Locked (10 page)

Now the gym is just an arena almost as good as the cafeteria for staring.

“Today we will be playing basketball.” Mr. Dalton strides back in forth in front of the bleachers. Ex-military, his words come out like drum beats:
TODAY we will be PLAYing BASKETball.

I’m sitting next to Sherlock. Next to Sherlock Holmes seems to be the only place I’m welcome these days. I’ve only just found out he’s in my gym class, despite the fact that I’d had a couple gym classes since he moved here—apparently he’d been skipping ever since he found out we’re required to wear gym shorts.

“We will choose TEAMS. This is more than a GAME. This is a chance for you all to show your ATHLETIC ABILITY.”

“This is a chance for us all to show off our legs. These shorts are bloody ridiculous,” Sherlock whispers to me. I grin. He rarely swears. And he’s right, but partially. They only look ridiculous on him. Like King Tut in a wifebeater.

“Jackie and Chase, you’re both team captains,” says Mr. Dalton. “Let’s take this SERIOUSLY. Pick your teams.”

I lean back and stretch my arms, settling in for the long haul. At least with Sherlock around, I won’t be picked dead last.

“Sherlock,” says Jackie immediately.

Never mind.

He groans. “Oh, what, I have to get up now?”

“Yes, you have to get up now.” I give him a little shove to hide my annoyance. I guess it makes sense. Half the school has seen him win fights he hasn’t started. They have to know he’s fit. He can’t afford not to be fit, with the number of people he pisses off.

And when Jackie blushes as he stops next to her, it makes twice as much sense.

The team picking process, which ought to be abolished in a court of law, goes on. Weirdly, I’m chosen halfway through. Out of pity, most likely. Chase had always been a bleeding heart. I get up and a thousand eyes pierce my spine.

I hate gym class.

More specifically, I hate basketball, which involves a lot of running and jumping and things I’m generally not enthusiastic enough to do.

Mr. Dalton arranges everyone. Across the gym floor, Jackie is saying to Sherlock, “You’re tall, okay, so just stand here and if someone chucks the ball to you, throw it in the hoop.”

I turn away and hear him say, “Why? What will throwing balls through hoops accomplish? Is a metaphor? Are we trying to get rid of spiderwebs, or just wasting more time lest we actually spent it doing something useful?”

I try to stop grinning.

And then the whistle blows and everyone’s doing the running and jumping thing. I hang back. I’ve already overheard three separate people on my team whispering about me. About the photo. So much for team spirit. And Sherlock’s plan.

If one more person whispers about me, I’ll go insane. At least Sherlock says things outright.

Somehow, that hurts less.

“What are you doing?” someone shrieks at me and suddenly a ball flies at my chest. I dribble it twice, completely forgetting what I’m supposed to do, before someone zooms past and steals it.

“Ugh,” says Chase’s friend Tanner, near him. Near me. “Useless.”

“What do you expect, she’s probably daydreaming about the next guy she’s gonna sext,” whispers some short guy from my math class. Both of them snort.

I back away. I feel strange today. Breathless. Like I really will go nuts if someone else whispers about me. I just want to hide. Sleep. I want to sleep.

On the other side, someone passes the ball to Sherlock, who rolls his eyes and shoots it through the hoop. Of course he’s good at basketball. Of course.

People cheer. Jackie slaps him on the back. “You really aren’t so bad.”

It’s official. I’m more of an outcast than Sherlock Holmes.

The ball starts moving again. August, who’s on the other team, shoulder-checks me hard. Ow. I bounce to the ground like the stupid basketball.

Mr. Dalton blows his whistle. “Adler! You all right?”

“Fine. I’m great.” Sherlock is watching me.

“Did you see that picture, Em?” someone near me asks. “The one that got emailed out?”

I feel dizzy. I try to be mad at Daphne. Doesn’t work. Maybe I deserve this.

“Mr. Dalton, Irene tried to tackle me,” August whines.

“Yeah, I saw it,” says one of his teammates, catching on.

The conflict speeds over Mr. Dalton’s face—make the call, or admit he wasn’t paying enough attention to see who hit who? “Fine. Penalty shot for Jackie’s team.”

August hoots and high-fives his friend, who has a matching eyebrow ring. They’re taking over the world.

“I’ll take it. I made the last shot,” says Sherlock. Surprisingly, nobody protests. I guess it’s hard to protest when he states everything like it’s already been decided. Jackie beams as she passes the ball to him. He takes his position in the middle of the gym floor, back straight, like he’s the star athlete of the world instead of a genius who’s probably never touched a basketball before in his life.

And then he keeps going.

When he reaches me, I have just enough time to say, “No, you’re supposed to take it from over there,” before he covers my mouth with his.

I think: Gym class? Really?

I think: What the hell do I do with my tongue?

I think: Oh.

So that’s what a kiss is like.

Oh.
Oh
—

The whistle shrieks into the middle of everything. My head is a building imploding. I can feel them—Sherlock Holmes’s lips. Warm. Human. Alive. Shocking the ghost right out of me.

And then they’re gone.

“PDA, Holmes!” Mr. Dalton is roaring. “Office! Now!”

Sherlock is staring at me and for a split second, there’s a tiny bit of surprise on his face—as if he hadn’t been the one to walk over and kiss me out of nowhere. Not the shot he was supposed to take.

Sherlock Holmes.

Just kissed
me.

He turns and strides cleanly out of the gym, as if he meant to go to the office all along and we were just making him late. I emerge from fifteen layers of
holy shit
and say hoarsely, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

“No you are not, Adler, your team needs you.”

“I just got knocked over, okay? My ass hurts.”

I have no idea what I’m saying. I’m only dimly aware that I’m pushing past Mr. Dalton, who’s given up on me for the sake of shouting “Quiet, everyone, quiet!”

Because everyone is whispering about the kiss.

And nobody is whispering about the photo.

I catch up to him halfway down the hall. “Sherlock.
Sherlock
!”

He stops, glancing at me calmly like it’s a completely ordinary day and nothing has changed and how did I never notice how beautiful his lips were before? How long can I stare at his lips before it gets weird?

“Care to skip with me?” he says. “I’m going out for lunch.”

His lips are moving now. Talking. Christ, that’s distracting. “Can you just hold your lips still for a second?”

His eyebrow twitches. “Is this a new variant on your usual
shut up
?”

“No, you can keep talking, just—quit waving your lips around.”

“What, am I holding them up on a flag?” He folds his arms. “I hate to ruin your apparently limited knowledge of how the human body works, but if I’m going to talk, my lips are going to move.”

I need to stop talking. Now. Or at least say something that makes sense. “Sherlock, what the hell was that in the gym?”

“We planned it, didn’t we?” he says, yawning. Meanwhile his stupid lips are the most amazing shape in the world. “I guarantee you, that picture is officially old news. People won’t be talking about it anymore.”

I should be annoyed, right? I should definitely be annoyed. Make annoyed, self. “Well—you could have
warned
me that you were going to—right then—”

“I saw an opportunity. Everyone was watching me. These things work best when they’re as dramatic as possible.” He brushes a piece of lint off his shirt. “People love drama.”

“
You
love drama,” I choke.

“Well, I’m a person. Contrary to the popular opinion.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I’m a person?”

“Yes, I will get lunch with you.”

He’d kissed me for no other reason than to help me.

He looks a little taken aback. Then he smiles. Not the ironic smile, or the vampire smile. Just a smile. “There’s a car in the second row of the parking lot that I’m eighty percent sure has the keys tucked behind the visor.”

“And I’m a hundred percent sure that we’re walking.”

The nearest diner is right downtown, just a few minutes’ walk away and definitely not worth the federal crime. My steps feel light. I feel light. Can you lose weight from kissing? Or maybe I just hadn’t realized how much the photo had been weighing on me.

This obsession with his lips better go away, because right now, I could write a forty-page thesis on them and not get bored.

We get to the restaurant just as my stomach growls. The only free seat is a striped red booth in the back. I order a huge plate of mozzarella sticks to split—if I eat another pizza I’ll die—and I shovel them into my mouth. I feel like I haven’t eaten in months.

Sherlock, of course, looks around at the other unsuspecting diners and immediately starts analyzing. His version of small talk. “That woman is eating out to escape the meals at home made by her health-nut husband. Want to know how I know? Of course you do. She keeps checking her watch nervously, but it’s too early for a lunch break, and she’s not dressed for work. Her dog’s in the car outside. She left with the pretense of taking it for a walk. The car’s covered with vegan bumper stickers and—”

“Sherlock,” I interrupt. “We’re friends.”

He shuts up as sharply as if I’d severed his sentence with a knife.

“You said you don’t do friendship. I don’t care. We’re friends.” I fit another mozzarella stick into my mouth.

“Hemp,” he says.

“What?”

“Hemp sweater. Present from her husband. She hates it, she’s been unraveling part of the sleeve for ten minutes.”

Awkwardness suddenly washes over me. Maybe I should have waited for the lip thing to go away first. It’s probably creepy to want to erect a twenty-foot marble statue of your friend’s lips. “I mean, I think we could be. Friends. Or we’re going to be. Or I want to be. I don’t know.”

“Is that typically how friendships are consummated? An official declaration and all that?”

“No. But you’re not typical. So I thought I would make it clear.” I fiddle with the salt shaker.

“Do I need to sign something?”

“No—”

“Are there monthly dues?”

“No. Are you really that clueless?”

“It’s a joke,” he says. “People like jokes, or so I’ve heard.”

I grin.

The start of a friendship isn’t supposed to be a momentous thing. Normal people ease into friendship all the time. But with Sherlock, there’s no easing. Only jumping into freezing cold water in the middle of January.

“Thanks for the kiss.” I slurp my ice water. “It was nice.”

“Was it?” he says idly.

And then I’m choking instead of slurping. “No, I mean—it was nice of you. To do that. Even though you didn’t want to.”

“Well, it was amusing at any rate.”

Of course he wouldn’t correct the
didn’t want to
. Of course he wouldn’t want to kiss me. I’d expected that. I don’t have statue lips. But my stomach sinks at
amusing
. “Why was it amusing? Did I drool on you?”

“No. It was amusing to see everyone else’s faces.” He pulls an expression that’s such a perfect mixture of extreme horror and fascination that I laugh. Unfortunately, the laugh comes midway through a mozzarella stick, and a piece of it shoots out of my mouth. He dodges and it hits a nearby man in the forehead.

“Decent aim. I’m surprised you’re not better at basketball,” Sherlock observes as the man starts swearing in extremely creative ways.

I leap up. “I think maybe we should leave.”

“Excellent deduction.”

|||

That night, I have dinner with Mom for the first time in weeks. Meatloaf. I hate meatloaf, but she forgot. Tonight, I’m determined to change my relationship with meatloaf.

Though there’s no anger on her face, I’m tense. Sherlock and I hadn’t been called to the office when we’d gotten back to school, so I’d assumed we hadn’t been missed, but it’s possible Principal Collard had told her we’d skipped out and now she’s just biding her time.

“So, Irene,” she says, mixing her peas with her rice. “How’s school?”

I inspect the dining room table. “School’s fine. All A’s, still.”

“No, I meant…how are you doing? Being back there?”

I cut my meatloaf into tiny pieces, and then the tiny pieces into tinier ones. The strain is clear in her voice. She’s not good with topics like this. I don’t want to force her. “It’s great. Nice to see old friends.”

And new ones.

“That’s good.” She exhales, and in the time after her breath leaves her, the air thickens with how hard both of us are struggling to find something to say.

“How’s work?”

“Good.”

More struggling silence. She’s always looked more like Carol than me. I used to resent that. Brunettes, while I’m a sandy blonde. Thin wispy shoulders, while I’ve always hated how broad my shoulders are. I’m like a short little square. They’re hourglasses. Were. Carol’s not anything anymore.

“Oh!” Mom says suddenly, with the relief of someone alighting on a topic. “Have you talked to the new neighbors at all? The younger one’s going to your school, I think. What’s his name?”

The lips leap back into my mind. I’d managed to keep them out for two whole minutes. “It’s…Sherlock.”

“Huh. Strange name. Are his parents ex-hippies?”

I smile. Then I stop smiling. “I don’t know. I have no idea what his parents are like. They don’t live there.”

“They don’t?” She tilts her head to the side. Carol used to do that, too. “But he’s your age, isn’t he?”

“Yeah…his brother’s his legal guardian. But he’s off on a work trip right now. I guess he does that a lot.” I frown. How often is Sherlock alone? In the other towns, he must have had friends. No matter what he says. He must have. Maybe a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Who knows with him.