Free Salvation by Anne Osterlund Page B

travel slowly around the room. There were three, maybe four unattached girls here who weren’t hideous. But he just couldn’t see taking the trouble.
    He dropped down into Tosa’s vacated chair beside the poker table. The guys there were playing for chips. Literally. Nacho Cheese and Sour Cream and Onion.
    “You want in?” the dealer asked.
    “Naw.” Salva leaned back and stared up at the ceiling fan.
    He couldn’t concentrate.
    Kept having the same vision over and over in his head. And he couldn’t seem to clear it. What he saw—what he kept seeing, as the blades of the fan spun above him, were the auburn highlights in Beth’s hair. And the doelike eyes that had staredup at him from her ghostly face. And the way that white dress had draped her slender frame.
    The night was insane. He must be high on adrenaline. The game had been incredible. The car was—face it, the car was unlike anything he’d ever planned on riding in during his life. And as designated driver, he was going to get to drive it home.
    But really, he wasn’t even thinking about that drive.
    Because he couldn’t get rid of the realization that had rocked and cracked his world like a broken windshield. Just before the car had pulled up.
    She might be crazy—wearing that thin dress on a night that was maybe twenty-nine degrees. And she might be a nerd—because, really, who from Liberty High School ever applied to go to Stanford? And she was most definitely a walking disaster area.
    But she was also
beautiful.

8
THE DARE
    The minute hand on the multipurpose room clock clicked to twenty past, and Beth felt the sharp movement as though it were a scalpel at her throat. The same scalpel that had sliced through her on homecoming night and continued to cut deeper during the long walk home in the dark. Alone. To the empty trailer.
    Her mother’s constant absence and Ni’s newfound dis-tractedness should have accustomed Beth to being stood up. She clenched the frayed strap of her backpack and forced her-self to rise from the stage.
He isn’t coming.
    For the two weeks since that awful night when Char’s comment had ripped the scab off Beth’s grief, Salva had had no time for study sessions, due to extra sports practice. Then this weekend, she had seen the writing, not on the wall but in full-color print on the front page of the regional paper. State champions. And his picture—of course it had been
his
picture—alongwith the words
brilliant
and
all-star
. The town had thrown a five-star parade.
    What did she expect—that he would remember her paltry little tutoring sessions after all that? Hardly. He had passed his first term in English. It wasn’t a stellar mark. He should want to achieve more. But there was no point watching the scalpel of time until it bled her dry.
    She vacated the room for the hall. Shouts from JV basketball practice echoed from the gym around the corner as she strode in the opposite direction. The wing was dark, except for the light from cit/gov, aka Coach Robson’s room. And the green glow of the nearest exit.
    Just go home,
she told herself.
Go
home and finish that essay for the Ag Association on why you want to be a famous writer and why they should choose to invest a thousand dollars in you even though you never want to look up the rear end of a cow, create a strain of lettuce, or cure onion blight. Go home and forget
about him.
    Forget she’d ever dreamed. Her head shrilled at the thought.
    It took a moment to realize the sound—a high-pitched electronic buzz—was actually coming from cit/gov.
    She glanced into the room.
    And found Salva. Asleep. Slumped on a keyboard, arms folded, head sideways, eyes closed. Oblivious to the buzzing keys.
    Unwanted empathy rushed to her chest. The screen was a deep liquid blue. Either he’d finished what he was writing, or he’d lost the document. Her gaze flicked to the printer. CHAPTER 5 : WITHOUT PRECEDENT . He had typed up his notes for tomorrow’s cit/gov test.
Who did