by Dahlia Adler
I’m so impressed by it all that I don’t even realize Dave is watching me gape like a dork until he says, “You look like you just entered a museum of chocolate and someone told you that you could lick the entire thing from floor to ceiling.”
My cheeks prickle, though whether it’s because I’m embarrassed at being a geek or because Dave is talking about licking things, I’m not sure. “I really like books,” I say meekly, tearing my eyes away from the stacks and attempting to meet his like a normal person.
His lips curve up in one corner. “Yeah, I got that. So what’s your favorite?”
I drop my eyes to the little insignia on his rugby shirt, afraid the blush I can feel his smile inducing is gonna sell me out. I’m not used to talking about books; Fitz used to make fun of my “girly princess books” so much I started hiding them from him. But I can already sense Dave wouldn’t be like that, so, screw it. “You can’t possibly expect me to pick just one. But if it was written by Tamora Pierce, Diana Wynne Jones, or Terry Pratchett, chances are it’s near the top of my list.”
“Good choices,” he says with a smile. “No love for Tolkien?”
“Haven’t read him yet,” I admit shamefully. “He’s on my to-read list, though, I swear. Those books are just always checked out of the library.”
Dave stares at me with a dumbfounded expression. “What kind of self-proclaimed book lover—a high fantasy lover, no less!—has never read Tolkien? He was only the most incredibly brilliant writer ever. The things that man invented! Seriously, he’d better jump to the very top of your to-read list immediately. I’ll be quizzing you on him tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. No, it isn’t possible that the mere suggestion of seeing Dave tomorrow—even one made as a joke—is the reason I suddenly feel like doing a touchdown dance. Clearly, the smell of old books is getting to me. “Okay, Lord of the Rings is like a thousand pages,” I inform him, trying to keep my thoughts on a sane track. “I’ll need at least a weekend.”
“A whole weekend? But—”
He’s cut off by the sound of a ringing cell phone. My ringing cell phone, I realize, utterly mortified as every single person in the library turns to stare and shush me. I reach into my bag for my phone as I dash out into the entrance. Of course, it’s Vic.
“Hey,” I whisper as I start to walk toward the exit onto campus, only to realize that it’s suddenly started pouring…and I’ve left my umbrella in the car. The librarians are glaring at me, but there’s no chance I’m stepping out in that. “I’m in the library and I can’t stay on the phone. What’s up?”
“I’m coming to get you with Sasha and Kelly. They’re gonna take us to this coffee shop everyone goes to and then we’re gonna go to the mall so we can get you a hot outfit for the Gamma party tonight. Be ready in two!”
“The what?” I ask, but I’m talking to nothing; she’s already hung up.
I can feel my stomach start to churn and I know I don’t want to spend the afternoon with Sasha and Kelly, whoever they are. I definitely don’t want to go shopping and I really don’t want to go to whatever a Gamma party is. What I really wanna do is stay in the library, especially if it means spending a little more time with—
Okay, no. I am not tailoring my college visit around a guy, no matter how much my best friend would probably approve. How could I even think of prioritizing some random boy I just met over getting the basics of the college experience with Vic—sorry, Tori—the very person I’d come to Southeastern to do those things with? She’s been dreaming of going to a Greek party forever, and as horrifying as I find the idea, I want her to have this.
“I have to go,” I tell Dave before I can make any excuses not to tell Dave. “Apparently I’m going to something called a Gamma party, and judging by the friend who just informed me of this fact, it’s not a physics-themed thing.”
“Alas, what man can compete with a keg and a toga?” He smiles ruefully, and is it my imagination or does he look the tiniest bit wistful that I’m leaving him? “It was nice to meet you, Reagan. Thanks for helping me find my way.”
“Right back atcha,” I reply, wishing I had more—and more intelligent—things to say. When I come up with nothing, I turn and start to walk out, but just as I’m about to pass through the doors, I turn back around and see that he hasn’t moved. In fact, I could swear he’s watching me leave. I take that as a sign that it’s okay to say, “Hey, if you’re feeling up for a party later…” I let it trail off, completely unsure how I could possibly end that.
He flashes those perfect, blinding teeth again. “I’ll check and see if my toga’s back from the dry cleaners.”
VICTORIA
I can’t believe I’m here. I’m at a frat party. I’m at a freaking frat party. I feel like I’ve “arrived,” and it doesn’t hurt that I’m wearing an awesome dress I found at the mall. Nothing makes me feel better about the nasty girls who’ve hated on the color of my skin my entire life than looking superhot in white. Not that anyone here has been anything but super nice to me; every single girl I met on the tour of the Lambda house was a total sweetheart. And yeah, okay, maybe I’m still the only brown chick walking around, but if anyone’s noticed, they certainly haven’t said anything to me.
For once in my life, I think I actually manage to blend.
Even now, my new dress is a little quieter than the stuff I usually wear—okay, a lot quieter—but it helps me fit in perfectly and I’ve already figured out how I’m going to turn it into an awesome outfit with some pinking shears and leather cord when I get home.
Next to me, Rae is all fidgety, and I practically have to hold her down. She keeps rising up on her toes, as if that’ll help the fact that she’s barely taller than the couch. It’s like she’s looking for someone, except she doesn’t know anyone there but me.
She does look super cute. I still can’t get over that she actually bought a top at the mall, a cute halter thing that shows off the muscle in her scrawny arms from years of carrying heavy trays. I’ve never seen her spend money on anything non-essential, though of course she and I have totally different ideas of what falls into that category. She’s still wearing the plain old jean skirt she always wears when she’s not wearing jeans, or jean shorts, or something in corduroy that may as well be jeans. But still, it works.
“Are you looking for somebody in particular?” I tease her, since she seems so antsy. I’m obviously kidding, or at least I mean to be, but then she starts blushing, and I realize she is. “Did you meet someone?” I know I sound every bit as stunned as I feel, but I can’t help it. I have never seen Reagan look twice at a guy—or girl. What exactly did I miss while I was checking out the Lambda house?
“Nobody really,” she says dismissively, but then she bounces up again on her toes to catch a glimpse of the door, and her blond curls bounce right along with her. “I told this guy I met for two seconds to come to the party and I don’t know what I was thinking but now I’ll feel bad if he shows up, completely lost.”
“If he goes to Southeastern, I’m sure he knows his way around a frat party,” I assure her, still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that Rae’s not only met a guy in our short day here but has gone as far as to invite him to the party. Like a date. How on earth did she do that already? I still haven’t even found a guy willing to bring me a beer.
“He doesn’t.” Her gaze is still fixed on the door. “He’s a prospective, like us.”
My nose wrinkles without my even thinking about it, and I’m glad she’s not looking at me. “Why would you waste your time with a high school senior when you could get with a college guy?”
Now she does look at me, and she rolls her eyes. “I’m not getting with anyone,” she says flatly, and I recognize the tone and expression from a million similar conversations before. It’s her response to my “Rae, Jason Brailey totally wants to bang you” (which was absolutely true) all over again, or to “Lance Oosterhouse has been checking you out for the last hour” (which was true, but apparently onl
y because he wanted to copy her white streak for a rave that weekend, not realizing it was natural).
I don’t know why she’s so resistant, but I have my suspicions. I’ve seen and heard guys around school harassing her—the same guys who were doing it at Joe’s this morning—though I usually pretend I don’t, because it’s so clear she prefers it that way. I found a picture once, though, when we were digging around her closet for Halloween costume ideas. When I asked who the blond guy in it was, she insisted he was nobody and snatched the picture out of my hand to toss it in the trash, but I saw “I love you” chicken-scratched on the back. She’s never mentioned him, and I never ask. I feel like I owe her that, even though at times like this, my restraint totally kills me.
I’m still watching her watch the door when Sasha comes over with a super cute guy in tow, and I quickly smooth down my dress and press my lips together to make sure they’re evenly glossed.
“Mark,” she says, looping her skinny arm through his massive one, “this is the girl I was telling you about. Tori, this is Mark. Mark, Tori is very new here”—her tone is so suggestive, I can feel Rae mock-vomiting at the back of my head—“and needs someone to show her a good time. Get her a drink, will you?”
Instead, he turns to Rae. “And you are…?”
I pray she won’t respond with her patented nasty “Not interested.” Fortunately she just says her name, although she ignores the meaty hand he’s holding out to her. Then, suddenly, I see her freeze, and my eyes immediately cut to the door.
I was sure that look meant The Guy had arrived, but all I see are a redheaded chick in braids and cutoffs and a lanky Indian guy in a Battlestar Galactica T-shirt. I’m about to ask Rae where her guy is when Battlestar looks in our direction and flashes the brightest, whitest smile I’ve ever seen. He’s obviously her man, and even kinda cute now that the smile’s replaced his look of terrified confusion.
He starts to make his way over and I feel an overwhelming urge to give Rae her privacy. I turn to Mark, and for what I’m pretty sure is the first time in my entire life, I ask, “Do you wanna dance?”
“How about we get a drink first?” His voice is low and manly, as if to serve as an extra reminder that I’m not playing with high school boys anymore, and it makes my toes curl in my stilettos. The last thing I see before I close my eyes and let Mark pull my hand through the crowd is Sasha, smiling at me with approval.
CHAPTER FOUR
REAGAN
“That’s not a toga,” I inform Dave as he winds his way over, his shaggy black hair falling in his eyes.
He shrugs. “Still at the dry cleaners.”
“So hard to find good help these days.”
“Too true.”
We’re both quiet for a long enough moment for me to ponder how weird this is, that I met a guy and mentioned this party and now he’s here, and it seems like he’s here for me, and I’m wearing a new shirt, and I never buy a new shirt.
“So this is what the kids are doing these days, huh?” Dave scans the room, and I take advantage of the fact that his eyes aren’t on me by glancing at his butt. His jeans hang low on his non-existent hips, which I find sexy for no reason I can possibly explain. I even love that he’s wearing a Battlestar T-shirt. There’s just something about the way he owns his nerdiness—
“Deciding how you feel about being seen with a guy in a Battlestar Galactica T-shirt?”
Oh God, I’ve been caught staring. I’m about to insist that I was looking at something else—I have no idea what—when he adds, “Your judgment wounds me.”
“No judgment,” I say, holding up my hands. “No frakking way.”
His face lights up like the hideously tacky inflatable Santa this one family at the trailer park always puts out around Christmas and leaves outside until around St. Patrick’s Day, when one of the six boys who crams into that tiny trailer inevitably knocks it down in a drunken stupor. It’s covered in duct tape and bandages, but somehow, it always seems to shine even brighter the next year. “A fan!”
“Not fan enough to own a T-shirt,” I admit, “but I’ve seen a few episodes. Shockingly, there’s never a waitlist for those DVDs at the library.”
“Well, it’s hard to beat a true superfan,” he says with a cocky grin that so doesn’t belong on his face that I can’t help but laugh. The grin turns into a frown. “I sense you’re mocking me again.”
“Your powers of intuition are only getting stronger, Clark Kent.”
He wrinkles his nose. “First of all, Superman doesn’t even have powers of intuition; he’s a guy who changes in a phone booth. Second of all, my fandom is a DC-free zone, thank you very much. Thor or bust.”
“I think you’re going to need to work your way up to Thor,” I inform him, nodding my head toward arms so thin I could probably wrap my thumb and middle finger around his biceps.
“What?” He flexes his arm muscle, and although there is indeed a little bulge when he does, he’s nowhere near godlike territory. Elementary school basketball player, maybe. “Not impressed by my superhuman strength?”
“Well, I’m sure weighing under a hundred pounds helps you get around faster than the average guy,” I offer helpfully. “Less bulk to carry around and all that.”
“I can’t believe I’m being picked on about my size by a twerp who’s probably not legally allowed to ride Space Mountain.”
“Now that’s just mean.”
“And making fun of my manhood isn’t?”
“I did not make fun of your, uh…” My eyes flicker downward, and in an instant I realize I’ve just pointedly glanced at his crotch. There’s so much heat emanating from my face right now that I’m afraid getting too close to the tequila would make me spontaneously combust.
He purses his lips, which quirk up at the corners. “You were saying?”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Hey, we can’t all look like X-Men,” he says, folding his arms over his chest.
“Are you saying I look like one of the X-Men?” I’m not sure how to take that.
“Duh.” He reaches out and flips up the one white curl that hangs in my face. “Rogue, obviously.”
“Oh, yes. Her. Obviously.”
He gives me a you must be kidding look. “Please tell me you know who Rogue is.”
“Hey, I knew ‘frak.’ That has to count for something.”
The head shake reeks of disappointment. “Absorbs powers and memories? Not ringing a bell?”
“Nope, but I’m guessing she has a freak-of-nature white streak in her hair too.”
“Indeed she does. And it’s not freaky, it’s cool. Or at least it’s freaky in the coolest possible way.”
I tuck my mutant hair back behind my ear, trying to ignore the weird flip thing my stomach’s doing right now. “So if you have X-Men envy, I take that to mean you don’t have weird spiky things hiding in your hands?”
He sighs. “You know Wolverine. Of course you know Wolverine. Why do the chicks always know Wolverine?”
“‘The chicks’? I think I’ve been insulted.”
“It’s because of Hugh Jackman, isn’t it.”
“Duh. So hot.”
He grins, and I can’t help smiling too, and the two of us are smiling like idiots when Vic strolls up to us, a “WTF” look on her face and the guy I’d met earlier—a much closer fit for Thor—in tow.
“Having fun?” she asks with a knowing smile, eyebrow raised in a perfect arch I just know she’s practiced in the mirror.
“It’s not the worst party I’ve ever been to,” I concede.
“I think it’s the only party I’ve ever been to,” Dave says, scratching his head, and Mark looks so perplexed by him that I just laugh again.
“Yes, well, you chose a good one,” I say. “What with my being here and all. Not to mention my absolutely best friend in the entire universe. Dave Shah, this is Vic—” She jerks her head slightly and I remember the whole “Tori” thing. For some reason, I don’t want to introduce her t
o Dave that way, but I obviously have no choice right now. “Um, Tori Reyes. Tori, Dave. And this is Mark,” I add quickly.
“Hey.” Dave flashes a smile at Vic and goes to shake Mark’s hand, which I can see he regrets a few moments later when he retrieves slightly crushed fingers from Mark’s iron grip. “You’re a senior too?” he asks Vic.
“Freshman,” she replies, her voice so loaded with meaning that I know even Dave can tell she’s lied about being a student there to Mark. “But I’m flattered you think I’m legal to drink.”
“Maybe that’s because you smell like a distillery.” As soon as I say it, I know I probably shouldn’t have. Behind me, Dave stifles a laugh, but Vic is not amused. It’s true, though—I can tell she’s had a couple already, and we’ve barely been at the party twenty minutes. Still, I recognize that I should probably rectify my comment immediately.
“So where’s the good stuff?” I ask as if I care. “The line for the kegs is so long I figured I’d be better off just waiting until I turn twenty-one.”
“I can help you guys out with that,” says Mark, and although I wish he wouldn’t, it seems to mollify Vic, so we follow them to the kitchen. Trays of Jell-O shots line the counter and a huge bowl of hideously green punch sits on a small square table. He hands each of us a Jell-O shot, and then hands a few to some stragglers hanging out in the kitchen, and together we toast college, and then his frat, and then we switch to punch and things get a little fuzzy.
“You have a what?” Dave blurts before cracking up laughing again. It’s nearly 2:00 a.m. and we’re sitting in the backyard of the house. We’ve both switched to water, but the smell of the meat grilling on the barbecue is still enough to make my stomach turn ever so slightly, thanks to the little drinking marathon earlier.
“A steam ’n mash,” I repeat, and just hearing the words out loud makes me explode into giggles. “We can’t buy food to put in the damn thing, but of course that doesn’t stop my mother from buying it just because ‘Oh my God, Reagan, sugar!’”—I put on my mom’s incredibly over-the-top southern accent, which she’s carefully cultivated because she thinks it makes her sound like some sort of wealthy belle—“‘We have to have this! Think of how quickly Ah could make mah mashed potatas!’ Never mind that the woman has made mashed potatoes approximately once, ever. And they were disgusting.”