Chapter 4

Chapter Four

BEFORE

TOM

Daisy.

I can't stop staring at her.

I'm being too obvious. At some point, she's going to start thinking I'm a creep if I keep looking at her from ten feet away and never make a move. But it's hard not to stare. She looks so good today. Her hair is the color of the center of a daisy, and it almost looks like gold glimmering in the sun as she stands surrounded by her friends just outside our high school. Her snug cornflower-blue sweater follows all the soft curves of her body.

Stop staring, Tom. Right now. Don't be a creep.

She looks up, and for a second, I freeze. Caught . I wait for her blue eyes to narrow at me, but they don't. Instead, a slow smile spreads across her lips. A couple of her friends notice us looking at each other, and I hear a smattering of giggles. I can make out the words "Tom" and "so cute," both in the same sentence.

"Jesus, Tom. Stop being a wuss and go talk to her already!"

My best friend, Slug, is leaning over me, spouting wisdom in my ear. His breath still smells like cigarettes, despite a healthy spritz of the mint mouth spray he uses to hide the smell from his parents. Unless they're dumb, they must know he smokes and have decided they don't care. Slug is the youngest of five kids, and his parents have pretty much checked out, as far as I can tell. As long as he doesn't take a flying leap off a building, they're happy.

"I'll talk to her," I say.

Except I don't move. My feet feel stuck.

Slug rolls his eyes so dramatically that all I can see between his eyelids is white. "If I had a girl looking at me the way Daisy looks at you, I'd be sticking it to her behind the bleachers as we speak."

Slug drools over every single girl in the entire school, and they all think he's gross. To be fair, he is gross. His real name isn't Slug, obviously. He got the nickname when we were in grade school because he used to eat bugs—legit bugs . During recess, when we went to the playground and most kids were running around or playing kickball, Slug was chowing down on insects. Mostly ants. But one day, he found a slug squirming its way through the dirt, brought it to the cafeteria at lunchtime, and very theatrically swallowed it in front of our entire class.

After that, most kids didn't want to hang out with Slug. So when I sat down across from him in the cafeteria at lunch once day, he looked amazed. Ten years later, we're still best friends. He stopped eating bugs, at least in front of other people, but he still doesn't have many friends.

What do you say about a guy who is seventeen years old with a nickname like Slug? Then again, what does it say about me that he's my best friend? My only friend.

Also, it doesn't help his prospects with girls that even though he shot up to over six feet in the last two years, he's only gained about ten pounds from when he was five feet tall. He looks a lot like a walking skeleton that put on a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt and got a face full of acne.

He sneers at me. "What the hell are you so scared of? You know she likes you."

I adjust the strap of my backpack on my shoulder. "Fine."

His face lights up. "And when you talk to her, will you put in a good word for me with Alison?"

"Sure," I say to make him happy, even though Slug has a better chance of scoring with a Victoria's Secret model than he does with Daisy's best friend.

My heart is thrumming in my chest as I walk over to Daisy and her flock of friends. The girls are standing by the stairs leading to the entrance of the school, in front of a bunch of flyers stuck on the wall. Right behind Daisy's head is a flyer for this year's school musical, debuting in two weeks— Grease —and next to that is a black-and-white photo of a teenage girl with the word "MISSING" underneath. I recognize the face of Brandi Healey from our class, who ran away from home way back at the beginning of the school year, which is why the flyer is now crumpled and weatherworn.

"Tom!" Daisy's face glows when I get within earshot. "I thought you were tutoring today!"

I shake my head. I've always had a knack for math and science, so I've been tutoring them since my freshman year. Last semester, I tutored three days a week to make extra money, but this semester it's only twice a week. I'm pleased Daisy knows my schedule. "Used to."

When she looks at me, her eyes are the color of the Pacific Ocean. I've never seen such a clear shade of blue. I literally can't imagine any girl being as perfectly beautiful as Daisy Driscoll.

But somehow, my eyes are pulled away from her face and down to her slender neck. To the pulsation of her carotid artery, below the angle of her jaw. Most peoples' hearts beat at about sixty to one hundred pulses every minute—I wonder how fast Daisy's heart beats. If I could watch for a minute, I could calculate her heart rate.

"So you're free then, huh?" Daisy says.

"Uh-huh." I scratch at the back of my neck. Daisy's friends are all staring at me and nudging each other. The nice thing for her to do would be to step away from them so I could talk to her without being humiliated. But she's not budging. "Do you…um, would you let me…um, walk you home?"

My request warrants a peal of giggles from the peanut gallery. One girl has her hand clamped over her mouth like this is the funniest damn thing she's seen all year.

"Shush." Daisy whips her head around to shoot her friends a look. Then she turns back to me with a serious expression on her face. "I'd love to walk home with you, Tom."

I'm so happy, I don't even care if these stupid girls won't quit laughing. Let them laugh. I'm walking home with Daisy.

But before Daisy can step away from her friends to join me, the girl standing closest to her, with pin-straight brown hair and thick glasses, grabs her arm. That's Alison—Daisy's best friend. I've got Slug and she's got Alison. Both of us could probably do better.

"Daisy," she murmurs.

That's all she says. Daisy . Which makes me think she's said a lot of other things about me in the past. And now that one word is a reminder of whatever awful things she said about me when I wasn't standing right here.

Alison doesn't like me. She's made that really clear. And it isn't that she doesn't know me and doesn't understand me. Alison knows me. We are, in fact, lab partners in biology this year. We have spent plenty of time together. And every minute we spend together, she likes me a little less.

" Shush ," Daisy says, more firmly this time.

Alison releases Daisy's arm, but not before shooting me a dirty look to end all dirty looks. If we were animals in the jungle, she'd be scratching my eyes out right now. I can't believe Slug's got a thing for her.

But I don't care, because a second later Daisy waves to her friends, and then she and I are walking away from the school, in the direction of her house. And when she smiles at me, I forget all about Alison. Alison who?

It's a really great day today. The sun is shining, and after the longest and coldest winter in history, we don't even need our jackets finally. All I can think about is Daisy. She has a dreamy look on her face, and she's almost skipping along beside me. I've known Daisy a really long time, and there are times when she reminds me of that same girl in pigtails that I gazed at from across the playground when I was four years old, even though, back then, all I could hope for was friendship. But even when I was four, I knew I wanted to marry Daisy Driscoll.

And someday I will.

"Let me carry your backpack," I blurt out.

She looks at me in surprise. "I can carry my own backpack."

But isn't that what a guy is supposed to do? Carry stuff for the girl? I don't want to screw this up. Daisy is too important. "Yeah, but I want to carry it for you."

She considers my offer for a moment. Finally, she hands over her purple backpack. "You are such a gentleman, Tom."

I'm smiling to myself—I did good. At least, I'm smiling until I get her backpack onto my shoulder. The thing weighs a ton . What the hell does she have in here? Bricks? Jesus.

"You…you have a lot of stuff in here," I gasp.

"I like to carry all my textbooks with me." She squints at me. "Is it too heavy for you?"

"No. No . Of course not."

I can't exactly give it back. I didn't have to offer to carry it, but I don't have to be Einstein to realize that I'm not going to score points by telling her that her backpack is too heavy for me to carry. So I suffer silently. I'm focusing most of my effort on not falling over backward from the weight of these two backpacks as we traverse the next several blocks in the direction of her house. Thankfully, it isn't far. We live in a tiny town, about ninety minutes from Buffalo, in upstate New York, where there's only one high school, everyone knows everyone, and you can walk clear across the whole town in an hour.

"You're always so quiet, Tom," Daisy says.

Damn—these backpacks are distracting me. "Am I?"

"Not in class," she amends. "In class, you always have your hand up."

My face gets hot. Does she think I'm showing off in class? I'm not trying to. I just want to get good grades. Next year we are applying to college, and I want to get into a top school so I can get into medical school eventually. My whole life, I've always wanted to become a surgeon. I think about it a lot . I've got an entire shelf full of medical textbooks, and I've read all of them.

I wonder what it's like to cut into a person with a scalpel. To feel their skin separate under my hand. To see their insides.

I can't wait to find out.

"I don't mind," she says. "You're smart. There's nothing wrong with being smart. In fact…"—she smiles at me—"it's hot."

That's news to me. "It…it is?"

Daisy stops walking and tilts her head to look up at me. "You know I like you, Tom, don't you?"

I stop thinking about all the weight on my shoulders, and instead, my eyes are drawn to her neck again. She is so slim that I can see her carotid pulse perfectly. I even notice the way it speeds up as she waits to see how I'll respond to her confession.

The carotid artery is the large artery that brings blood to the brain. It's roughly an inch below the surface of the skin. Slicing through the carotid artery would result in death in about ten seconds. The jugular vein is even more vulnerable—it lies just below the jaw line, and could easily be sliced with a sharp blade.

I sense, however, that Daisy would not be interested in trivia about the delicate veins and arteries in her neck. So instead, I reach out and take her hand in mine.

She looks very pleased by this turn of events. Much more so, I suspect, than if I sliced through her jugular with a knife.

Daisy chatters as we walk, talking about her classes and her friends. I listen and nod my head and ask all the right questions at the right times. Although mostly I'm focusing on how sweaty my hand has become. I'm trying to think dry thoughts, but it's hard. Daisy's hand is dry and soft and perfect.

As much as I like being with her, it's a relief when we get to the steps of her front porch and I can hand over her five-ton backpack and also yank my sweaty hand away from hers. I wipe it on my jeans as discreetly as possible. As if she didn't notice my palm had a puddle in it.

Daisy has a nice house—three stories high and freshly painted a pale blue color that matches Daisy's eyes. It's one of the newer ones in the neighborhood, instead of being desperately in need of repairs, like mine. Daisy's family has more money than mine, and I'm also willing to bet she doesn't wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of her parents screaming at each other and dishes shattering as they hit the wall.

"Well," she says. "Thank you very much for walking me home. And thank you for carrying my bag."

"You're welcome."

"You're so polite ." She giggles, as if pleased and amused by my politeness. I am always polite, because at home there are consequences if I'm not. "Are you always such a gentleman?"

There's a slight edge to her voice that makes me think she's looking for something from me. Does she want me to kiss her? We've been holding hands for the last twenty minutes. A kiss would be the natural progression. But it doesn't come easy to me. I've never had a girlfriend before, and I don't think Daisy has ever had a boyfriend before.

Truth be told, I've only kissed a girl once, and I didn't even want to do it. She kissed me . Except the only people who know about that are me and her. And now just me.

"Tom?"

Her head is tilted up to mine—she clearly wants me to kiss her. I reach out and run my finger along the base of her jaw. Her lips, puckered in my direction, are shiny with pink lip gloss. They are probably very soft and smooth, and Jesus Christ, why can't I just kiss her already?

"Hey, is that Tom Brewer over there?"

I leap about five feet away from Daisy at the sound of the booming voice coming from the side of the Driscoll house. I am mildly horrified by the thought that if I hadn't been so chicken, Daisy's father would have caught me kissing his daughter. Thank God for small favors.

"Hi, Daddy." Daisy flashes her father an easy smile. "You're home early."

Jim Driscoll steps in front of us, all six foot three of him. He is a solid wall of muscle, and if he had caught me kissing Daisy, he would probably be drop kicking me as we speak. Daisy has two older brothers, both away in college, so she's the baby, and also the only girl. Her father is protective of her.

But maybe he wouldn't have beaten me to a bloody pulp if he caught us kissing. He looks more amused than anything. Besides, I'm not a punk. It's not like he caught Slug almost kissing his daughter.

"I've got a late shift tonight," he explains to Daisy. "Just came home to change and kiss your mom goodbye."

Daisy crinkles her button nose. "Yuck, Dad. TMI."

Her father lets out a booming laugh. "Do you find that disgusting? I don't think Tom over here thinks kissing is disgusting." He winks at me. "Do you, Tom?"

If I could disappear into the ground right now, I would do it.

He claps a large hand on my shoulder. I hit five foot ten this year, but Daisy's father still towers over me. So does my own father. "You should come by for dinner some night. Daisy talks about you all the time—my wife and I would love to get to know you better."

"Dad!" I don't know what is more gratifying—finding out the girl I've been fantasizing about talks about me all the time, or seeing how mortified Daisy looks when he says it. She flashes me an apologetic look. "I really don't."

He ignores her. "Well, Tom?"

"Yes, sir," I mumble. "That sounds great."

Daisy's father winks at me. "You tell my wife when you're free, and she'll prepare a feast. You don't even have to wear a tie—although you'll earn extra points if you do."

Daisy's pale skin has turned an adorably pink shade. As her father disappears into the house, she shakes her head at me. "You don't have to come to dinner. Really."

I'm glad she said that, because I have no intention of ever having dinner with the Driscoll family. Even though I think about Daisy every moment of every day, I don't want to get to know Daisy's parents. I don't want to spend time with them. Especially not her father. I'll be happy if Daisy's father and I never have a conversation again for the rest of my life.

After all, the less time I spend with the chief of police, the better.