After our early dinner, we end up running into Trevor and Teyonna, who have taken it upon themselves to add more items to their scavenger hunt: a purple shoe, somebody bald, a REAL unicorn, an overflowing toilet. They claim they’re just trying to pass the time while they wait for the remaining two teams to finish, but I notice that the handwriting switches up with each line and suspect they’re doing this to entertain each other. They seem to be getting along a whole lot better than Alex and I are.
I’m slumped on a bench outside a gas station, where Alex is using the bathroom. Trevor bolts past into the building, sneakers skidding loudly across tile, scooping up an armful of snack-size Flamin’ Hot Cheetos bags.
“Tell me about it.” Teyonna says with a light groan as she drops onto the bench next to me, even though I haven’t said anything. She rotates her right foot in circles until her flip-flop falls off. “These are not the kind of shoes you wanna wear for walking around all day.”
A lady passes by and plops a baby onto Teyonna’s lap, then heads right into the gas station. “Denise!” Teyonna shouts after her. “How could you do this to me?” She leans my way, dropping conspiratorially, “I’ve got baby fever.”
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Denise is Trevor’s cousin. She’s here all week, like me. The wedding’s turned into a family reunion.”
“Look at those cheeks.” I smile at the baby. “What a cutie.”
“Wanna hold her?”
“Sure.”
I take the baby, and when she snuggles up to me, a strange guilt tugs in my chest. I remember Spencer’s cold expression, how he’d wanted to be Adalyn’s favorite without putting in any effort. She’d wanted me to hold her when she was sick, tired, upset; she ran into my arms when she was hurt, she’d swallow the medicine when I pleaded. He didn’t try. “What’s the point when she prefers you, anyway?”
“Watch this.” Teyonna blows raspberries on the baby’s belly, making her squeal. “She’s so freakin’ adorable! I can’t stand it. Ahhh, I want one.”
“Me, too.” I pass the baby back to her.
Teyonna slides me a look that is first empathetic but morphs into surprise. A spike of alarm. “With Trevor?”
“Um.”
“Sorry, that was nosy. Now I sound like one of Trevor’s aunts, always coming for my throat with those kind of questions.” Teyonna claps her hands against her knees in a Miss-Susie-Had-a-Steamboat pattern, riddled with pent-up energy, tapping her feet in that quickstep way I’ve seen soccer players do during practice. “He’s a riot, isn’t he?”
“There is only one Trevor in this world, for sure.”
She half smiles. “Don’t I know it. I used to think he might be . . . not too much for me to handle, per se, but more than I could deal with at that time. He seems to have mellowed.”
I don’t think I could ever call him mellow, but at least he hasn’t been stealing helium tanks recently.
“I don’t think I’ve had near as much fun since then,” Teyonna says wistfully. Then she straightens, as if she didn’t mean to say it. “I’m glad he found you, that he’s happy. You two are cute together.”
Discomfort pinches my nerves. It’s a lot easier to lie to Alex than to Teyonna, who’s never done anything to hurt me. I’d have to be an idiot to miss that emotion in her eyes.
I hesitate. “Trevor . . . I haven’t been with him long. He and I, it’s not . . .”
I’m spared from blowing our cover when Alex and Trevor walk out of the gas station at the same time, interrupting us. Alex doesn’t even break stride, just cuts a peculiar expression at Trevor and Teyonna, who are now whisper-giggling, heads bent together. He shakes his head. “Let’s go, Tempest. It’s time to tell me your secrets.”
I feel it again—that electrical burst—and my breath stills. There’s a strange spark in his eyes that tells me he isn’t just referring to the fourth scavenger hunt clue.
A raindrop lands on my forehead. Another darkens the sleeve over his shoulder. I lead him across the road, into the woods, and he reaches for the list in my hand; as it passes from mine to his, a memory glows brightly between us.
THEN
I reach an arm behind me, practically dislocating my elbow to sneak around the binder and stack of textbooks on the window ledge. I hate sitting in this spot directly after gym, wet from half an hour in the pool, cold air blowing from the vent above turning my stiff hair into chlorinated icicles. My skin’s uncomfortably tight, eyes watering. Good thing this class doesn’t have any hot guys in it, because I haven’t reapplied my eyeliner yet. I’m naked without my eyeliner.
Elbow somehow intact, I manage to pass the note into Yasmin’s hand without removing my gaze from the projector.
Mrs. Chevis is jotting notes in green dry-erase marker across the clear sheet, pad of her hand stained. Why did the Ottoman Empire retreat from the (she yawns and checks her notes) Balkans?
The door opens. Yasmin slinks inside, hangs the hall pass up on its peg, and begins to walk over to her desk, which is behind mine. When did she get up to go to the bathroom? I whirl around in confusion, but her seat’s empty. If she isn’t behind me, then who just took my note? The only other person nearby is Alex, who sits at my eight o’clock, cheeks rather flushed, eyes cast down, trying to hide behind his hair.
“Psst.”
I know he hears me. He makes a jerking movement, as if he almost glanced up but caught himself in time.
“Pssst. Did you take my note?”
Alex has superhuman memory. He only has to look at the screen for half a second, then neatly copies down three full sentences. I forget the end of a word while I’m still writing it. “Yes.”
Yasmin’s eyes bug out. She leans, loud-whispering, “Took your what?” Her neck and eyelids are packed with pink roll-on scented glitter, so she must’ve been busy decorating herself in the bathroom.
That.
Is.
Not the response I thought I’d get, even though it’s clear he could’ve been the only person to intercept my private business.
Right now, Alex King is suddenly interesting. Much more interesting than the Ottoman Empire, anyway. “Why’d you take my note?”
“You handed it to me.”
“That was for Yasmin.” I check on Mrs. Chevis. She’s scratching her head with the marker’s cap end now, the sound of her own voice putting her to sleep. She has newborn twins. At the beginning of the semester, she unloaded her frustrations about the “crap maternity leave this district gives to new parents” onto our class and has been trying to make us all forget what she said about the superintendent with Friday movies as bribes.
“Yasmin wasn’t here,” Alex points out crisply.
“I didn’t know that, though. The note was obviously for Yasmin. You shouldn’t have taken it. You—”
He looks up at me then, lasering me with the full force of his eyes, and it lands a physical blow. His curly hair’s untidy on the left side, like he’s had a fist propped in it, face tilted toward the right half of the room. He tries to replicate my triangular note-folding but gives up and goes for an old-fashioned square. His hand is much warmer than mine when his fingers pass the note back into my waiting palm.
I unfold it, scanning with a third-party viewpoint to gauge how bad I came off in this note between Yasmin and me.
Hey, Yaz! I am so BORED!!!!!!!! What are you doing later? I have to work until 8 but I told my parents I get off at 9, so you want to get ice cream? I know Corey works there but if I show up alone I’ll look like a creep.
I don’t know I have to babysit my little brother while my mom works. Tomorrow?
Tomorrow I’m supposed to help my grandma at her store.
Maybe I’ll come by? I’ll let you know. What’s your number? My parents have my phone cuz I’m grounded so I’ll have to call you on the house phone.
Below that, my cell phone number is as big as a traffic sign in sparkly gel pen, followed by a string of hearts. I gasp, flattening the note to my chest before stuffing it into my pencil pouch.
“Did you read any of this?” I hiss at Alex.
Without looking at me, he angles his notebook in my direction so that I can see my own phone number dashed across the top of his notes in neat handwriting.
The gall of this kid! Yasmin and I exchange exclamation mark faces.
My attention ricochets between Mrs. Chevis and Alex. Another detention will cut into my work shift, which will cut into my slowly accumulating savings. The day I’m legally an adult, it is Goodbye, Ohio! “Forget what you saw,” I tell him ominously.
“Sorry, can’t do that.” He’s doing that thing again, gaze flickering briefly up at the teacher’s notes, then expelling an entire paragraph onto his paper. His handwriting’s better than mine. Heat flares up my neck, tingling in the tips of my ears for some reason. Is Alex my nemesis now?
“But.” I am at a loss. Yasmin’s eating this up, and I admit I’m enjoying the end-of-the-school-day drama. World history is usually when I nap behind my binder. Or ditch to see a matinee. I haven’t been able to convince Yasmin to join me ever since we wound up in the same theater as her mom when we were supposed to be giving an oral report I’d neglected to prepare for. I’m hanging as far out into the aisle as I can brave without spilling from my chair, eyes intense on his every flinch, the way his knee won’t quit bouncing. High color slashes his cheekbones, and a rapid pulse thumps below the hard angle of his jaw. “You can’t call that number.”
“I’m going to.”
He says it so firmly, and my god. Where has this boy’s voice been? All I can do is stare. He doesn’t look at me again, but his neck gets redder. He shoves his notebook into his backpack as if worried I’ll dive for it. The thought hadn’t occurred to me.
Yasmin covers her mouth with her hands to stifle a giggle.
“Then I won’t answer,” I tell him.
“I’ll text.”
“I won’t read your texts.”
He holds my stare. “You will.”
Holy shit, I think I’m blushing. It is the most horrible sensation to have ever happened to me. My skin is being dipped into boiling oil.
“Romina!”
I whip around to face the front. Mrs. Chevis isn’t too tired to put me in my place, unfortunately. She’s told me twice so far this year that I am one of the “most inattentive and disruptive students she’s had the joy of teaching” to which I pointed out that she’s only been teaching for three years. Get back to me when you’re mid-career like Ms. Linden and then evaluate how bad I’ve been.
The bell rings. By the time I’ve collected my stuff, Alex is already ducking out the door into the hallway’s swell of students. A Milky Way sits on my desk.
I pick it up: The wrapper is warm, like it’s been in his pocket, and I’d bet anything the chocolate inside is gooey and melted. I am not going to answer a strange boy’s texts, but I suppose I’ll take the candy.
