Bailey Morgan [2] Fate (17 page)

Delia had Annabelle and me get out of our seats so that she could fold them down as well. Then she instructed the three of us to sit on top of the folded seats so that we could see the display she'd set up on the others. The centerpiece was the poster board I'd caught a glimpse of this morning. Delia had written
GEEK WATCH
in scripty, all-capital letters at the top. Underneath, in a variety of colorful markers, she'd provided pictures, statistics, and commentary on the top four chic geeks at our school. There was Jared Sands, aka Music Geek, under whose name she'd written:

She'd listed similar attributes for each of the others: the math genius who'd probably grow up to be the next Bill Gates (with better fashion sense, Delia insisted); Lit Geek, who Delia was pretty sure was the kind of guy to quote Shakespeare to a girl and actually mean it; and Cryptic Geek.

“His name is Alec,” I told her. “Alec Talbot-Olsen.”

Delia grabbed a marker and wrote that down. Whereas she'd printed out pictures for all of the other guys, Alec's profile was mainly question marks, though she'd ascertained that he was “adorably shy,” “really, really smart,” and “mysterious.”

“You know, if a bunch of guys put our pictures on a poster and sat around discussing the way we look and act, we'd call them pigs.” Zo made this comment in a completely neutral voice, and without taking a peek in her mind, I couldn't tell whether she was bothered by this fact, or amused.

“It does seem kind of … wrong,” Annabelle said meekly.

Delia waved their objections away. “One: We're only saying good things about them. Two: We're barely talking about the way they look. If a bunch of guys were doing this, it would be all about our bodies, which is why they'd be pigs. And three: These guys are totally unappreciated at our school, and we're
appreciating them. Do any of you really think they'd mind?”

Clearly, Delia had put a lot of thought into this. Underneath all of the fashion and boy talk, she was actually one of the nicest people I'd ever met. She'd been popular for as long as I'd known her, but she'd never ditched the rest of us, and she didn't seem to care about popularity at all. While the rest of the girls at our school were tearing each other down, Delia was earnestly bestowing fashion advice upon the masses. The worst thing anyone could say about her was that she was shallow, and those of us who knew her knew she wasn't even that. Long story short, Delia wouldn't have been doing this if she'd thought there was a chance of hurting somebody.

“Here we are,” Delia said, gesturing to a small stack of poster-board squares about an eighth the size of the first.

“We?” I asked. Delia nodded and then proceeded to hand us each a square with our picture on it. All four pictures had been taken the same night, two years ago. I wondered if Delia had done this on purpose, or if seeing Morgan the day before had just brought sophomore year and that particular dance up in her subconscious mind. More likely, she'd chosen these pictures because it was the last time Zo had given Delia complete control over her appearance: dress, makeup, hair, and all.

“We've got four
possibilities
here”—in a rare show of tact, Delia very pointedly did not call them geeks— “and four of us. Now we just have to decide who the best match for each of us is, and then we'll pin our
pictures on to indicate the pairings. We'll reassess later in the week, and if us or the guys aren't feeling it, we'll scramble and try again.”

“You've got to be kidding me,” Zo said. “This isn't a game show, Queenie.”

Delia dazzled us with a brilliantly white smile. “But it could be.”

Zo rolled her eyes, but she gave in, because as much as she played the martyr, she and Delia were in a constant process of making each other's lives interesting. Without Delia around, Zo would probably be too busy beating guys at soccer to ask them out, and without Zo to argue with, Delia might have gotten caught up in the fact that with almost everyone else, her charm got her whatever she wanted. They were both extremes, and they balanced each other.

So why weren't either of them more worried about the four of us splitting up?

Even in the middle of Geek Watch, after a morning of boys and psychic conflict, I couldn't quite keep from thinking about it, and this time, the thought was accompanied by another pang of sheer yearning, for the Otherworld. For no reason that I could see, my longing for the Otherworld and my fear of losing my friends were tied together in my mind. I turned this realization over, unsettled and wondering if I'd ever be able to separate the two.

“Pay attention, Bay.” Zo poked me in the side. “You don't want to miss the rules to Pin the Girl on the Geek.”

“Now, to determine compatibility, I ran a few analyses …”

Zo and I stared at Delia. I wondered why Annabelle didn't seem taken aback, and then I did the math.

“And by ‘I,’ you mean ‘Annabelle,’ right?” I said.

“Natch.”

I didn't question how exactly Annabelle had had time to do all of the research she'd done for me
and
come up with some kind of compatibility matrix for Delia. The two of them had computer class together, and knowing A-belle, in that single period she'd probably also discovered a mathematical equation for world peace and cured puppy cancer.

If I hadn't known her middle name was Elisabeth, I would have sworn it was Multitasking.

Unable to resist playing along, even though part of me refused to let go of the longing and the worry that colored my thoughts, I accepted the compatibility charts from Delia. The first thing I noticed was that Annabelle scored high on compatibility with Alec, due to their joint interest in ancient languages. The second thing I noticed was that I scored pretty much the same across the board, whereas Zo and Delia both had obvious counterparts.

“Bailey gets Alec.”

Despite my having sworn her to secrecy the day before, Zo wasn't taking any chances on somebody else getting dibs on the first guy I'd shown interest in since Kane. I'd never been great at sticking up for myself.

So what was going to happen when I didn't have anyone to stick up for me?

Darn those thoughts and the way they just wouldn't leave me alone! Darn the fact that everyone else could enjoy Delia's matchmaking machinations, while I just kept thinking that a year from now we probably wouldn't even be living in the same city, let alone attending the same school. And most of all, darn the mental image of the hills and the colors and the feeling of belonging I associated with the Otherworld, a place where I instinctively knew that I'd never be lonely or scared or alone.

“Of course Bailey gets Alec.” Delia tossed her pony-tail over one shoulder. “As we've already established, she's going to be his
bodyguard
and
pump him for information.
Plus, he totally likes her already. I can tell.”

As far as I knew, Delia had never even met Alec, but she sounded so sure that he liked me and, honestly, I trusted her guy radar a lot more than mine.

“I'm fine with Bailey getting Alec,” Annabelle said. “I really don't have a preference.”

Since I'm not going to ask anyone out anyway.
She didn't mean to send the thought to me, but I caught it anyway.
They probably wouldn't even say yes.

“I think Annabelle should go with Lit Guy,” I said. Of all the photos on the poster board, his looked the nicest, and sitting there, listening to her thoughts, I couldn't help but think that Annabelle could use someone to quote a little Shakespeare to her. Of the four of us, she was probably the prettiest, the one who'd grown into her looks the most over the past few years,
but trying to tell her that was like putting a piece of chocolate cake in front of Zo and telling her not to eat it.

Futile.

“Okay,” Delia said, consulting her charts. “If Bailey takes Alec and Annabelle goes with Lit Guy, then that means I get Math Boy, and Zo, you're with the quiet, broody one.”

Zo and her boy would probably just sit around for hours, glaring at each other. I wondered if in some crazy way that actually made them a good match. It was certainly easier to imagine than picturing Delia with the captain of the math team.

“Now, come on, pin the girl on the geek!”

Annabelle, Zo, and I obeyed, and our pictures stared back at us.

We aren't really going to do this, are we? Zo
asked me silently.

I glanced at Alec's name, smiled, and shrugged. “Why not?”

Remind me to kill you later.

“Sure,” I said, “but seriously, given the creepy voice thing, you may have to get in line.”

Annabelle and Delia, who had no idea what Zo was silently saying to me, didn't pay much attention to the audible half of the conversation; Delia just gave me a look, which I interpreted to mean quite clearly, “You'd better not be mind-talking about my boobs.”

“So … what now?” I asked. I'd told them everything I knew about the mystery that was Alec Talbot-Olsen. Annabelle had shared the fruits of her researchy labor with us, and Delia had divided the school's most
eligible geeks among the four of us. As far as lunch periods go, this one had been pretty productive, except for the fact that I'd barely eaten anything at all.

“Now we go back to school,” Annabelle said. “If we wait any longer, Zo will have to speed to get us back in time.”

Poor, deluded Annabelle seemed to think that if she could keep Zo from running perpetually late, Zo would stick to the speed limit. Clearly, A-belle didn't know her cousin as well as I did.

Zo tossed the keys in the air and caught them. “We've got a few minutes,” she said. “You got any other wisdom to impart on the geek front, Delia?”

Delia just about died of shock at the question. For once, she was stunned into silence.

“What about you, A-belle? Any more graphs?” Content to bide her time, Zo tossed the keys into the air again. Annabelle, moving with surprising speed and grace, grabbed them and then scrambled for the driver's seat.

Zo's mouth dropped open. “No fair.”

Annabelle started the car and buckled her seat belt, quite pleased with herself. “All's fair in love and war. And car pools. Now, flip the seats up and buckle your seat belts. I don't want to be late for calculus.”

Delia and I obeyed, even though we had to nudge Zo to her seat in order to flip the others up. One of these days, Zo was going to learn to stop underestimating her cousin.

It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for.

* * *

It took us almost twice as long to get back to school as it had to get to Fifties in the first place, and by the time we returned, Zo had finally recovered.

“Next time,” she told Annabelle, “I'm going to Coney, and we're going to leave you in the parking lot.”

Annabelle snorted and pocketed the keys.

How could the two of them even think of splitting up for college? They were like two halves of the same Porter whole! Besides which, Annabelle was even shier than I was. Who was she going to steal keys from if Zo wasn't around?

Sidhe. Home.

The image came as a reminder, in equal parts bitter and sweet, that there was a place where I wouldn't have to worry about these things, a place where my connection to my friends was a memory, instead of a living, breathing thing capable of making my stomach turn itself inside out.

I don't have to sit around waiting for them to leave me,
I thought.
I could leave them first.

Where had
that
come from? The whole point of my senior-year angst was that I didn't want the four of us to split up; why in the world would I even think of bringing everything to an end sooner?

Sidhe. Home.

No,
I thought violently.
This is my home. These are my friends. Leave me alone.

And just like that, the image and the longing were
gone, and I zoned back in and slipped out of the car before the others could notice something was up.

I shut the car door behind me, and as the four of us started walking toward the school, I realized that my right hand had Morgan's necklace in a death grip. I loosened my hold and allowed the pendant to fall back on my chest.