Chapter 11
Brandon arrived just in time to pick me up before I got on the bus. As expected, he teased me about not waiting for him at my house, but it was a small price to pay for not having to worry about how I was going to get to school if he didn't show up. We made small talk and all too soon arrived at school. As we pulled into the parking lot I was desperately looking for something witty or insightful to say. I needed to give him a reason to stay interested in me, but nothing came to mind.
As we pulled to a stop, the quiet hum of a cellphone on vibrate broke the strange paralysis that'd gripped me for the last twenty seconds. Brandon's grin was more than a little sheepish as he fished his phone out of a front pocket and checked to see who was calling. I didn't need his groan to know it was one of his friends. A selfish urge to try and make him ignore the call and continue to focus on me momentarily flared up, but I suppressed it.
It was such a petty thing to do, and even worse was probably the quickest way to demolish whatever interest he might have towards me. I might be almost completely naive when it came to dating, but anyone who'd read more than a couple books, or sat through eight or nine chick flicks, totally knew that the quickest way to drive a guy off was to become controlling and manipulative. Unless maybe you were a cheerleader and you were talking about a guy who was used to dating cheerleaders. Which while I wasn't even close to the former, the latter actually described Brandon almost perfectly.
I almost stopped midway through the action of opening my car door, but it was too late. Even if I'd picked the wrong course, the moment was gone. I had to just play it cool and leave or risk looking like a total loser. He returned my wave with a nod and shifted his focus back to whoever was on the phone with him.
Brandon had parked on the opposite end of the parking lot from where he normally did. Presumably it was because all of the good spots in his normal area had been snatched up by people who weren't running quite as late as us. I was halfway to the closest door before I remembered that it was still closed as a result of the mysterious 'potato gun rampage' as everyone had started calling it.
A normal person, one who was really as self-confident as I pretended to be, would have just turned and headed towards the eastern set of doors. Not wanting to look like a ditzy blonde who couldn't even remember that someone had run a SUV into the flagpole and temporarily rendered one of the four main exits inoperable, I kept walking.
The school was narrower than it was long. I could walk around the west end, and use the closest doors on the north side, and still have plenty of time to get to my locker before Biology started.
I was busy replaying my conversation with Brandon as I walked around the corner of the building. The air was already hot enough to suck the moisture out of rocks, but that wasn't the cause of the sudden rush of heat to my face. I didn't think I'd ever seen the boy before, but Jasmin was easily recognizable, even half-hidden amid all the intermittently-functioning cooling units that lived on this end of the building.
I couldn't see much beyond the boy's wild red hair, but even that was enough to tell he wasn't completely comfortable. I wanted to turn around and go back the other way, but there was a chance that Jasmin had already seen me, and if so I couldn't afford to look like I was scared of her.
The fact I actually was terrified she was going to snap and start trying to kill people was irrelevant. If I could convince her I wasn't scared, I was less likely to get hurt.
I kept walking, not necessarily steering closer to the three-quarter wall the boy was leaning against, but also being very careful not to go out of my way to stay further away from them either. As I got close to the pair, a little more of the boy became visible, reaffirming my impression that he wasn't happy to be talking to her. His shoulders looked unnaturally tight and he was shaking his head slowly from side to side.
Locked as I was into my course, I couldn't help but hear them both as I got closer. "I can't do this, Jasmin. I've been meaning to tell you for a while, but I was afraid of how you'd react."
I half stumbled at the raw pain in his voice. While I was still trying to recover my balance, Jasmin looked up at me, and the force of her glare almost made me fall over my feet again. I'd seen plenty of girls try and warn off potential competition, but I'd never seen an expression that intense.
Despite my earlier resolve, I couldn't help myself. I veered further away from the pair as some primitive, survival-minded part of my subconscious sought to create a buffer between me and the girl who looked ready to rip out my throat.
I'd gone far enough I couldn't see either of them, but it honestly felt like Jasmin watched me all the way until I managed to make it safely out of sight. I'd read stories where people claimed to have felt someone's gaze trying to bore a hole in their back, but this was the first time I'd ever experienced it for myself. I hadn't even believed it was possible, but the pins and needles I'd felt starting the second she'd looked up hadn't disappeared until I put a brick wall between us.
Biology would've been unpleasant even without everything else that was going on. The air conditioning was out to part of the building, and Mrs. Sorenson's classroom was one of the ones that apparently were going to go without until they got the regulator or switcher, or whatever it was, fixed.
I bowed out of our little competition even earlier than usual. I probably should have stayed in the game longer, should have kept answering questions until she came up with a real stumper, but I wasn't in the mood. Once I was safely free to let my mind wander, I couldn't think of anything other than the look on Jasmin's face. Even the steadily rising temperatures achieved by packing more than thirty bodies into a tiny classroom with only one door wasn't sufficient to really distract me. I was going to suffer once again for having stumbled into somewhere I didn't want to be.
By the time I made it into English and sat down next to Britney, my heart felt like it was going to seize up. Mr. Whethers walked into class a few seconds after the bell rang, took one look at his already perspiring students, and told us all to go ahead and spend the time reading rather than worrying about trying to focus on a lecture. It was a nice gesture, and normally I would have appreciated it, but I'd just finished Wuthering Heights, and knew that flipping the book back open wasn't going to help distract me. Unwilling to spend another hour in worry, I let my thoughts drift over to another, dangerous area.
Thinking about Brandon wasn't safe anymore. He'd started out making my stomach knot up simply because he was so gorgeous, but lately my insides had started jumping around for other reasons.
I wiped away the light sheen of perspiration on the back of my neck, and wished the world was simpler. If only I was still in Minnesota, or anywhere other than this crazy, secretive town with its ridiculous share of gorgeous boys. Boys who didn't behave much at all like any other popular kids I'd ever known. Alec hated me, Brandon stopped by to give me a ride to school every day, and neither of them should have even realized I was alive.
If I couldn't be at home, couldn't the universe have at least arranged for me to get involved with a nice, normal, uncomplicated, plain-looking boy, or barring that to remain safely uninterested in boys altogether? At the very least, someone out there should have managed to keep the air conditioning working.
By the time English ended, I felt worse, albeit for different reasons than earlier in Biology. Luckily, Algebra was starting to become a real sanctuary. The fact that we had a test made everyone even more focused than normal. Considering how on-task and busy Mrs. Campbell normally kept the class that was a feat in and of itself. I scanned through the first problem, and then picked up my pencil and got started.
Having successfully finished my test with ten minutes to spare, I expected lunch to bring more of the same kind of anxiety that I'd just managed to push out of my mind. It was headed that way. Despite Britney's best efforts to distract me with a point-by-point analysis of what was going on with someone named Sandra, and the two boys she'd been leading on for the last month.
; I followed Britney through the lunch line, gripping my meal replacement drink with both hands. We sat down at our usual table, only to be surrounded a few seconds later by an energetic mob of familiar-looking people. It wasn't until Brandon slid into the seat next to me that I realized who everyone was.
"We thought maybe we'd come join the two of you today. That shabby little corner where we always sit was getting a little old."
Brandon's voice was smooth and flawless as always, but even that couldn't distract me enough to miss the flash of dislike in Cassie's eyes as she sat down next to Britney.
Nobody talked about anything important, which was good since I couldn't focus on anything other than the fact I'd just been given one more sign, a really big one, that Brandon was interested in me.
A couple of minutes before the warning bell rang, I looked up from the group and saw another familiar face leaving the lunchroom. Everything suddenly dropped into place, and I grabbed Brandon's arm.
"Who's that?"
Brandon tensed up for a second, and then his massive arm relaxed under my hand as he followed my gaze.
"That's Ben." His voice dropped to a rumbling whisper. "The one I told you about the other day."
It was incredibly obvious, all the while making absolutely no sense. He was obviously uncomfortable this morning, just like you'd expect from someone who was in the unenviable position of telling off a borderline psychopath. Everything I'd seen substantiated Brandon's explanation, but why would Jasmin become so enamored of someone so average-looking? Not only that, what were the odds Ben was one of the eight males in America who would decide they weren't interested in dating the most gorgeous girl on the planet, even if she was a nut case?
I was still trying to sort out all the pieces when Brandon fished his cell phone out of a pocket and checked the time. In an amazing display of herd behavior, thirty seconds later his friends had all disappeared, and he was standing to leave.
"We should do this more often. I'll see you tomorrow."
The words were innocent enough, but there was something in his eyes that made a rush of warmth shoot through me. Britney was so excited she could hardly speak, but I was too excited myself to feel very superior.
I floated through my next class, and would've gone through the rest of the day the same way, if I hadn't had to share a class with Alec. Still, I was so happy that even Alec's giving me the cold shoulder didn't completely sour my day. Rachel had turned my illness into something really cool, and Brandon really did like me. Life couldn't get much better than this.