The Nightworld - Jack Blaine [7]
The place is packed, both with kids I recognize from school and others I don’t. People mill around in the living area, staring at the flat screen and talking in little groups. There’s bottled beer chilling in ice and a spread of food that looks like it had to be catered. Do people really cater their high school parties? I’m more used to a keg and some Doritos and dip. Charlie grabs a beer and starts loading up a paper plate with delicacies. Lara watches him, amusement coloring her face. Then she looks at me and sort of tilts her head in a way that makes my heart beat faster.
“Want a beer, Nick?”
“Sure.” I take the bottle she hands me. We stand, two feet apart, awkward and silent. Charlie’s busy with his food and seems to be keeping his distance nicely. Finally I say, “How have you been?”
“How have you been?” Freaking genius. I saw her three days ago. I’m sure nothing earth-shattering has happened to her since then. She must think I’m such a—
“Okay.” She smiles that smile and I stop thinking. “Nothing much going on. How have you been?”
“Um, you know. The same.” We both start laughing.
“Want to check out the view?” She starts walking toward the windows, and I see that one of them is a door. I follow her through the room, out onto a balcony that looks over the entire city. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the city all lit up and spread out like this before. It would be amazing to see this every day.
“Weird,” Lara says with a frown.
“What?”
“It’s only eight o’clock.” She points toward the rest of the city. “There are never that many lights on this early.” Lara looks up at the sky, eyeing the cloud cover. “Then again, it’s never this dark on a summer evening at eight o’clock at night.”
The dark cloud that was off in the distance when Charlie and I were at the bus stop has grown into a blob that blots out the sun as it gets ready to set.
“Looks like there’s going to be a storm.” I smile sideways. “Hey, maybe I’ll have an excuse to miss my curfew. I can’t go home if it’s raining, right?”
Lara rolls her eyes and looks like she’s trying not to let on that she thinks it’s funny, but she can’t help letting out a little stutter of a laugh. She just shakes her head and looks back up at the cloud, not saying anything.
I know I should try to be chill, but I can’t stop looking at her. I almost can’t believe I’m standing here with her like this, like we’re old friends or something. Her hair’s come a little bit undone and it’s blowing a little in the breeze, twisting into her face. It’s blue, then pink and then yellow again in this weird, shifting twilight.
I almost want to reach out and put my arm around her—I have this weird feeling that she wouldn’t push me away. But just as I’m about to do it, she turns from the sky and back to me and busts me staring. I feel heat rise to my cheeks.
“It was cool being in class with you this year,” she says.
I’m surprised. I didn’t even think she’d noticed me. “Um,” I mumble. “It was?”
“Yeah. I, um, I sort of wondered if maybe you were going to ask me out, before the year was over. But you never did.” She looks up at me sort of funny, and it suddenly hits me. I realize that she must be shy. Lara Hanover, shy!
“Wow.” I don’t know what to say.
“You’re really pretty smart, aren’t you, Nick? I noticed in Mrs. Martin’s class that you really read the assignments. I could tell because of the way you knew what she was talking about sometimes.” Lara looks down at the balcony railing. “I read them too. I like books, mostly.” She looks back up at me. “Does that sound dumb?”
I’m about to say that she could never sound dumb to me, when my worst nightmare appears at the balcony door.
“There you are!”
I close my eyes. I know that voice. I turn, and sure enough, there’s Donny Morris. Standing just inside the apartment, grinning his sleazy grin at Lara. “I wondered where you were hiding.”
Lara smiles back