I’m spared from blowing our cover when Alex and Trevor walk out of the gas station at the same time, interrupting us. Alex doesn’t even break stride, just cuts a peculiar expression at Trevor and Teyonna, who are now whisper-giggling, heads bent together. He shakes his head. “Let’s go, Tempest. It’s time to tell me your secrets.”
I feel it again—that electrical burst—and my breath stills. There’s a strange spark in his eyes that tells me he isn’t just referring to the fourth scavenger hunt clue.
A raindrop lands on my forehead. Another darkens the sleeve over his shoulder. I lead him across the road, into the woods, and he reaches for the list in my hand; as it passes from mine to his, a memory glows brightly between us.
THEN
I reach an arm behind me, practically dislocating my elbow to sneak around the binder and stack of textbooks on the windowledge. I hate sitting in this spot directly after gym, wet from half an hour in the pool, cold air blowing from the vent above turning my stiff hair into chlorinated icicles. My skin’s uncomfortably tight, eyes watering. Good thing this class doesn’t have any hot guys in it, because I haven’t reapplied my eyeliner yet. I’m naked without my eyeliner.
Elbow somehow intact, I manage to pass the note into Yasmin’s hand without removing my gaze from the projector.
Mrs. Chevis is jotting notes in green dry-erase marker across the clear sheet, pad of her hand stained.Why did the Ottoman Empire retreat from the(she yawns and checks her notes)Balkans?
The door opens. Yasmin slinks inside, hangs the hall pass up on its peg, and begins to walk over to her desk, which is behind mine. When did she get up to go to the bathroom? I whirl around in confusion, but her seat’s empty. If she isn’t behind me, then who just took my note? The only other person nearby is Alex, who sits at my eight o’clock, cheeks rather flushed, eyes cast down, trying to hide behind his hair.
“Psst.”
I know he hears me. He makes a jerking movement, as if he almost glanced up but caught himself in time.
“Pssst. Did you take my note?”
Alex has superhuman memory. He only has to look at the screen for half a second, then neatly copies down three full sentences. I forget the end of a word while I’m still writing it. “Yes.”
Yasmin’s eyes bug out. She leans, loud-whispering, “Took your what?” Her neck and eyelids are packed with pink roll-on scented glitter, so she must’ve been busy decorating herself in the bathroom.
That.
Is.
Not the response I thought I’d get, even though it’s clear he could’ve been the only person to intercept my private business.
Right now, Alex King is suddenly interesting. Much more interesting than the Ottoman Empire, anyway. “Why’d you take my note?”
“You handed it to me.”
“That was for Yasmin.” I check on Mrs. Chevis. She’s scratching her head with the marker’s cap end now, the sound of her own voice putting her to sleep. She has newborn twins. At the beginning of the semester, she unloaded her frustrations about the “crap maternity leave this district gives to new parents” onto our class and has been trying to make us all forget what she said about the superintendent with Friday movies as bribes.
“Yasmin wasn’t here,” Alex points out crisply.
“I didn’tknowthat, though. The note was obviously for Yasmin. You shouldn’t have taken it. You—”
He looks up at me then, lasering me with the full force of his eyes, and it lands a physical blow. His curly hair’s untidy on the left side, like he’s had a fist propped in it, face tilted toward the right half of the room. He tries to replicate my triangular note-folding but gives up and goes for an old-fashioned square. His hand is much warmer than mine when his fingers pass the note back into my waiting palm.
I unfold it, scanning with a third-party viewpoint to gauge how bad I came off in this note between Yasmin and me.
Hey, Yaz! I am so BORED!!!!!!!! What are you doing later? I have to work until 8 but I told my parents I get off at 9, so you want to get ice cream? I know Corey works there but if I show up alone I’ll look like a creep.
I don’t know I have to babysit my little brother while my mom works. Tomorrow?
Tomorrow I’m supposed to help my grandma at her store.
Maybe I’ll come by? I’ll let you know. What’s your number? My parents have my phone cuz I’m grounded so I’ll have to call you on the house phone.
Below that, my cell phone number is as big as a traffic sign in sparkly gel pen, followed by a string of hearts. I gasp, flattening the note to my chest before stuffing it into my pencil pouch.
“Did you read any of this?” I hiss at Alex.
Without looking at me, he angles his notebook in my direction so that I can see my own phone number dashed across the top of his notes in neat handwriting.
