The next few minutes passed in a haze. Before I knew it, I’d danced with Marcus for several songs. After the first one they were all fast songs. Riley had somehow extricated himself from Kelsey and was once again controlling the jukebox.
I kept sneaking looks at him over there, but he wasn’t looking my way. In fact, he wasn’t really looking at anyone. He was keeping his head down, poring over the jukebox’s song list as if it held the meaning of life.
What was he thinking? Had he felt what I’d felt while we were dancing? I was pretty sure that he had. In fact, I was 99.9 percent confident that he’d been on the verge of kissing me when Marcus had interrupted. So why was Riley acting like this now? Why had he made a break for it as soon as he got the chance?
At first such questions were wistful. But the more I turned them over in my head, the more annoyed I got. Riley wasn’t stupid. So why couldn’t he just get over himself and admit that I was the real Planetarium Girl? Surely he was smart enough to figure out the hair thing on his own… .
Luckily, Marcus didn’t seem to notice how preoccupied I was, or at least if he did notice he didn’t care. He was a good dancer and seemed to be enjoying himself. He grabbed my hand and spun me, then dropped me again and did a little spin of his own.
“Nice moves,” I said, finally focusing on him.
“Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.” He twirled me around one more time. “By the way,” he added in a too-casual voice, “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What’s the deal with your cute friend?”
For a second I thought he was talking about Riley. I almost blurted out something stupid to that effect.
But I caught myself just in time. “Wait,” I said. “What cute friend? You mean Britt?”
He nodded. “The girl you came with. You pointed her out earlier, remember?”
Now that he mentioned it, I had. Britt’s name had come up while I was talking to him and Rachel in the dining room.
“I know you said she came here to meet Tommo,” Marcus went on. “Do you know if she’s, like, serious about him?”
I was surprised. Only not. Guys always went for Britt. Why should this one be any different?
“Um, no,” I told him. “She’s definitely not that serious. They only met like a week ago.”
“Oh! Cool. So do you know what her type is?”
The song ended and I stepped back. “She doesn’t exactly have a type,” I told him. “Go talk to her. I’m sure she’d love to meet you. You can tell her I sent you if you want.”
I couldn’t help smiling as Marcus thanked me and took off. It figured. Hadn’t I thought all along that he reminded me of Britt? I couldn’t imagine what Britt was going to do with the male version of herself, but I was looking forward to hearing all about it later. If only I had something equally fun and juicy to tell her about my own evening… .
I glanced around for Riley. When I found him, I caught him staring back at me. My heart gave a little jump when I saw the serious look on his face.
Enough is enough, I told myself firmly. We need to just deal with this already. I’ve got to stop playing games and lay it on the line, tell him—again—that I’m The One he’s looking for. And not stop telling him until he believes it.
Summoning up all the courage I could find, I headed toward him. He was still watching me, not moving.
“Where is he?” a female voice cried out from the stairs. “Where’s my sweet baby Riley? Because his Planetarium Girl is here at last!”
All eyes turned toward the newcomer, including mine. A girl was hurrying down the stairs. She had wide, teddy-bear-brown eyes, a big, round booty encased in a tight skirt, and a freakishly high-pitched voice. Her shoulder-length platinum hair was pinned back from her face with sparkly clips, and the heels of her wedge slides added about four inches to her petite height. Think a blond Betty Boop on steroids. Another girl, taller and a little less flashy in general, was right behind her.
The first girl spotted Riley just as she reached the bottom of the steps. She stopped short and clutched at her own heart.
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed, her voice approaching a pitch that only dogs could hear. “It’s you. It’s really you! After our wonderful, romantic, inspiring meeting in the planetarium, I was afraid I’d never find you again!”
“Get in line, sister,” one of the other fakers called out. “You’re not the real Planetarium Girl. I am!”
The newcomer ignored her. She raced over and flung both arms around a surprised-looking Riley. “It’s so awesome to see you again, Riley. I’m so glad you posted that thingy looking for me on MySpace.”
“It was on Facebook,” one of the video-game-playing girls called out, already sounding kind of bored. “Riley doesn’t do MySpace.”
“Whatever.” The spawn of Betty Boop didn’t seem too concerned. She never took her eyes off Riley as she went on. “Anyway, I’m glad I can finally tell you that my name is Tiffie. And since you said you wrote me a song, I decided to write you one, too! Can I sing it for you, baby?”
“Um, sure, I guess.” Riley seemed nonplussed.
Tiffie took a deep breath, then burst into song. It was a fairly tuneless, rambling thing with goofy lyrics about kindred souls and planetary alignment. I had to give her an A for creativity, though her singing voice rated about a D-minus. I guess everyone was too surprised to do anything but listen to the entire song—all three verses. Even Riley’s friends put down their PlayStation controllers and turned to watch.
By the end almost everyone was laughing, including Riley. Tiffie didn’t seem to mind. She beamed at him.
“See?” she said. “We inspired each other.”
“That’s cool.” Riley seemed amused. “I, um, appreciate you laying it on the line like that, Tiffie.”
The rest of the faker gang seemed pretty skeptical of the whole thing. “You can’t be Planetarium Girl,” one of them told Tiffie. “You’re way too short.”
“Oh, but she totally is!” I’d almost for gotten about the second girl, the one who’d been behind Tiffie on the steps. But now she hurried forward. “See, I was there, too, and I saw the whole thing.”
“You couldn’t have,” Kelsey said bluntly. “It was dark, remember?”
“Of course she doesn’t remember that, because she wasn’t there,” one of the others called out. “But I was. Because I’m Planetarium Girl.”
Tiffie’s friend clasped her hands in front of her. “It was super-romantic,” she said. “See, we’d noticed Riley before the lights went out. It was totally love at first sight for Tiffie, you know? She was just going over to say hi when everything went dark. And, well, the rest is history.”
It was so close to what had actually happened that I was taken aback. I glanced at Riley, who was slowly edging away from both of them.
Meanwhile the other fakers seemed unwilling to let Tiffie’s story stand unchallenged. A skinny blonde jumped forward.
“That’s not how it happened at all!” she cried. “See, I’d been checking out Riley all day. So I was right behind him in the planetarium, and I waited until it was dark so I could talk to him without any teachers interrupting us.”
“Get real.” My good pal Kelsey was the next to speak up. “You guys all sound like stalkers. No, the way Riley and I really met in the planetarium was just fate. I didn’t even know what he looked like when I bumped into him in the dark; I just knew we were destined to be together.”
“Oh yeah? Then how’d you know to ask him about that band on his shirt?” another girl challenged.
Kelsey’s face went as red as her hair. “Oh,” she said. “Um. I, well, uh …”
I was still hanging back behind the rest of the crowd watching the whole crazy scene. When I glanced Riley’s way again, I was startled to find him sidling in my direction. He stopped right next to me.
“Can you believe this?” His voice was quiet and he sounded kind of weary. “When I started this, I was just looking for the girl who inspired me to write that song.”
“Well, you’re looking at her right here,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. When I saw him blink in surprise, I gulped. But what the heck. It was too late to take it back now. “Like I tried to tell you from the start, I’m the girl from the planetarium.” I kept my voice low so the others wouldn’t overhear. Not that there was much chance of that at the moment. The competing fake backstories were reaching a fever pitch. “I’m the one you met that day, even if you don’t realize it.”
His mouth twitched into an uncertain smile. “Come on,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “I know you said something like that in your first message, but I didn’t think you were really one of them.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I don’t want to play games; I was just telling the truth. Why do you think I friended you in the first place?”
He shrugged. “I figured you saw that I liked the Beast and were just joking around about the other stuff as an excuse to get in touch.” Shooting a look at the arguing fakers, he added, “I didn’t think you were like the rest of them.”
I wasn’t sure what else to say. Before I could figure it out, shouts and the sounds of running feet came from upstairs. The faint cries of “Fight! Fight!” got everyone’s attention.
The video game girls jumped up. “Uh-oh, wonder what’s up?” one of them exclaimed.
“Come on, let’s go see!” Was it my imagination, or did Riley seem kind of relieved to have an excuse to rush away?
I frowned, but there wasn’t much else I could do about it. Everyone was already racing for the stairs.
Following more slowly, I emerged upstairs just in time to hear the crash of breaking glass. “Take that!” a voice yelled.
A familiar sounding voice. Uh-oh …
I pushed my way forward through the chanting crowd. In the middle of the circle Tommo and Marcus were facing off against each other. Tommo’s hair was soaked, and there was a rose petal stuck to his cheek. The rest of the bouquet was lying in a puddle on the rug, along with the remains of what had probably been a pretty nice vase.
“Stay away from her, buddy boy,” Tommo snarled. “She’s here with me.”
Marcus danced away, easily dodging the punch as the taller guy took a swing at him. “Oh yeah?” he taunted. “Funny, she didn’t say anything about that while we were making out just now.”
Tommo let out a howl of rage and dove at him. Once again Marcus jumped out of the way, grinning from ear to ear as if he was having a blast.
Britt was there too, of course. She was wringing her hands and calling out for both of them to stop. But I knew her well enough to be able to tell that she was secretly thrilled to have two guys fighting over her.
I rolled my eyes and sighed. Typical. Then I shoved my way forward until I reached her. “Hey,” I said. “What’s new?”
“Not much.” She smirked at me. “Some party, huh?”
“Yeah. But I think it might be time for us to make an exit.” I tossed a glance at the guys, who were circling each other like a couple of prizefighters. Skinny, well-dressed prizefighters. “Always leave ’em wanting more, right?”
Britt looked amused. “See? You do listen to my words of wisdom! And you’re right—let’s get out of here.”
“Right behind you.” I searched the crowd for Riley as we pushed our way toward the door. But he was nowhere in sight.