Embarrassed to have caught them in such an intimate embrace, I tried to slip past them into the school, but Valerie chose that moment to come up for air and she saw me.
“Hi, Abby. Where have you been? You missed everything!” Her eyes were dreamy and unfocused, fever-bright in the darkness of the night. V leaned closer, nibbling on her earlobe. “Jason’s looking for you, by the way.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the door before closing her eyes, succumbing to V’s attention once more.
Seeing them together made me even more uncomfortable and confused. Valerie never kissed on the first date. It was one of her unbreakable, unbendable, unbreachable rules. If Zo was not to be trusted—and after what he had done to Dante tonight, I was sure he couldn’t be—then could his band mates be any better? I bit my lip, worried. I’d have to talk to Valerie. Soon.
I pushed through the door and stopped in shock, frowning. Valerie had been right: I had missed everything. The dance was practically over. A few couples still lingered in front of the empty stage, but other than that, the only people in sight were the janitors, pulling down the torn pink and red streamers that dangled from the ceiling like tattered clouds. The harsh fluorescent lights reflected off the limp white balloons that drifted across the floor in some unseen breeze. The air seemed to hold the echo of Zero Hour’s music, and I thought I could hear the whisper of Zo’s voice haunting the almost empty room. It’s time, my children . . .
Ingrained reflex made me look at my watch even though I knew it was broken. Startled, I saw that the hands had jumped from midnight to ten minutes past two. Could it really be that late?
I scanned the room once more and spotted Jason sitting on the far side of the dance floor. He was hunched over in his chair, his head resting in the palms of his hands. My heart clenched to see him so forlorn and alone.
I wove my way through the remains of the Valentine decorations, stepping over the torn banners and silver confetti scattered across the floor. “Jason?” I brushed my hand across his shoulder as I sat down in the chair next to him. “Are you okay?”
Jason looked at me with red-rimmed, bleary eyes. “No. I’m not.”
I withdrew my hand at the sharp tone in his voice. “I’m sorry—”
“You should be,” he snapped. “I can’t believe you would do this to me.”
“Do what?” I curled my hands into fists around my skirt. “What are you talking about?”
Jason’s mouth dropped open in honest surprise. “You left the dance over four hours ago. I looked everywhere for you. I was worried about you.” He shook his head. “If you didn’t want to come to the dance with me, you should have said so instead of just ditching me.” His bow tie hung around his neck in loose ribbons. He’d unbuttoned his collar and his cuffs. He looked like a wrinkled shadow of the Jason who had picked me up a lifetime ago.
“I did want to come to the dance with you. It’s why I’m here—”
“Now.” Jason’s mouth thinned as though he tasted something bitter.
“I’m sorry I was gone so long. I honestly didn’t know it was so late. I guess I lost track of time.”
“That seems to happen a lot when you’re with him.”
I blinked in surprise, too stunned by the acid in Jason’s voice to say anything.
“Isn’t that where you were? With him? With Dante?”
I pressed my lips together, wishing they would stop tingling. “Yes, I was with Dante. But it’s not what you think—”
Jason snorted.
“It’s not what you think,” I repeated firmly.
Jason looked down at his hands clenched into fists on his knees. “I wanted this to be a special night for us, Abby.”
“The night’s not over.” I tried to keep my voice light even though my heart thumped heavily in my chest. After a brittle silence, I finally said, “Do you want to get some hot chocolate or something?”
Jason ran a hand through his golden curls.
His silence hurt more than his curt words.
“Valerie said Zero Hour played. Were they good?” I asked, not really caring, but wanting to say something.
“Oh, yeah, they were great. They really know how to work a room. It was incredible. The highlight of the evening. The whole crowd got up and danced.” Jason pinned me with dark golden eyes. “Too bad I didn’t have anyone to dance with.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
I pursed my lips. “Do you want to hear my side of the story or are you just going to sit there passing judgment without all the facts?”
“Fine.” Jason leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest.
“Fine,” I repeated. I took a deep breath. “I went outside for some fresh air and I saw Dante and Zo get into a fight. Dante got hurt and I took him to the workshop office so I could bandage him up. We talked and then I came back to the dance. That’s it.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed in blatant disbelief. “That’s it? That’s the story?”
“That’s the truth.”
He shook his head, a dry laugh escaping his lips. “You’re amazing, Abby, I really mean that. I thought we were better friends than this. Zo was here all night playing with Zero Hour. How could he have gotten into a fight with Dante? When?”
“You don’t believe me,” I said, stung. “You think I’m lying.” Cold anger filled me. I covered the dried blood on my dress with my hand, tangible proof of the fight that would wipe the righteous anger from Jason’s face. I wanted to put his hand on the stain, make him feel the rough edges where the blood had soaked into the fabric, make him believe me, but I didn’t. I heard Dante’s voice, low and fierce in my memory—This is between me and Zo. Dante hadn’t wanted anyone else to know; whatever it was that had happened between them, well, it wasn’t my secret to tell.
“I’m not a liar, Jason,” I said hotly.
“I saw you, Abby,” he shouted. “I saw you with him. I saw him kissing you.”
“He didn’t—”
“Right. I know what I saw. It was worse than watching Valerie and V slobbering all over each other all night.” Jason shook his head. “I thought you were my best girl. I thought . . .”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I’d never seen Jason this angry, this hurt. Tears tickled the back of my tongue. I swallowed them down. They tasted like salt, desiccating my throat.
“I waited for you for a long time. When you didn’t come back, I went looking for you. I walked around the whole school looking for you. And then I saw the light on in the workshop.”
My heart stuttered in my chest, threatening to stop beating.
“I was so relieved to find you.” Jason’s pale face looked like chalk. “And then I saw him standing behind you, his hands on you . . . your hands on him . . .”
“Jason . . .” My voice didn’t seem to want to leave my throat.
“I saw him lean over you and . . . and . . .”
“He didn’t kiss me,” I tried to whisper again.
Jason shrugged, a mere twitch of his shoulder. “Maybe not. But I bet you wanted him to.”
Now my heart stopped.
“You know what hurts the most?” Jason asked. All the anger, all the hurt, had drained from his voice, leaving it flat and hollow. “That you never told me you were unhappy.”
“I wasn’t,” I protested, but we both heard the false note in my voice.
“I guess I knew this was coming. I guess I’ve known it since our birthday.” Jason pulled off his tie and shoved it into his pocket. “It’s why I wanted to wait to have our first kiss. So maybe you would kiss me like I was your boyfriend, and not like I was your brother.”
“Jason . . .”
“It’s okay,” he said, but we both heard the false note in his voice.
“Please.” I touched his hand. His skin was colder than snow. I looked into his hazel eyes and saw in their liquid golden depths the fading hope that maybe we could still be friends, and the firm knowle
dge that we certainly couldn’t be dating friends. I felt a sliver of my heart shiver with pain, shooting icy needles into the nerves of my fingers and thumbs. My fingers spasmed, clutching, desperately trying to hold onto something I knew I’d already lost. “I don’t want it to be like this.”
“It already is,” Jason said sadly, moving his hand out from under my fingers. His eyes held mine for a long time. They were the eyes of a stranger. “You look really beautiful tonight, Abby. I don’t know if I told you that yet.”
A lump lodged in my throat. “Thanks. You look nice in your tux too.”
He stood up stiffly. “It’s late. I should take you home.”
I wanted to say all the words that people usually said at times like this—I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I still want to be friends— but Jason and I had been so close for so long, the words were there without either one of us saying anything. I didn’t know if I was glad of that or not.
Instead, I rose and followed him silently across the floor. The tears I had swallowed finally spilled over my cheeks.
I looked over my shoulder, sure I would see a shadow-Abby and shadow-Jason still sitting in their chairs, holding hands and happy, the ghosts of who we used to be now that we were someone else. But the chairs were empty, adrift in a sea of broken paper hearts.
Chapter
12
It took exactly three hours and thirteen minutes for the news of Jason’s breakup with me to race through the school on Tuesday morning. I had hoped the Monday holiday would give me a little bit of protection from the gossip-mongers in the school. No such luck. I cowered at the back table of fourth-period world history, chewing on a hangnail, terrified of what the next two minutes would bring. The seat next to me—the seat that had been Jason’s all year—was empty, and I kept darting glances from his seat to the door. Jason hadn’t picked me up for school earlier—not that I had really expected him to—and we’d been careful to avoid each other in the hallways all morning. It was like some complicated dance that only couples who had broken up with each other could perform. I wondered if all couples, happy or not, were slowly dancing their way around each other toward this kind of inevitable, horrible, awkward end. It was a depressing thought.
History was the first class we had together. We couldn’t avoid each other anymore. The dance led to here, to now.
The door opened and Jason walked into the classroom. My heart chattered inside my cold chest. He glanced around the room, his eyes skipping right over me. He walked down the aisle between the black tables; for a moment I thought he was going to take his regular seat next to me, a grin on his face, and ask to borrow my notes. For one brief shining moment I thought everything could go back to the way it had been. I thought I could have my best friend back.
Jason pulled out a chair at a table two places in front of me and sat down without even looking at me.
Everyone else in the class, though, looked from Jason sitting next to Melissa Cooper back to the empty seat next to me.
The whispers rustled through the room like dead autumn leaves skittering across cement. The sound made the hairs on my arm stand up.
I let my head fall on my crossed arms on the table. Don’t cry, I told myself sternly. It’s only one class. You can hold out for fifty-five minutes. I deliberately didn’t think about the agony the lunch hour was sure to bring.
A dull thump sounded next to my ear. Peeking out of the corner of my right eye, I saw a black leather backpack blocking my view. The empty chair squealed in protest as someone pulled it back sharply across the waxed linoleum floor. A familiar musky-sweet scent reached my nose.
I sat up straight in my chair, my mouth dropping open in amazement as Dante sat down in the chair next to me. He raked his hair out of his eyes with one gloved hand and then flipped open his notebook, copying down the notes written on the board.
The whispers rose in the room like high tide. I felt the eyes jumping from me to Jason to Dante back to Jason and back to me, around and around in ever-tightening spirals until I could almost hear the instant the realization clicked for everyone in class: I wasn’t with Jason anymore; I was with Dante.
Knowing how fast the gossip would spread, I felt torn between wanting to make some kind of announcement that no, everyone had it all wrong, and feeling a secret thrill that maybe, yes, everyone was exactly right.
Did that make me a bad person? A bad friend? I chewed on my hangnail. Why couldn’t these things be painless? Why did someone always have to get hurt?
Melissa inched her chair closer to Jason, grinning.
On opposite sides of the room, Lily and Sarah both flipped open their cell phones, fingers flying over the tiny keys.
Robert turned around in his chair, muttering to Jason, flicking glances past Jason’s shoulder to me and Dante. I saw Jason shake his head once, then twice, cutting across Robert’s words with an angry gesture of his hand.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered to Dante.
He paused in writing down his notes. His changeling eyes were the color of clear white-blue water. “Transferring.” A small smile played around his lips. “I’m sorry, Abby, have I taken someone’s seat? Would you like me to sit somewhere else?”
“No, it’s fine. It’s just . . . I mean, I thought after Friday . . .” Flustered, I sighed, trying to organize my thoughts, trying to ignore the gossip and speculation churning around me. “How’s your arm?” I finally said.
A rim of frost hardened around Dante’s eyes. “It’s fine.”
“Good,” I sighed with relief. “Did you talk to Leo about what happened? I know you said you didn’t want to but—”
“Abby, it’s fine,” he said firmly, turning to a clean page in his notebook.
“Oh. Okay.” I fumbled my history book out of my backpack, plunking it down on the table between us. “Sorry I asked.”
He leaned close to whisper in my ear, “Thank you for your concern, but honestly, my arm is fine.” And to prove it, he reached around my shoulders with his left hand and pulled my chair closer to his. The squeak of the chair and the stares of the class only made his smile wider. For the first time, I noticed a dimple hiding in the corner of his grin.
I shook my head. What was I doing, noticing his smile at a time like this? What was he doing, flirting with me at all? Didn’t he know Jason had broken up with me mere hours ago? What game was he playing? He couldn’t get away from me fast enough on Friday night, and today, he couldn’t get close enough?
“Rilassati, Abby,” he continued to whisper into the shell of my ear, his breath sweet on my skin. “With any luck, Zo’s performance will have worked its way through the school in a few days. Don’t worry—things will be back to normal soon enough.”
Before I could respond to this confusing statement, Ms. McGreevey rapped her ruler against her desk, calling the class to order.
Dante scrawled a note, angling his notebook so I could read his perfectly flowing script: Meet me before rehearsal? The bottom of his “t” tilted up with a little hook.
I pulled the page closer and wrote a reply: Sorry—Mtg Valerie.
Dante nodded his understanding. After? The tail of his “f” reached all the way to the next line; it looked like an “s” sliding across the page.
I hesitated, wondering what I was getting myself into, then wrote: OK.
“I have a couple of announcements before we begin today,” Ms. McGreevey said. “First, Mr. Thompson has asked us to remind all students that tickets for the school play, Much Ado about Nothing, will be on sale beginning next Monday. Opening night tickets for February 27 are buy one, get one free, so make sure you purchase your tickets early.”
Butterflies beat their slow wings in my stomach. I wasn’t ready to think about opening night so soon.
“Second, Principal Adams has been receiving reports of suspicious activity on school grounds—fights, graffiti, and the like. There have also been some thefts from the school library and the workshop on campus. He is urgi
ng us all to keep a sharp eye out for individuals who are not students enrolled in the school who may be hanging about the building or grounds. I hope it goes without saying that if any of you see anything suspicious, you will report it to me or to Principal Adams.” Ms. McGreevey peered at us over her long nose.
I glanced at Dante, who had grown still and thoughtful next to me. On an impulse, I jotted a name on his paper: Zo? I bumped his elbow, flicking my eyes to the paper.
He followed my gaze, saw what I had written, and his gray eyes clouded over. He drew a thick X over Zo’s name and then closed his notebook, resting his hand on the cover.
Curiouser and curiouser, I thought, tapping my pen against my finger. What was going on between those two? I would have thought they’d be good friends since they had a shared history, but instead, they had clashed almost every time I’d seen them together.
“Pop quiz,” Ms. McGreevey announced, and I, along with the rest of the class, groaned, but pulled out a sheet of paper.
During the quiz, Dante hummed a lilting, haunting melody under his breath, and before I knew it, class was over.
Maybe sitting next to Dante wouldn’t be so bad after all.
~
I sat alone at the lunch table, not sure who, if anyone, would be joining me. I wasn’t betting on Jason—not after history—and sure enough, he walked past me to sit down two tables away with Robert and his other friends. I tried not to show my hurt. I didn’t even have my hopes up that Dante would join me. Ms. McGreevey had asked him to stay after class. As long-winded as she was in class, she was generally even worse after class. There was no telling when Dante would be released.
I hadn’t seen Valerie all day, which was bad since we’d planned to meet before rehearsal. I set my sandwich down as I spied Natalie strolling into the lunchroom, a pair of dark sunglasses banded across her eyes. I half-stood and waved my hand to get her attention. She picked her way carefully through the crowd, wincing and flinching at every loud laugh, every bang of the trays on the tables.
Collapsing in the seat across from me, she dropped her head in her hands and proclaimed in tones of profound hurt, “Ugh.”