She's So Dead to Us (26 page)

I grinned to myself when I heard her footsteps coming down the hall. She started to pass me, and I reached out and grabbed her wrist.

“Jake! What are you doing?”

“This.”

I pulled her to me and kissed her, cupping the back of her head with my hand. Ally giggled and melted into me, her whole body melding with mine. Two seconds later, though, she pulled away.

“We can’t do this. We’re so gonna get caught.” But her hands were on my chest and she was blushing like crazy. She bit her bottom lip, and I almost died.

“No one ever comes into this hall at lunch,” I said, glancing at the door to Barry’s Custodians Only closet. Ally looked up and laughed.

“This is kind of our place,” she joked.

“Where it all began,” I joked back, tugging her to me with my arms around her waist. It wasn’t exactly true. It had begun at my house that day back in August. But it was those detentions that had forced us to actually talk. That was where I’d really started to like her. Not just daydream about her. I leaned in and touched my lips to hers, giving her a long, slow kiss. When I broke it off, her eyes stayed closed and her head tipped back.

“You really want to go back to the cafeteria?” I whispered, tucking her hair behind her ear with my fingertips. I could practically hear her heart pounding. Or maybe that was mine.

“Mm mm,” she said, shaking her head.

“Good.”

So we stood there kissing without a single breath for air, until the bell rang and we finally had to wake up.

My palms sweated as I clutched my number two pencil. Time was running out. I could feel it. I stared at number thirty two, willing it to just tell me the answer.

Baseball player’s chocolate bar. Baseball player’s chocolate bar. It wasn’t a Baby Ruth. That didn’t fit. Who the heck else had a chocolate bar?

“Done!” Annie rang the bell and dropped her pencil. She shoved her completed crossword across the counter for me to envy. “Read it and weep.”

I moaned and slapped my book closed. “I suck!” I said, head in hands.

“This is true,” Annie replied with a matter-of-fact nod. “Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be, like, cheering for your man at the lacrosse game?”

I groaned again and stood up straight, stepping aside so Annie could ring up an elderly lady who had a basketful of discount toilet paper.

“First of all, I don’t have a man. And secondly, since I don’t have a man it would be kind of odd for me to attend the lacrosse game and cheer for him,” I said, leaning back in front of the second register, which was closed.

“I see. Verboten boyfriends can be difficult that way,” Annie said.

She handed the woman her change and gave me a hesitant look as the lady moved toward the door. “So, listen, there’s something I feel like I should tell you, but I’m not sure if I should tell you.”

My heart thumped with foreboding, and I stood up straight. “Well, now you obviously have to tell me.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay, but I’m not entirely sure what it means.”

“Annie, what?” I demanded.

“I was at the
Acorn
today and Shannen came in to talk to Chloe,” Annie said, tugging her laptop out of her bag, which was behind the counter. “Of course I tried to listen in, as I always do, but they were whispering, so it was hard to hear everything.”

My throat prickled. “What did they say?”

Annie opened her computer. “I typed up what I heard,” she said, glancing at the screen. “Shannen said something about ‘that night we went to Paddy’s.’ Then she said something I didn’t hear, and then Chloe flipped out. She said, ‘What? How could you do that? You promised me you wouldn’t do anything—’”

“What were they talking about?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Annie said. “But then I distinctly heard Shannen say, ‘Jake made me swear I wouldn’t tell Ally.’”

I felt like the floor had just dropped out from under me. Shannen and Jake were keeping secrets from me together? Secrets Chloe knew about?

Annie looked up at me, her eyes wide with apology. “Should I not have told you?”

“No. It’s good. It’s fine,” I said, my mind reeling.

I saw a pair of headlights flash in the parking lot. Jake was there. Perfect timing, as always.

“He’s here,” I said.

Annie glanced over her shoulder out the window. “You should just ask him about it,” she said confidently. “Maybe it’s nothing.”

Right. Somehow I had a hard time believing that.

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe I will.” But I found I couldn’t move. Jake honked the horn and waved me out, grinning.

“Or just forget about it,” Annie said. “I feel bad that I just ruined your night. Just go and have fun.”

“Yeah,” I said, grabbing my jacket off the end of the counter. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Annie.”

Outside, a misty rain fell from the dark April sky. I popped open the door of the Jeep, and Jake grinned at me. He had a streak of dirt on his face, and the entire side of his uniform was caked in mud. My whole body responded to his gorgeousness, but my heart felt sour. Why was he keeping secrets from me? And with my former best friend/current worst enemy?

“Wow. Rough game?” I asked, trying for a light tone.

“You should see the other guys.”

He pulled out, and within fifteen minutes we were parked in the country club lot again. He leaned over to kiss me, but I couldn’t kiss him back.

“Hey. Is everything okay?” he asked.

I looked into his light blue eyes. I didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to sit here and pretend that everything was fine. Try to kiss him with all these questions whirling around in my mind.

“No, actually,” I said, shifting in my seat.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s just . . . Annie overheard something today,” I said. “A conversation between Chloe and Shannen.”

Jake swallowed. “Yeah?”

“Something about Paddy’s and about how Shannen promised you she wouldn’t tell me . . . ?”

Jake turned completely away from me, staring out the windshield. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. What were they talking about?” I asked.

“That’s all they said?” he asked, still not looking at me.

“That’s all she heard,” I replied, feeling even more suspicious.

Jake sighed and gripped the steering wheel. His hands kneaded it like it was bread dough, his knuckles turning white.

“Jake, you’re scaring me,” I said. “What the hell is going on?”

“I just . . .” He looked me in the eye, and for a long moment he said nothing.

“Just what?”

“I didn’t want you to know about Paddy’s,” he said, turning away again. “I mean, I’ve seen you at a couple of parties, and you never drink. I thought . . . I guess I thought you’d think I was a loser for going to a bar or something.”

Relief flooded through me, and I laughed. “Is that it? I don’t think you’re a loser.”

“You sure?” He looked at me sheepishly.

“Please. I’d think you were a loser if you drank and drove or got so messy drunk you barfed on my shoes or something, but I’m not gonna judge you for going there and hanging out,” I said.

Jake smiled almost sadly and looked down at his hands.

“You’re really cool, you know that?”

I smiled, my face warming pleasantly. “Thanks.”

He looked up at me again, and we finally kissed.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you the whole game,” he said.

“Me neither,” I replied, even though it didn’t make sense. I pressed my mouth against his and wrapped one arm around his neck, trying to pull him closer to me.

“Ow!” He cursed and leaned away.

“What?” I asked, breathless.

“Stick shift. Knee. Not good,” he said, wincing.

I laughed. “Toughen up, Graydon. Is this how you act on the field?”

He smirked and leaned in to kiss me. “No. I just wasn’t expecting to get injured
after
the game.”

I sighed and dropped back in my bucket seat, looking through the windshield at the surface of the lake, which was pockmarked by the now rapidly falling rain. This “date” was not going well at all.

“Sneaking around does have its drawbacks,” I said.

“Yeah. But it’s kind of fun, too,” he said, reaching for my hand.

I sighed, lacing my fingers together with his. “It kind of sucks, though. That we can’t tell anyone.”

“You told Annie, right?” he said.

“Well, yeah, but—”

He lifted his shoulders. “So, there you go.”

“But wouldn’t it be cool if we could, I don’t know, go to a movie or something?” I asked.

“Movies are overrated,” he replied, reaching for me. His eyes went to my lips.

“Jake—”

He sighed and sat back again. “Ally, I thought we were good with this.”

“I know,” I said, looking at my lap.

“If my friends found out about us, they’d just try to break us up,” he said, running his one clean hand over my hair. “I don’t want to deal with any more of their crap. I just want this.”

He leaned in and kissed me, and any longing for anything else melted away. He was right. If the Cresties found out about us, they’d start torturing me all over again. And I’d kind of been enjoying the not getting tortured these past few months. Ever since Shannen and I had faced off after the pool annex incident, she and the rest of them had basically left me alone. And considering the not-so-thinly-veiled threat Shannen had issued that day, and the bluff I’d issued back, that wasn’t really a boat I felt like rocking.

But the prom was coming up. And it may have been a stupid fantasy, but I wanted to go with Jake. I had a whole daydream of him in a tux and me in some gorgeous dress, walking into the dance together and everyone stopping to stare. In a good way, of course. Why couldn’t I have that? Why did everything have to be so screwed up?

“You okay?” Jake asked.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” I said, forcing a smile even though my heart was so heavy it was tugging down on the corners of my mouth.

Maybe I’d just work a double shift the day of the prom. Earn money instead of spending it on a dress and a ticket and a limo. Save up for next year’s prom.

When maybe, just maybe, things would be different.

I was standing outside my English classroom, cramming for the test I was going to have to take in three minutes, when Trevor and Todd came bouncing up to me out of nowhere.

“Dude, dude, dude! Did you ask anyone to the prom yet?” Todd asked, slapping my shoulder and squeezing it. Hard.

I flinched, still clutching my copy of
The Odyssey
in both hands. My thoughts instantly flashed on Ally, and my cheeks flared. “No. Why?”

“Cool! Because I just asked Jennifer Dell—”

“And I asked Kiersten Staples—”

“And they said they won’t go unless Carrie Ann Sullivan has a date too.”

“So will you ask her?”

I stared at them. “Who?”

“Carrie Ann Sullivan!” they said in unison. Todd leaned toward my ear. “She’s the sophomore on varsity lacrosse. The one with the black braids and the huge—”

My blush deepened and I nodded. “Right. Carrie Ann Sullivan.” I swallowed hard, my brain full of thoughts of Ally. What would she think if she could hear this conversation? Probably that we were all disgusting pigs.

“I don’t know, guys.” I looked down at my book and tried to concentrate.

“Come on, man! If you don’t ask her, we don’t have dates,” Trevor said, bouncing up and down in his destroyed Chuck T’s.

“Why won’t they go without her?” I asked.

“Who knows?” Todd said, throwing up his arms. “Some stupid girl code? They’re like BFFs or something, and they all want to go.”

“What’s tripping you up man? The big boobs or the hot legs? Why is this even an issue?” Trevor added.

I took a deep breath. The thing was, it wasn’t like I could go to the prom with Ally.

Whatever we were doing, we’d decided to keep it a secret. For a very good reason. But I couldn’t not go to the prom. Everyone was going. We were getting a limo together, and we were going to all drive down to Hammond’s house on LBI after. It was going to be sick. I couldn’t miss it. Ally couldn’t expect me to miss it. And if I couldn’t go with her, I didn’t really care who I went with.

“All right, fine,” I said. “I’ll ask her.”

“Yes!” the Idiot Twins cheered, chest-bumping each other. They turned toward me, thrusting their chests out again, but I shook my head.

“No. I’m good.”

“Thanks, man,” Trevor said, slapping me on the back. “You won’t regret it.”

The bell rang, and I turned to walk into my English class, feeling tense and nervous and sick. I told myself it was just because I was about to fail my English test, but I knew that wasn’t it. Even though what I’d just promised to do made perfect sense, I had a feeling that Trevor was wrong. Somehow, I was going to regret it.