Hometown Heartless by Carrie Aarons

Author:Carrie Aarons [Aarons, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2020-01-20T16:00:00+00:00

19

Kennedy

Six teenagers sit in a booth at the local diner.

The three boys wear their dirty football jerseys over jeans, a silent boast about how hard they fought for the victory tonight. The girls sit under their wings, cheerleading sweatshirts covering their short skirts, their slim legs pebbled from standing in the cold for so long.

From an outsider’s point of view, we look like a group of yuppy, popular jocks and their girlfriends. I guess it’s not far off.

The only thing they wouldn’t realize is that I’m trying to force my heart to be invested in the guy sitting next to me, rather than pine after the one I can never be with.

“One time, Scott did the entire omelet challenge in an hour,” Logan spills.

Rachel turns to him, astonished. “When was this? Surely, not when we were dating. I would have never touched you if you’d eaten upward of three dozen eggs, Gaston.”

“Oh my God, Rach!” Bianca giggles at the clear bathroom situation Rachel is trying to allude to.

“Nope. It was freshman year, and I was a fucking champ. Puked like twenty minutes after, but my picture is over on the wall.” Scott brushes his shoulder off and then points to the wall behind the cash register.

We’ve been at the diner for about an hour, noshing on apps and different sandwiches after the football team won their game tonight. The entire restaurant is full of students from our high school, six or seven people crammed into every booth, with parents and coaches present too. It’s the local hot spot after every game, whether it be football in the fall or baseball in the spring.

“Would you ever do one of those challenges?” I ask Logan, simply to start a conversation.

“I think I probably would, but I’d need a good incentive. Free meals from the restaurant, or money. I would not scarf down fifty buffalo wings for a T-shirt.”

I laugh, trying to imagine sitting in front of fifty chicken wings and voluntarily eating them all. “No, I guess I wouldn’t either.”

“What kind of food could you eat like that? Just scarf it all down?” Rachel muses to us all.

“Ice cream, hands down. Any flavor, but it’s just so good.” Bianca nods sagely.

“Pizza, for sure.” Logan winks at me.

“Burgers, I could eat thousands of those little ones at White Castle,” Damien, Bianca’s boyfriend says.

“Sushi. One hundred percent, I could eat sushi all day long.” Rachel crosses her arms over her chest.

“Bullshit,” Bianca and Scott say at the same time, and then laugh at each other.

“You’d get sick of it after the second spicy tuna roll,” I agree, shivering just thinking about that much sushi.

“All right, smarty pants. What food would you eat for twenty-four hours straight?” Rachel snips at me.

Tapping my chin, I ponder the question. “French fries.”

“That’s not a food challenge food!” Logan laughs, his forehead hitting my shoulder from where he sits next to me.

It’s an intimate gesture, one a boy who likes a girl flawlessly executes to make it look nonchalant but really he wants to touch her.

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