Falling Under (8 page)
Suddenly, I understood that it still miraculously worked. And it was full. So full it felt like rays of sunshine were bursting through my chest, poking out of me in radiant splendor. Haden spellbound me and life changed to Technicolor. In his smile, I felt the bindings that tethered my spirit rip away.
I wanted to be reckless. I wanted to be like my mother. I half expected the campus to erupt in song and a choreographed dance number.
“I’ll meet you in the library,” was what I answered, though what I wanted to say was much more prolific and would have been a great deal more embarrassing.
“I can’t wait,” he said, blushing so gently I may have imagined it. He stood slowly, unfurling, never losing eye contact with me. He maintained the connection even when assailed by Brittany and Noelle, the cheerleaders from his first day. They flanked him, draping themselves over him, and touching him like I never had.
“There you are,” Brittany said, stroking his arm and pointedly ignoring the rest of us. “We have a surprise for you.”
Brittany held up a basket of muffins and Noelle dangled a thermos from her finger.
Something changed. A foreign expression moved over his face, like a thief stealing my most prized possession. The unnamed spicy aroma that usually surrounded him singed, and I smelled sulfur instead. Haden slipped his arms around Britney and Noelle and barely nodded a good-bye to me as they walked away.
My radiant heart shriveled into a tiny, dry raisin. How could I be so stupid? My father deserved extra credit for at least trying to keep me away from boys, since I obviously didn’t understand a single thing about them. Haden was probably laughing and telling the Sneetch Association how I practically swooned at his feet. They’d be chuckling at my naïveté while they complained about how hard it was to find good help these days.
I was a joke.
“Stop it.” Donny followed the trio into the building with her eyes. “He’s being a jerk. Don’t you take his shit personally.”
“I’m not.”
“You are too. The air left your tires as soon as those girls showed up. I’m so tired of them. All of them. They suck. They think their daddies’ money makes them special and it doesn’t.”
Ame disagreed. “It certainly makes their boobs special. Noelle is in my PE class. Two weeks ago, her girls were B students—they look like C-plus at least now.”
Donny snorted. “Oh, my God. You’re right. What kind of parent pays for a boob job for a seventeen-year-old? Mine won’t even pay for highlights.”
My barely Bs tightened at the thought of going under the knife. Not even to get Haden’s attention would I do that. If that was what he wanted—tears stung my eyes—if that was really what he wanted, my heart was breaking.
“Don’t you cry for him,” Donny warned me. “He’s not even worth a single tear. He’s a cartoon who thinks he’s a man.”
I nodded. She was right. Sneetches are not tear-worthy.
Ame flipped open her cell. “Crap. We’re all late for class.”
“Are they ever going to fix the bell so that it actually rings once in a while?” Donny drank the last of her coffee and tossed the cup.
The school bell had been off all year. Sometimes it rang for no apparent reason; most of the time it just didn’t do anything at all. Most teachers stopped letting us use the bell as a tardy excuse by winter break.
“Hey, guys. Hi, Donny.”
We all looked up in surprise at the source of the voice. Gabe of the always perfect hair had joined us.
“What do you want?” Donny asked. To be fair, I still hadn’t seen him be anything but nice.
“Nothing really.” He shrugged. “I guess we should go to class, huh?”
“Ladies first,” she snapped, gesturing for him to go ahead of us.
“Are you always such a bitch, or do you save it up for me special?” he asked.
Ame and I exchanged wide-eyed glances.
“This is level-one bitchery, asshat. Stick around if you want the real show.”
He muttered under his breath and started walking towards the door that we should have gone through five minutes ago. Donny crossed her arms and glared at him until he turned around and yelled, “I’ll save you a seat in English.”
Before she could retort, he flashed a smile and took off running up the steps.
A trace of a smirk crossed Donny’s face before she asked, “What the hell is going on around here?”
I half expected to be stood up in the library. I promised myself not to be let down if he skipped the study session. And if he did show, I would remain aloof and unconcerned with anything but our mutual grade.
Instead, Haden was already asking me a question as he slid into the chair across the table from me. “Who exactly are you, Theia Alderson?”
He stole my breath, frazzled my senses, and interrupted my heartbeat. Now he wanted me to be coherent? I found myself staring at his Adam’s apple to avoid his eyes. “I’m just a girl.”
Haden’s clothes, though completely different from the kind he wore in my dreams, fit him very well. A white collar poked out of the V-neck navy sweater, crisp yet somehow casual. His jeans, as I remembered from my too-close encounter that morning, were also dark navy, but were distressed and fit him to showcase his lean lines.
Completely at ease in a lazy pose that reminded me of Donny’s slouches, he regarded me for what seemed a very long moment. “I’ve asked around about you.”
“Oh?” I tidied the papers in front of me.
Why was he asking about me?
Why was he asking about me?
“Tell me, how does the only girl who hasn’t lived in this town her whole life
not
have any kind of status at all? Nobody knows anything about you. It’s like you’re a ghost.”
not
have any kind of status at all? Nobody knows anything about you. It’s like you’re a ghost.”
“More like a nonentity.” The words slipped out.
“I find that hard to believe.” Haden leaned forward, encroaching on my space, throwing me off balance. Lord, the smell of him made me tingle. “The guys in this school must be first-class morons. Your accent alone should make them all mad for you. The pretty English rose.”
“I’ve noticed that most young men here are easily distracted by … other kinds of girls.” I blushed violently. I hoped he’d be humane enough not to mock me for it.
Haden smirked. “I started to wonder if maybe I was the only one who could see you. ‘Isn’t she that girl who plays violin?’ was the most I got out of anyone.”
I shrugged. He could stop anytime. I didn’t need to be reminded how very unseen I was. “We should tackle some of these questions.”
“I just wondered how the most beautiful girl in school manages to fly so far under the radar.”
I sat back in my chair. “Now I know you are teasing me.”
He smiled, not the kind that disarmed me completely, but one that signaled a shift of power all the same. “The other girls, they try very hard to sparkle. You—you just glow without any effort at all.”
I bit my lip. Knowing I wasn’t the most beautiful girl in school didn’t change the elation I’d felt when he said I was. Haden was out of my league, I knew that. If I was going to begin the kind of games boys and girls play in high school, I should have started with a nice boy who didn’t make me feel like Little Red Riding Hood alone with the Big Bad Wolf. I wanted so badly to believe he thought I was special that I was willing to pretend I didn’t know better.
“Nothing to say to that?”
“I can’t think of anything to say that won’t sound stupid. I don’t have much practice with—”
“Compliments?”
I nodded. Compliments. Boys. Conversation. Seduction. You name it, I was inexperienced.
“Do I make you nervous?”
I nodded again.
“I suppose, in the long run, that’s probably a good thing.”
“Haden?” I asked hesitantly.
“Yes, Theia.” He leaned forward again, smiling at my agitation. I couldn’t help but smile back a little.
“Does anything make you nervous?”
He cocked his head to the side, measuring me and his answer carefully. “Not very much. Why do you ask?”
“I suppose I just want to get some equal footing. You seem to like to keep me off balance.”
His grin turned wolfish. “I suppose I do. It’s not a good idea for you to be too comfortable around me anyway.” He raised an eyebrow like a well-accomplished villain. “I’m not a very good person.”
“You want me to be afraid of you?”
He shook his head. “I want you to be smart.” His voice was so low I instinctively leaned closer.
“Are you so very dangerous, then?”
The distance between our faces grew shorter with each breath. “I’m not like the other boys,” he teased.
“I’m glad,” I whispered.
Haden sighed and his eyelids lowered, his gaze resting on my lips. “I’m serious, Theia. You’ll never be safe with me.”
“If you are about to tell me you are a vampire that glitters in the sunshine, I will—”
He laughed, a chuckle really, but it wasn’t practiced. It wasn’t an emotion he put on to impress me or anyone else. It encouraged me to want more of him.
His hand traced the table near mine, and I spread my fingers out in hopes of an actual touch. He pondered our closeness very carefully, it seemed. I wished very much to know what he was thinking.
Our moment was broken by a female voice. “Haden?”
We sat up, and I blushed eighteen shades of red while he answered, “Hey, Brittany.”
Disappointment and humiliation twined around my insides while looking at Brittany. She was perfect in all the ways that counted when attracting a boy. She shimmered in the right places and stayed matte in the others. Sixteen going on twenty-three on the outside, while portraying a wholesome, family-values girl on the inside. Maybe that was her outside too, though. I don’t know what she was on the inside. An enigma. She wasn’t very nice—but you never saw her being overtly ugly either.
“My locker is stuck. Can you come help me?” She was already pulling him by the hand. The look she shot me had territorial written all over it. “We’re all going to Hootenanny’s after the game. Can you come?”
Hootenanny’s was our small town’s answer to TGI Friday’s and the place the sneetches loved most in the world after sporting activities. Donny, Ame, and I avoided Hootenanny’s, preferring the smaller, less frequented places in town.
“Of course I’ll help you,” he answered. “We’ll work on these later?” he asked me as he was being led away.
“Right.”
He walked backwards a few more steps and brought Brittany’s hand to his lips without taking his eyes off me.
My hand tingled where he kissed her.
And the bastard knew it.
CHAPTER FIVE
L
ater that afternoon, Donny reluctantly pulled her car in front of the cute bungalow Ame pointed to on the right. “I really think this is lame,” she said, complaining one more time in case either of us was unsure how she felt about this visit to the psychic.
ater that afternoon, Donny reluctantly pulled her car in front of the cute bungalow Ame pointed to on the right. “I really think this is lame,” she said, complaining one more time in case either of us was unsure how she felt about this visit to the psychic.
Amelia smoosh-hugged her across the seats. “I know you do. Thanks for coming with me anyway.”
I couldn’t help but smile at Amelia’s barely contained excitement. She clapped her hands, the sound muted by her rainbow-print fingerless gloves that striped their way up her arm. I looked at my bland beige-on-beige outfit and pursed my lips.
I wasn’t exactly all-in on this little adventure, but it was a distraction, and I needed one desperately. Haden had tangled my insides with his pretty compliments followed by total disregard.
And then there were my dreams.
We’d had a substitute in history, so we watched yet another war film. My skin felt heated the entire hour, but I didn’t dare turn to see if Haden was looking at me. After class, he disappeared into the hall before I managed to sling my bag over my shoulder.
I was disappointed and relieved at the same time.
Donny and Amelia were still talking in the front seat. I realized I’d been daydreaming again.
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