Getting Caught by Mandy Hubbard Page A

he’d started the date by trying to get me to agree to mini-golf, knowing Willow Valley doesn’t have a miniature golf course and we’d have to travel way out of the way to get to one. Not to mention that he picked me up a half hour late. Not exactly a way to impress a girl. All of this, in my mind, combined to mean one thing: he regretted asking out a punk girl and was afraid of what his friends would think.
    “I kind of missed the beatings I used to take from you in gym,” he says, flashing me the irresistibly sheepish grin that makes me remember why I’m hooked on him.
    “But I thought you would have been dying for another of Charlotte’s famous milkshakes and the opportunity to brag about how the baseball team beat Vincent High, your sworn enemies. That seems like your type of thing,” I say.
    He squints. “Oh yeah? And what type of thing is that?”
    I bite my lip, trying to think of the correct word. “Normal.”
    “Normal?” He looks intrigued.
    I shrug and stuff a French fry into my mouth. “Yes. Normal. Safe. Boring . You don’t stray from the path.”
    He looks confused. “Are we talking Robert Frost here? Two paths diverging, et cetera?”
    “Just because a path is well-worn doesn’t mean it’s the best one. Getting good grades, extracurriculars, going to college…it may be right for some people, but not for everyone.”
    He looks like he’s spacing out, but suddenly he snaps to attention. “Sorry, I thought I’d been magically transported to English class. So college is not for you?”
    I nod. “At least, not now.”
    “You’ve thought a lot about this, huh?” He chews his burger carefully and swallows. “But some people would say you’re just coasting through life. What about having ambitions?”
    “I have ambitions. I mean, yeah, school isn’t for me,” I admit. “I want to find something I’m passionate about, and it’s definitely not the pep squad or calculus. So after I graduate, I’m going to travel. Try new things.”
    “Is that so?”
    “Yeah. There’s got to be something out there for me, you know? I get the feeling Peyton’s doing all this Harvard stuff because that’s what the perfect student is supposed to do. Not because she really wants to. Recipe for disaster.” I realize I’m babbling again, jumping around from one topic to another, so I take a breath and say, “What are your plans?”
    “I have a full-ride scholarship to play ball at Saint Bonaventure,” he says with a smirk. “So I guess you can probably smell the havoc sizzling, huh?”
    I can’t help but laugh. “SO you really like football? You don’t just do it because... well.. it’s expected?”
    He shrugs. “Yeah, I do like it. I’m sure you think it’s lame, but I love it. It’s one of those things that never lets me down.”
    “And then what? College is just a way of extending your high school existence. There has to be something after that. What about the real world?”
    He gives me a defensive look. “Hey. I don’t know. Ball got me a scholarship. I figured I’d map out my life later.”
    “What about your book?”
    He stares at me, mouth slightly open. I know it was a little pathetic for me to admit that I remembered his writing, since I hadn’t heard anything about it since freshman year. Back then, in English, we were given an assignment to write a short mystery story, and Dave turned in a full-length novel. The teacher thought it was amazing and read parts of it to the class. Talk about submitting it to publishers had been tossed around, but then, summer vacation came, and it was never mentioned again. I’d fully expected to eventually see, “A Novel by David Ashworth” in Barnes & Noble.
    He looks at his plate and says, “I do like to write. It’s my hobby.”
    “Do you like it more than football?”
    He grins. “I don’t know. Probably. I kind of forgot about writing for a while. Everyone else did, too. Except you, I guess. Football is what people expect of me.