Before my parents’ expectations constricted around me like a straitjacket.

I ducked into a girls’ bathroom and, as soon as the door shut, I sagged, bracing myself on the sink. My reflection stared back: makeup flawlessly applied, hair immaculate, delicate necklaces to accentuate my ample cleavage.

Xander is back.

Like a magic mirror, I watched the thought turn me back into that little girl I’d been with him, free of all life’s pressures and pain. To a time when I still believed in love stories…

“You were just kids. It didn’t mean anything. He forgot you, remember?”

The words rang out hollowly in the empty bathroom.

I’d been a silly fool like my dad was always warning me about being, pining after something that wasn’t there.

I couldn’t let Xander’s presence turn me back into the soft-hearted girl I’d been.

Soft things bruised easily. Shutting myself up behind a hard, closed door was safer.

Mask firmly back in place, I tossed a lock of hair over my shoulder and went out. I sauntered into the calculus classroom a minute after the bell rang, fashionably late. Most of the seats were filled, and Xander wasn’t in any of them. Maybe I’d imagined him. He had to have a dozen PhDs by now.

Maybe he’s teaching here…

The thought almost made me smile as I took the only seat left, in the back corner.

“So glad you could join us, Miss Wallace,” Mr. Greer said, standing at the head of the class in front of a huge whiteboard. “Welcome, class, to AP Calculus. I’m assuming you all did the assigned prep work this summer? Let’s review.”

The entire class pulled out their school-issued iPads and took up notebooks and pencils.

I watched in dismay as Mr. Greer began filling the whiteboard with numbers, letters, symbols…

equations I barely remembered from Algebra II.

Math and my brain just didn’t get along, no matter how much Dad expected them to.

I’d been managing to keep my head above water for years, but five minutes into class, I knew I’d come to the end of the line.

The girl next to me—new to the school and a Bender by the looks of her eccentric clothes—shot me a curious look. My mask had slipped. Indignation flared. She obviously didn’t know who I was…

Oh, get over yourself.

Except I had a reputation to maintain. It was superficial and lonely and total bullshit, but it did the trick: It kept people at a distance so they couldn’t see the mess right in front of them.

***

By lunchtime on day one, I was exhausted. My course load was heavy enough without calculus weighing it down, but now it was clear I was in big trouble.

And then I spotted Xander. He sat in a corner of the sunlit cafeteria by himself, reading a book. The light turned the tips of his hair golden as it fell over his eyes. A sack lunch sat on the table in front of him. He talked to no one and no one talked to him.

I could talk to him. I could cross all the stupid, invisible social boundaries and say hi. No harm in that.

But that was the opposite of being hard and aloof. He’d broken his promise and made no effort to tell me why. Maybe he found the social boundaries hard to cross too. But there was no one around now. My friends were at a table on the other side of the room. Maybe…

Xander looked up. Our eyes met for a short moment, but it felt like a current of electricity zipped between us. The weight on my shoulders lifted again for just a moment… Then a smug smirk touched his lips, and he went back to his book.

So there’s your answer.

“Screw him,” I muttered, even though I sort of felt like crying.

***

That afternoon, I led the Royal Pride dance team through our routine.

We’d been rehearsing since August for Friday’s pep rally.

The dance looked good, and I was happy—mostly because being captain was something my parents approved of.

Mom liked it because it kept me fit, code for so you don’t get fat .

Dad said it would look good on my Brown application.

To them, my life boiled down to looking the “right” way and going to the “right” school.