I looked up. She had just pulled to a stop at the front of the school parking lot. “I wasn’t trying to groan.”
“You seem to do a lot of things you aren’t trying to do. Maybe you should try not to do things like that. You’d have more friends.”
“Thanks, Ashley. Good tip.”
I reached for the door handle just as a group of people walked in front of Ashley’s car, Cade among them. He slid across the hood, landed on his feet on the other side, and then winked at her.
Ashley opened her mouth in disgust. “Who is that arrogant jerk?”
“Nobody.”
She honked her horn three times.
“Ashley, stop.”
She rolled down her window.
“Hey!” she shouted at Cade. “That was totally rude, what you just did.”
I jumped out. “See you later.”
I walked away to the steady stream of my sister’s rant. I tried not to smile, but it was fun to hear someone tell Cade off for once. Nobody seemed to have the guts to do it at this school. He had turned as if actually listening to her, wearing his own smug smile. I picked up my pace so he wouldn’t see me.
A minute later I heard a voice from behind me. “It runs in the family, I see.” Had he jogged to catch up to me just so he could say that?
“Our feelings toward you?” I said, forgetting that I was supposed to be ignoring him. “Yes, must be genetic.”
“I hear there are meds you can take for that.”
I tilted my head. “Really? Do you sell these anti-Cade-annoyance pills? Is that how your friends manage it?”
“No, I was referring to your issues, but … ”
I raised my eyebrows. “Yes, I won that round.”
“So what’s the score, you three, me two hundred?”
“You’re keeping score?”
“Always.” At that, he left my side, joining up with a group of friends.
Not worth it, I repeated over and over again in my head until he was safely out of sight. My jaw hurt and I realized I was clenching my teeth. I let a deep breath out and tried to relax. It helped when I saw Lucas walking alone twenty feet in front of me. I could practically feel all the tension leave my body as I watched his relaxed gait.
Ahead of Lucas, Isabel waved at me from across the rocks. She bounded over, her dark curls bouncing. By the time she was walking beside me, I’d forgotten all about Cade. And since I was still pretending he didn’t exist, I was not going to tell her what had just happened. I was proud of myself for holding my tongue.
“Hey,” she said, linking her arm through mine. Her plastic bracelets clinked together.
“Hey,” I responded.
“I’m surprised he didn’t feel you burning a hole in the back of his head.”
“What? Who?”
“Funny. Like you don’t know who you were just staring at.”
My cheeks went hot and my gaze went back to Lucas, who was now almost to the lockers across the commons.
I was about to avoid the subject by asking Isabel if she finished the History assignment. But then four sophomore girls met up in front of us with a loud squeal. They all exchanged the lidded Starbucks cups they were holding. I was confused until Isabel whispered, “They each buy a drink in the morning and then they switch.”
“Why?”
“Why not? It’s fun.” We walked around them. “We need a morning routine.”
I gestured back toward the girls. “That morning routine?”
“Not that one. But something we do or say every morning when we see each other to start the day right.”
“Um … ”
“A handshake?”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “ ‘Hey’ has been working pretty well for us for the last three years.”
“But they’re so cute,” Isabel said, nodding toward the giggling girls.
“We’re not cute enough for you?”
“No. We’re not.” She smiled.
“Just last night, before falling asleep, I thought to myself, I wish Isabel and I had a morning tradition. It would make our friendship so much cuter.”
“And last night before I fell asleep, I was wondering how you got so lucky to have a best friend like me when you’re such a brat.”
“So lucky.”
Isabel’s eyes widened. “That’s it! That’s our tradition.”
“To talk about how awesome you are and how lucky I am every morning?”
She shook her head. “No … Well, we can do that too. But how about the first thing we say to each other every morning is the last thing we thought of before we went to sleep the previous night?”
“That won’t work. You’ll just say ‘Gabriel’ every morning. You’ll say it so much that soon I’ll start to wonder if my name is Gabriel.”
“That’s not true.” She stuck out her lower lip. “Fine, I guess we don’t need a tradition. But, speaking of Gabriel, he wants to go out with us this weekend. You’ll come, right?”
I tugged on the straps of my backpack. “I thought we already decided no setups.”
“No, it wouldn’t be a setup. It will be a group of us. Some of his friends and us.”
I frowned, suspicious. “What will we be doing?”
“Go-karts.”
The indoor track wasn’t cheap. I calculated how much money I had saved in the jar in my closet. After I bought the guitar, the twins’ mom hired a full-time nanny, so I was out of my regular source of income. Occasionally, I worked for my mom at craft fairs, but it had been a while. I couldn’t remember if I’d spent all my money the last time we went to the movies with Gabriel and his friends.
“Okay, sure. I’ll talk to my mom about it. Sounds fun.”
“It sounds awesome.” The bell rang. “See you at lunch. If you don’t die in Chemistry, that is.”
“Every day poses that risk.”
“I believe in you.”
She was ten steps away when I called out. “Iz!”
She turned. “Yeah?”
“We don’t need any cutesy traditions. We’re solid you and me.”
I wasn’t going to die from boredom this time. It was going to be from shock.
In Chemistry, there was a hand drawn arrow underneath my final message from the day before. It pointed down, to the end of the desk. As if something was under there. My eyes went wide. Was there something under the desk? I looked on the floor but my high-topped red sneakers were the only things there.
What if …
While keeping an eye on Mr. Ortega, I ran my hand along the bottom of the desk, disgusted when it met a lump of what I assumed was chewed up-gum. Gross.
Still, I let my pencil roll off my desk and land on the ground. I used my sneaker to slide the pencil back toward me then ducked down to retrieve it. While leaning down, I craned my neck around. Sure enough, wedged under the strip of metal that ran between the desk legs was a piece of paper folded into fourths. I quickly grabbed my pencil and the paper then sat back up, the blood rushing back down my face.
As quietly as possible, I unfolded the paper and smoothed it flat. It was as if this was the most normal thing in the world, like this person and I exchanged notes all the time.