MRS. LOT OPENED THE DOOR AND smiled at me. “Hi, Kat,” she said. “He’s down in the basement.”
“Thanks,” I said, returning her smile. I went down the hallway and made the three turns that took me to the stairs to the basement. I could hear he was playing already, but I needed a second to prepare myself. Why was my gastrointestinal system having so much trouble with the idea of being around Tyler? Is it possible to have a stomach flu just from being around one particular person?
Stop being ridiculous, Kat, I told myself. I took a few deep breaths and started down the stairs.
Halfway down, I was able to see him sitting there on the sofa, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He was so focused on the screen that he didn’t notice me. It gave me a second to look him over, which confirmed what my internal plumbing had already figured out: I had it for this guy. My best guy friend who I’d known forever. The guy who had gone away for the summer and had come back so cute that it almost hurt to look at him.
The guy who was currently beheading a zombie.
Yeah, I had it for him bad.
But as I looked at him, I thought about Olivia and how she had it for him too. Olivia the gazelle. Kat the warthog.
He would never go for me in a million years. Sure, I was his friend, and obviously that hadn’t changed over the summer, but he would never look at me that way. No one wants to date the warthog. Better to just get him and Olivia together, and I’d lose this stupid crush on him, which didn’t even make sense to begin with.
Taking another deep breath, I got to the bottom of the stairs and waited for a break in the action.
“Hey,” I said after he had completed his move. I didn’t want him to get killed by a zombie simply because I’d distracted him at the wrong time.
He paused the game and looked over, grinning. “Hey! About time.”
“I can’t stay,” I said, walking over to the chair beside him, suddenly too nervous to even think about sitting on the couch next to him.
His smile faltered a little. “Oh. How come?”
“My dad’s not home yet. We haven’t even eaten dinner.”
“Wow. That kind of stinks.”
I nodded.
He glanced back at the TV and started up the game again. “You could have just texted me.”
“I know. But I wanted to talk to you about something.”
He paused the game and looked at me. “Sounds serious.” He frowned. “Is something wrong?”
Yes. It’s wrong that I’m sort of freaking out and feel like I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. “No, no,” I said, hoping I sounded more normal to him than I did in my head. “I just wanted to ask you . . . uh . . . are you going to the dance?”
He blinked a few times, his head sort of rolling back as though that was about the last thing he’d expected me to say. I might as well have just asked him about his next trip to Mars. “I wasn’t planning on it. Why?”
“Uh, no,” I said, waving off the idea and laughing. “Of course you wouldn’t go. Um . . . so. What do you think of Olivia? She got really tall over the summer, huh?”
He did some more blinking and frowned. “Yeah. I guess.”
“It makes her a really good dancer. Being so tall, I mean. Like a gazelle,” I said. Because I couldn’t seem to stop babbling. This was exactly why I hadn’t come over since he’d returned from camp—ugh, could I be any lamer?
“Like a what?”
“A gazelle. You know, like an antelope? We learned about them in that unit on African savannahs? Oh, wait, you weren’t at school last year, so maybe you don’t know about savannahs. I have a book on them, if you want to borrow it. Really interesting stuff. Gazelles, I mean. And savannahs.”
He scrunched up his nose. “Kat, is something wrong?”
Yes. I like you and I can’t stop talking. “No, why?”
“Because you’re acting weird, your face is red, and your voice is kind of . . . screechy.”
“Is not!” I screeched.
Sigh. I tried again. “It’s not. And I’m fine. I’m just wondering what you think of Olivia, that’s all.”
He shrugged and looked away. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Well, think!”
He turned his wide eyes back to me. “What?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I meant, she’s so beautiful, don’t you think?”
“I guess so,” he said, shrugging again. He turned back to the TV and started up the game. Not a good sign, but I pressed on.
“And she is sooooo popular this year already.”
“So?” he asked as he stabbed a zombie in the eye with his broadsword.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just thought you’d be into her.”
“She’s not really my type.”
My heart lurched at that. He had a type? More than that, he’d thought about his type enough to know she wasn’t it? “What’s your type?”
He glanced at me for half a second and then back at the TV. “I don’t know. Someone with a brain, I guess. Someone who doesn’t obsess over which ‘boy-band hottie’ she wants to kiss most.”
Uh-oh, time to do damage control. “When she did that speech in homeroom about her band boyfriend, she was doing it ironically,” I said, hoping I was using the word right. “She didn’t really mean it. She was being funny. She has a really good sense of humor.”
He looked at me, and I knew he wasn’t buying it.
“Anyway, she’s definitely the girl you want to be with at the dance, if you know what I mean. . . .”
He paused the game again and looked at me. “What’s going on here, Kat?”
I swallowed as a million thoughts whirled around in my brain and I scrambled to sort out something to say. “Nothing, just, uh . . .”
Thanks a lot, brain.
“And I thought we were going to do a scavenger hunt this past weekend,” he said, scrunching up his face into a frown. “I miss those.”
I cringed and looked down at my hands. We used to do these goofy scavenger hunts where I’d climb up the tree that went right to his window and we’d exchange lists of ten items to gather—things like werewolf hair (which Hector “donated”), a hawk master’s gauntlet (one of Mrs. Lot’s rubber kitchen gloves), dragon’s blood (hummingbird-feeder nectar), and even fairy dust (Laura was not happy when I made it out of one of her sparkly eye shadows). Whoever collected all the items first won. The prize was usually something dumb—like getting knighted or having the loser be the winner’s servant for the day—but it never mattered. It was more about the game.
On Saturday, Tyler had texted me that he had a list ready for our first hunt of the school year, but I’d bailed, too nervous to spend that much time with him. Even though, at the same time, I really missed doing the hunts too. We always had so much fun and laughed like crazy at what we’d come up with for the items.
I just wanted things to get back to how they were. But how could that happen when I felt like barfing every time I was around him?
“I had to do a bunch of chores,” I said, still not looking at him.
“Really?” he asked, and I could tell he didn’t believe me.
I hated lying to him, but what could I say? You’re too cute now and I don’t know how to be your friend anymore without it being weird?
I nodded and changed the subject. “Anyway, I just thought you’d want to talk about Olivia. You don’t know her all that well, but since you’re at school with us now, you’re going to be spending a lot more time with her.”
“Not if I can help it,” he muttered as he started up the game again.
Before I could say anything to that, my phone buzzed in my pocket. “I’ve got to go,” I said.
“See you tomorrow,” he said as he stabbed another zombie in the heart.
Which was exactly what I was going to do to Olivia.