Seduced by the Game (34 page)

Our kiss tasted like
cinnamon breath mints and the salt of my tears.

My eyes fluttered open
when he broke away from me. His were so blue, so intense, so deep as he stared
back at me, still caressing my cheeks with the pads of his thumbs.

“Do I need to apologize?”
he asked, his voice cracking on the words.

My gut clenched at the
thought of him apologizing for making me feel so incredibly safe and protected
and loved. “No. Please don’t.”

Jamie nodded. He kissed me
again, on the forehead this time, and I heard the shutter of the camera once
more.

A boy whose face I
recognized but whose name I couldn’t remember stood over us, holding out a
stack of tissues for me. I took them from him and wiped my eyes. “Thank you,” I
said, but my voice was all stuffy and watery.

He kept his hand out and
reached for mine. “I can help you up, Katie.”

When I was on my feet
again, Jamie stood next to me and put his arm around my waist. He turned us,
and in the area where the line waiting for the photographer had been, there was
now a massive crowd—probably at least a hundred students, many of whom had been
my good friends—all of them staring. Or I thought they had been my friends.
Maybe they still were. Half of them were crying just as hard as I had been.

My breath caught, and I
couldn’t make my legs move. I leaned back into Jamie’s chest.

“Are you all right?” he
asked me, his voice soft and sure by my ear.

I nodded.

“I’m right here with you,”
he said, and he guided me toward this sea of faces I’d written out of my life.

Before I could process
anything that had just happened, I got sucked into the sobbing whirlwind of
people I’d thought had written me off as dead. Some reached for me to hold my
hand as I passed. Others drew me in for a hug.

“We’ve missed you, Katie,”
they said.

They’d missed me? If
they’d missed me, why hadn’t they made any effort to see me? To support me when
I might be dying? Why had they all been avoiding me like I had the plague?
Maybe Mom had been right after all and they just didn’t know how to deal. Maybe
they were just as scared as I was.

A few kept saying, “You’re
so brave.”

I didn’t feel brave. I had
felt terrified every single day since the doctor told me I had cancer, and my
fear only seemed to grow by the minute. Even now, I wouldn’t be here at all if
not for Jamie—if not for him asking to bring me here, for him holding on to me
and lending me his strength. I would be hiding out in my house and letting that
fear take root in my mind. Letting it suck all the hope out of me until I
wanted to give in.

It took nearly ten minutes
for us to get through the throng and back into the main part of the gym, where
they had the dance floor and tables and chairs.

Jamie must have sensed my
exhaustion because he guided me to a chair and held it out for me. “Let’s sit
for a minute.” He said it in a way that made it seem like he was just as tired
as I was, but anyone with two eyes could see he was fine. He sat in the chair
next to me and took my hand. “You are, you know. Brave,” he added when I gave
him a questioning look. “So brave.”

He made me want to be
brave.

I couldn’t seem to take my
eyes off Katie the whole night, not even when some of the guys from her school
sat down and wanted advice on becoming a pro in their sports or when the girls
came over and begged me to sign their arms or…well, some specific other places
I had no intention of signing. The girls flirted and tried to get me to dance,
but I was only here for Katie. I didn’t want to be rude to them, but I really
wasn’t interested in anything they had to offer.

I didn’t mind the requests
for autographs so much. I’d gotten used to that by now. Everywhere I went
someone wanted a piece of me. It was just the
other
pieces of me they
wanted that got to me. It took some work on my part, but eventually, the
overzealous girls backed off.

Every time one of the guys
cut in for a dance with Katie, or one of the girls came to catch up with her,
she seemed even more bewildered by the attention than she had when I’d kissed
her. She’d been so sure that none of them cared about her anymore, when the
truth was probably just that they didn’t know how to tell her and show her. So
often, cancer seems like a death sentence. How was someone our age supposed to
react when we found out one of our own was in a battle like that? It just takes
some time to adjust, I supposed. God knew I’d needed it.

I still wasn’t sure what
had come over me when we had gotten our pictures taken. I just knew that Katie
had given a piece of herself in that moment, not only to me but to everyone who
had been watching, and I hadn’t been able to stop myself from kissing her. No—I
could have stopped if she’d wanted me to. I just didn’t want to stop, and she
didn’t ask. I wanted to hold her close and make her feel loved.

She’d laid herself bare in
front of all of us, and the photographer had captured the moment. Katie had
been crying a lot lately, but these were a different kind of tears. It wasn’t
just her fears and sadness keeping her locked up tight; it was so much more.
Like everything under the moon that a person could feel had all crashed into
her at once and it was too much for her to keep inside any longer. I’d never
witnessed anything more beautiful, so I could only imagine what the images
would look like.

The thought had never
crossed my mind that I might start to fall in love with her when I’d asked her
to go to her prom with me. I had just wanted to see her come back to life.
Well, she had, and now I was pretty much royally fucked. Getting Webs to let me
take her to prom was one thing; getting him to let me really go out with her
was something else entirely.

I was setting myself up
for a huge heartbreak. I knew it. There just didn’t seem to be any way to stop
it from happening now. Maybe it was better not to try. Maybe I needed to feel
that heartbreak so I could appreciate these moments—seeing her laughing and living—all
the more.

The band finished their
song, and the guy who’d most recently asked Katie to dance brought her over to
me. Her smile was as bright as the twinkling lights overhead, but her cheeks
were too flushed and her eyes were more sunken in than they had been only a
short while ago. She was wearing out fast.

“Thanks, Shawn,” she said,
her voice winded, as she sat in the empty chair beside me.

He winked at her and
nodded at me. “Any time, Katie.” He gave an awkward wave and turned around,
disappearing into the crowd.

I took her hand in mine.
“Why don’t we sit this one out?” I didn’t want her to get so tired that she
couldn’t enjoy everything she wanted to experience tonight. She needed to pace
herself.

She nodded. “That’s
probably best. I think they’re about to announce the king and queen, anyway.
Then they’ll have their coronation dance. We should have a little while to get
some rest in.” Her eyes moved to the stage where a few of the teachers were
gathering and taking over the use of the microphone from the band.

At least she wasn’t going
to try to convince me she wasn’t tired.

I pushed a plate of fresh
fruit in front of her and followed it with a glass of water. She dug in with no
further prodding.

After a few bites, she
said, “You should have some, too.”

I shook my head. “I’ve
already had plenty. I’m fine.” Besides, as long as she was okay, I was okay.

A woman called for
everyone’s attention in the microphone. Once it got quiet, she turned it over
to the senior-class president, a girl in a hot pink dress who I recognized as
one of the first to talk to Katie tonight.

“As pretty much everyone
should know, we had a last-minute revote on the prom king and queen.” She took
out an envelope and slid her finger under the flap, then pulled out a single
card. “The results for both king and queen are unanimous on this revote. For
the first time ever, we have no prom king.”

A half-eaten strawberry
fell from Katie’s hand and back to the plate. She shook her head. “I don’t
understand,” she said only loud enough for me to hear.

I thought I might
understand, though, and if I was right it made me gladder than ever that I’d
worked up the guts to ask her to come with me. But I just shrugged and shook my
head, and I kept my attention focused on the stage.

“Now, as to the prom
queen…”

The class president gave
the band a nod, and they started playing again—the familiar strains of Bruno
Mars’s “Just the Way You Are.” A few other students jumped up on the stage, and
they all started dancing. I recognized a couple of them as members of Katie’s
Glee Club, and that was when I knew I was right.

Katie laughed, her eyes
lighting up.

By the time the lead
singer started singing, the crowd had parted and joined in the dancing, too.

“A flash mob?” Katie
shouted at me in disbelief, her voice barely audible over the music. “Who are
they mobbing? God, I would have loved to be part of this.”

But she was about to be.
She just hadn’t accepted that someone could have done something like that for
her…yet.

Sure enough, the lead
dancers who’d joined the class president on stage jumped down to the dance
floor as part of the routine, and the five of them danced their way through the
path that had opened up in the crowd.

When the chorus kicked in,
every single person in the gym—students and teachers alike—was singing along
and pointing right at Katie. Her jaw dropped when she realized what they were
doing. Fresh tears filled her eyes.

I put my hand on her back
and leaned close. “Take it all in. Every moment of this.”

After the second verse and
chorus, the lead singer had joined everyone else on the dance floor. He took
the microphone to the class president, and the band dropped their volume down
and went into a holding pattern of sorts.

“We love you, Katie,” the
class president said over the music. “We all miss you, and we want you to know
that we’re all behind you—every single person here, students and teachers
alike. You’re not in this battle alone, and when you don’t have the strength
left, we’re going to fight even harder. The Glee Club put this together for you
with Mr. Jenkins’s help, and we unanimously voted for you to be our prom
queen.” Then she handed the mic back to the singer.

Two of the dancers came
over to collect Katie, but she was shaking so hard when she got to her feet
that I worried she would fall. I got up with them, supporting her with an arm
around her back. They led us out to the middle of the dance floor, and the
crowd of dancers converged around us. Someone came forward with a wreath of
flowers and put it on Katie’s head right as the band kicked it into gear again.

Katie wobbled slightly,
and I pulled her closer to my side, urging her to lean into me. She let most of
her weight fall back, putting her hand over mine where I held her waist while
they finished out the flash mob. As the strains of the music faded, everyone
backed away until Katie and I were alone in the center of the gym. The lights
dimmed except for a spotlight hitting the rotating disco ball above us and the
Christmas lights draped everywhere. The band started into another song, a
slower one this time.