Lessons in Love Read online

  Lessons in Love

  Clarissa Carlyle

  Copyright 2014

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright 2013 by Clarissa Carlyle (http://clarissacarlyle.blogspot.com). All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the author.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons either living or dead, as well as any events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, any means of reproduction, either electronic or physical, of any part of this book, without written permission is unlawful piracy and deemed a theft of the author's intellectual property. You may use the material from this book for review purposes only. Any other use requires written permission from the author or publisher.

  Table of Contents

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

  Part IV

  Epilogue

  Bonus! Book 2: Letters of Love, Chapter 1

  Author Info

  Part I

  Alexandra Heron gave her brightest smile as she pivoted around in her red and white cheerleading outfit.

  “W!” she exuberantly yelled out the letter with the other girls, using her arms to make the “W” shape.

  With the sun shining and her blonde halo of hair bouncing around in a ponytail, she looked every inch the American teen dream.

  The cheerleaders of Woodsdale High were out in the afternoon sun, practicing hard. They spun, jumped and kicked around in a small corner of the football field. A handful of male admirers were seated nearby, enjoying the show, but the girls were purely focused on their routine. The team was renowned throughout the state for its high energy and perfectly choreographed performances.

  After over an hour of practice, the girls disbanded, clapping their sign-off chant in happy unison. They began to fan out, each going their own way in different directions.

  “Alex, that routine was great!” Claire Taylor complimented as they wound down the rehearsal.

  “Thanks.” Alex smiled modestly, picking up her water bottle from the side of the field and taking a long, refreshing drink.

  “I like the new direction you are taking the team. You make a great captain,” Claire continued kindly.

  “Thanks.” Alex blushed modestly.

  “We still need to work on the pyramid, and there are a few girls out of step,” Sophie Walker said coldly as she sat down on the nearby bleachers.

  “Yes, I know.” Alex forced a smile.

  “Well, as captain, that’s the sort of thing you need to be sorting out,” Sophie continued, her dark eyes boring into Alex’s blue ones.

  “As vice-captain you could always help out more,” Claire suggested, raising an angered, perfectly shaped eyebrow at Sophie.

  “I wouldn’t want to step on any toes,” Sophie replied coolly. She finished her drink and then headed away from the field, loosening her ponytail as she did, so that her dark hair cascaded flatteringly down her back.

  “She’s still sore about not making captain,” Claire said to Alex apologetically.

  “It’s okay. I can handle Sophie Walker.” Alex shrugged.

  “You never sweat the small stuff, do you?” Claire noted admiringly.

  “Life’s too short.” Alex smiled.

  In the locker room, Alex changed out of her cheerleading outfit into some skinny jeans and a white T-shirt.

  Claire changed into her Juicy Couture velour tracksuit, carefully tucking away her beloved cheerleading outfit.

  “It’s a shame we can’t wear these home anymore,” she noted sadly as she zipped up her duffle bag.

  “How can a cheerleading outfit attract negative attention?” She sighed in dismay. Wearing her cheerleading outfit around school had been one of Claire’s proudest moments in her eighteen-year lifetime.

  “Yeah, it sucks,” Alex agreed, though she wasn’t nearly as bothered with the latest rule now enforced by the school board.

  “I guess everyone got jumpy after there was that sex scandal at Northbrook High.” Alex shrugged in a noncommittal gesture.

  “You’re right,” Claire agreed. “But just because that girl was wearing a cheerleading outfit, it had nothing to do with what happened.”

  “Try explaining that to the school board, who are just a bunch of crotchety old men who blame high skirts and tight tops for every rape that’s ever occurred. It’s so sexist.”

  “Mmm,” Claire sounded bored by the conversation and was typing furiously into her cell phone.

  “Apparently Colin Baker broke up with Hayley Tork earlier today.”

  “Oh?” Alex feigned interest. The politics of high school dating didn’t interest her in the slightest.

  “I never thought they’d last,” Claire continued, shaking her head. “I mean, he’s totally a music geek, and she’s in the drama club. Clash!”

  “Mmm.” It was Alex’s turn to zone out from the conversation.

  “Do you need a ride home?” Claire asked brightly as they walked out towards the parking lot. Only a few cars remained now, most students having headed for home when the bell rang marking the end of the day. The only people who hung around after hours were in clubs, and most of those had since concluded for the day.

  Claire paused by her bright blue VW Beetle, looking expectantly at Alex.

  “No, it’s okay.” Alex smiled. “My mom is coming to pick me up.”

  “Are you sure?” Claire didn’t sound convinced. “You know, you should really tell your mom to stop picking you up, and that way I can take you home! It would be way more fun, trust me!”

  “Yeah, I’ll talk to her.”

  “You always say that,” Claire moaned.

  “No, this time I really will. Honest.”

  “You better!”

  “I will, I will.”

  “Cool, so I’ll see you in class tomorrow?” Claire asked hopefully.

  “You bet.”

  “Don’t we have that new math teacher tomorrow?”

  “I think so.” Alex had no idea.

  “Well, he’d better be cute because I hate math!” Claire declared, making a mock face of disgust.

  “Yeah, math sucks,” Alex agreed.

  “Well, see ya tomorrow!”

  Claire climbed into her car and waved furiously at her friend before switching on her stereo and cranking out the latest Taylor Swift song.

  Alex watched her pull out of the parking lot and then got her iPod out of her backpack and placed the small headphones in her ears. With one flick of a button her head was filled with the ambient sounds of her favorite band, Radiohead. She smiled, comforted by the music, and began to walk away from school, away from the parking lot and towards home.

  Alex’s walk home took almost forty minutes. By the time she got home, the sun would be dipping in the sky, casting long shadows along the ground.

  She walked the familiar route from the high school to her home, making sure to keep a low profile as she headed down the street. As she entered one of the smarter residential areas of Woodsdale, Alex took a cap from her backpack and pulled it down over her golden ponytail, making sure to force the cap as low as it would go.

  Glancing at the houses along the streets brought back painful memories, which Alex tried to shut out. She’d considered changing her route home to avoid them, but that meant adding an additional half an hour on to an already long walk. She needed that time to do homework and help with dinner.

  The houses were all stunning, set back on long, immaculate green lawns. Alex c
ould imagine all the dads in those houses, out on a Sunday afternoon, trimming their lawns, their kids bringing them beers, eager to participate somehow.

  As she wistfully thought the journey away, the music offering a comforting backdrop to her thoughts, still, Alex felt a lump forming in her throat. She coughed it down, desperate to suppress it. She knew it wouldn’t go down well if she went home another time with her eyes reddened from crying. Her mother had already warned her about it.

  “It doesn’t do any of us any good, Alex,” she’d told her daughter sadly. “We need to just accept how things are and move on with our lives.”

  But Alex struggled to move on, so when she walked among the beautiful homes with the white shutters that matched the white picket fences, her pace slowed almost to a standstill. She admired each and every home, imagining what the family inside was like. What they would be sitting down to eat that night, and whether they all sat down together.

  In Alex’s mind, each of those perfect homes contained a perfect family.

  Eventually, Alex’s walk home pulled her away from the dreams of suburbia and into a more declining part of town. The houses got smaller and dirtier, the cars became cheaper, and finally she rounded a corner and found the bane of Woodsdale’s existence—the trailer park.

  Everyone at school loathed the trailer park. Anyone who lived there was labelled trash and thus an instant social pariah.

  Alex had seen them, held up against their lockers, accused of being dirty and cheap. When those students weren’t being harassed by their more affluent peers, they were usually found smoking outside, in the back of the gym building.

  Keeping her head low, her eyes trained to the ground, Alex’s walk became more of a sprint as she darted within the trailer park, hoping no one had followed and seen her.

  She ran among the lines of trailers, which were set out haphazardly. She ran across the dirt almost to the back of the park before stopping at a long, grey trailer that appeared newer than its counterparts. She swung the front door open with such anxious speed that it almost came off its hinges. She finally entered, gasping for breath.

  “Jesus, honey, where’s the fire?” her mother asked from her position by the tiny gas stove where they prepared their meals.

  “Sorry, Mom,” Alex answered, breathing heavily.

  “Seriously, Alex, one of these days you’re going to swing that door clean off, and then where will we be? I certainly can’t afford a new one!” Alex’s mother told her sternly, placing her hands upon her hips. Alex grimaced at the money reference; she was tired of hearing about their precarious financial situation.

  “How was school?” her mother asked, changing the subject.

  “Same as ever.” Alex shrugged.

  “Still no report card?” her mother queried, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. She had the same blonde hair as her daughter but was taller and slimmer. Alex was relatively short and quite curvaceous with soft, round features, whereas her mother’s were sharper and more elfin.

  “No, Jackie, no report card.” Alex sighed.

  “I’ve told you not to call me that!” Jackie Heron said sternly. “It’s mom or nothing.”

  Alex rolled her eyes. She was tired from practice and in no mood to argue.

  “Can you at least get your brother and tell him dinner is ready?” Jackie asked.

  “Where is he?” Alex peered past her mother into the dimly lit trailer. She couldn’t hear the usual sound of her brother’s Xbox being used.

  “He’s outside.”

  “Outside?” Alex asked, horrified.

  “Yes, outside, playing with some guys he knows from school.”

  “Seriously? You know the kind of people who live here, right?” Alex scoffed with disapproval. “If you want Andy to be dealing drugs by the time he goes to high school, then great job, he’s heading in the right direction!” Alex clapped her hands in mock applause.

  “At least he’s trying to make friends!” Jackie protested. “And you need to stop thinking of it as us and them. We live here now, Alex. We are trailer people too. Start embracing it.”

  “I’d rather stick a needle through my eye,” Alex answered coldly.

  “Then do that, then.” Jackie sighed. “But please, go get your brother first.”

  ****

  Alex reluctantly retrieved her brother from where he’d been playing basketball with some of the other local boys around his age.

  As the family sat together at the long-line dining table, which could be folded out from the kitchen worktop of the trailer, Alex thought of the families in the large, beautiful homes. She doubted they were eating meatloaf like she was. She imagined they were eating something more refined like prawn linguine.

  “Quick knocking me!” Andy yelled angrily, delivering a sharp elbow into Alex’s stomach.

  “Oww!” Alex almost choked on her dinner. “I can’t help knocking you.” She coughed. “There’s not enough space at this stupid table.”

  “Look, I’m going to work in a bit, so I need you two to behave,” Jackie warned. She currently worked two jobs. During the day she cleaned houses; at night she worked at a local gas station. Neither job paid well.

  Her children didn’t answer her.

  “Andy, have you done your homework?” Jackie asked, her voice sincere.

  “Yes, Mom.” Andy’s singsong response implied he was lying.

  “Alex, can you check, please? I don’t have time.”

  “Fine.” Alex shrugged.

  “Have you done your homework?” Jackie continued her interrogation.

  “Yep.” Alex was also lying. Her incomplete math homework sat within her backpack, but she had no intention of doing it. A new teacher the next day meant a free pass on homework, at least for the time being.

  A coy glance from the head cheerleader was potent currency among the faculty, as Alex had found, and she had no reservations about perverting that system as thoroughly as she could.

  ****

  “Seriously, who schedules math for first period?” Claire moaned in disgust as she slammed her car door shut.

  Alex raised her shoulders and tilted her head, unable to provide an answer.

  “It’s just a sick joke,” Claire continued. “I mean, my brain hasn’t even woken up yet!”

  “Good job you drove to school, then,” Alex joked.

  “Driving is easy,” Claire scoffed. “It’s math that’s the problem!”

  The two girls walked away from the parking lot and towards the main school building. Despite it being early morning, the sun was already burning down on their backs, an insight of the hot day to come.

  Claire was wearing a short denim skirt and vest top while Alex wore a bright pink sundress. It wasn’t her usual style, she’d found it at a local flea market—not that she’d tell anyone that—but she felt it was the sort of dress that a head cheerleader should wear. Coupled with pink nails and long, blonde hair, she fit the part perfectly.

  “You’re certainly eye-catching today,” Claire noted as they entered the bustling hallways of the school. Almost every guy who walked past turned briefly to give Alex a once-over. Alex barely even noticed until Claire pointed it out.

  “Guys are just predictable.” She shook her head.

  “Boys, you mean,” Claire corrected. “What we need is a man. Someone mature and discerning.”

  “Who knows his wines?” Alex quipped.

  “Yes, exactly!” Claire grinned. “And I hear that our new math teacher is particularly hot,” she added cheekily.

  “The morning is looking up for you, then!”

  “It certainly is!” Claire beamed.

  “Maybe math won’t be so bad after all.”

  “It’s still math,” Claire retorted in a deadpan tone. “Brad Pitt could walk in as a sub, but it’d still be math. Math is beyond saving.”

  ****

  When the girls entered the classroom, most students had already arrived, so they gravitated towards two spare desks at the b
ack of the room. The sound of the screeching bell tore through the air before they’d had a chance to sit down.

  Oblivious, Claire and Alex began to get out their study books and pens. They failed to notice the angered pair of eyes watching them from the front of the classroom.

  “You girls are late,” an unfamiliar voice stated angrily.

  Alex glanced to the front of the room in confusion, blushing as she suddenly felt all eyes upon her.

  A man in a crisp white shirt and dark denim jeans was staring at her, his dark green eyes squinting in disapproval.

  Glancing at the whiteboard behind him, Alex saw that he had written his name, Mr. Simmons. So this was the new math teacher. And he was already mad at her. Great.

  “We’re not late,” Alex told him coolly.

  “Oh, you’re not?” Mr. Simmons said mockingly, raising an eyebrow at her.

  “We were in class when the bell rang,” Alex answered confidently.

  “You were in class, but when the bell rings, for the second time, you should be sitting at your desk and ready to work,” Mr. Simmons told her sternly.

  “Jeez, first bell, second bell. We are here. Commence teaching!” Alex waved a dismissive hand at him.

  Mr. Simmons shook his head in annoyance. “You need to show some respect, Miss…” He paused, prompting Alex to reveal her name.

  “Heron. Alex Heron,” she told him begrudgingly.

  “Well, Miss Heron, you need to show some respect towards your teachers. But you’ve already wasted enough of my time, so can everyone open their textbooks to page 249.”

  Mr. Simmons turned his back to Alex and the class and began to write up their lesson for the day, which involved various algebraic equations. Claire groaned across from her as she saw the variation of numbers and letters appear on the board.

  Alex’s color returned to her normal tanned shade, her cheeks kissed golden by her hours spent outside in the sun. She didn’t enjoy being the center of negative attention but knew she had to play her role. An arrogant attitude was all part of the head cheerleader persona.