Foes & Cons

of the top firms in the country, let alone the world. Graduate from the Brockden architecture program and you can basically work at a firm of your choosing, though I want to come right back here to Chester. I’ve wanted to take over the family business since I could remember.
“You’ll get in, they’d be idiots not to accept you. And then we’ll all work together, right here.” Todd Oden comes over to give me a firm handshake. “You get taller every time I see you, Squirt.”
He’s called me Squirt since I was born, basically, and has acted as my fun uncle when my own somewhat reserved dad couldn’t play the part. Todd is an avid skier and took Blair and I to the mountains throughout our childhood. He’s the one who taught me how to catch a baseball, since my own father is completely uncoordinated. Come to think of it, I have no idea what my dad and Todd have in common that makes them thick as thieves. Except, of course, architecture.
But where my father is reserved, level-headed, and a homebody, Blair’s dad is a bit of an adrenaline junkie. Zip-lining, hang-gliding, or jumping out of an airplane; you name it and he’s done it. He’s taken Blair on some pretty epic adventures, and it’s not a surprise that he allowed his teenage daughter to spend three months out of the year in a third-world country with all of its natural disasters and human dangers.
Out of all the things I lost when Blair abandoned our friendship, my relationship with her father is one of the worst. Of course, I miss her, and what we could have been. But Todd is like a third parent to me, and one I can go to with no judgment or repercussions. Since Blair and I had our falling out, her father and I have become distant as well, and that’s a damn shame.
My parents, and probably Todd too, just think we grew apart, that it was some kind of natural distancing due to being a guy and a girl in the midst of high school drama. Mom still talks about Blair like she’s some kind of angel, and I know that she thought we’d date one day.
I don’t have the heart to tell them what she did to me. Also, it’s embarrassing, and how was I going to explain to my parents that we were playing seven minutes in heaven? No, better to have them think that Blair and I just have different friends and different interests.
Deep down, I also know I could never own up to the ways I’ve tormented her. Blacklisting her from parties, not speaking up when my friends taunt her, or the girls I hook up with are bitchy and mean to her face. There was the time I let my friends fill her locker with condoms, or when I drove right past her on her street as she was waiting for the school bus, rain drenching her as she was sans umbrella. I hadn’t even stopped to offer her a ride. There was the annual Christmas Eve party my parents threw for all of our friends in town, when I laughed as Blair’s dress ripped in front of thirty of our schoolmates who were sneaking beers in my basement. I beaned her with a volleyball in gym class junior year, had my group of friends nominate her as a joke for homecoming queen, and schooled her ass in our AP history class last year in Jeopardy.
It’s been small things, nothing too terrible, but a thousand cuts to her that I know have wounded me just as badly. I’ve tried to break her down mentally as revenge for what she’d done to me, and I almost thought it was working.
Then she gave me that backtalk in the hallway today. Something in her has completely flipped, and it’s making me the insecure one.
Blair’s knockout body, the tan summer freckles on the bridge of her nose, and the way her hair smelled like marshmallow as she flipped it over her shoulder … it all engulfs me. As if her becoming extremely hot over summer break isn’t annoying enough, now I have to sit behind her in our AP government class. Where, might I add, she raises her hand and nails every question, even on the first fucking day.
My blood smolders in my veins. There is so much history and animosity between us, and yet I can’t help the attraction that has always burned inside me when it comes to her. Even before today, when I saw her in all of her new, hot glory. We’ve always had that spark. And for some inexplicable reason, she put it out before we could ever explore it.
I have my first warning shot planned for tomorrow, and I can’t wait to see her face.
A sick part of me enjoys torturing her. The other part, the part she cut out with a knife, burns with satisfaction.
I reminded her that she made us this way, and it’s my responsibility to keep reminding her that she’s the one who forced this outcome.
If I didn’t, I might break and let her see how much damage she’s really done. And that is unacceptable.

5 Blair
The agenda for the first class cabinet meeting of the year is laid out on the first row of seats, and more packets are piled on the front table.
To be honest, I know that half of these papers won’t be seen by human eyes, but Nate asked me to print off twenty of them, so I did. We’re lucky if we have ten people in these before-dawn meetings for the entire school year, but since it’s the first one we may get eleven, so we come prepared.
I’m still waiting for Nate to arrive, with my extra-large coffee in tow, and I see a few familiar faces in the front row of the music room. This room has been our “congressional chambers” for all intents and purposes