Chapter 1

I couldn’t believe I was spending the weekend with Elliott Spencer. It was bad enough that my dad was dating his mom. Couldn’t they just go on a lover’s weekend in the country by themselves like normal embarrassing parents? Instead, they decided to bring me and Elliott along so we could “get to know each other”, and refusing wasn’t an option.

First of all, I already knew Elliott Spencer. He was the king of the nerds in my Junior class at school. He was on the chess team and something called Quiz Bowl, which was somehow even dorkier. It was as if the guys (and a few very weird girls) on the chess team decided that playing a dumb old board game was just too cool so they needed to make a club where they played competitive trivia games. And yes, that’s what Quiz Bowl is. I’m embarrassed to even know that! I saw him riding his silly red bicycle to school sometimes. I wouldn’t be caught dead on that thing!

Me, I’m a cheerleader, but I’m not too snobby about being among the coolest girls in school. I don’t look down on the girls on the dance team, step team, pep squad, or the boys on the lesser sports teams than the football and basketball teams for which we cheer. Even the marching band nerds at least do something to support the school when they play at halftime of games and pep rallies. But what does the freaking Quiz Bowl team do for our school? They won a state championship last year, but did they get even a lousy spring pep rally for it? Heck no! The football team gets the real pep rallies where we pull out the stops and all they do is lose in the first round of the playoffs every year.

At any rate, as much as I argued, Dad seemed to genuinely like Elliott Spencer’s mom and was getting pretty serious about her. I sure didn’t tell my friends at school about it though! Can you imagine, people teasing that me that I was on the verge of becoming Elliott Spencer’s sister? Now, even if our parents did get married I’d just be Elliott’s step-sister, of course, but it’s not like the girls at school would care. They’d be all asking if I was going to have to share a bedroom with Elliott or joking if I was going to change my name from Haley Riddle to Haley Spencer. Heck one of those bitches would probably make an incest joke! I felt like I was in that stupid old Brady Bunch TV show and didn’t like it one bit.

That’s why I’d kept anyone at school from finding out Elliott Spencer was awkwardly bumbling his way into my life. Thankfully (I guess?) Elliott seemed embarrassed too and hadn’t told any of the nerds about it either, or if he did they didn’t believe that he was so intimately connected to a beautiful cheerleader like myself and just ignored him.

People at school finding out about our unlikely association was just one of my problems though. When our parents started dating in the winter of our Sophomore year they were going first to fancy restaurants and then having cringey candle-light dinners at one of their houses. For those, I, and I assume Elliott, would be sent to bedroom purgatory for the evening, although usually I had something better to do and was out of the house anyway. That’s how it went through the summer too, although I don’t even want to know what those two got up to when I was gone for cheerleading camp for three weeks. Isn’t it perverse? A Dad’s supposed to be worried about his hot 16-year-old daughter’s sex life, not the other way around!

And since now you’re all wondering, bunch of perverts the whole lot of you, I’ll go ahead and tell you I did have a sex life at the age of 16. No, cheerleaders don’t bang the whole football team after every win, we aren’t dispatched to blow basketball players in the locker room to warm them up for the big game. But most of us aren’t virgins, either. My first boyfriend had been Aiden Morrison who’s on the freaking Lacrosse team, and as you might expect from that, he’s filthy rich. He picked me up for dates in a Porsche, although embarrassingly it was his mom driving, but what was he gonna do? We were freshmen at the time! I lost my virginity to him over the summer before sophomore year, just before I left for cheerleading camp, but the bastard cheated on me with a girl from the stupid dance team while I was away! He said it was just too long for him to go without sex as if that made it okay.

I’m a self-respecting girl though so I dropped him like a cheap Walmart pom-pom. That left me unfortunately single when tenth grade began and I was so busy with cheering at football games, plus pap rallies, plus practices, plus my actual school classes, and of course hanging out with my friends. I didn’t have a serious boyfriend that year, but then no boy worth dating would do a sappy romance anyway.

I don’t mind saying that I’m pretty hot. I’m not being conceited, I’m just stating an objective fact. I’m relatively tall for a girl, at five and a half feet. I have brown hair to just below my shoulders (no, not every cheerleader has to be blonde!) and I part it down the middle so it flows long and beautiful over my shoulders. Dad says I look like the “All-American girl”. My body is toned from years of cheerleading and always have a good tan going even in the dead of winter – don’t even ask how.

My sophomore year, I tarnished my squeaky clean image by hooking up with two boys during the school year and one more over the summer, plus a few dates that didn’t progress to going all the way. Naively I thought this was fine, but by Junior year I had a bit of a reputation. I wasn’t considered a school slut, but guys would say they’d heard I was easy, which made me want to jump off the roof. Or better yet push the guy who said it off the roof.

So I liked sex. There’s just no winning as a girl. If you don’t like sex you’re an ice queen, if you do like it you’re a slut. Guys force it on you anyway one way or another, even in the so-called “me too” era. Once a guy has a car and takes you on a date he expects sex or at least a blowjob. I am a horny girl so when I first got in those situations I’d say “Hell yeah!” and do it, but then the same guy who’d been desperate to get with me would tell everyone I was “too easy”. If you try to refuse, they’ll just keep on badgering you, and maybe even force you to do it, more or less. It’s a total mess. That general state of gender relations is why I didn’t have anything going on with guys as Junior year began. If I was into girls at all I would have become a lesbian.

All of this meant I had no real excuse when Dad announced he had his girlfriend were going away to some state park for the weekend and bringing me and Elliott along. On the one hand, I have to admit I was happy for Dad. He had so many lousy girlfriends who treated him badly and even cheated on him, and even though she spawned Elliott, his mom seemed like a pretty okay woman. Her name was Linda and she was a nurse, which was an occupation I could see myself having one day. I’d met her a few times and she was pretty and chill. She didn’t start drama with Dad, she made him happier than I’d seen him in years.

For his part, Dad’s a pretty good guy. He is a construction site foreman, which means he supervises construction workers building all kinds of things, but mostly apartment buildings in his current job. He’s 40. He likes watching auto racing with his buddies and doing projects around the house. Our yard has to have the greenest grass on the block, he’s out there all summer with hand tools trimming our bushes. Sometimes he even makes me help him. He’s a pretty decent dad though overall, just somewhat overbearing with wanting me to get good grades and be respectful. Some of my friend’s dads are jerks or even creeps, but when Dad is mad at me it’s usually with good reason (although I probably won’t admit it at the time!)

I wanted Dad to be happy. My mom, his wife, had died when I was two-and-a-half and he hadn’t remarried. He dated on and off but had never found the right woman, I think in part because he was also considering if they’d be a good step-mother for me. That he and Linda were trying to get me and Elliott to get along meant their relationship was getting serious, and I was happy for Dad. But I could do without the actual getting-to-know-Elliott part of the equation!

Elliott fucking Spencer. He’s not quite the worst type of nerd, the ones who wear anime shirts and have a neckbeard, but he’s still a real dweeb. He is tall and chubby, not quite obese, you could politely call him “stocky”. He has curly brown hair that’s pretty short, but it’s a real mop of a haircut. He wears such dorky clothes, always these dumb flannel shirts like he’s fresh from a photoshoot for the LL Bean catalog. If they even still have an actual catalog. He has brown eyes with freckles and pale skin, no doubt from sitting in front of the computer all summer. He has a long, thin face and is pretty clean cut. He even wears glasses, with these unfashionable black rims that make him look halfway like a college professor. All he’s missing is a pocket protector.

If he wore better clothes and got a better haircut, he might be halfway cute but ... okay, stop it, I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t going to be like the fucking Parent Trap movie. We’re not going to realize, oh, we don’t hate each other, we’re actually in love! Although come to think of it that wasn’t the plot of that movie, Lindsay Lohan played both twins so she didn’t fall in love with herself (that came afterward – boom, rimshot!) But you get my point. Like I’d ever go out with a nerd.

I knew Elliott from school and we’d talked a little bit, mostly at our parent’s behest, but I didn’t really know or care to know much about him. The feeling was mutual, as near as I could tell, even though he had the opportunity to talk to a hot cheerleader, he had the audacity to just act annoyed and insulting when our parents had schemed to get us in a room together.

I certainly didn’t talk to Elliott at school except to say “hello” or “get out of my way, nerd”. I’d only really seen him outside of school once when Dad went away for the weekend to a convention for people in the apartment building construction industry (god, being an old person is really lame, huh? They actually have an annual convention for that!)

Originally the plan was for me to stay at Elliott’s and for the weekend but I talked Dad out of that. Instead, Elliott’s Mom just picked us both up from school and drove us to my house, and came in to cook me dinner. It was all very unnecessary but it was just ordained that it would be this way so I didn’t burn the house down. You leave a pot of soup on the hot stove for a few hours just once while you get distracted with a very important gossip phone call and people think you’re a total idiot!

We ended up in the back of his mom’s SUV for a half-hour while she drove me home, and all he could talk about was how pep rallies were too loud and he didn’t like being forced to go to them. I ended up just putting in my headphones and listening to music, I just couldn’t deal with his stupidity. Then when we got to my house he sat down at the dining room table (which was quieter than the kitchen where Linda was cooking) and he did his homework. Voluntarily! He didn’t even try to come see every red-blooded boy’s fantasy, the inside of a cheerleader’s bedroom. I wondered if he was gay, but I figured he probably just had low self-esteem. Whenever we talked that weekend he just snipped at me so of course, I snipped back. It was very easy to get into an insult match with Elliott Spencer, but being a nerd he was very witty so I was always careful to think of smart insults to fire back at him. It became something of a game which, if I had to admit, was fun to play, but only because our parents made us be together so we might as well do something fun.

That’s where things stood as our big vacation (hah!) loomed. It was the weekend before fall break, for which I was going on a proper vacation with some cheerleading girls for the long weekend. For the trip with my Dad and Elliott and his mom, we’d be leaving after school on Friday and spending that night and Saturday at a hotel.

I was dreading the whole thing and wasn’t exactly bugging Dad for details, and I certainly wasn’t talking to Elliott at school, so I ended up barely knowing where we were going on the Friday of the trip. Perhaps not the best plan I’ve ever had, but it’s not like this trip was my idea. I was just going to grin and bear it and get it over with. Dad had told me we’d be outdoors a lot so I brought tanning lotion and my bikini, but knowing his definition of “outdoors” I begrudgingly packed my shoes that were okay for hiking and some bug repellent. If there had been such a thing as nerd repellent I would have packed that too.

At school that day it was a dull Friday, as Fridays go, with no pep rally or football game for the first time that fall. Not that I care a lick about football games, except as a cheerleader it’s my time to shine. We had cheer practice after school so by the time I got out to the circular drive in front of the building where parents pick up their kids, most of the cars and kids were long gone.

Dad and Linda weren’t there yet so I sat down with my best friend and fellow cheerleader Kaycee Rubin to wait for our rides. Right away I noticed Elliott was there waiting too, over by the bushes with his nose in an actual physical book, and not even one for school, some kind of science fiction paperback. I started scheming how to avoid Kaycee noticing we got into the same car.

“So watcha doing this weekend?” Kaycee asked. I’d known her since middle school. She had started dying her hair right before high school and tried to pass as a natural blond. She was barely five feet tall and very curvy, with a bubble butt and big boobs. She wasn’t much of a cheerleader but the guys at school hardly seemed to hold her lack of athletic ability against her, it was her other attributes with which they were more concerned.

“I gotta go to this state park with my dad,” I said, lying by omission and not mentioning Elliott or his mom. “He’s all gung ho about it so I couldn’t really say no, he’s paying for next weekend after all.” Kaycee was going with us on a shopping trip to the big city two hours away.

“That sucks,” she said, “But you can maybe take some good pictures to post to social media. The outdoors make a great backdrop for a hot babe like yourself.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “If I don’t get Ebola or something.”

“Geeze you’re not going to Africa, girl,” she laughed. Just then I saw Dad’s black 4-door truck cruising down the narrow circular drive. At least that thing was easy to notice.

“What are other people posting this afternoon?” I asked. She couldn’t resist out her phone and began giving me a report. It was almost too easy to distract Kaycee, just get her nose in her phone and she was oblivious. I waited until Elliott got in the back seat then I said “Oh shit, gotta go, can’t keep Dad waiting or he gets pissy,” I said. “Too-da-loo!”

She laughed at my antics and said bye. The truck was so tall that she couldn’t see Elliott in it from her sitting position, especially as I entered through the opposite side of the truck. The perfect getaway!

“Don’t worry Haley, nobody saw you getting in the car with me,” Elliott said as I climbed in the back seat with him.

“I should hope not!” I said prissily as I threw my backpack onto the floor between us. My dad’s truck had the extended cab with nice seats in back, so at least I wasn’t crammed in on top of the obnoxious nerd.

“Now guys, we’re going on vacation! Let’s try to get along okay?” Elliott’s mother said. Linda’s brown hair was even curlier than her son’s and went down like a bell to just below her shoulders with straight bangs in front. She probably had last updated the hairstyle in the 1990s, I’m not even joking, but it kind of worked for her and she was old so she might as well keep it if it looks pretty, right? Even though she was disrupting my blissful life with Dad, I didn’t really hold it against her since she seemed to be a decent person and was making Dad happy. I was giving her a fair shake, but that kindness didn’t extend to her son.

“Fine,” I said, “But he started it!”

“Come on now Haley,” my dad said, finally chiming in, “That’s no argument for a 16-year-old.” Even though I’m a cheerleader and not the brainy type, Dad acts like our conversations are a college debate sometimes. That had been a rather childish thing for me to say though, I had to admit, so I just sighed and dropped it. Elliott looked at me gloatingly but I chose to be the bigger person and wait for my revenge until our parents were out of earshot.

Our school’s campus was near the interstate so pretty soon we were zipping out of town. Our respective parents grilled us about our day and we gave vague half-answers, so at least Elliott could do something like a normal teenager. Eventually, they gave up and started having an animated conversation about their favorite interstate exits. I’m not even kidding! That’s the kind of stuff adults talk about – the flea market at exit 117, the outlet shops at exit 130, the fiberglass dinosaur museum at exit who-gives-a-bleep. They talked unironically about the “attractions” at each exit like this was just the most interesting stuff.

I guess this just what happens when two people live their whole lives in a dinky city in a dinky state. I know I’m getting out of here as soon as I can and moving somewhere interesting.

Before I died of boredom, I put in my headphones and listened to music while Elliott played games on his phone. Eventually, we got off the highway and were on a two-lane country road with cows and horses right out the window. I wondered who lived at these places. Country girls, I guessed. Being around the horses would be cool but I didn’t think I could handle living on a farm, all those smells and nobody interesting around for miles.

Our weekend getaway was at a “resort” hotel way off in the mountains. Not the cool mountains like Aspen and Vail that you see on television, with luxury clothing shops and celebrities, these mountains were a few hours from our city and just had a bunch of trees and, I don’t know, rednecks and coal mines I guess. Dad had dragged me out here before since it was one of his favorites. These mountains felt like the sort of area where you were always in danger of running into a hillbilly playing a banjo, although the resort was relatively upscale and seemed to attract middle-class families like ours from the cities within a few hour’s drive.

It was exactly my dad’s kind of place; very scenic and I guess it was kind of pretty, with all the mountains shooting up as we drove through the valleys. They weren’t big snow-capped mountains like out west, but instead just tall and covered with dense, green trees as they towered over everything. It took forever to drive those winding mountain roads so I nodded off to sleep briefly.

Dad woke me up soon after by gently saying, “Haley, we’re here.” So we were. I stumbled to my feet and went inside to check in. It was at least a nice hotel way back in the woods on a big artificial lake which was created by flooding a valley where there had been a town in the 1940s. That sounds weird, but the big attraction was that people could go scuba diving in summer and see the ruins of the town. It all seemed very corny and touristy to me, but nobody asked me where I wanted us to go for the weekend!

The hotel was very modern when it was built in the 1980s or something, I suppose, and it had a huge lobby with natural rock walls and a waterfall-style fountain in the middle. Pretty nice for the middle of nowhere, I guess. We had to haul our luggage up to our room after checking in. I’d complain that the hotel didn’t have a bellhop but is that even a real thing? I don’t know. Dad doesn’t have a ton of money so we always stay in mid-range places. When I’m rich I’ll stay in luxury hotels and tip the bell boy to bring my luggage to my room, then he sticks out his hand for a tip that’s how it works, right? Entirely too much of my knowledge about how the world works comes from watching movies.

We got supper and had some more boring conversation I mostly don’t even remember. Dad was flirting with Linda but thankfully toned it down enough that it didn’t make me throw up my dinner. Elliott talked about the latest Quiz Bowl competition and I wanted to stab my ears with a fork to get out of listening to his story. I made sure to go into excruciating detail about our cheerleading routine for revenge and watched Elliott’s eyes glaze over, but Linda was very interested since she had been a cheerleader back in the day 1990s.

After that went back to our rooms. Our parents had booked two connected rooms which meant I had to share a room with Elliott. I had figured that would happen but it still sucked. Dad and Linda went to do a sunset hike on a trail called Lover’s Lane, which was cute, I guess, even if it was cringey too.