Spellbound - Cara Lynn Shultz [30]
Before I could answer her, Brendan sauntered in, his black hair messy as usual, his white button-down shirt untucked and his black tie undone. I felt that familiar fluttering—only it was stronger now, spreading through my body like a dull ache. Seeing him again confirmed it for me: I really, really liked Brendan. And it scared me, because the word like didn’t seem strong enough to describe how I felt. I craved him in a way I wasn’t used to. It was a little—okay, a lot—more intense than a crush. My feelings for him could kick a crush’s butt.
I never found out about Halloween Movie Night, I realized. Is he going this Friday? Could we go together? And there’s a winter formal coming up….
My toe tapped a little impatiently. I couldn’t wait to talk to him. Brendan sauntered over to his desk and I leaned forward, opening my mouth to say hi.
Without even casting so much as a glance in my direction, Brendan sat down in his desk and slouched low, stretching those long legs in front of him like he was lounging at home in front of the television, not sitting at attention in class.
I sat back and closed my mouth, and cast a furtive glance to Cisco, who just shrugged. Jenn, for her part, looked like she was too busy holding on to her breakfast to notice, but I caught a smug glance coming off of Kristin to her left.
Damn it, I thought, and whipped open my notebook with such fury that I ripped one of my pages.
The next hour was torture. I would rather have been waterboarded, suffocated, forced to lick the subway floor—anything!—to get out of that classroom. I found myself studying the back of Brendan’s head as if it would give me any answers. Every scratch of his messy hair, every time he leaned forward, every twist he gave the small silver hoop pierced in his cartilage, I just wanted to throw my pen at him. I envisioned it ricocheting off the back of his head.
The bell rang and he reached for his bag. I found myself leaning forward and the words were tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“Hey, Brendan?” I asked hesitantly. My voice sounded thin and insecure, and I cringed. He paused in his chair and leaned back, turning his left ear in my direction but he didn’t look at me. “I have your hoodie. It’s in my locker. I would have brought it to class but it didn’t fit in my bag. So it’s in my locker. So, yeah. Just um, let me know what you want me to do with that, ’cause it’s in my locker.” Shut up, shut up, shut up. The words tumbled out like an avalanche of dorkiness.
He tilted his face in my general direction, but his green eyes barely focused on me. “Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. My locker’s open, just leave it in there if you can. It’s number 445. Thanks.”
With that, he slung his bag over his shoulder and walked out.
He forgot about that? I felt my face getting red, redder still when I overheard Kristin walk by, mimicking me to Amanda and Kendall, her like-minded minions. “It’s in my locker,” she mimicked in a high-pitched voice, darting an evil glare my way as Amanda cackled.
Cisco gave me a mournful little smile, while Jenn looked dumbfounded. “Why do you have his hoodie?” she asked. “Did I see him on Friday?”
Happy for a change of subject, I leaned over and said, “You cannot still be drunk from Friday.”
“No!” Jenn seemed insulted. “I went out for brunch on Sunday with my sister and we ended up pub crawling. We have awesome fake ID.”
“With Austin, too?” I asked.
She looked at me, lost.
“You told me you and Austin were going to Wollman Rink this weekend.”
Jenn turned a little greener. “So that’s why he left me a weird message.” Jenn paused, then clutched her stomach. “I need to get out of here. Are we going out for lunch or what?”
I agreed to go. The last thing I wanted to do was be in that cafeteria with him. I felt so stupid for thinking there was some kind of connection. I was probably something like a starving person, I surmised. A starving person will eat a rancid slice of pizza and think it’s a gourmet meal,