He barks out a laugh. Then laughs harder. And he keeps right on laughing until he disappears into the crowd.
I am . . . I am taking it as a no.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I get back from the river after everyone else.
Well, I get back the second time later than everyone else. At some point, I apparently lost my phone and I’ve been frantically looking for it ever since. It’s of course not a freaking iPhone so I can’t just track the thing like everyone keeps telling me to do. I’ve spent three hours going back and forth between my room and the river, until now, when it’s too dark.
I’m beginning to think some possum ate it or something, which is fantastic. I definitely can’t afford to just buy a new one.
It was high-key stressing me out all night, and now here I am, hanging out with Riya and Addie, and the liquor Addie managed to snag from the store across the street that doesn’t card has made it so I’m only low-key stressing over it now.
I am distracted by these girls, and actual, non-competitive, non-asshole-boys-related fun. It’s past lights out, but at this point, lights out has gone from lax to nonexistent, so no one cares. Will could be in here, and he and Riya could have just like . . . hung a sock on the door and I bet no teacher would stop them. We’re all high school juniors, but the staff here is extremely used to college kids. Not high schoolers who everyone else seems to think need supervision.
I have procured cookies to go with Addie’s liquor. Crumbs are all over Riya’s bed. (She had to give hers up to the cause since she didn’t provide snacks. A fair sacrifice, I feel, but then I won’t be the one sleeping on crumbs and chocolate chips all night.)
“So Carter.”
“So Addie.”
“You were sitting mighty close with your mortal enemy this evening.”
I sniff and take a bite of the cookie, which is half the size of my face. “Oh, was I?”
She raises her eyebrow and Riya just smirks. Riya says, “I believe I even overheard something about you falling asleep thinking about him.”
My face is so hot suddenly it surprises me, and I bite my tongue when I’m going for the cookie. “Shit,” I say. You never realize how fast you move until you bump your head on something or how hard you bite until you injure your mouth.
“Geez, forget I asked,” says Riya.
“No, no. My tongue.” I’m lisping it and everyone is laughing.
Addie, however, will not be deterred. “Falling asleep thinking about him?”
“About punching him, Addie, that’s different.”
Her eyes are sparkling when she opens her mouth to speak so I cut her off. “You were standing mighty close to that cute little redhead, so I don’t want to hear about it.”
Addie laughs. “Yes,” she says. “Because I want to make out with her.”
“Well.”
She shrugs.
Riya says, “She has a poin—”
“Oh no,” I say, and I’m not sure why I feel, like, actually mad. “You and Will are so all over each other none of us can exist in the same space as you without getting lust all over us.”
“What?” She shrieks it, like actually shrieks.
I look over at Addie, who locks glances with me, and we both look back at Riya. She’s dark red and blinking. A lot.
Addie says, “Come on.”
“We’re friends.”
I laugh, “Okay.”
“I’m serious! We are. We’re . . . friends.”
I grin. “I, for one, spend all my time with my platonic friends poking them in the side and giggling and grabbing their wrists.”
Riya purses her lips. “Will is touchy. I’m touchy.”
Addie says, “Well, you’ve never grabbed me by the wrist.”
“I didn’t grab Will by the wrist!”
I’m laughing hard now that the conversation has turned from me and Reid to someone else, and then there is a knock on the door.
My grin goes a little wicked, and I say, “Probably your knight in shining armor right now,” to Riya.
Riya hisses, “Carter—” and I open the door, laughing. Then freeze.
“You dropped this.”
“Uh.”
Reid is standing there in sweatpants and a black T-shirt, holding out my phone. I don’t even have the mental wherewithal to fully process the relief. Because I am suddenly extremely aware of the full-on coat of crumbs on my own shirt, my pants. I lick a small piece of chocolate off the corner of my mouth and Reid’s eyes flick down to it, then back to my eyes.
“You want it?” he says.
I blink and tell myself to stop thinking about how short these night shorts are and how giant this T-shirt is, then I just grab the hem so it’s clear I’m wearing pants. “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, uh, thanks.”
“Any time,” he says. His eyes are dark and focused, and maybe it’s just the lighting. Maybe it’s the fact that they keep dipping down to my legs.
There’s this awkward silence, then he says, in this quiet, almost deadpan voice, “Are you planning on taking it or?”
I bet I look like a beet. I bet beets would look at me and say, “Wow, that girl is red.”
“Of course. Ha. Duh. I’m tired.”
“Yeah?” he says. He cocks his head just the slightest bit, and the corner of his mouth cocks with it.
I snatch the phone back. “How did you get this?”
“It fell out of your pocket back at the river.”
“You walked away before I did.”
He smiles, teeth this dazzling straight white. “It fell out as soon as you sat down.”
“I’ve been calling it all night.” He says nothing, just keeps right on smiling. I huff and cross my arms over my chest. “Why didn’t you just give it back right away?”
He says, “Two can play the game, sweetheart.”
I want to knee him in the balls. Just right here, right now. Watch him double over and grab my arms to catch himself. Fingers curling into my biceps. Forehead resting in the crook of my neck.
Suddenly I can’t breathe.
“You okay?” he says. Curse my fair Irish skin; I can’t think a thing without it showing up all over my entire body.
“I’m fine,” I snap.
“Well. Sweet dreams, then.”
I shut the door in his face.
“What was that about a knight in shining armor?” says Riya.
“You shut up immediately.”
Riya starts cackling, like falls over cackling, and Addie catches her. I’m not even paying attention; I’m too busy checking my phone. Frantically. He didn’t change the language, the alarms look fine. Nothing in my address book is changed. Nothing weird texted or anything. I keep scrolling. And scrolling.
Five minutes later I get a text from “My Biggest Threat.” He’s programmed himself into my phone. I missed it.
My Biggest Threat: what are you still doing up, young lady?
I scowl, willing my mouth not to curl up.
Carter: Someone woke me up.
My Biggest Threat: oh please. You weren’t sleeping.
Carter: Maybe I don’t need a good night’s sleep to beat you.
I text again, before he has the chance to respond.
Carter: My biggest threat, huh?
My Biggest Threat: I try to be honest.
Carter: Honesty and ego are not the same thing.
I can picture him there in his room, arm under his head, smirking up at his phone screen, and something twists in my belly.
My Biggest Threat: Not always.
Carter: You are honestly insufferable.
My Biggest Threat: yeah you’ve said that.
My Biggest Threat: get your beauty sleep, princess.
Carter: You’ve called me that one before
My Biggest Threat: oh are you keeping track
I practically throw my phone into the nightstand drawer and slam it shut. And ignore the catcalls and suspicious looks from Riya and Addie that are stabbing dagge
rs into me from all sides.
I don’t know when exactly I fall asleep, or when exactly I wake up, but there is no break between those things from my brain, and its thinking about Reid.
Today is a group challenge. There are only fourteen of us left, and barring a major disaster on one team, there should be just one of us from each team sent home after the individual challenges this week. Barring any major disaster being the key phrase. I slide a glance over at Reid and he is not even looking in my direction.
Andrew snaps in front of my face. “Carter.”
I blink. “What?”
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m right here.”
He narrows his eyes and says, “You gonna get started on that sauce any time soon?”
I whirl around to look up at him and I’m mad that he is so much taller than I am. “Well, Andrew,” I say—slow and over-enunciating, “I will be starting on the sauce when it’s time to actually make the sauce.”
“What?”
“You’re still cooking the lamb.”
“Okay?”
“So how about you focus on doing what you’re gonna do, and you let me focus on what I’m gonna do.”
His nostrils flare and he stands a little taller. He is the Gaston of this kitchen; he doesn’t want to be told no, and that makes me want to just spend the rest of this challenge telling him no as many times as possible. “Carter, this is a group challenge and after you screwed up—”
“Let it GO. Good LORD,” I say. My voice is too loud by a margin; I know, I can hear it. But there’s like nothing I can do to tamp it down. “You screwed up scallops, I screwed up a meringue, we’re still here and there’s nothing either of us can do to turn back time.” He blinks. “So how about you get your ass back to your lamb before you screw that up, too.”
He is red, hands curled into fists, and I am high as a kite off of it.
But he goes. Because we are running out of time. Riya is smiling to herself across the kitchen while she works on roasting some green beans and garlic and Addie audibly snorts.
Reid is glancing over at me now, and his lips are twitching into an almost-smile. After thirty seconds of looking around my station, Reid crosses the kitchen. “You looking for the flour?” He holds out the bag to me, and even though it does in fact say ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR, I flip him off.
“Your loss,” he says. He turns away from me and winks. He definitely did something to it. It takes me an extra two minutes to find the flour in the back, but I find it eventually, and then remember that I left the butter out to melt and took my eye off it to get back to the pantry.
I glance down at it—the perfect level of meltiness. Then glance up at Reid. Shit. Shit.
He catches my eye from where he’s whisking something, biceps flexing under this tight white T-shirt, and he raises a single eyebrow.
I stare back at the butter, hands frozen. What if he did something? He can’t have; this is butter. It’s just butter. I sniff it, fingers digging into the bag of flour. It smells like butter. I don’t think . . . oh my god, I’m being a complete basketcase.
I shut my eyes and drop a dollop into my sizzling pan, which now I’m worried has been sabotaged in some way, but the butter seems to be reacting normally to the heat, and it’s not like he put iocane powder in it. Whatever he’s done can’t actually murder a judge.
I don’t think.
I stir some salt and flour into the butter to make a roux and keep my eyes on the other spices I need for this sauce while I stir. I’m looking hard enough at them that my roux burns slightly but it’s fine. It’s fine, it’s fine.
Reid isn’t even breaking a sweat. He’s cool and collected, so confident that whatever he has done to screw me today must have already happened. My sauce is probably already ruined or maybe the lamb or . . . I don’t know, I don’t know.
Sweat is running down my forehead, my chest; it’s popping up on my wrists, of all things, and I didn’t even know that was possible.
I dip my finger in the sauce before I pour it over the lamb and it tastes fine? I think? Despite the slight burning. I add a little salt, a pinch of saffron, and then it’s legitimately good. But maybe whatever sabotage he’s done won’t come out until judging and I’ll be standing there all confident, smug next to Andrew, and then the first judge will taste it and say, “This tastes like burnt rubber. Get out of my kitchen,” and I will have to slit Reid’s throat as I leave and then go to prison but it will be worth it.
I’m shaking hard enough as I drizzle the sauce that I get specks all over the plate.
Riya hisses, “Get it together, Carter.”
“I am. I am.”
Judging commences. There are no disasters.
I’m still sweating when we leave the kitchen, and there is not a hair out of place on Reid’s beautifully undercut head, and I probably still look panicked when we cross the quad back to the dorm. Reid, however, is laughing.
It goes this way three days later, too, when we have the individual challenges.
Reid texts me the night before.
My Biggest Threat: how are you feeling about tomorrow?
Carter: Confident
My Biggest Threat: oh really
I don’t respond but I can’t get it out of my head. And I am just panicking all the way through my crab cakes and avocado relish, shaking so hard the whole freaking time that I drop my avocado relish twice and have to remake it. Twice. I barely plate in time. Riya keeps giving me weird looks and I wonder if she thinks I am intimidated by Andrew. Or, not worse, but still not ideal, so love struck with Reid that I can’t focus.
It is neither of those things.
I am screwing up everything because I am waiting, and I hate, hate, hate waiting.
There are still too many of us for the judges to give us our individual dish evaluations aloud, which means I will be waiting some more. Shaking some more. Sweating some more. Until judging. I’ll have no idea what Reid did until I know if I’m being sent home.
I barely sleep that night and can barely concentrate all through the next day, until judging. When two people go home, and those two people are not me, and now, six weeks in, we are in the final twelve.
I blow out a deep breath. Whatever he did, I am still here.
This week, at least, I’ve won.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It is two a.m. and I can’t sleep. Tomorrow is another group challenge, I think, though the judges never really confirm to the degree I want them to. And I don’t know if I’m super nervous about it or if I’m just tired. It’s been a long several weeks. I think everyone is tired.
It seems ridiculous, though, that I am too tired to sleep. But here we are.
I am hit once again with the pang of missing home.
Em and I have texted a few times—like I could go a month and a half without really talking to her—but I barely have time with all the cramming and cooking and panic to actually jump into phone calls with her, and she’s working her ass off at the pool this summer. It’s hard.
It . . . it’s no one’s fault. But I feel lonely.
Disconnected.
Just. Tired.
I blink up at the ceiling, and I am thinking about last week, and wondering what Reid did to screw me over, because he certainly looked as though he was doing something to screw me over, was certainly just as cocky and assholey as ever, like he had accomplished something. Even when my dishes weren’t affected and I made it through the week. Like he had won.
It’s infuriating, and it vibrates under my skin.
Maybe that is why I can’t sleep.
Riya is snoring like a foghorn, lying there perfectly still on her back, and here I am. I’ll go into tomorrow’s challenge sleep-deprived and maybe that will be the end for me. That speeds up my heart rate even further and now I’m in a semi-panic. But it’s two a.m. and I am not lying here in the dark thinking about ingredients and the particular bad habits of the stove and what pan I should use next time if I
wind up on sauces again, and how sautéing behaves a little differently in all this heat and humidity. I am thinking about Reid and what he can do to destroy me. How I can destroy him. I’ve been doing that since I got here.
Maybe that was his angle all along. The pranks were inconsequential; change her mindset, that will get her.
That sounds like an awful big set of machinations, though. Especially if it was his aim from the beginning. He didn’t even know me when this started. I was just the grape-haired girl, indistinguishable from anyone else. There’s no way, even as devious and assholey as he is, that he just picked me as his biggest competition for no reason and set out to ruin me.
DAMMIT, here we are again.
I shut my mouth tight and blow an exasperated breath out through my nose rather than screaming. No sense taking Riya down with me into this obsession-somnia.
I fling my feet over the edge of the bed and scratch my head. Maybe a thirty-minute change of scenery is in order.
At home, when I can’t sleep, I slip into the kitchen and bake. I don’t even like baking, really, but there is nothing better for two a.m. than hot cocoa and a blueberry muffin. That’s not an option here, unfortunately. The kitchen stays locked after we leave. But what is an option is sneaking down to the common room to read.
I walk down the stairs in plaid night shorts, a bed-wrinkled black tank (both hand-me-downs from my sister), and bare feet, so quiet, apart from one rogue stair squeak, that I think no one will hear me. Unless they have supersonic hearing. But I doubt anyone is awake.
The fire is going—seriously, it must just literally always be going—and it is completely silent apart from the crackle and my breathing.
I eye the little bookshelf, hoping desperately that it has more on it than just the classics that school requires you to read. And stop short.
There’s this black tuft of hair, and I can see his nose in profile. Elbow on the arm of a couch, long fingers turning pages. I can’t make out the distinct features of his face, because it’s dark in here except for the fire. But I don’t need to. It’s Reid.
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