Back up there, Cheer-Girl, I thought. Chloe? Worried aboutme? Was this supposed to be one of those “what’s wrong with this picture?” quizzes I used to do in the waiting room at the dentist’s office? What had happened to Chloe Your-Mere-Presence-Offends-Me Larson? What had happened to all of her issues?
“And besides,” Chloe continued. “You alone at Peyton with Jack?” She rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t even handle standingnext to him at the party. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re kind of new to the whole boy thing, and I thought someone needed to be here to do damage control when you had the big meltdown.”
I read between the lines: ninety percent of Chloe had been here for the Toby-Makes-a-Fool-Out-of-Herself show (and possibly to pick up the Jack pieces after it all went down), and ten percent of her had been vaguely concerned that I might be dead or something because I’d turned off my necklace cam.
At this point, a ninety-ten split with Chloe was about as much as I could possibly ask for.
“I did not have a meltdown,” I grumbled.
Chloe didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t!” I insisted. Sharing an incredibly impassioned kiss with someone and then belting them in the stomach and pulling a runaway bride (minus the bride part) was not a meltdown.
“Did he kiss you?” Chloe’s voice was matter-of-fact, but her eyes were just a little bit lethal.
“Ummm … no.” Technically, I had kissed him.
Chloe let out a breath. “Maybe the twins are slipping,” she said. “They were positive that he was going in for the kiss before the feed died.”
I stuck as close to the truth as possible. “I sort of … errr …” I took a deep breath of my own. “I punched him in the stomach.”
“Are you demented?”
I took stock of the situation. I’d just kissed my mark, whohappened to be the most eligible bachelor at my high school, the son of an evil lawyer whose name was constantly on the top of CIA watch lists, the nephew of the voice behind our operation, and the ex-boyfriend of not one, but two bloodthirsty varsity cheerleaders. And then I’d punched him in the stomach and run.
I had to face the facts. For once, Chloe’s insult was right on target: I was obviously completely demented.
To distract her from that oh-so-apparent fact, I turned to the portion of this twisted equation that didn’t have me still going disgustedly weak at the knees.
“Jack’s uncle.” That was all I got out, all I was able to say.
“What about him?”
If Chloe knew something, she wasn’t telling, but that didn’t enlighten me at all as to whether or not she knew, because even if she did, Chloe would make me dig for it.
“His voice.” Why was it I could only manage two-word sentences? Was this some kind of postkiss affliction?
“What about it?” Chloe wasn’t giving an inch.
This time, I tried for three words. “I recognized it.”
I half expected her to say “what about it?” but she didn’t. Instead, without even looking at me, she said, “No, you didn’t.”
The way she said it made me even more convinced that I had.
“Yes, I did.”
“No.” Chloe’s voice was sharper this time. “You didn’t.”
Sure, I thought. I didn’t recognize the voice, just like I didn’t kiss Jack. A lie for a lie. When Chloe turned off the highway a second later, I realized that we weren’t headedback to the party, or toward my house. I couldn’t quite imagine her being all gung ho on girl bonding time given the mounting tension in the car, so I was pretty sure we weren’t going back to her house for a sleepover. That didn’t leave too many options.
“Where are we going?”
Chloe didn’t answer. Now that I’d told her that Jack hadn’t kissed me, and she’d refused to offer me any real answers to the questions I wanted to ask about Jack’s uncle, I had ceased to matter and was more or less invisible.
“Chloe!”
“Where do you think we’re going?” Chloe asked. “While you were flirting—badly, I might add—with Jack Peyton, I was at the party, monitoring your mission and tying up ends on the Infotech case.”
