Echoes of the Heart - Casey, L.A. (digital ebook reader .TXT) 📗

I lifted my hand to my sore face, forced a laugh and told him the story I had rehearsed in my head and by the time I finished, May was cracking up. Hayes showed up at that moment and May rehashed everything I just told him and soon, they were both laughing at me. I laughed too and pretended that the story I made up was real because it beat the alternative.

“Lad,” Hayes winced. “It’s all swollen and black and blue, you’d take less damage from a punch.”

“Yeah,” I snorted. “I probably would.”

We talked about football, comic books and music as we boarded our bus to school and pulled up at Sir John Leman High School. I made it through the entire day without too many questions about my face until the last period of the day – History. Our teacher took ill over the lunch break and there was no substitute to look after us so we had a free period. We had to keep quiet; the teacher in the classroom next door left the door open and she would frequently pop in to make sure we weren’t acting up.

One of my classmates asked me what happened and the whole bloody room stopped what they were doing and listened as I repeated my story. By the time I had finished, I was grinning because of how much everyone was laughing but I couldn’t help but feel like a complete and total fraud. I looked around the room at the smiling faces and stopped at one who wasn’t so much as grinning my way, she looked proper pissed off if I was being honest with myself.

Frankie Fulton was a classmate and most definitely the best-looking girl in my year, or at least I thought she was. She had auburn hair, big green eyes and skin so fair she looked like she glowed. I had fancied her for as long as I could remember, but did nothing about it because I didn’t know what to do about it. I tried to give her a smile, but she was looking at me so intently that I couldn’t hold the contact and looked down at my workbook. I felt her gaze on me throughout the whole period and when class was over, she stopped by my desk before I could escape the room.

“Risk.”

I looked up at her and froze because she was looking at me like she knew my deepest, darkest secret.

“Hey.” My voice cracked so I quickly cleared my throat. “Hey, Frankie.”

She blinked. “You get off the bus at Cumberland Road, right?”

May and Hayes stopped behind Frankie when they realised she was talking to me and they both widened their eyes and looked at me like I was some sort of bird magnet, but the reality was, I had no clue why Frankie was talking to me. She hardly ever spoke to anyone, let alone me. She listened to her headphones the majority of the time and liked to keep to herself. I was as stunned as my friends that she was interacting me with me at all.

“Uh.” I blinked up at her. “Yeah. Yeah, I get off at that stop.”

“Okay,” she nodded. “I’ll get off there today and you can walk me home.”

She didn’t ask permission, she was telling me what I was going to do and I wasn’t about to disagree with her so I bobbed my head and said, “Okay.”

She nodded then turned and left the classroom along with the rest of our classmates. May and Hayes both smacked me at different points on my body as I grabbed my stuff and shoved it into my bag at rapid speed.

“Mate!” May practically squeaked. “Why does she want you to walk her home?”

“Dumb arse,” Hayes shoved May. “She’s into him, why else would she ask?”

“Maybe to make sure he’s not in danger of any flying pans on the way home?”

Hayes cracked up at May’s teasing, but I barely heard them.

I grabbed my bag and bucked it out of the room after Frankie so I wouldn’t miss the bus. I had no idea if Hayes was right and that Frankie liked me, but there was no way in hell that I was going to miss the chance to find out. My friends were trailing behind me as we left the school grounds. Frankie waited to board the bus until she saw me. She sat up at the front like she usually did and I had no clue whether or not I was supposed to sit next to her so I just sat a couple of rows behind her like I normally did.

It was a mild day not hot or cold, but I was sweating.

Quicker than I anticipated, the bus rolled to a stop at Cumberland Road. I stood up with my friends and some other students and we got off the bus. I glanced over my shoulder when I saw Frankie hop down from the steps onto the pavement and my heart thrummed in my chest. This was actually happening. She really wanted me to walk her home. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember how to walk and looked to my friends for help. Hayes’s dark brown skin looked flushed on my behalf and May was smiling like normal, but his smile was a little too big.

I cleared my throat when Frankie came to a stop at my side. I wasn’t massively tall, but I was taller than everyone else in my year and even taller than some of the older kids a few years ahead of me. I was five foot eight inches and, looking down at Frankie, I wondered if she topped off at four foot eleven. I had never realised how short she was until she stood next to me. She was seriously tiny.

“Uh.” Hayes coughed. “Hey, Frankie. Me and May were just about to go to his house, which is this way,” he pointed over his shoulder. “So we’ll see you both later.”

Hayes