The Tomboy & the Rebel Read online

  The Tomboy & the Rebel

  By

  Leeann M. Shane

  Copyright © 2018 Leeann M. Shane. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner, including electronically or mechanically, photocopying, or by an information and retrieval system, without written permission from the Author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s bizarre imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to the actual persons, alive or deceased, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  ASIN: B078N68C15

  Stock image: unsplash.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue – Dare

  Epilogue – Melanie

  About the Author

  FOR THE TOMBOYS

  PREFACE

  DARREN

  There was a time in everyone’s life when it all made sense.

  The mistakes, the heartache, and the failures. All the pain that felt overwhelming, the tears that felt like they’d never stop. The overpowering fear that everything you’ve ever done would never matter.

  Sometimes it wasn’t about dealing. It wasn’t about keeping quiet. It’s about being strong until you can get that single moment.

  That’s what Melanie was to me. My moment.

  The single most important moment of my entire empty life. The problem was that she had no clue how much she meant to me.

  At least not until both of our moments became the same. And then it wasn’t even about my moment anymore.

  It was about not ruining it. The way I ruined everything.

  CHAPTER ONE

  High school sucked.

  And no one warned you. Not your parents, not your friends, and not even that one weird and kooky aunt that stopped by once a year with homemade patchouli candles. Oh, I’m the only one with an Aunt Luanne? Okay… Anyway, what I’m saying is, if you’re going into war, there needs to be some sort of preparation.

  Middle school doesn’t count. That was watered down high school with an emphasis on paying more for the same crappy lunch.

  And studying doesn’t help when you’re facing down the popular kids without a single weapon in sight.

  Plus, what weapon would suffice for a mob of hair tossing, judgmental, jerk wads anyway?

  A nuclear can of hairspray?

  I smirked, passing by the most popular girls at school, and stopped. I hated this part. Every morning it was the same. Stop, wait, and dissipate into the fog of unpopularity.

  “Ahem,” I cleared my throat, barely able to see my locker through the mob.

  There were five people standing in front of my locker. And one of them just so happened to be Maisy Brooks. Quintessential popular girl; at times her cliché-ness drove me insane.

  The only one who looked over was Darren Morre. Okay, listen. I prided myself on not being a walking talking cliché like his girlfriend, Princess Maisy, but I was a girl, who had eyes, and an empty heart. And Dare was too beautiful to worry about cliché’s.

  But that didn’t mean I liked him. I didn’t like him. He was rude and disgusting, cracking lewd jokes in the back of the classroom and I swore I saw him walking toward the detention room every other day.

  I liked parts of him. I liked his face. And hair. And voice. And his shoes… I liked a lot about him, but what mattered, and that was his insides. Without the inside of him, the outside was a complete and utter waste.

  “I need to get in my locker,” I stated, putting my hands in my pockets, expression bored.

  I was bored and angry, but it didn’t always make sense why. My emotions on a daily basis sometimes made complete and utter sense, and other times, they made me question my entire outlook. Was I angry? Or was I empty?

  Were they even different?

  “We’re talking,” Maisy said flippantly, twirling her buttery blonde hair over her shoulder and returning to Dare.

  Dare stepped back and hooked his grip around her elbow, pulling her away from my locker. “Go on, Melanie,” he murmured, returning his gaze to his girlfriend’s face.

  Gee, I wanted to say, thanks for letting me use my own locker. Instead, I used the half inch of space granted to me to wedge in and turn the padlock. Their conversation fought past my ears; I heard it anyway.

  “So yeah,” Maisy said, “we need to decide if we’re having the party at my place or not, Dare.”

  “What party?” he asked, his deep tone dripping with boredom.

  She hesitated. “Really? Are you kidding me? I’ve been planning this party for weeks. Where do you go in there? Your head’s not just supposed to look pretty. It’s supposed to think and remember, too.” She giggled.

  A sigh fell from his lips. I could hear the emptiness in his tone, and wondered why she couldn’t? Why were the hardest things to see usually the things that were right in front of our faces?

  “I have to work,” Dare rumbled.

  “I haven’t even picked a date yet.”

  He paused, and I realized I was standing there, half-in-half-out of my locker, hand touching my biology textbook. I peeked through my hair to find him watching me. I looked back down and got moving, grabbing my textbook and shoving it into my bag.

  “You should have the party at your place,” he relented.

  She squealed and hugged him, flinging her arms around his neck. I glanced over at him, and his eyes were on me again.

  “Can I invite anyone I want?” he asked, holding my gaze prisoner.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I looked away and closed my locker, leaving the happy couple to plan parties and squeal. War was just like this. Quiet, slipping through crowds of unsuspecting and frankly unseeing people, and hoping you captured the flag before it blew up in your face.

  Angry. I was definitely angry today.

  And sad.

  But I fought that emotion, turning it into hard chunks of stone in my chest where my heart was supposed to be. Feeling anything hadn’t worked for me lately. Feeling nothing, now that was the sweet spot. To float unfeeling through life and barely make it by, was far better than demanding to feel and falling to the ground.

  Sad. I was definitely sad today.

  And angry.

  Rubbing a hand over my eyes, I made my way to the no longer used outdoor amphitheater in the middle of Phoenix High. It was a maze of paths that led to every wing of the school. It was like a highway to nowhere. At the very top, near the gnarled trees and graffiti laden cement walls, were my friends, Genna and Sean. Genna and I weren’t as close as Sean and me. She was quiet and nervous, Sean and I loved her. When she found her voice, she was stunning. Funny, charismatic, and alive. Mostly she just stared at her feet and mumbled. And that was okay. Sean and I lived on the same street and had been friends since we were four.

  I had a crush on him for all of freshman year after he stopped cutting his shaggy blond hair, but that had passed. Thankfully. Plus, Sean was hopelessly and madly in love wi
th Maisy Brooks, the locker hog. Had been for the past two years. He liked to draw, and had an entire comic dedicated to her. He drew her like she was a superhero, when really, she was a villain.

  I didn’t get it.

  Sean was sweet and loyal. Why did he want a mean monster to be his hero? Why couldn’t he be his own hero?

  I climbed the cement steps to the top. At one point this outdoor amphitheater used to be used for outdoor rally’s and plays, but that was decades ago, and it had long since turned into a high school hierarchy topographical map. It was shaped like a mini colosseum, reaching up like an archaic Roman stadium.

  The popular kids were in the middle at the bottom on stage. They sat scattered around like kings and queens. In the middle were Dare and Maisy, and everyone else they hung around. On the first row were the jocks. Loads and loads of them. In the second row were the less, but still well-known junior prince and princesses.

  The hierarchy rose to the absolute no one’s. Yours truly. Well, that’s not entirely true. There was one other person all the way at the top, and that was Mackenzie Jacks.

  Ex-Queen.

  She looked down from her perch and glared at the people on the stage. I could feel her anger and resentment from all the way on the other side of the amphitheater. She’d fallen off her pedestal two months into the new year, and her fall had been catastrophic.

  Must be, since she was sitting across from me.

  No one knew what happened but her and Maisy.

  And as long as Maisy kept it secret, the longer she had the power.

  After all, what queen was fair all the time?

  “Cool shirt,” Sean said, giving me a smile when I got to the top.

  It was a black t-shirt with a single polaroid on it. Instead of an image illustrated on the photo, it was the word live. I made most of my shirts, and I made this one because I loved pictures, lived through them, but sometimes I got so stuck in capturing moments, I’d forgotten what it felt like to actually have one.

  “Thanks.” I dropped down beside him and put my head on his shoulder. “Hey, Gen.”

  “Hi,” she whispered, picking at a tiny green weed that had managed to grow through the cracks, her black hair in her eyes.

  Sean kissed my hair and then returned to his sketchbook. Super Maisy was saving a bunch of kids from a large grotesque ice cream cone. The thing was creepy, with dripping strawberry blood and cracks in its shell.

  I raised an eyebrow at her outfit. Pink everything, even her lips. “Are those panties, or a thong?”

  Sean smirked. “They’re in the middle. I call it thongies.”

  “How impressive. That’s either really innovative, or kind of pervy. Can’t tell which.” I studied him carefully, trying not to smile at his serious expression. Gosh, Sean was cute. Messy haired and sweet, but nothing had ever happened between us. He wasn’t a stupid boy. I wasn’t a stupid girl. If we wanted to be together, we would. I guessed we were waiting for our superhero to fly in and save us.

  But unlike Sean, I wasn’t sure there was this magical being that would come and swoop me off my feet. Knowing my luck, he’d probably just block my locker and poke me in the shoulder all day.

  Sigh. Now that’s true love.

  “I’m an enigma, you know that,” Sean said, pushing his dark blond locks out of his eyes. He had a 90’s rocker slash nerd thing going on. Wrinkled t-shirts and jeans, with an adorable smile and manners.

  He was the perfect kind of boy to fall in love with. He’d never break your heart.

  But he’d never push it either. I think I needed my heart to be pushed, to be slammed into the ground; I needed my heart to break wide open before I fell hard for someone.

  Thanks Mom and Dad, I thought bitterly. Not only had they pulled the rug out from under me, they screwed up my heart, too.

  “Right. You’re impossible to figure out.” I stretched my legs out and tucked my hands in my pockets, pulling my sweater close to shield my shirt.

  My brain took advantage of the lull in conversation to fade away. Lately, it had been harder and harder to be present. It was so much easier to not even be there. It wasn’t like anyone noticed anyway. Feeling sadness move through me, I looked down at Sean’s comic, hoping it would tear me from the dark thoughts.

  No one but Sean and Gen knew about my parent’s divorce. No one knew how my loving family home had turned into a war zone overnight. Gone were the family breakfasts, and in their place, was screaming and tears.

  I knew it was unfeasible of me to think we could just go back in time. But I wanted to. I wanted to be fifteen again, right before Dad started staying late for work and Mom stopped asking how my day was. I was seventeen now, and the divorce wouldn’t go through for another two months.

  Until then, my parents refused to settle. Refused to back down. Mom wanted everything to hurt Dad, and Dad wanted everything to hurt Mom.

  In the meantime, they were both hurting me.

  I knew they loved me, but it was hard to convince myself of that these days.

  What makes people hurt each other? How does love turn into hate?

  How can two people that loved each other yesterday, scream at each other the next?

  Empty. I was definitely empty.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The moment I stepped foot in photography class, my shoulders unhunched. I felt like I’d been floating through nothing all day. I’d skipped lunch today and hid out in the library. Sean hadn’t texted, so I figured he was deep in Super Maisy world, and Genna had to take tutor lessons during lunch until her grades picked up.

  I inhaled the cold, metal smelling air in the studio, and dropped my bag on my table. Photography was a small class of only sixteen. There were only two reasons someone took that class. Out of love, or out of punishment. It was impossible to fail, but the workload was also impossible to fake. Often times, those with bad behavior were forced to pick an elective, and once school started open spots in all the cool classes, like woodshop and off campus training programs, had dwindled. Photography was the only class that had an opening this far into the year.

  Hence the newest arrival.

  Darren “Dare” Morre waltzed into the room twenty seconds before the bell rang and settled in his usual seat on the far end of the classroom. He shared a table with a girl named Tyra, one of Maisy’s friends, and neither of them took this class seriously.

  I studied him as he leaned back in his chair, throwing Tyra an easy smile. His lips moved, and she giggled, smacking his arm and rolling her eyes at whatever moronic thing he’d just said.

  “Idiot,” I whispered, looking around for Mr. Rios.

  He had an office within the studio. The door was open, and he walked by the door, cell phone to his ear. He passed the door and disappeared to the other side of his office.

  When Dare and Tyra snickered once more, I looked over, glowering at him. They were both laughing, so I should ideally be irritated with them both, but I wasn’t. I was only angered by him. His easy smirk, the stupid way he talked like everyone was supposed to listen, and the way he didn’t seem to care about anything.

  The boy looked emptier than me, but instead of being pushed aside for it, he was loved. Oh, he’s so cool. Doesn’t like a single thing. How hip.

  “Idiot,” I whispered again, scowling at the side of his face.

  His stupid chocolate brown hair looked like he spent hours getting it to lay just right, parts tousled, parts perfect. The hair on his temples had this slight curl to them, and there was even a teeny tiny mole on his temple that looked like a crescent moon. He was a lot taller than most of the seniors, undoubtedly over six feet. He wore a dark blue hoodie with gray stitching and jeans the same color; his black Chucks rose up on tiptoes to keep his chair balanced. I knew his face was part teenager, part man, that awkward/adorable stage in a boy’s life that made even the hardest pressed teenage girl stupid. His eyes were the color of gunmetal and storm clouds, this deep, dark gray that went so incredibly perfect with his chocola
te brown eyelashes.

  And don’t get me started on his voice. It was so deep, I could feel it vibrate my spine when he spoke.

  My pulse sped up when he smiled, turning his head away for a moment, inadvertently putting his gaze in my direction. Our eyes locked, and the metal and storm that roared in his eyes pinned me in my spot. I made a face and looked away when he didn’t and forced my gaze on my photography folder.

  “Idiot,” I reiterated.

  “Okay, quiet down,” Mr. Rios ordered, closing his office door and walking into the studio. He settled at his desk, leaning against it and crossing his arms over his chest.

  “As you all know, we finished our modern interpretation unit on Monday. Grades will be sent to your school email after four.” He pushed away from his desk and went around to sit at it, opening a green folder. “We’re starting a new unit. It’ll take three to four months. Projects will be due January 31st. Anything turned in after will be docked fifteen percent.” He studied the papers on his desk and then looked up with an evil grin. “I’m not going to help you out either. I’ll assign each pair a one-word clue, and you will construct a progression from beginning to end. For example.” He held up a picture of an orange. “This is an old project from last year. This student’s assignment was angles. He took a different picture of the same orange from different angles for three months straight.” He flipped through the portfolio. “He played with shadows, lighting, position, frames, and capturing it as it rotted; basically, he blew it out of the park. I expect the same out of all of you.”

  He got up, a stack of index cards in his hands, his evil smile growing. A sick feeling started to form in my stomach.

  “So, I thought about how I could make this harder on you all. I know, what a great guy, huh?” He grinned. “Photographers have a vision, and it’s hard to change it. So, what better way to make you by giving you partners?”