The Swap

Chapter Two

Before

"Me? How?" Griffin replied, a hint of disbelief in his tone.

I was trying to work up the nerve to enter the room, my hand resting on the doorknob, when Lizbet spoke up again. "You won't go to the party with me!"

"I have conditioning at six in the morning, Lizbet."

Of course she was starting a fight over this. She was so irrational when it came to spending time with Griffin. One time, our sophomore year, we went on a family vacation to Gulf Shores, and Lizbet locked herself in our closet until Mom agreed to invite Griffin to come, too. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who can ever say I was third wheeled on a family vacation.

"If you're going to the game, you can come to the party," Lizbet tried to reason.

"There's a difference between being home by ten thirty and being home by two am, baby. You know I'd come if I could. I love spending time with you, and you know I'd prefer to be there with you, making sure you were safe around all those guys," he halfway joked, his voice lowered, softer, trying to sooth my sister. Sometimes you had to resort to the voice you used on toddlers who threw tantrums when it came to Lizbet. I could picture him through the door right now, rubbing her arm with one hand and cupping her face with his other.

"You owe me," Lizbet sighed, weakening. The perfect boyfriend wins again, I guess. Most guys our age would be mad when their girlfriends go to parties without them, and here's Griffin, letting his girlfriend get mad for not going with him. It was a backwards relationship, to say the least.

No matter how bratty Lizbet was, how much she complained about things Griffin couldn't change, he tried his hardest to do whatever it took to make her happy. Griffin's friends called it being whipped, Mom called it being a gentlemen, Lizbet called it sucking up, and Griffin saw it as his normal day routine. It's been that way since they met sophomore year.

Sometimes when they fought it would end in flames, Lizbet kicking Griffin out and yelling that it was over, Griffin starting his truck and angrily whipping out of the driveway, but we all knew better. They'd be okay less than twenty four hours later, when Griffin showed up at the doorstep with roses or appeared below our bedroom window with a whole speech of an apology. The second one kind of got annoying when his romantic gesture woke me up, too, when most of the time the fights were Lizbet's fault anyway.

From the outside, it made perfect since for Griffin and Lizbet to have hit it off the way they did. Preppy volleyball girl meets baseball star and live happily ever after, the end, right? Wrong. In a school as big as Fredrickson, even the jockey types don't always meet each other without help. Griffin and Lizbet actually met in a way most people wouldn't guess: through none other than Lizbet's more socially awkward, intellectually curious sister. Don't believe me? It's true.

This time last year, Griffin was struggling enormously in Chemistry. Athletes grades weren't allowed to drop below a certain GPA before they were kicked off the team, and Griffin's baseball privilege was hanging by a thread- whether or not he passed the final. His coach, obviously concerned about losing a valuable teammate, convinced the teacher to hook Griffin up with a peer tutor: me. So Griffin came over every other day after baseball to study, and you can imagine what happened from there. Lizbet gave a few batted eyes here, hair flips there, casual pen drops in direct line of Griffin's direction... and boom, he's been under her spell since.

"Hey!" I announced loudly to break up any potential make-out happening as I finally pushed the door open and collapsed on my bed, my soda on my bedside table. Griffin was sitting on the bed opposite of mine, my sister perched in his lap. Lizbet groaned as she watched me open my books.