“See you at the after-party?” Onny asked.
“Uh, no, got other plans, actually,” said Alexander, looking distinctly disturbed. “See you Monday.”
Onny watched Alexander disappear into a sleek car.
Byron waited until that moment to step beside her, a sly smirk on his face as he said, in mock wonder, “Hmm. I wonder if he knew that ‘Human’ was the name of the tulip we dissected in class last week. Aptly named, and then sacrificed, of course, by you.”
Onny could feel the cosmic force of her glare rising up from her toes. Maybe it was a little over the top to imagine a flower being sacrificed to the greater good… like the Homecoming game. But Onny had felt kind of bad about tearing apart a flower just to look at its pistils and whatever else, and it sounded so much better in her head to pretend there was a grander purpose to “Human’s” sacrifice. Byron, of course, thought she was being ridiculous and had merely stared at her when she began the “funeral procession” to the trash can.
Onny glared at him. “Thanks for ruining that.”
“Try sacrificing another flower,” said Byron, turning on his heel. “That should fix it.”
While Onny eventually explained it to Alexander, who laughed off the whole thing, all of her attempts to get him into another perfect moment had failed. Alexander would smile at her, but it seemed like every time she tried to go over and talk to him, one of his friends would show up and refuse to get the hint. Once, Alexander tried to get her attention, but Onny was already in the car with Ash and True on the way somewhere urgent. Timing was flat outnoton her side. Fail, fail, fail.
But Onny knew things were bound to change.
She had checked her horoscope for this week, and it had said,Love is finding you soon, if you let yourself receive it.And with the Halloween midnight gala and the town’s four-hundred-year anniversary, it was bound to be a time of magic and romance. Everyone was coming to her parents’ place for the official celebrations, andeveryoneknew Corazon Diamante threw the most epic parties imaginable. Alexander the Great-Looking was sure to be there, and Onny refused to let anything get in the way of their predestined romance.
Plus, this time she had a love potion to seal the deal. She was sure there had to besomethingthere, enough between them for a love potion to fan quietly into future flames of love. A flutter of nerves opened up in her chest.This was it,she thought, breathlessness stealing through her. All this effort, all the spell work, and everything would line up despite Byron Frost’s disastrous commentary.
Ugh,thought Onny.I hate him.
As if summoned by her thought, a cold shadow fell over her desk. Onny looked up to see her dreaded lab partner, bane of her romantic existence and destroyer of an otherwise cosmically perfect meet-cute: Byron.
Onny hated admitting it, but the first time she saw him she’d actually gotten butterflies in her stomach. Now when she looked at him, it was a lot more like centipedes.
Byron Frost might have the name and face of a poet, but he had the soul of a mechanical pencil.
He and his mom had moved into Moon Ridge at the beginning of junior year. He’d instantly caused a stir with his young BruceWayne vibe, thick sheaf of cocoa-dark hair, gray eyes, enigmatic-but-sexy-billionaire jawline, and uncannily intense stare.
Sadly, her particular loathing hadn’t affected him at all. Byron was not only at the top of their class, but also the darling of every teacher, and he flat out detested anything that reeked of stars and whimsy, i.e., the entirety of Apollonia Diamante. He’d made that clear the first time they met in homeroom, where Onny—in an overture of being nice to the new kid—offered to read his tarot cards.
Beautiful Byron Frost had raised an eyebrow and declared, “I find cosmic bullshit the worst kind of pretension.”
From then on, their relationship went as follows:
Swords drawn.
Flags planted.
War declared.
The fact that they were forced to be lab partners was just a cruel quirk of the universe.
“What’s this?” asked Byron, dropping into the seat beside her. “Onny Diamante has beat me to class? Will wonders never cease?”
“Hail Satan to you, too,” she grumbled at him.
“You usually arrive with the second bell on a cloud of incense smoke.”
Onny eyed him suspiciously. Had he been tracking her movements? She looked at him but didn’t notice anything out of the usual. Byron looked immaculate as always: formal gray sweater, dark jeans, hair swept away from his forehead. If he could come to school in a three-piece suit, he probably would.
“My meeting with Lucifer ended early,” said Onny.
“Tell him I said great work on the polar ice caps.”
“Why don’t I tell him—” Onny started to say, when their biology teacher swept into the room.
