“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I grumble, snatching my hand out of hers. I scoot off the bed and stride toward the door, eyes prickling with heat.
Before I reach it, Rae says, “This is what I’m talkin’ about. You’re about to cry.”
I rest my hand on the doorknob but don’t turn it. “I’m not.”
“Angie…” Rae’s suddenly at my side, her pretty pink nails circling my forearm. “Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. Spread them into different baskets. Find different baskets.”
“I don’t want different baskets.”
Rae sighs real loudly. “Fine, but you’re not allowed to whine and cry if you lose.”
“Fine.” I’m still staring at her hand, which finally comes away from my arm. Her fingertips have blurred a little.
“And just so we’re clear, I do believe in you.”
I finally look back up at her. She’s a couple of inches taller than I am, but not so many that I have to tilt my head back.
She gives me a one-armed hug. “Now let’s call the beast who knocked you over.”
That’s how I entered the driver of the large black SUV’s information on my phone—under Beast, for the T-shirt he was sporting. Yes, my phone still works, but the cracks make it difficult to read the screen, plus I almost sliced my finger. I ended up winding a piece of tape around the bottom to keep the cracked glass in place.
“We’re not calling him,” I say.
“You said he was hot.”
“Rae, he gave me his phone number so I could tell him how much it’ll cost to fix my bike. Running into me wasn’t some creepy pickup scheme or anything.”
Rae fake pouts, but then moves on to discussing the possibilities of there being new kids in Reedwood High this term. Every year, there’s a handful of them. Talking about them gets Rae as excited as I become when my favorite artists drop a new single.
Funny what gets people’s pulses pounding.
4
The Beast in Tennessee
I spend the night dreaming with my eyes open, Mona’s contest electrifying my brain. By two a.m., I come up with a melody that I think is good until I play it on our baby grand before heading to school. It sounds so awful that I glower at the black and ivory keys a solid ten minutes before plunking them in an attempt to make something better rise.
Nothing better rises.
Well, besides my mother. She walks into the living room dressed and made-up, asking why I’m not ready yet. I cover the keys and lug my tired and annoyed self back up the stairs and then over to school.
After hooking up my bike to the rack in the parking lot, I speed up the flagstone path and into the grand redbrick building. Classroom doors are still clicking shut in the hallway lined with sunshine-yellow lockers. The color is supposed to be soothing and energizing, or so says our principal, who’s a great believer in everything feng shui and holistic. She had a Buddhist monk rearrange the classrooms last year. In some of them, the desks fan out around the whiteboards like sunrays.
“Angie!”
I spin around to see Rae pulling open a classroom door.
“Tell me you have first-period history with Mr. Renfrew.”
“I didn’t get my schedule yet.”
I’m starting to walk away when I almost bump into a wall of tanned skin covered in fruity body lotion.
Melody Barnett smirks at my knees. In my haste to leave, I forgot to replace the princess Band-Aids with flesh-colored ones. “Took the training wheels off your bike?” She says this low enough so that Rae doesn’t hear.
Mel adulates Rae—like most everyone in school—and dislikes me—like most everyone in school. People don’t get our friendship.
“Bite me,” I say, pushing past her.
In a pair of high-wedged espadrilles that make her legs look longer than my entire body, Melody toddles toward Rae, flapping her schedule as though it were Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. “I have history too, RaeRae.”
Ugh. Even the sound of her voice is grating, high-pitched and nasal, which makes her first name quite unfortunate.
Mel loops her arm through Rae’s and tugs her into the classroom.
“I’ll save you a seat,” Rae says to me.
Once they’re gone, I start toward the registrar’s department, a modern wing made entirely of glass that houses the administrative desks and the principal’s office. Only one other person is waiting for their schedule this late.
Jasper leans against the secretary’s desk. “If it isn’t my all-time favorite singer,” he says to me.
I roll my eyes. “You’ve never even heard me sing.”
“That’s not for lack of tryin’.” He rakes his fingers through his sideswept golden bangs.
“I don’t sing in public.”
“You’re aware that if you want to be a singer someday, Conrad, you’ll have to sing in front of people?”
“I’m not ready yet.”
He shoots me a sly smile. “Can I get a private showcase when you are ready?”
“I don’t do private showcases.”
“You wouldn’t even have to sing,” he says in a low voice.
My pulse trips.
The secretary hands him a sheet of yellow paper, then asks for my name. The enormous printer behind her roars to life and spits out another piece of yellow paper.
Jasper skims his schedule, then stuffs it in the pocket of his khakis. “What class do you have?”
“Calculus with Mrs. Dabbs. You?”
“History.”
“Rae and Mel have history too.”
“I’d rather you had history.”
I blink at him, then blink down at my schedule, because I’m not sure what to do with that comment. Jasper and I have been friends for almost as long as Rae and I. Granted, we’re not as close, but still … I fold and refold my schedule until it’s no larger than a mosaic tile.
“Angela, Jasper.” Principal Larue chirps our names.
I turn, ready to apologize for being late, but the words stick to my tongue. Next to her stands the beast who ran me over.
Okay, he didn’t run me over, but it was a close call.
The principal smiles up at him. “I’d like you to meet our newest student.”
“Welcome to Reedwood, dude,” Jasper says.
The beast nods, rolling his white button-down’s sleeves to the elbows, revealing tanned forearms with ropy lean muscle. I bet the rest of his body is just as nice … Not that I’m interested in the rest of his body. Or anyone else’s body, for that matter.
I zip my gaze off him and set it on the principal, who’s traded in her signature permed hair for a funky new hairstyle—a short Afro adorned with a silk scarf that makes her look a decade younger.
“Would you be so kind as to show Tennessee to his classroom, Angela?”
“Me?” Since I forgot to replenish my depleted supply of oxygen, it comes out as a squeak.
Nice.
The beast … I mean, Tennessee, presses his lips together so tightly that his stubble-coated jaw tics. I still can’t get over the fact that he goes to my school. Let alone to high school.
“I can show him to his classroom, Mrs. Larue,” Jasper proposes.