“We made over a thousand?” Brooke exclaimed, and Aaron nodded. “Wow!”
“Hang on—we’re selling these for fifty cents, right?” Victoria asked. “So this would be over five hundred dollars, not to mention all the stuff the other group is making at Javier’s place!”
“If we sell them all,” Aaron said. “Which I bet we do.”
He grinned at me, and I tried not to look too pleased with myself. While everyone cleaned the counters and put the dishes away, talking excitedly, I opened the front pocket of my duffel bag and pulled out one of the fortune cookies I’d made last night. It was covered in blue sprinkles shaped like tiny stars. When I was sure no one was looking, I slipped out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
Owen’s computer desk was a mess. I straightened up a little, throwing away the clips of paper on the floor and putting away the scissors Victoria and the others had left out. Then I carefully placed the fortune cookie on Owen’s keyboard before heading back downstairs to join the others.
Chapter
Sixteen
“So what’s this secret weapon Victoria keeps talking about?” Gabby demanded the second I got to English Wednesday morning.
“Secret weapon?”
“You know what I’m talking about—she said it was all your idea,” Gabby said. “She said you guys think you might still win the fund-raiser competition somehow.”
I smiled mysteriously. “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”
It was like the whole brass section had made a silent agreement not to tell anyone about the fortune cookies until the game that night. Julia bugged Natasha and me all through lunch, and neither of us said a word. Maybe after being so behind since the first game, we were all kind of enjoying having a secret weapon.
I was in a good mood when I walked into science, and not just because of the game. My stomach did a little flip as I set down my backpack.
“Hi, Owen!”
“Hey,” he said with a smile. Then he went back to his sketchbook. I stared at him for a minute, waiting. He glanced up and blinked.
“What?”
“Didn’t you . . . ?” I stopped, then shook my head. “Nothing.”
He went back to doodling, and I opened my science book. So long, good mood. Was Owen really not going to say anything about the fortune cookie I’d left for him? There was no way he hadn’t used his computer since yesterday evening. He must have seen it. And if he saw it, I was sure he would’ve opened it and read the fortune that was very obviously written by me.
But Owen didn’t say a word about it all through science. So by the time I got to the gym that evening for the tournament, I wasn’t nearly as confident as everyone else that my fortune-cookie plan would work. After all, the Owen plan had apparently been a total failure.
I ended up back in the auxiliary gym at a table with Brooke, Javier, and—ugh—Trevor. And it didn’t take long for me to realize that the brass section just might win after all.
“This is insane!” Brooke cried, opening another box of cookies and handing eight to the two sixth-graders at the front of the line. “Holly, we’ve gone through at least a hundred of these already. We’re so going to sell all of them.”
“I hope so,” I said, excited despite the whole Owen thing. He was in the main gym, along with Natasha and Victoria. Aaron was at the other brass section table in the auxiliary gym. After an hour, I saw him leave. When he came back a few minutes later, he headed straight for my table.
“They’ve already sold more than half of their fortune cookies in there!” he told us, and Brooke let out a little cheer. “This is awesome, Holly,” Aaron added with a grin before heading back to his table.
And by the time the tournament was over, I had to agree. Not only did we sell all of the fortune cookies, but all of our brownies and cupcakes as well. Everyone from the brass section huddled around Gabe in the corner of the main gym as the crowd filed out. He’d been keeping track of the cash all night with the calculator on his phone, and now he was adding it all up.
“And the grand total is . . .” Gabe tapped his phone with a flourish and grinned. “Twelve hundred fifty-eight!”
“Dollars?” yelled Trevor in disbelief, and everyone laughed.
“That’s more than we made at the first two games combined!” said Aaron.
“And it’s because of those awesome fortune cookies,” Brooke added, beaming at me. Then everyone was thanking me and patting me on the back, and while we cleaned up all the tables I couldn’t stop smiling.
I was carrying a stack of boxes out to Mrs. Grady’s SUV when Owen caught up to me.
“Here,” he said, taking a few of the boxes.
“Thanks!” My stomach started doing this weird leaping thing, like I was in an elevator that just dropped for a second.
“So something kind of funny happened when I got home from school today,” Owen said. “Mom was upset with Megan because she got into the cookies.”
“Oh no, really?”
“That’s what Mom thought. She had a bunch of blue sprinkles stuck in her teeth.”
I tripped a little on the curb. “Oh?”
“Megan kept saying she’d found it upstairs last night,” Owen went on. “Mom and Steve thought she was lying—they were really mad. But she still had the fortune in her pocket, and when I saw it, I thought maybe she wasn’t lying after all.” Balancing the empty boxes carefully in one hand, Owen showed me the little slip of paper crumpled up in his other hand. I didn’t have to read it to know what it said.
WILL YOU GO TO THE SPRING DANCE WITH ME? (PS—NINJAS WIN)
“Wow, interesting,” I said, trying to sound surprised. “Even the fortune cookie knows the ending.”
Owen laughed, shaking his head. “I thought you didn’t watch it.”
“I didn’t,” I admitted. “But the cyborgs look evil on the case, so I’m going with ninjas.”
“Why didn’t you just put it in and watch the first half?”
“Because I—I want to watch it with you.” I kept my eyes on my shoes, feeling my cheeks warm up.
“Oh.” Owen set the boxes in the trunk of his mom’s car, then stepped back so I could put mine in. “Okay . . . how about sometime over winter break?”
“Really? Ow!” I straightened up too fast and banged the back of my head against the door. Wincing, I slammed the trunk closed and rubbed my head, trying to look nonchalant. “That sounds great.”
“Cool.” Owen smiled. “And I hope you’re not too attached to that tank.”
I made a face at him. “Trying to psyche me out won’t work.” But as we headed back across the parking lot, my stomach started doing that leaping thing. After a few seconds, I had to ask.
“So?”
He blinked. “So . . . what?”
I felt my cheeks turning red again as I pointed at the fortune still in his hand. “So, what’s your answer?”
Owen looked at it, then at me. “Oh, wait—you’re serious?”
He didn’t say it meanly at all, but I winced, anyway. “Well, yeah.”
“But the spring dance isn’t until May. I thought you were kidding.” Now his face was red, too.
“Neither is the science fair, and you’re already making me work on that,” I joked half-heartedly. Owen smiled a little, but didn’t say anything. I took a deep breath.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, stopping outside of the school entrance. “I wish I’d said yes when you asked me to the dance. And I . . . I’m sorry I lied to you. That was wrong.” Owen was staring at the ground, and so was I. But I made myself keep talking.
“It’s not what you think, though. The thing is, I kind of thought I did have a date. I mean . . . there’s this guy who I, um, like . . . and someone told me he said he was going to ask me to the dance. But it turned out he was talking about somebody else.”
/> And right at that exact moment, the door swung open and bashed my arm.
“Oh, Holly! I’m so sorry!”
Natasha was backing out of the entrance, holding one end of a folding table. And of course—of course—Aaron was carrying the other end.
“It’s okay!” I squeaked, grabbing the door with one hand and rubbing my sore elbow with the other. At least it was a distraction from my still-throbbing skull.
“Thanks, Holly,” said Aaron as he passed.
“You’re welcome.” If anyone ever invented some sort of face lotion that prevented blushing, I’d so be all over it.
I kept holding the door open when Leah and Sophie came out carrying a few boxes, followed by two of the booster parents with another table. Neither Owen nor I spoke until I’d let the door swing shut and everyone was out of earshot. He was looking over at his mom’s car, where Natasha and Aaron were loading the table in the back.
“They went to the dance together, right?”
“What?” I asked.
Owen pointed. “Aaron and Natasha. That’s who you’re talking about, isn’t it.”
Great. Closing my eyes, I wondered if my face had entered the purple zone yet. “Yeah.”
“You like Aaron?”
“Yeah.”
I waited several seconds before opening my eyes. But Owen was still watching the two of them over by the SUV.
“It doesn’t look like Natasha likes him, though.”
It was pretty much the last thing I’d expected him to say. Surprised, I looked across the parking lot as Aaron shut the back door of the car. Natasha stood a few feet away from him, her arms crossed, staring at the ground. Aaron said something to her, and she smiled and shook her head, then waved good-bye and hurried over to Leah and Sophie. Aaron stuck his hands in his pockets and slowly walked back toward the school. Even from here, it was easy to see he was pretty bummed.
“Oh, you’re right,” I said, forgetting my own embarrassment for a second. “But she does like him. That’s weird.”
“Are you sure she does?” Owen asked.
“Pretty sure, yeah.” I turned to face him again. “Anyway, I’m really, really sorry about the whole dance thing. I shouldn’t have lied to you.”
“It’s okay,” Owen said. “And I’m sorry about what Trevor told you.”
“Huh?”
Owen pulled the door open as Liam and Max came through carrying another table. “Trevor said he told you that we played Prophets that day I said you couldn’t come over. You know, because of Megan’s recital.”
“He made that up?” I said hopefully.
“Well . . . no.” Owen glanced down. “I mean, Megan really did have a recital, and I went to it. I wasn’t lying about that. But the recital was right after school, so Trevor just came over a little later. I could’ve invited you, too, but I thought you . . . I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t. So I’m sorry, too.”
I felt like about a hundred weights had been lifted off my shoulders. “It’s okay.”
Owen looked relieved, too. “Okay.”
He pulled the door open and waited for me to walk through. I put my hands on my hips and glared at him.
“Hang on.” I pointed at his hand again, the one still gripping the fortune. “You still haven’t answered!”
Brushing the blond hair out of his eyes, Owen stared down at the fortune like he’d forgotten what it said.
“If you want to say no, it’s okay,” I said nervously, and he shook his head.
“No, it’s just . . .” Owen gestured over to where Aaron was now helping Liam with the table. “It’s not till May. Are you sure you don’t want to wait and see if—”
“Know what Gabby told me?” I interrupted. “After I found out Aaron and Natasha were going together, she talked me into going to the dance by myself. She said it was better that way because if you got a date too far in advance, you might end up hating him—or her—after a while, but then you’d be stuck going with them, anyway. Which makes sense and all, but . . . well, I figure that can’t happen with us. We’ll still be friends in May, right?”
In the last ten seconds, Owen had probably blinked a blink for every single fortune cookie we’d sold. But he was smiling, too.
“Right,” he said. “And yes. I mean, you know—yes, I’ll go with you.”
“Cool.” I pulled the door open, feeling happier than I’d been in weeks. “Oh, wait! One more thing.”
“Yeah.”
“Please please please please please, will you still help me with the concert programs?” I asked. “Because I worked on them last weekend, and oh my God, Owen. They look. So. Lame.”
Owen laughed. “Definitely.”
Chapter
Seventeen
Two days before the winter concert, I got to the band hall early to put my horn up before first period. I noticed Mr. Dante in his office, and wondered if I could convince him to tell me who won the fund-raiser. (He insisted on keeping it a secret until the concert, when one of the booster parents would announce the winner right before we performed. All three sections were supposed to have Santa costumes ready—Mrs. Sutton, the drama teacher, was going to let us borrow stuff from the theater department.)
Everyone knew that the fortune cookies had been a huge success, but no one in the brass section had told anyone else in band exactly how much we’d made. It was going to be a close call, and I was dying to know if we’d managed to pull it off.
When I left the cubbies, I ran into Aaron. Literally.
“Oh, sorry!” I exclaimed, taking a few quick steps back (but not fast enough that I didn’t get a whiff that sort of grapefruit-and-pine-tree scent that still made my stomach butterflies swing dance).
“My fault.” Aaron leaned over to pick up the notebook he’d dropped. “Hey, I’m glad you’re here—you got a second?”
“Sure.”
“Hang on, where’d they go . . .” Aaron was rummaging around in his bag. I watched as a few pencils and a crumpled-up worksheet fell out, and fought the urge to grab his backpack, dump out its contents, and organize it properly. It would probably take most of first period.
“There!” he said triumphantly, and my eyes widened in surprise when he handed me three DVD cases—Carrie and the two Watch the Fog movies. “Sorry I’ve had them for so long.”
“Oh, no problem.” I stuck the cases in my bag and made a mental note to add them to the spreadsheet when I got home. “Did you get to watch any of them?”
“All of them,” Aaron said. “They were great—I think the second Watch the Fog movie was my favorite. That scene where the doctor walks out of his office and doesn’t see the dead kid crawling on the ceiling behind him . . . that was really freaky.”
“That’s my favorite part, too,” I said eagerly. “And that’s why the Asylum was so cool—that haunted house I told you about—because they did that. We got to this one room and this guy crawled right over our heads really fast, I don’t know how he did it.”
“All right, I’m definitely going next year.” Aaron zipped up his bag. “You said you went with Natasha, right?”
“Yeah.” As soon as he said her name, I got the weirdest feeling. Like I was doing something wrong, just by talking to him.
“You’re pretty good friends with her?”
I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going. “Um, yeah. Very.”
“Right.” Aaron slung his backpack on his shoulder. “Can I ask you something?”
Whoa, déjà vu. I had a sudden memory of standing right here with Aaron a few weeks ago when he’d said the same thing.
“Sure,” I said, and in the next few seconds several things clicked into place.
“It’s about Natasha,” Aaron began.
(We’d been talking about Carrie and the winter dance. He’d said, “Speaking of, can I ask yo
u something?” right before Liam had interrupted us, and I’d been so sure he was about to ask me out.)
“We went to the dance together . . .”
(But Natasha had been standing over by Julia’s cubby. And I remembered Aaron glancing over in that direction. I just didn’t realize at the time that he was looking at her.)
“And it was really cool—we had a great time. I mean, that’s what I thought, and it seemed like she thought so, too.”
(I’d told him Natasha came to the Asylum with me. He knew she was one of my best friends.)
“But ever since then, she’s been acting kind of . . . different.”
(He was thinking about asking Natasha to the dance, and he’d been about to ask me if she liked him.)
“Like she . . . I don’t know. She’s kind of avoiding me, and I don’t know why. So I was wondering . . .”
(And now he was about to ask me again.)
“Do you know if Natasha likes me?”
I stood there, staring down at my shoes.
“Sorry, I know that’s kind of a weird thing to ask,” Aaron added. “It’s just that I thought she did, but then sometimes it seems like she doesn’t, and . . . well, you and I are friends, right? So I figured I’d ask you, because if she doesn’t like me and I’m annoying her, I mean . . . I don’t want to do that.” He laughed a little, looking self-conscious.
A few weeks ago if Aaron had asked me all this, I would’ve wanted to crawl into a hole and cry for about a year. And while it certainly didn’t feel great now, one thing he said stuck out more than all that stuff about Natasha: You and I are friends, right?
Even though I still felt hurt and embarrassed that I thought it was me he liked for so long, I was flattered. At the beginning of this semester, I couldn’t even talk to Aaron without stammering or drooling. And now, somehow, we were friends.
And I was going to be a good friend, too. To him and to Natasha.
“She likes you,” I said, looking directly at him. “She really does.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I nodded slowly, thinking. “And I know why she’s been avoiding you. I mean, I think I do. I’ll, um . . . I’ll talk to her.”
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