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  CRUSH

  The Kelly Brothers

  By Celia Loren

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  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

  CHATPER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Prologue

  San Diego, 2005.

  I remember exactly what I was wearing the day I fell in love for the first time. I remember too the color of the sky (bad-air-quality avocado), the newspaper headlines (“Forest Fires Near Big Sur”), and the music on the bus radio (Sheryl Crow). But most of all, I remember the boy. He was already five foot six, which was tall for a ten year old, and he was rocking blonde tips and that gelled flip that was so popular for two months in the nineties—in other words, he was already perfect.

  There were fifteen of us in Mr. Seidman's P.E. class, and though it must have been well before noon, we were already sweating on the soccer field. It was the last day of my first week at George Washington Carver Elementary School, and as of that humid Friday, I'd yet to make a single friend.

  “We're doing four laps around the field today, folks. That'll make a mile,” Mr. Seidman said.

  I remember the gym teacher, too—he had the fussy, inflated look of a snowy owl and was about as friendly. “Now, the middle-schoolers run a mile,” Seidman hooted. “So each and every one of you who completes this task will be ahead of the curve.”

  At this news, the class had broken up into little tittering groups, much to my lonely-girl dismay. My Dad had told me that all I needed to do to adapt to our new city was “smile and be myself!” but the social hierarchy at Carver was apparently having none of my Midwestern charms. There was, on one end of the spectrum, Melora Handy and her band of prissy followers. They called themselves The Ponytails. On the other side were Corinne Laughlin-Moe and Katie Delft. They liked to bring caterpillars to class and let them crawl all over their arms during lessons—and even they, it seemed, didn't want to kick it with the new kid. This made me—the motherless, gung-ho, corn-fed, Nebraska transplant—a persona non grata. A total pariah. A freak.

  “And lookie what we have here!” Mr. Seidman cried, shading his eyes and directing our attention toward the gym doors. You could hear the excitement in his voice—it was clear that some Golden God was about to descend into our midst. And just like something out of Greek mythology, the object of our class' attention started to sprint towards us, running faster than anyone I'd ever seen up close.

  “Who is that?” I asked Corinne, breathless. She was pretty preoccupied with her caterpillars but still managed to spare the sprinter a withering glance.

  “That's Chase Kelly. He's been out sick all week.”

  I actually repeated the name to myself, loving how the K sounds rolled across my tongue. Chase. Kelly. He seemed to be smiling at us, as his little blonde head bobbed across the pitch. I saw two neat rows of braces on his teeth, glinting in the sunlight. Every girl paused, conversations halted—just while we watched the kid run. Chase Kelly had the easy, thoughtless, watchable stride of a cheetah. Moving quickly came natural to him.

  Chase was more gangly than muscular back then, but it was immediately clear from Mr. Seidman's greeting that this sexy animal was the favored athlete of the whole fifth grade.

  “Mr. Kelly!” our teacher cried, thumping Chase on the back as he landed, un-winded, amongst us. “Glad to see your flu has flown the coop. Boys and girls, Mr. Kelly here can run a five-minute mile. So you should all be aiming for his dust when we do our warm-up.”

  Chase smiled a little bashfully, then puffed up his chest. He'd worn a Spongebob Squarepants shirt, and that only seemed like more evidence of his star quality—he had good taste in cartoons. This was the first time a boy made my heart beat faster, my palms grow sweaty, my mouth go dry. The Meloras and the Katies around me all seemed to fade away while Chase stood there, sizing up his competition. That is, until Mr. Seidman blew the whistle.

  “GO!” my gym teacher bellowed to the sky. We started scampering, and I zeroed in fast on my mission. My purpose at Carver had suddenly taken shape. I needed to run with Chase Kelly. Past him, if possible. I needed that boy to see my hair streaming behind me in his peripherals, so he could see that I, too, was worth knowing.

  And so I ran. I passed The Ponytails, who were never dressed for gym anyways—preferring to wear constricting mini-skirts that were just this side of the Carver dress code. Katie and Corinne could eat my dust. It was easy, once I gave myself up to the fact: I simply had to reach Chase, or die trying. I ran that day like I'd never run before, and have never replicated since. After the first lap and a half, I was within spitting distance. By the second, sweat was pouring off my back and down my Blink-182 tank top, but our classmates were falling behind.

  “Not bad for a girl!” he yelled, pausing briefly to glance over his shoulder. “Where'd you learn to run?” I was concentrating so hard on the finish line, it took a moment to register that Chase Kelly was actually speaking to me. Were I not otherwise occupied, I swear I could have fainted.

  “My—mom,” I wheezed. Talking was hard. “Where'd you? Learn to run?”

  We rounded the goal-posts a third time, and for a moment, I burst ahead of him. Glancing back, I saw that the two of us had an easy lead over our classmates, and the people closest to us were still about a third of a lap behind. So, I slowed down. Until we were neck and neck.

  “My Dad taught me,” Chase gasped finally, after he too had determined our lead was sufficient. “Right before my parents got divorced.” When I looked over, I saw that Chase had a wryness in his eye. His expression, even constricted with effort, suggested an intelligence surpassing that of the average fifth grader. He was being ironic. I concluded, from this one face, that Chase was funny and wise.

  “My parents are divorced, too.” I yelled
. The air ripped from my lungs. I didn't dare to speak again, lest the stitch that was already growing in my side bring me to my knees. I was content to run side by side with Chase Kelly, in companionable silence. I was almost sorry when we reached the finish line.

  “Way to go, Ms. Lynne!” Mr. Seidman yelled. And after a long pause in which I struggled to catch my breath, my classmates trickled in behind us. Melora raised her eyebrows at me with something resembling approval. For the first time all week, the fifth grade seemed to notice me. I looked up to smile at Chase Kelly, imagining that our friendship had been sealed on the track—but he wasn't beside me anymore. For a second, I panicked. It still seemed possible that I could have dreamed him. So I squinted along the hazy horizon, past the basketball court, the tetherball poles, the rusty old playground—all while Mr. Seidman rattled off everyone's mile time.

  I found Chase again by the big red slide, the one where the Ponytails liked to gather and talk accessories. He was sitting on the wood-chips, head bent low in conversation with someone. He didn't look sweaty or winded at all. I didn't recognize his companion from the back, though there was something about the other boy's honey-blonde hair that seemed familiar. It was only when I came up close behind them that it occurred to me to be shy.

  “Hey,” I ventured, eyes locked on Chase. “That was fun, back there. I never got to tell you—I'm Avery Lynne.”

  After I spoke, there was a horrible pause in which it seemed like everything could collapse. Chase squinted up at me like he was struggling to remember who I was. But just then, his buddy turned around, and I saw that he was squinting up at me, too. I couldn't help but laugh. They had the exact same expression, the exact same face.

  “Oh my God!” I giggled. “You're–”

  “This butthead is my brother, Brendan,” Chase said, flicking a wood-chip in the direction of his doppelganger. The other Kelly boy was a near-mirror image of his brother, except for a few key details. Brendan wore a single silver ring in his ear. Brendan had skater-boy hair, which fell in soft waves around his shoulders. Brendan didn't wear braces, but he was rocking an oversized t-shirt for the Red Hot Chili Peppers—easily my second-favorite band, after Blink.

  “Avery's parents are divorced, too,” Chase said to his brother. Then he smiled at me, and I knew I was safe in at least one Kelly's estimate. Still, I waited for Brendan to say something comforting, or smile at me, too. Something about the kid intimidated me from the get-go.

  After a long pause, Brendan Kelly peeled himself off the wood-chips. Though it didn't seem in line with anything I knew about identical twins, I was shocked to see that the other Kelly boy stood about an inch taller than his brother. He seemed runtier, despite this. Somehow more drawn and bookish than his brother.

  “So you guys had the flu?” I said, for something to say.

  Brendan just kept staring at me, until Chase started to chuckle with discomfort. But I was emboldened by my mile time, and let him stare me down. I figured I had nothing to hide, and everything to gain.

  “Did you know,” Brendan said at last, with an eerie gravity: “That if your hand is bigger than your face, you're an idiot?”

  I was so eager to please the Kelly twins, I fell for that dumb line. After I opened my palm in front of my face, Brendan Kelly hit me lightly—but square—on the nose bone, and all three of us dissolved into improbable giggles.

  I fell for the twins that day, and the day after, and the month after, and the years after. All this time, I've been falling.

  Chapter One

  Savannah, Georgia 2014

  “Name one great artist who ever quit at something.”

  “Umm, John Lennon.”

  “Okay, that's one.”

  “Probably Kafka, right? De Kooning. Virginia Woolf...”

  “That's not what I meant.”

  “Sylvia Plath...”

  “Ugh! Fine!” From her perch on the bed, Zooey hurls a ball of rainbow-patterned socks in my direction. “You win. But don't think for one second that abandoning your dearest friend at art school makes you Virginia Woolf.”

  My friend and I exchange a sad smile, as has become our habit this week. I kind of waited until the last minute to tell Zo that I wouldn't be coming back to Savannah in the fall, so I can't exactly blame her for giving me crap. Especially since she's my one true blue these days.

  I came to art school last August so convinced that I'd become part of a whole new crew of thoughtful, nerdy weirdoes just like me—only to find that a lot of the same popularity hierarchies I’d hated in high school were still par for the pre-adult course. After I'd found Zooey during Welcome Week (and after we'd bonded over a shared disdain for certain abstract expressionists), we'd become pretty much inseparable. And if the tables were turned—if it were her leaving me stranded at school without so much as an explanation—I'd be pissed as hell.

  “I just wish you'd tell me why,” my friend says, for the umpteenth time. “Or at least, tell me if it's something I did.”

  “It's nothing you did. I swear.”

  This much is true. The person who 'did' it is still in the picture, though, and I can't bear to spend three more years avoiding his smirks. I can't bear to be trapped in classes next to him, where I'd have to hear him wax poetic about sculpture and other bullshit and being applauded for his “insight.” It was hard enough going to the counselor the morning after and being asked all those horrible questions. And later, at the disciplinary hearing—watching him lie to my face. The memories could still make bile rise in my throat.

  The city no longer felt safe to me, and no part of my art school dream remained intact—so yes, I was heading back to Western skies. And no, I wasn't able to tell my friend why I was such a profound failure of a reinvention. To be honest, I was worried that Zooey's opinion of me would change. Not in a way that she'd mean for it to—Zooey was the most understanding person I'd ever met—but something in her manner was bound to shift if she learned the truth about my leaving. She'd start to pity me. She'd want to crusade against my enemies, to adopt all of my fears like they were her own. And I was in such a wretched place, it just didn't seem fair to bring someone else down to my level. I knew it was stupid—but the 'it,' the 'him,' the horror that had happened—had left me feeling soiled.

  “I think I hear your Dad's car,” Zooey stands, and goes to the window. “Yup. There's old Frank.”

  “The pumpkin, come to take me away.”

  “You promise you'll Skype? And visit, maybe?”

  “I'll Skype.”

  Zooey watches my father as he putters toward the dorm's entrance. He doesn't know the full truth, either. But Frank and I have the kind of relationship where he doesn't ask many questions. Ours is a silent alliance, grounded in guilt and mutual respect.

  “You're sure things won't just be worse for you? At a big old state school like that?” Something in Zo's tone makes me glance up from my seat on the suitcase. I should give her credit. Zooey might have picked up on more about my sudden departure than I realized. She could be offering me one more chance to explain myself.

  “I really want to be near my Dad, Zo. It's not like he's doing all that well, by himself in that big house.”

  “But he's a grown-up. You're just a teenage dirtbag.”

  “For one more month.” Zooey doesn't look convinced. “And besides. I do have some high-school friends who stayed home and went to state. This girl Melora–”

  “The Ponytail chick? I thought you hated her.”

  I actually only hate one person, but our goodbye didn’t feel like the right moment to be splitting hairs. In lieu of a confession, I just smile sadly again.

  “Okay, okay. I'm not trying to deprive you of friends because I'm jealous or anything,” Zooey concedes, her voice cheeky as all hell. “I just worry.”

  “Well, don't worry so much.”

  “It's just such a bummer! I meet one cool person at college, and she’s skipping town on me.”

  “There are loads of cool people i
n your college future, I'm sure of it. Now come give me a super-emotional hug before Frank storms in.”

  We're already too late: I can hear my Dad's strained breathing before I see his shadow, falling wide across the sick-colored linoleum. Frank's a big guy. He used to be head of security for San Diego University, before he retired. These days, he intimidates crossword puzzles.

  “Wait, I remember! Those twin guys! Won't they be at school with you?” I hold tighter to Zooey's back, so I can avoid showing her my reddening face. The Kellys. Okay, sure, they've crossed my mind. The fact that I mentioned those bums to anyone at college suddenly strikes me as...childish. I hope my Dad isn't listening.

  “I haven't been close with those two in forever,” I say, hoping my words come across as casual. I don't know why I feel like I'm lying—for this part, at least, is the truth.

  “I remember those little blondies!” calls Frank, who takes the moment to step fully into our room and sit down heavily on my roommate's bead. I break away from Zooey and turn to my Dad, who grins at us like it's any other day. Like he didn't just drive a thousand miles to fetch his failed daughter from Georgia. “Mac and Jason, right? You three couldn't be separated.”

  “Brendan and Chase, Dad. And we could be separated, actually. The three of us didn't hang out much past the beginning of high school,” I don't embellish this story, and both Zo and Frank seem content to let the facts lie. I guess it isn't really a headline, anyways. People drift apart from their middle-school friends. That's kind of SOP, in fact.

  But I can't deny to myself that I've been thinking about the Kelly boys. Those mop-tops even appeared to me in a dream the other night, for the first time in years. I was back on the track team, doing wind-sprints with Chase while Brendan yelled ridiculous things at us from the bleachers. The three of us went out for pizza afterwards, like always. But instead of racing our bikes home, to the respective nests where our single parents toiled away in the shadows of deep depressions the dream ended with me standing on the table at Fioro's, rotating around so they could see from all angles. I can't remember anything much after that, just that the two of them clapped and clapped for me.