Page 5 of He Hate Me

Here I am again, sitting across the dining table from last week’s trash. Same old soccer jersey, same resentful attitude, but this time there’s that smug triumph underneath it all. He thinks he’s winning now. I shouldn’t let it, but it gets under my skin. He may think of me as the interloper here, but I’m not. He is the one who doesn’t belong. He was just the housekeeper’s kid, yet he acts like this place is his birthright and I stole it.

“Sir,” Brandon says, fake as hell, “I was wondering if I could borrow your car tonight.”

“What do you need it for?” Devin asks, slipping into his ‘Boss of You’ persona.

“I’m meeting one of my friends at the movie theater,” Brandon says. “Then we were going to go to hang out at the arcade.”

The arcade, my ass. More like smoking weed in the field behind the mall. Not sure who he would be doing it with, though. I haven’t heard of him hanging out with anyone.

“Is this with a girl?” Devin asks. Super awkward now. “Or a boy. Either is fine.”

“It’s not a date,” Brandon says, quickly. “Just hanging out with a couple buddies from the team.”

“Bom chicka bom bom,” I sing, earning a disapproving look from my mom. Brandon gives me a what-the-fuck look,’ but he also colors a little. No, it doesn’t really make sense to imply he’s having sex with his guy friends but if it embarrasses him, I’m doing it.

“Do we know these boys?” Devin asks.

Brandon shrugs. “I don’t think so. They were recruited from other districts like I was.”

“I’m really not comfortable⁠—“

“Why don’t you take him, Deja,” my mom interrupts Devin. “You’re going to the movies tonight, aren’t you?”

“Uh,” I say, caught off guard. Usually I’d have a lie at the ready, but I’ve been talking about going to see this new movie for weeks and was even griping about how I couldn’t see it on opening night because one of my friends was grounded and we’d all promised to go see it together. I should also explain that Devin’s car is a two-year-old Mercedes Benz E class that he still caresses with his fingertips every time he walks past it. There is zero chance of him lending it to Brandon, or anyone else for that matter.

“What time does your movie start?” I ask, trying to think on my feet.

“We hadn’t picked one yet,” Brandon says. I try giving him the ‘work with me’ eyes, but it’s a no-go. “I think that would be a great idea.”

“You can give him a ride home after, can’t you?” my mother presses on. “You girls weren’t planning to go anywhere else.”

“We were actually going over to Lorelei’s house after,” I improvise. She lives in the opposite direction from us, so it is definitely out of my way to bring him home.

“You could take Brandon and his friends with you,” my mother suggests.

“So have boys over?”

“Her parents are going to be home, aren’t they?” Devin asks, that much-too-sharp brain of his picking up on my careless mistake.

“Yeah, of course,” I say. We aren’t going to Lorelei’s house precisely BECAUSE her parents are going to be home. We are going to the field behind the mall.

“Just make sure you guys are home by midnight,” my mom says, cheerfully. “It will be good for you to spend some time together. You two snipe at each other too much.”

Brandon and I exchange a look across the table and for once we are on entirely the same page. We don’t like each other, and we don’t WANT to like each other. What we both wish is that the other would disappear and never come back.

Brandon is as rude in my car as he is everywhere else. He rolls down the window, lowers the seat way back, and tries to change the radio station. My car is not that new or that nice because I bought it with my own money that I saved up over two summers. Or two-thirds was my money and the other third Devin and my mom gave me. Devin was very adamant about getting it checked by a mechanic and all that before I bought it. He paid for that, too.

I mean, I really love Devin. You might be like, ‘why didn’t he just buy you a car?’ but that would never be him. He believes learning how to get things for yourself is worth way more than you getting things the easy way. And it’s not like my car isn’t cute. I stay pretty low-key with it though, because most of the other girls drive nicer cars. Melodie Yang drives a Range Rover. A sixteen-year-old in a Range Rover is not something I can compete with but thank goodness she’s kinda awkward and still has braces on. By the time she realizes the power she could have over these materialistic bitches, I’ll be in college.

“Where you meeting your friends?” I ask Brandon, deciding to keep it somewhat cordial.

“At the mall,” he says like I’m stupid.

“I’ll drop you off outside the theater,” I say, smacking my gum.

“Where are you going to be?” he asks. “Mommy and Daddy are going to be so disappointed to hear you’ve been lying to them.”

“I’m meeting the girls in the parking lot, asshole,” I respond.