Not gonna think about that. “We should double. Boden hangs out with smart guys. I bet he has a friend who’d like to go.”
“Thanks,” she said, “but I’ll pass. I don’t want to be stuck improvising excuses when your dad catches you. I’d like to keep my good-influence status.”
I never should have told Selena that my dad thinks she’s a good influence on me. She brings it up far too often. She’s never told me whether her parents think I’m a good influence on her, and I’ve never asked.
There are some things it’s better not to know.
c c c
That day at school, I flirted with Boden in physics but somehow couldn’t bring myself to ask him for tutoring help. I hoped he would make the next move.
He didn’t. Ditto for Wednesday. My love life was stalling, but Dad had a great time at dinner that night with Ms. Nash.
I came to school early each day to put out cat food near the dumpster for Mascot. He eyed me with suspicion, watching mefrom a distance. As soon as I left, though, he padded over to inspect my offering and eat it.
My father was allergic to cats, so feeding Mascot was as close as I would come to owning one. I was determined to win him over. One day, he would let me pet him. One day he’d purr for me.
On Friday, I saw Cooper, Jasper, Amelia, and Dahlia standing around the hall during lunch, talking. Dahlia was smiling, her body angled toward Cooper, while she tucked her hair behind her ear.
Cooper grinned back at her, oblivious to her personality flaws. And okay, maybe I was being judgy. I’d hardly ever talked to her in person, but I’d heard an earful from two junior girls in drama class who’d tried to befriend her when she first moved in last year.
They’d invited her to go to a movie, and she’d told them she had family plans that night. Then she’d shown up at a party that some seniors were throwing. She’d flirted with half the guys there and turned them all down when they asked her out. The phrase she used was, “I’m not saying my answer won’t be yes later, but for now, it’s no.”
And for some inexplicable reason, the guys didn’t seem upset with that treatment. It was like she’d become a competition they all wanted to win.
The next Monday, when the drama girls asked Dahlia how her “family plans” involved going to a party, she laughed and said, “Some of us have cooler families than others.” No apology or explanation.
So yeah, good luck with her, Cooper.Caveat emptor. Buyer beware.
That day in physics, the class explored electricity by buildingsimple and parallel circuits. I smiled and talked with Boden, determined that today I’d ask him about helping me with my trig homework.
His black glasses perched on his nose, and his tousled dark hair looked like it had been styled with a little too much enthusiasm, which gave him a quirky charm.
Mr. Johnson was taking forever to come around to all the groups and check off our work. While we waited, I pressed the button that lit up the lightbulb. We’d done everything right. Another one hundred percent on the lab.
“Does it bother you that we don’t know how electricity actually works?” I asked.
“We know how it works,” Boden replied like it was a stupid question. “That’s the whole point of the lab. When you give electrons voltage, it creates an electric current.”
“That’s just describingwhatthey do, notwhyorhowthey do it. We don’t even understand why electrons have a charge or where they are at any given moment.” Mr. Johnson, the teacher, had waxed on about this mystery.
I imitated his voice. “They are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. They know when you’ve been sleeping and know when you’re awake.”
Boden laughed. “You don’t need to worry about any of that. It won’t be on the test.”
“We don’t even know what light is.” We’d also spent some time covering wave-particle duality.
“Which is why it’s also not going to be on the test.”
I ought to say,Speaking of learning stuff for tests, how are you at trig?But asking Boden to tutor me suddenly seemed like such a commitment. Did I really want to pursue this guy as a homecoming date? It was one thing to talk to him in physics class;what if he had no conversational skills and the whole night was filled with awkward silences?
Going to the dance would be so much more fun if I knew Selena could double with us. If we went in a group, there would be less pressure and it would be easier to arrange things with Cooper. He could just drop me off at Selena’s house and her parents wouldn’t think it was odd that the group was leaving from her house.
I could find out if Boden knew of a friend who would be a good fit for her and casually plant the idea of a group of us going together. She didn’t have to know I’d suggested it. “Do you know my friend Selena?” I asked.
“Yeah, she’s in AP Chem with me.”
“I should’ve known you’d be in at least one class together. She’s smart like you.” This year, all of Selena’s classes had extra letters in front of them. My only honors class was AP Lit. “She’s really nice too. She’s a little shy, though. I’m always telling her she should talk to more people in her classes, but she worries about getting in trouble and ending up on the teacher’s bad side.”
