Why I Loathe Sterling Lane Read online

  “Was it about the new weight room?” the mountain asked, snapping my focus back to Cole and the matter at hand. The mountain still ignored his dismissal. “You got the funding for it?”

  After the headmaster refused Cole’s petition to upgrade the weight room, Cole had taken it upon himself to raise the funds—he’d launched an aggressive campaign, asking alumni and parents to contribute. And when they did, and Cole’s results surpassed all expectations, the headmaster rerouted the funds to replace the gymnasium’s roof instead. It wasn’t fair and everyone knew it, but Cole was still determined to find a way to make good on his promise. He’d even thrown together a barbecue fund-raiser, hosted and prepared by the student athletes.

  “Of course I got the funding,” Cole said. “Did you ever doubt me?” He grinned, but something in his voice was off. Whatever it was, he’d tell me as soon as the others were out of earshot. Fortunately, his friends didn’t notice. They were too busy celebrating the weight room news and clapping one another on the shoulder—like boys do to express affection or solidarity. Finally, they dispersed, heading toward class.

  “Thanks for the care package,” one of his friends called back.

  A lump settled in my stomach. His thank-you was for Cole’s benefit—they wouldn’t have even acknowledged me if he wasn’t here.

  “That care package was for you, not them,” I told Cole.

  I’d missed him so much that I spent two whole days baking and assembling a box of his favorite desserts. Time I could have devoted to studying—or catching up on my favorite crime dramas. I don’t allow myself to watch television when school is in session.

  Still, my fervent baking wasn’t entirely selfless. There was nothing like the precise movements and measurements of baking to put my thoughts back in order. For years I’d been reluctant to admit to such a domestic hobby, particularly in front of my father, but baking was in many ways a chemistry class. Mismeasure one simple ingredient and your chocolate cake will fall flat.

  “Did you really think I wouldn’t share? You sent enough to feed an army—either you’re trying to fatten me up or you planned for me to share. It was sweet of you. And here’s a tip: next time, tell him you’re welcome.”

  “Whatever,” I mumbled. Even though I knew he was right. “We should head to class. You have European lit now, too?” Of course I already knew the answer. I always memorized Cole’s schedule as well as my own.

  He nodded and fell into step beside me. I wanted to tell him about my horrible morning—about Sterling Lane and how he’d ruined my favorite class. But I was trying to listen more to others, since that was on my list of social skills to practice.

  “So you did it?” I asked. “You raised the money for the new weight room? I’m impressed.”

  He stopped walking and grabbed my arm, tugging me out of the stream of people heading to class. Surprised, I turned to face him. The intensity in his gaze made my shoulders tense up.

  “I didn’t,” he whispered. “I came close. I did everything I could.”

  “Then why did you tell your friends you did?” I asked. “Just have another fund-raiser or something.”

  “It’s too late for that.” Cole glanced around nervously, clearly not wanting to be heard. But the hall was empty, meaning class was about to start. We would be late, and tardies could be recorded on our permanent academic records. My hands balled into fists at the thought. But I took one look at Cole’s face and forced myself to breathe right through the tight-chested feeling. The panic in his eyes was infinitely more urgent than a broken Rule or two.

  “Coach asked me about the money in front of a bunch of the guys, and I couldn’t let them down. So I lied. And they all went crazy celebrating, so I couldn’t take it back without looking like a total ass. I didn’t know Coach would just start ordering things. I mean, I figured he’d ask again or something. But all of a sudden he was handing me this invoice and wanted to reconcile the budget. Since I was the one managing the money.”

  The pressure behind my eyes was back and building with every word.

  “How much?” I asked. “How short are you?” I had nearly a thousand dollars in my savings, and I could get a few hundred more if I cashed in the savings bond our grandmother sent at Christmas.

  “I need five thousand by Tuesday.”

  “Dollars?” I practically shrieked. “Five thousand dollars?”

  “Shhh.” Cole’s glance darted up and down the deserted corridor.

  “You have to tell them,” I said. “Tell them before they spend more money. They’ll understand.”

  “No, they won’t,” Cole replied. “They’ll think I’m a liar. And a failure. My friends trust me. That’s why I’m captain. I’m supposed to be a leader. This will ruin everything I’ve worked for—you think they’ll vote for me next year after this? If this got out, it could ruin my chances of making a professional team.”

  “Then go to Dad,” I said. “He can give you a loan. Just until we figure something else out.”

  “Tried that,” Cole said, shaking his head. “He said no. And gave me that lecture about how easy we have it. Compared to how they struggled when he was a kid.”

  I nodded. That rant always rankled me. He’d chosen to send me to a fancy school. I never asked for it. And still, I work twice as hard as anyone. My life was determined by his financial successes and his subsequent choices for us. While I admired my father’s business acumen, it always seemed unfair that we were criticized for not living up to it when our professional lives hadn’t even begun yet.

  “Worst part is,” Cole continued, “Coach told Dad about the weight room. That I’d come through. Dad called yesterday to say how proud he was—that he’d been wrong to doubt me.” Cole shook his head. “I can’t un-tell this lie.”

  I’d always figured the word “proud” fell outside Dad’s emotional repertoire. Cole was right—he had to find a way to fix this without coming clean.

  “Cole, I—”

  “I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me,” he said. “So don’t look at me like that. I told you because you’d understand. I was going crazy being alone in this. Look, I’ll figure something out. I have an idea, sort of.”

  I took in the stubborn set of his jaw and the determination blazing in his green eyes. And I knew Cole well enough to be concerned. “Just promise me you won’t do anything crazy,” I said. “Give me time to think this through. I’ll help you. I promise we’ll figure this out.”

  “It’s not your job to rescue me, Harps.” His phone chimed and he glanced at it. His eyes doubled in size. “Shit. We are so late. I can’t believe you didn’t say something. Have you ever been tardy before?”

  “Sure, lots of times,” I lied. I hated seeing the guilt in his eyes, mingling with all his other worries. I followed a half step behind as he started walking toward the closed classroom door. My stomach swan-dived into my intestines at the thought of marching into that room. Me—late. Tardy. Fallen to the ranks of deviants like Sterling Lane.

  “Promise me—Cole, seriously,” I pressed. “I’m not going in there until you promise me you won’t do anything. I’ll figure this out. No bank robberies.”

  He grinned, and the weight of his worry disappeared in an instant. Cole was a ray of pure sunshine when he wanted to be.

  “No bank robberies. Pinkie promise.” He hooked his little finger around mine, the way we’d done since before I could remember. “Let’s go. Given your attendance record, they’re probably sending out an Amber Alert.”

  “Not something to joke about,” I told him, opening the door.

  “You say that about everything.” His words were uttered to the entire class with absolute confidence no one would mock him. Everyone always liked Cole.

  Mr. Halpern stopped midlecture and turned to look at us, one eyebrow arched.

  “It’s my fault,” Cole told him. “Little family emergency. I’ll take her tardy, too.”

  “Not a problem, Cole,” Mr. Halpern said, smilin
g. “Just take a seat.”

  The two remaining desks were at opposite ends of the room, so I shuffled over to the nearest one and pulled out my Master Course Binder. Since I was never late, I was never unprepared to take notes when a lecture began. The thrum in my chest made my fingers shake as I pulled out my pen and frantically copied everything that had been scrawled across the whiteboard in those first few moments we’d missed.

  I glanced across the room at Cole. He was staring vacantly at the board. A worry line pressed its way between his eyebrows, and he frowned at nothing and everything.

  Knowing Cole, he’d fibbed about having a plan in order to reassure me. He knew all too well how I could worry myself into a panic attack. I glanced down at my notes, struggling to focus on the individual words. The fingers clutching my pen were white-knuckled.

  I’d thought history class was horrible that morning, but watching Cole suffer was all-out excruciating. Even if I couldn’t care less about lacrosse, the weight room, and the thorny territory of our father’s approval, Cole cared passionately about all of them. So of course I would find a way to salvage Cole’s situation. After all, I’d been rescuing him since before either of us could remember.

  Reason 3:

  I intended to just ignore him.

  And I really did try.

  But he spends an inordinate amount of time ensuring that’s

  IMPOSSIBLE.

  After my regular lunch of carrot sticks and an avocado sandwich, I filed into physics early. Eating was far more efficient without the added burden of dividing my energy between food and conversation. That’s why it didn’t bother me that I always ate alone.

  Since I had time to spare, I pulled out a blank index card and started listing all the money Cole and I could access. Per Rule 15, I was thorough. I’d saved money to buy new books for my second graders, but I’d give it to Cole instead and find a way to get by with what the classroom and library already had. Ultimately, those kids needed attention more than anything else. Yet no matter how I racked my brain, Cole and I were still four thousand dollars short.

  I needed to be broader in my thinking instead of just scrambling to scrape together small sums. But how? Cole needed an anonymous benefactor, or else a way to host another fund-raiser without letting the team know why.

  Something slammed into my chair. Like an earthquake. Or like a shark taking an exploratory nibble.

  Ink streaked across my note card, ruining my list.

  I turned.

  Sterling Lane sat in the chair behind me. Examining me with lazy brown eyes that reminded me of the cocker spaniel I’d had as a kid. In all my worry about Cole, I’d completely forgotten Sterling Lane existed. And now more than ever, I did not have time for his shenanigans. I would not be taking notes or typing papers or whatever other acts of servitude he envisioned. I set my pen down and prepared to set that Rulebreaker straight.

  “Harper Campbell,” he said. “I’ve been looking forward to actually meeting you. Didn’t mean to catch you off guard in history. Cole and I tried to find you at breakfast.” He looked so benign in that moment that I had to conjure the image of Mrs. Stevens’s stricken face in order to summon the rage I needed to put him in his place.

  “Save that slippery smile for the day you run for office,” I told him. “Your antics in history class spoke volumes about what lurks behind it.” Sterling’s eyebrows rose. He glanced around as if wary of having an audience, then shifted closer, until our faces were barely two feet apart. My first instinct was to recoil, but I couldn’t risk anything that would be perceived as backing down. Unfortunately, at that proximity, I couldn’t help but notice the rich brown of his eyes, or how they were framed by ridiculously long eyelashes. They’d almost look feminine if the line of his jaw and the rest of his features weren’t such a clichéd version of handsome. Not that it mattered.

  “Easy there, tiger,” he said. “Did I do something to offend?”

  “I’m not offended, just incredibly busy.”

  “Right. You look like you’re about to disembowel me. Look, the last thing I want to do is alienate Cole’s sister, so whatever I did, I apologize.”

  “Whatever you did?” I repeated, incredulous. As if he’d already forgotten about his behavior in history class. “No need to pretend to be friendly for Cole’s sake,” I said. “I know you all laugh at me behind his back, and now you expect me play your little secretary? No thank you. But I have no doubt you’ll bulldoze someone else into it. Until that time, I ask that you refrain from interrupting class with ridiculous fictional illnesses.” I turned back to face the front of the room, but not fast enough to miss the way those hazy eyes perked up with interest. A new wave of exasperation washed over me as I stared at the card. Not only had he ruined my note card by knocking into me, he’d made me lose my train of thought.

  “Interrupting class? Is that all it takes to get you this heated up?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, turning just enough that he could see the scorn on my face. “It was how you did it. You enjoy tormenting others. Lording your power over Mrs. Stevens, and now trying to manipulate me. Cole told me all about you—how you got expelled. And if you step out of line here, rest assured the headmaster will throw the book at you.”

  “Cole told you about that?”

  I nodded. Even though I suddenly wasn’t certain what we were talking about.

  “Well, that’s a first.” His eyes narrowed as he surveyed me. “Most people give me a standing ovation for putting that asshole in his place. You’re an odd one, Harper Campbell.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about—Cole had never given me any specific details about Sterling’s past. But expulsion was expulsion, and Sterling had most likely deserved it.

  “I’m glad you found someone to stroke your already sizable ego. But I think you’ll find I’m not susceptible to your games.”

  “You know, that almost sounds like a challenge.” There was a quiet menace in his voice that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

  I pulled out my notebook and pretended to be too engrossed in my studies to hear him.

  “Harper, Harper, Harper.” He sounded almost regretful as he repeated my name. Like he lamented my fate. “It’s a strange name for a girl. It almost sounds like a boy’s name. Is that why you did that?”

  I didn’t need to turn around to know what he meant. Someone like Sterling would have no trouble intuiting that I’d gone too far the week before when I’d ordered my dad’s barber to cut my hair off, until it was shorter than Cole’s. It had been an impulse born of practicality. I resented the time I wasted drying it almost as much as I hated going out in the winter with damp hair.

  “Lemme guess.” An edge crept into his voice, sharpening itself on each and every syllable. “Your parents wished both twins were boys. Decided to pretend you were one anyway. Something you took up a little too willingly. It’s a shame. Minus the prune expression, you might make a pretty girl.”

  I stared at my notes, refusing to subject myself to his mocking scrutiny. But try as I might, I couldn’t regain my focus.

  “Maybe you should smile more,” Sterling prompted. “Like Cole.”

  Those words were a Molotov cocktail, setting my whole psyche on fire.

  Sterling Lane might as well have trespassed in my father’s thoughts and brought a few choice arrows to fling at my unsuspecting back. I had to work twice as hard as Cole to get a fraction of the recognition. I was constantly harangued to smile, to be gracious and gentle, instead of being a “spiny, sharp little sea urchin.”

  I didn’t have time for Sterling Lane and his sadistic games.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” I said, turning to face him. He watched my every move with the careful, calculating gaze of a chess master. My fingers strangled the edges of my desk. Rearranging his perfect face would violate at least five different Rules.

  “I know enough. The rest I can infer.” His mouth curved up a little as he poured coffee
into the little cup of a sleek silver Thermos.

  “You flushed when I called you pretty.” He grinned like the Cheshire cat. “You liked that.”

  “I. Did. Not.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I take it back. I was just being polite.”

  For some reason that stung more than anything else he’d said that day. “That’s not what I meant…” I started to say, but the way he crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back in his seat was so malevolently self-satisfied that I swallowed the rest of my words. “Leave me alone.” It came out like a plea. One that Sterling gleefully ignored. His arm shot out.

  I tried to block him as he reached around my shoulder to grab my notebook off my desk, but he was fast—reflexes that had to have all the coaches adjusting their starting rosters. We scuffled for a moment, both tugging on the pages and collecting the curious stares of our classmates as they wandered in for the start of class. Which distracted me into giving Sterling the upper hand.

  He sat back, holding my notes aloft. The pages wrinkled under his careless fingers as he shuffled through them.

  “Pre-made notes and an outline?” He smiled like he’d crafted them himself. “I had a feeling you were just the girl I was looking for. Knew it from the way you’re perched there all uptight, like you’d just sat on a telephone pole.”

  “Give me my notes.” I managed to keep my tone polite, even if he hardly deserved it.

  He released them into my waiting fingers and watched as I smoothed the wrinkles from the pages. He took another sip of his coffee, savoring it.

  “If you’ll consult section 1.3 of the student handbook, you’ll discover that food and beverage are not allowed in class unless specifically provided by the teacher for educational purposes,” I informed him. Because he really ought to know. “I have no intention of associating with a Rulebreaker. You can’t have my notes. And you can’t sit here.”