The Renegades

Chapter 6

Rae's sitting on Landon's bed when he gets home from practice. She's watching YouTube videos on her phone. She considered going home since she's mad at Landon, but she hates home. She doesn't hate Landon. She's just mad at him.

Landon tosses his backpack on the ground. The small thump gets Rae's attention. She sits up and drops her phone to her side. She looks at him with pursed lips and slightly squinted eyes. It's her angry look. He's seen it enough times to know that he doesn't like that look.

He sits down next to her on his bed and kisses her cheek.

"Are you going first or am I?" she asks. This is how they fight. It freaks other couples out because they never actually argue or yell. They sit. One starts. The other listens and then talks. The first one to talk listens. That's usually the end. It barely qualifies as a fight. It's weird.

Landon figured out what he did wrong when he was driving home. He knows it's better to go first. Then Rae knows that he knows what he did. It makes her happier.

"Sabina is your friend. I shouldn't try to get you to tell me stuff that she only wanted you to know," he says.

She nods. For someone as smart as he is, Landon can be a real idiot when it comes to figuring stuff like this out. She's proud he actually did.

"If she wants you to know, she will tell you. It's super unfair of you to try to force me to tell you her secrets. It puts me in a really bad position. She's my friend; don't try to make me betray her," Rae says.

"I know, baby. I won't do it again." He still wants to know what was making his sister happy, but he knows now is not a good time to try to ask subtly. "There's a line between loyalty to each Harper twin, and I won't try to make you cross it."

She pecks him quickly on the lips. "Good."

He kisses her again- longer, harder.

Right after Landon had gotten home, Wesley Parker also got to the Harper house. He has a key and let himself in. Even if they hadn't just officially given him a key, he knows which side door is left unlocked and could get in through there. They can't keep him out, even if they didn't officially welcome him in.

He knows Landon is with Rae. He does not want to third wheel with that. He thinks about just sitting in the living room and watching TV, but that's not why he wanted to come to the Harpers'. He wants to see Sabina.

He walks up the stairs to her room. Her room and a bathroom are the only things on the floor. It's called a half-floor or something. Landon's room is the basement. Sabina's door is open when he gets to it. She's looking through a box of vinyl records to decide what to play. Wesley watches from the doorway as she chooses one, puts it on her record player, and waits for it to start playing before turning around. She sees Wesley leaning against the doorframe in the doorway and jumps.

"Hey, Bean," he says.

"Have you just been standing there watching me?" He nods. She shakes her head. "And everyone calls me a freak."

He steps into her room. "I don't call you a freak."

She doesn't say anything, mainly because she doesn't know what to say. She's kind of freaking out. She sits on her bed.

"What're you listening to?" he asks.

"Paul Simon's Graceland."

He smiles at the answer. "Never heard of it."

Of course he hasn't, she wants to say. Nobody in Ruby listens to it, especially not anyone in high school, especially not a football player. They all listen to the same pop crap that goes on the radio and rap and the occasional country. Nobody listens to the classics. They think she's a freak for listening to the classics.

Wesley starts walking around her room. He hasn't been in it since probably elementary school. It's obviously changed. She has strings of pictures hanging from the ceiling. Most of them are of either her and Landon or her and Rae. Ones that aren't of them are nature photography. He didn't know she was a photographer. There are a few old family photos from before her parents started traveling. There's one of two little kids jumping on a bed.

"Is this us jumping on the bed?" Wesley asks.

She doesn't know which picture he's looking at, but she knows there is one of them jumping on the bed when they're seven or eight.

"Yup," she replies.

"We used to do that all the time," he says. That's what they always used to do when they hung out. The Harper twins and Wesley would jump on the bed until they got too tired and needed a nap or too hungry and needed a snack. "I probably haven't jumped on a bed since fifth grade."

"Too cool for it now, huh?"

He shakes his head and laughs. If he didn't know any better, he'd think she hates him, but he knows better. She let him kiss her. That has to mean something. Unless she hated the kiss and now hates him. He hadn't considered that. He really hopes that isn't the truth.

He walks over to her bed, climbs onto it, and starts jumping. "Nobody can ever be too cool for jumping on a bed."

He looks down at her as he jumps. She struggles not to smile as she watches him.

"You're going to break my bed," she says. She heard a rumor about him breaking a cheerleader named Bethany's bed last year. The rumor did not involve them jumping on the bed.

"Did you just call me fat?" he teases. The question flusters her. "I won't break it, but if you join me, we might."

She shakes her head and just keeps watching him.

"You know you want to, Bean."

She watches him jump a few more times. She pushes herself up into a standing position and starts jumping with him. They jump together with Paul Simon's Graceland playing in the background, moving closer and closer to each other until their elbows start hitting as they jump. They jump until they're too tired to jump anymore and collapse onto the bed, its frame squeaking. They both explode in laughter.

Wesley turns his head to look at her as she holds her stomach in laughter, her nose crinkles, and her eyes sparkle. Sabina notices him looking at her.

"What?" she asks.

He leans in and kisses her. "If you're a freak, nobody should ever want to be normal."

The door opens. Landon appears in the door frame. Wesley panics for a moment, thinking Landon knows he just kissed his sister and is going to kill him.

"Oh, hey, Wes," Landon says. "Rae and I are going to watch a movie if y'all want to join."

"Sure," Sabina and Wesley say at the same time.

They all go downstairs to the living room, where Rae is waiting under a blanket. Landon pulls the blanket onto him when he sits next to her. Sabina grabs a blanket, too.

"Can we share that?" Wesley asks. "It's cold in here." Wesley is not cold.

He pulls the blanket over his legs, finds Sabina's hand underneath, and intertwines his fingers with hers.