by AC Washer
“What?” I whispered. He said nothing.
I tried to shoot my foot out to nudge his, but ended up banging it against his chair, drawing a few looks from a couple other students.
But not from Mickey. Zero response.
“Are you seriously giving me the silent treatment?” I sort of whispered. If anyone had any right to give someone the silent treatment, it was me—if I was any good at staying quiet, that is. Not only did Mickey embarrass me with his “overprotective brother act,” but if I hadn’t waited so long for him to get out of the bathroom, I might be sitting right two feet from the love of my life right now.
Mickey didn’t answer. Instead, he ground his teeth as he crossed his arms. He was now glaring ninja swords at Mr. O’Faolain. ‘Cause really, glaring daggers was nothing compared to this.
I looked back at O’Faolain, trying to figure out what about my gorgeous soulmate was ticking Mickey off so bad. Good-natured Mickey. Nerdy Mickey. He was now Darth Mickey.
I studied O’Faolain as he strung equations across the board. It was strange; he didn’t seem as hot as he had a few moments ago. Not that he wasn’t hot—everyone here was gorgeous—but his forearms weren’t making me drool anymore.
After a few moments, Mr. O’Faolain’s writing wobbled, like he was driving on a bumpy road. He lost his grip, and the red marker dropped from his hand, clattering on the floor.
Everyone went silent. A few kids stared at Mickey. Some at O’Faolain. But most ducked their heads down as if they were examining their cuticles.
A nervousness permeated the room. My gaze swiveled between O’Faolain and Mickey, but I couldn’t make sense of the tension that ran so thick it seemed I could reach out and touch it.
After a minute, the teacher straightened his shoulders and turned around, nodding at Mickey. Only then did Mickey relax, a satisfied smirk replacing his intense glare.
For the rest of the class, no one even glanced in our direction. Mr. O’Faolain, who no longer seemed as soulmatey as I’d first thought, didn’t even look past the first row for the rest of the lesson.
I frowned. Something was very, very strange.
As soon as class ended, I turned to Mickey.
“What was with the staring contest?”
“The what?” Mickey looked at me, confusion written all over his face.
But I knew better. As someone with a ton of experience faking innocence, it was easy to tell when someone else was faking it, too.
“You know exactly what.”
Mickey grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder, heading toward the door.
I scrambled after him. “Well?”
“We don’t like each other.”
“Yeah, I got that, but the staring thing. What was that about? And he seemed so…so…” I glanced back, making sure we’d walked far enough down the hall to be out of O’Faolain’s hearing. “So amazing at first and then he just didn’t. What was that about?”
“Sounds like you came back to your senses.”
“Haha. Funny. Come on, Mickey. What was that?”
But before Mickey replied, Bridgette popped into view.
“One second, Kella,” she said, pulling Mickey away from me. They stood against the opposite wall in the hallway, their whispered exchange drowned out by the rush of students racing between classes. After a few minutes, Mickey shrugged. Bridgette didn’t seem to like that response, frowning back at him before turning her back on him and walking my way.
In the two seconds it took her to cross the hall with Mickey trailing after her, her expression shifted from upset to bright and happy—almost like she’d pushed a button.
“So, Kella,” Bridgette said, her voice bright and peppy, “we’ve got gym now. It’s on the opposite side of school, so we need to hurry.” She tugged on my elbow, pulling me away from Mickey.
“But Mickey needs to tell me—”
“Sorry, no time,” Bridgette said, tugging me further away. “We’ll have to speed walk as it is.” I shot a glare at Mickey, letting him know that we weren’t done here—he owed me an explanation. Mickey batted innocent eyes at me, making me want to punch him.
PE didn’t turn out as bad as I’d thought it would. Bridgette told the teacher I wouldn’t be dressing out for gym today. He shot me a glance, shrugged, and told me to go sit in the bleachers while everyone else did soccer scrimmages.
At first, I kept thinking about math class, equal parts mortified at how I must have looked to my classmates as I stood there drooling over my teacher and puzzled at why everyone—myself included—had acted so weird. Soon, though, Bridgette distracted me from my thoughts. While Bridgette might seem happy-go-lucky, she had an alternate personality on the soccer field.
I watched in fascination as she stole the ball from players running full speed, cutting in front of them so they’d have to jump to avoid tripping over her. One guy shouted something at her, and by her expression, she didn’t appreciate it. A few seconds later, he ended up with a soccer ball to the groin, Bridgette wearing a picture-perfect expression of shocked surprise. But I caught her smug expression as she turned away.
Bridgette stayed out of trouble until the same guy shouted at her after she stole the ball from him again. A few minutes later, she slid her legs under his, sweeping him onto his back as she redirected the ball to a teammate. The whistle blew, the gym teacher waving a red card at Bridgette. Bridgette shrugged, flouncing back to the bleachers, smiling at me. I resolved to make sure I always ended up on her team.
But in the next class…The only thing I learned in English was that Bridgette had zero attention span. She kept scoping everyone out but me. One second, she’d glance at the opening door. The next, at a kid taking a pencil out of his bag. Then, the girl two seats in front of me standing up to throw a tissue in the trash. Bridgette kept her narrowed eyes on the strawberry blonde until she sat down again.
Bridgette had insisted we sit in the back corner furthest from the door, and it turned out to be a good thing, too. I had no doubt she would’ve done a full 180 if anyone so much as sneezed behind us.
When I saw Mickey standing outside our classroom door waiting to walk with me to physics, I leapt at the chance to get away from Bridgette. After fifty minutes of sitting in the same room with her, I’d started jumping at any movement someone made in the classroom to the point where I had no idea what the lesson was about. All I got from class is that we had homework. Involving a paper. Maybe. And that two girls had colds and only one of them used tissues and had pinpoint accuracy in throwing them in the wastebasket. And that the redhead in the second row tapped his pencil against his desk when he was thinking. And the brunette with the long ponytail in the front row liked to play footsie with the leg of her desk. And…well…there was more to notice than I had ever really cared to.
Thankfully, my last class of this stupid block schedule, physics, was a no-Bridgette class, so I actually had a chance of passing it, since she wouldn’t be there to distract me.
Chapter 7
The scent of chocolate chip cookies blasted me as soon as Mickey opened the front door of the house. The smell acted like a gravitational force, pulling us to the kitchen, and Mickey and I willingly played the part of incoming space debris—yeah, physics was my last class of the day. Maeve slid a cookie tray out of the oven and popped it on top of the stove. She looked every bit of the 50s housewife: floral-print apron, matching floral oven mitt, blond hair swept into a bun, and a spotless kitchen as her backdrop. Impressive. Not even a dish in the sink.
“How was school?” Maeve pulled out a spatula from the drawer.
“Good,” Mickey and I answered as we slid into the barstools closest to the cookies.
“Did Mickey show you around?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mickey answered.
“How were classes? Did you make any friends?”
I glanced toward the stairs, wondering if chocolate chip cookies were worth the inquisition. My growling stomach answered the question fo
r me.
“Classes were fine, but half of them are with Goober over here.”
“Kella, that’s no way to talk about Mickey. We treat each other with respect.”
Seriously? Maeve sounded as if she was quoting some lame parenting book word-for-word. I looked over at Mickey to see if she was for real. He shrugged.
“So I met Bridgette today,” I said.
“Oh?” Maeve extended her arm toward Mickey, cookie in hand.
“Yep, all one-hundred-and-twenty pounds of obnoxiousness,” Mickey said. Maeve snatched her hand away before he could touch the cookie.
“Mickey, we don’t mention a girl’s weight,” she said, eyebrows tucked into a V.
Mickey held up his hands. “That was a factual statement—minus the obnoxiousness part. But I don’t think I’d get much pushback if I presented that as fact, too.”
“Factual or not, adolescent girls often struggle with weight. I don’t think I need to remind you that we do not wish to…” Maeve glanced at me. “Exacerbate any unhealthy perceptions by focusing on the subject.”
Mickey winced. “Yes, ma’am.” He got his cookie.
I rolled my eyes. There it was again. Just because I was a little skinny didn’t make me anorexic. Hello, some people had crazy fast metabolisms. No matter how much I ate, I couldn’t pack on any weight.
“What’s with you calling her obnoxious? Aren’t you guys dating?” I asked. Maeve handed me a cookie as I propped my elbows on top of the counter.
“It is possible to date someone who’s obnoxious,” he said.
“Wow,” I said, offended on her behalf. “How about you put the girl out of her misery and just break up then? No one wants to be the ‘obnoxious’ girlfriend.”
“Maybe she hopes my feelings will change.” Mickey shrugged. “And as long as she’s content with the relationship—”
“Wait, Bridgette knows what you think about her and she’s still dating you? She can’t be that desperate. I mean, she’s gotta have some self-respect.” I raised the cookie to my lips only to lower it again. “And even if she doesn’t, what are you getting out of this relationship? Wait,” I said, holding up my hand, “don’t answer that. I don’t want you to answer that. I will lose all respect for you if you do.”
Mickey grimaced. “It’s not like—never mind.”
I studied Mickey’s closed expression for a moment, glad he at least opened the possibility that there was more to the relationship than the obvious. Maybe he and Bridgette had started out as friends. Come to think of it, Caleb had had plenty of obnoxious friends—and girlfriends—but that hadn’t made him like them any less. Maybe it was a guy thing. Or maybe I didn’t have much experience in the “relationships” department, friends included.
After all, friends hung out at each other’s houses. Friends could talk on the phone without their parents yelling in the background. Friends shared secrets. And sharing my secrets had never been an option. Not unless I wanted my prosecutor dad to make everyone’s lives a living hell. No, the closest I got to having friends was ragging on the guys I would race my Dad’s car against once every couple of weeks.
I raised my cookie up for a bite, but where my teeth expected to meet chewy, gooey goodness, they slammed into a brick instead. My hand moved reflexively to my jaw. Maeve might look like a 50s housewife, but she must have flunked Home Ec.
Mickey gamely chomped down on his serving of over-baked tragedy instead of looking at me. Maybe Bridgette was right. Maybe he’d grow to love her. Maybe he only thought she was obnoxious because he hadn’t moved on from his old girlfriend—the one who died. When he did, maybe Bridgette thought she’d be right there, ready to take her place.
The thought made me cringe. Bridgette—any girl—deserved better than that. And in any case, I’d strung together a pretty long list of “maybes.” Maybe I was wrong.
The phone on the kitchen counter rang. Maeve, who’d been wiping down the already clean counters, paused, her head whipping up to stare at it.
It rang again.
No one moved.
“Um, want me to get it?” I asked.
Maeve stepped toward the phone as if I’d broken some sort of taboo, picking it up on the third ring.
“Who is this?” she said.
I arched a brow at Mickey, who shook his head and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “That’s Maeve.”
“I see.” Pause. “Yes. She’s here.”
Maeve held the phone out to me. “Kella? Your caseworker wishes to speak with you.”
I grabbed it. “Hello?”
“Hey, Kella, it’s me, Deena. I just wanted to check in with you. How was your first day at school?”
“One second.” I looked over at Mickey and Maeve. Maeve leaned with her back to the counter, her arms folded as she watched me. Mickey wasn’t looking at me, but he was on cookie number two. That could only mean he was using it as an excuse to listen.
I covered the receiver before I said, “Could I have a little privacy? Please?” Maeve opened her mouth but seemed to think better of whatever she was about to say. Instead, she shut her mouth and walked out of the kitchen.
“You, too,” I said to Mickey. He got up and threw his cookie in the trash before he left the kitchen.
“Okay, Deena? School was insane.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll catch up soon.”
“No, not that kind of insane. I mean…” What did I mean? That the students and teachers were beyond hot? That I think I might have drooled on my desk in Mr. O’Faolain's class, but I couldn’t be sure because I was too busy ogling him? Anything I said would have Deena rolling her eyes.
“Things are just weird here.”
“Well,” Deena said, drawing the word out. “Maybe that has to do with you being new and all. It’s a small town, and small towns do things different than cities like Denver. It takes time to get used to them—and them to get used to you.”
“But…” I sighed loud enough into the receiver that it crackled back at me. “Sure.”
“So how is your foster family? You settling in?”
“Maeve’s fine. A little uptight. But Mickey—I know he doesn’t look like it, but he’s got a shitload of drama following him around. I could do without that.”
“But he’s treating you okay?”
“Well, yeah,” I admitted.
“Good,” Deena said. She took a deep breath, and I found myself tensing, waiting for what she was about to say. Deep breaths over the phone weren’t usually a good sign.
“About your brother…”
Panic kicked in, setting my heart racing. This wasn’t just a friendly call. “Caleb? What’s wrong? What happened?”
“He’s fine, he’s fine. The doctors just had a little scare a couple hours after we left yesterday.”
“What kind of scare?”
Deena sighed. “The kind where he didn’t get transferred out of the ICU. But he is stable for now.”
For now.
“I told you something like this was going to happen. I knew it.” I wanted to shout it into the phone, but I didn’t want Maeve or Mickey to come to see what was going on.
“Honey, there wasn’t anything you could have done to stop it. It’s just one of those things.”
“No, he needs me there. You know how some patients get better when they’ve got family talking to them? I bet Caleb needed that and not some lame nurse Kate that reads him romance novels,” I said.
“You couldn’t have stayed up there by yourself. You know that. Not with you being a minor.” Deena paused. When she spoke again, her voice was carefully neutral. “Kella, how’d you know about his nurse?”
“What?”
“Kate. How’d you know he had a nurse named Kate?”
“I don’t know, I—” I stopped to think. The dream. Caleb told me in my dream. But that was impossible. But what were the chances that dream Caleb told me something that only real Caleb would have known? Then again, Kate was a pretty common name�
�it could have been a coincidence. A really strange coincidence.
“Kella? You there?” Deena asked.
“Uh, yeah. Um, maybe you mentioned it?”
“No, I just met that one today,” Deena said. “Were you walking around that hospital when you weren’t supposed to?”
“No, I—”
“Tell me the truth.”
“Maybe one of my nurses mentioned her?” I said, because explaining that I’d dreamed it would so not go over well. Deena would never believe me.
“Okay,” Deena said, her tone letting me know that even though she wasn’t buying it, she wasn’t going to push it either.
“Deena? I want to see him.”
Her sigh crackled in my ear, and I gripped the phone even harder, scared she’d say no.
“It’s not a good time right now, Kella. You need to be in school. You’re not going to catch up if you keep missing classes. I can’t take you on the weekends, and Ms. Reid—well, she made not having to transport you to and from Denver a condition of placement, so we have to work around my schedule.”
“But I need to see him,” I ground out. “Please.”
Another sigh. “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe there’s a no-school day coming up. I’ll check it out.”
I nodded before I remembered she couldn’t see me. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
After dinner that night, I headed upstairs determined to catch up on schoolwork so that Maeve would let me start seeing Caleb during the week. Each of my teachers had handed me a manilla folder filled with worksheets and lists of makeup assignments. A week’s worth of lessons wouldn’t have been so bad, but I’d also missed the week before because Dad had some sort of conference that he’d taken me to because he didn’t trust me at home by myself.
I sighed as I looked at the thick stack of work. Well, it was only going to get worse once I got my missed assignments from my other classes the next day. I grabbed the Calculus folder, knowing the longer I put it off, the worse it would be.