“Your shot, Duffy.” Wesley leaned on his pool stick, a triumphant smirk on his face.
“You haven’t won yet,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But I’m about to.”
I ignored him, focusing my attention on one of the two striped balls still remaining on the table. At that point, I really wished Wesley and I had just stuck to our pattern—walk straight up to his bedroom, bypassing everything else entirely. But that night on the way up the stairs, Wesley had mentioned having a pool table—and proceeded to brag that he was a wizard with a pool stick. For some reason, it sparked a competitive nerve in me. I just couldn’t wait to wipe the floor with him and knock that cocky little grin right off his face.
Only, I was starting to regret my decision to challenge him to this game because, as it turned out, his boasts hadn’t been too far from the truth. I wasn’t bad at pool either, but I was about to get my ass kicked. And there was nothing I could do to wiggle my way out of it.
“Steady there,” he whispered, his lips brushing past my ear as he eased up behind me. His hands settled on my hips, fingers toying with the hem of my shirt. “Focus, Duffy. Are you focusing?”
He was trying to distract me. And shit, it was working.
I jerked away from him, trying to thrust the back of my pool stick into his gut. But of course he dodged, and I succeeded only in knocking the cue ball in the opposite direction of what I’d intended, sending it right into one of the corner pockets.
“Scratch,” Wesley announced.
“Damn it!” I whirled around to face him. “That shouldn’t count!”
“But it does.” He took the white ball out of the hole and placed it carefully at the end of the table. “All’s fair in love and pool.”
“War,” I corrected.
“Same thing.” He eased the stick back, staring straight ahead, before shooting it forward again. Half a second later, the eight ball sailed into a pocket. The winning shot.
“Asshole,” I hissed.
“Don’t be a sore loser,” he said, leaning his stick against the wall. “What did you really expect? I’m obviously amazing at everything.” He grinned. “But, hey, you can’t hold it against me, right? We can’t help the way God makes us.”
“You’re an arrogant cheater.” I tossed my pool stick aside, letting it clatter to the floor a few feet away. “Sore winners are way worse than sore losers, you know. And you only won because you kept messing me up! You couldn’t keep your fucking hands to yourself long enough for me to make a decent shot! That’s just low. And for another thing—”
Without warning, Wesley lifted me up onto the pool table. His hands moved to my shoulders, and a second later, I was flat on my back, staring up at him as he smirked. He shifted so that he was on the table too, leaning over me with his face only inches from mine.
“On the pool table?” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “Seriously?”
“I can’t resist,” he said. “You know, you’re pretty sexy when you’re pissed at me, Duffy.”
First, I was struck by the irony of that statement. I mean, he used sexy and Duffy—implying I was fat and ugly—in the same sentence. The contrast was almost laughable. Almost.
The thing that really got me, though, was that no one, not even Jake Gaither, had ever called me sexy. Wesley was the first. And the truth was, being with him made me feel attractive. The way he touched me. The way he kissed me. I could tell his body wanted me. Okay, okay. So it was Wesley. His body wanted everyone. But still. It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced in… well, I’d never experienced it. It was exciting and empowering.
But none of that could erase the stab of pain the last word in his statement gave me. Wesley might have been the first to call me sexy, but he was also the first to call me the Duff. That word had been tugging at me, taunting me, for weeks now. And it was his fault.
So how could he see me as both sexy and Duffy at the same time? Better question: why did I care?
Before I could manufacture any decent answers, he started kissing me, his fingers already locating the buttons and zippers of my clothes. We became a tangle of lips and hands and knees, and the issue was completely pushed out of my head.
For the moment, at least.
“Go Panthers!” Casey yelled as she and a few other members of the Skinny Squad did cartwheels along the sidelines.
Beside me, Jessica was waving a two-dollar blue-and-orange pom-pom,
her face glowing with excitement. Jake and Tiffany were having dinner with Tiffany’s parents that night, which meant I got to spend a couple of hours with her… even if that couple of hours was at a stupid sporting event.
The truth was, I hated pretty much anything requiring school spirit, because, obviously, I had none. I hated Hamilton High. I hated the horribly bright school colors, the incredibly generic mascot, and at least ninety percent of the student body. That’s why I couldn’t wait to leave for college.
“You hate everything,” Casey had said to me early that day when I’d explained to her why I had no desire to attend the basketball game.
“That isn’t true.”
“Yes, it is. You hate everything. But I love you. And Jess. Which is why I am going to ask you, as your best friend, to bring her to the game.”
When Jessica had told me she wanted to hang out that night, my first instinct was to just go to my place and watch movies. But Casey’s obligations to cheer at the game had interfered. That might not have been a big deal— Jessica and I could have watched movies on our own—but Casey had to make it so complicated. She wanted to see Jessica, too. And she wanted us to see her cheer. Even if it went against everything I stood for.
“Come on, B,” she said, sounding irritated. “It’s just one game.”
She was irritated a lot these days. Especially at me. And I really wasn’t in the mood to argue with her.
So that’s how I’d been wangled into this. That’s how I’d wound up sitting on an uncomfortable bleacher, bored out of my mind, as the cheers and shouts of the people around me brought on a fucking migraine. Absolutely wonderful.
I’d just decided to drive to Wesley’s after the game, when Jessica elbowed me in the side. For a second I assumed it was an accident, like she’d gotten a little too excited waving her pom-pom around, but then I felt her tug on my wrist. “Bianca.”
“Huh?” I turned my head to face her, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her gaze was focused on a group of people a few bleachers down.
Three tall, pretty girls—juniors, I thought—sat in a row, leaning back on their palms, their legs crossed. Three perfect ponytails. Three pairs of hip- hugger jeans. And then, up the aisle, walked the fourth. She was smaller and paler with short black hair. Clearly a freshman. She was carrying several bottles of water and a few hot dogs in her arms, like she’d just come back from the concession stand.
I watched as the smiling freshman passed out the bottles and food.
Watched as each of the juniors took theirs from her. Watched as they gave her less than appreciative looks. She took her seat at the end of their little row,
and none of the older girls seemed to talk to her, only to one another. I watched as she tried to hop into their conversations, her small mouth opening and closing again as each of the juniors interrupted her, ignoring her entirely. Until, after a moment, one faced her, spoke quickly, and looked back to her friends. The freshman stood up again and walked, still smiling, down the steps and back toward the concession stand. Back to do their bidding.
When I faced Jessica again, her eyes were dark and… sad. Or maybe angry. It was hard to tell with her because she didn’t show either of those emotions very often.
Either way I understood.
Jessica had been like that freshman once. That’s how Casey and I had found her. Two senior girls Casey cheered with—complete cheerleading stereotypes: bitchy, blond, and bimbo-like—had been bragging about some dopey sophomore they kept as a “pet.” And, more than once, Casey had watched them talk down to her.
“We’ve got to do something about it, B,” she’d said insistently. “We can’t just let them treat her that way.”
Casey thought she had to save everyone. Just like she’d saved me on the playground all those years ago. I was used to this. Only this time, she wanted my help. Normally I would have agreed just because it was Casey asking. But Jessica Gaither was a girl I had no desire to even meet, let alone save.
It wasn’t that I was heartless. I just didn’t want to know Jake Gaither’s sister. Not after what he’d done to me. Not after the drama I’d been through the year before.
And I’d managed to stand my ground quite firmly… until that day in the cafeteria.
“God, Jessica, are you fucking brain-dead or something?”
Casey and I both turned around in our seats to see one of the skinny cheerleaders glaring down at Jessica, who was at least a head shorter than she was. Or maybe that was just the way Jessica slumped, cowering.
“I asked you to do one simple thing,” the cheerleader spat, jabbing a finger down at the plate Jessica was holding. “One stupidly simple thing. No fucking dressing on my salad. How hard is that?”
“That’s how the salad came, Mia,” Jessica mumbled, her cheeks bright pink. “I didn’t—”
“You’re a moron.” The cheerleader turned around and stormed away, ponytail swinging behind her.
Jessica just stood there, looking down at the plate of salad with big, sad eyes. She seemed so small then. So weak and mousy. At that moment, I didn’t think of her as beautiful. Or even all that cute. Just fragile and skittish. Like a
mouse.
“Hurry up, Jessica,” one of the other cheerleaders called from their table, sounding annoyed. “We’re not saving your seat forever. Jesus.”
I could feel Casey looking at me, and I knew what she wanted. And, staring at Jessica, I couldn’t exactly pretend I didn’t understand why. If anyone needed a little bit of Casey Saves the Day, it was this girl. Plus, she didn’t look anything like her brother. That made my decision a little easier.
I sighed and said, loudly, “Hey, Jessica.”
She jumped and turned to look at me, and the fearful expression on her face almost broke my heart.
“Come sit with us.” It wasn’t a question. Not even an offer. It was pretty much an order. I didn’t want to give her a choice. Even though, if she was sane, she totally would have chosen us.
Then Jessica was hurrying toward us, and the senior cheerleaders were pissed, and Casey was beaming at me. And that was that. History.
Though it didn’t seem so much like the past just then, as I watched the little freshman girl hurry off toward the concession stand. I could see the way her jeans hung on her wrong—she didn’t quite have the curves for low-rise pants—and that awkward slouch in her shoulders that made her look strangely unbalanced. Those little things that separated her from her so-called friends. A walking echo of the girl Jessica had been. So long ago. Only now I had a new word for it. For that girl.
Duff.
There was no way around it. That freshman was definitely the Duff in comparison to the pretty bitches bossing her around. It wasn’t that she was so unattractive—and she definitely wasn’t fat—but out of the four of them, she was the last one anyone would notice. And I couldn’t help wondering if that was the point. If they used her as more than just the errand runner. Was she there also to make them look better?
I looked at Jessica again, remembering how small and weak she’d seemed that day. Not cute. Not pretty. Just kind of pathetic. The Duff. Now she was beautiful. Voluptuous and adorable and… well, sexy. Any guy—except Harrison, unfortunately—would want her. But the strange thing was, she didn’t look all that different. Not on the surface, at least. She’d been curvy and blond even then. So what had changed?
How could one of the most gorgeous girls I’d ever met have been the Duff? How did that logic even work? It was like Wesley calling me sexy and Duffy at the same time. It just didn’t make sense.
Was it possible that you didn’t have to be fat or ugly to be the Duff? I mean, Wesley had said, that night at the Nest, that Duff was a comparison.
Did that mean even somewhat attractive girls could be Duffs? “Should we go help her?”
I was startled for a second, and a little confused. I realized Jessica was watching the freshman make her way down the sideline.
I had a horrible thought then. One that officially made me the biggest bitch ever. I seriously considered going and claiming that freshman as our own, so that maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t be the Duff anymore.
I could hear Wesley’s voice in my head. “Most people will do anything to avoid being the Duff.” I’d said I wasn’t most people, but was I? Was I just like those cheerleaders—now long since graduated—who’d mistreated Jessica or like these three perfect ponytailed juniors on the bleachers?
Before I could make a decision, though, to help the freshman—be it for the right reasons or the wrong—the buzzer sounded over our heads. Around us, the crowd stood, all cheering and whooping, blocking my view of the small, dark-haired figure. She was gone, and so was my opportunity to save her or use her or whatever I might have done.
The game was over. The Panthers had won. And I was still the Duff.
