UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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My heart beats faster than I’d like as I cross the library’s threshold, but I focus on putting one foot in front of the other. There’s no sign of Peter, and with no bodies filling the space, the library’s chilly, gray and tired with no lights. I feel like an idiot. When Peter said “first thing,” he probably meant five minutes early, not fifty.
I settle into one of the big armchairs in the reading center of the library. I should finish my precalculus homework, but I pull out my character journal and open to a line that’s been bothering me. Ophelia’s father tells her, “Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star.” He means “star” astrologically, like their love’s not meant to be. But he’s also saying Hamlet’s out of her league.
Such a beautiful way to say an awful thing.
I used to like the idea of fate. It’s comforting to think things happen the way they’re supposed to, but what if your fate is a bad one, like Ophelia’s?
What’s a person supposed to do with that?
I must believe that my fate isn’t set, or else why play my games?
Something loops down through my field of vision and slides across my neck. I go fight-or-flight, throw one hand up to catch whatever’s there.
Don’t touch.
I can’t really feel what it is through my glove, but some kind of fabric is slipping away as I turn, grazing my neck as Peter reels it back in.
An empty shirtsleeve.
He slings the shirt over his shoulder, over a fraying T-shirt that . . . biceps. Peter has biceps.
“I startled you. Sorry,” he says. But he doesn’t look sorry. He looks pleased with himself.
“That’s all right. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.”
“Hard at work on Ophelia?” he says with a grin, but he’s not making fun. “Over here.” He waves for me to follow him into the stacks.
We’re alone in a nearly abandoned building. The ridiculous thought pops in: His present is a kiss. He’ll press me up against the shelves. Books will fall, and the building will crumble. The thrill-and-dread mix makes it hard to follow him without shaking, and I keep some space between us, just in case.
He leads me through a maze of shelves to a corner table where two rows of stacks meet. On the table, several books lie spread open. They’re encyclopedias—one from each set the library has—and a couple of dictionaries, too. He closes a Merriam-Webster and hands it to me.
“Look up ‘asshole’ in the dictionary,” he says.
“What?”
“Just do it.”
I open it and flip to “asshole.” There’s a picture of Oscar smiling back at me.
I laugh for a second. Then I tug at the photo’s corner. It sticks.
“You did this?”
He nods and gestures to the table, “The encyclopedia entries are longer, more detailed in listing his crimes.”
“Why?”
“I’m on a mission. Because he’s an asshole. Because he dropped you.”
“He didn’t mean to.”
“He was being his stupid self and he hurt you, and he’s been harassing you since the first day of school. Anyone can see you don’t like it.”
“Okay, sure, but—”
“Tell me you’re a fan of getting groped by Oscar, and I’ll put these back.” He moves as if to start.
“I’m not a fan. Not. A fan.”
Peter smiles.
“But this is so . . . elaborate.” That he would do this for me, I’m overwhelmed.
“I have anger problems,” Peter says lightly as if he’s said he’s a fan of scuba diving. “Sometimes when I get angry, instead of punching my fist through a wall—”
“You’ve done that?”
He shrugs. “I express my frustration through art.”
“This is art?”
He shrugs again, grinning, “Well, that’s what I’ll claim if they catch me, but they won’t. And even if they do, I used the tiniest bit of putty. It’ll peel off. That’s grounds for suspension, tops.”
“But for making fun of Oscar?”
“I’m not making fun of him,” Peter says, “I’m defining him.” His smile’s contagious, dangerous.
“He’ll think I did it.”
“No. He won’t. Seriously, you’re new. You’re a girl. The only thing he suspects you of is being in love with him. The guy’s got a runaway ego.”
“So who’s he going to think did it?”
“Somebody who wishes they could be him. Probably the mission will backfire. Probably, it’ll just feed his ego.”
“Mission?”
“Yeah, Project A-hole.”
I’m laughing too loudly. I’ll get Peter in trouble. “Can we put them away? Before somebody sees?”
“I’ll put them away. I can’t risk you getting implicated in my covert activity. Roger that?”
“I copy.”
“No, you’re supposed to say ‘roger’ back.”
“Roger back.”
He groans. “You’d be hopeless as a spy.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“No, I’m serious. Get out of here before you compromise my position.”
“Okay.”
“Go! Be off!” He’s gathered a couple of volumes in one arm and is sweeping at me with the other. “That’s Shakespearean for ‘leave.’”
“Peter?”
“What?”
“Thank you.”
He holds my eyes, and maybe it’s my imagination—it’s still dark in here—but I think his cheeks flush red. Or maybe I’m mixing up what I see in him with what I feel.
Peter waves me away.
“Have you seen this?” Oscar bends over the lunch table, Merriam-Webster in hand, open to his definition. I guess news of pranks travels fast.
Oscar’s beaming.
People lean in and fall back laughing. Peter does the same. He’s a great actor because he’s not hiding anything. He’s not worried about getting caught, and he thinks his own joke is fantastic.
“I’m famous,” Oscar says. “I mean, more famous than I already was.”
Peter widens his eyes at me—see? He told me so. And he mouths the words, “Worse than I thought.”
Oscar breaks into song: “You ain’t nobody till somebody hates you!”
My eye contact with Peter lasts a little too long, and there’s so much potential energy thrumming between us—it wants us to close the distance, fall in. It’s like one of Dad’s physics tricks—stretching the rubber band makes it get warmer.
Sooner or later it snaps.
I ask Mandy if we can go somewhere to talk after rehearsal. As much time as we’ve been spending together, it can be hard to get Mandy alone.
We pick the Dancing Elephant Café, a crunchy-granola place near Avondale Park, named for Miss Fancy, the circus elephant who used to be an attraction there. The sign out front is already lit up since the light’s fading earlier these days, and there’s actually a chill in the air.
On the stage in the corner, a guitarist’s setting up for what looks like a punk-country crossover. “Cowboy meet fauxhawk,” says Mandy. “I like.”
I think she likes the guy’s exposed arms. Mandy looks like she wants a private concert, but I hope he won’t start playing before we’re gone.
Mandy buys us tea and pumpkin bars—“Made with lots of real butter,” she says, “so hush-hush to my mom.”
I’ve got to talk to someone, but telling Mandy about Peter feels like a risky step. If I tell, it will feel more real, like this might be the start of something.
So, I stall. “You and Drew . . . that’s all good?”
“It’s been rough since auditions,” she allows, and then brightens, “but Caddie, you have no idea how amazing it is to be in love.”
It isn’t her fault I have no idea, that I won’t maybe ever. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me about it?”
“It’s like, I see things differently. Everything looks . . . more of whatever it is.”
I snatch up and tuck away every word. By the time she’s finished, Mandy’s made love sound like a unicorn made of rainbows that cures cancer in its spare time.
“So what’s up with you?” she asks.
“Well.” I break off a piece of my pumpkin bar with a fork. Mandy, of course, is using her hands, but everybody’s gotten used to me keeping the gloves on to eat. “Peter did something super nice,” I say, and at the risk of breaking spy rules, I reveal that Peter was behind Oscar’s definition. “I like him, Mandy.”
She squeals. “I knew it!” she says. “I knew! Maybe this is why you had to get cast as Ophelia. Maybe it’s your fate so you and Peter can fall for each other.”
“Too late,” I say.
“I knew it!” she says. “I was just waiting for you to admit it.”
I’m already wondering if confiding in Mandy was a bad call, but her excitement for me, her pleasure at getting the secret firsthand, makes it worth it.
“Here’s the thing,” I say. “I don’t know what to do about it.”
“You kiss him,” Mandy says. “Duh.”
I think, don’t touch, but in spite of it, I laugh.
“I don’t want . . .” I’m not sure what I can say that won’t reveal too much. “I should probably keep things professional,” I say. “What if something went wrong and we couldn’t stand working together?”
“That’s fear,” Mandy says. “You know what you do with fear? You have to crush it.” For punctuation, she takes a raw sugar cube from the bowl on the table and pulverizes it between her teeth.
“That’s the other thing about being in love,” she says. “I’m not afraid of things so much—it’s like when you ask yourself what’s the worst thing that can happen? It can’t be that bad because Drew is still there.”
“Mandy, what do you have to be afraid of?”
“I get afraid of things,” she says, “looking stupid, saying the wrong thing . . . Everybody does.”
I think about Mom, how her face looked pinched for months before Dad left town. That pinched look, that was fear, the tension that comes before pain.
Maybe it’s mean to ask, but I have to: “What about losing Drew? Are you afraid of that?”
“Ahhhh!” Mandy makes an animal sound in her throat. “Petrified! I don’t think there’s anything scarier than losing a person you care about—except maybe not caring at all.”