It still feels risky to believe that, but I have hope these days.I have genuine hope.
“Are you guys coming or what?”Sinclair calls.
“Don’t you start,” Olive yells back, and he laughs and sticks his middle finger up at her.
“Behave yourself,” Tori tells him.I can’t help smiling.
“So the trial will be after the Christmas holidays,” Olive says as we follow the others.
“Sounds like it.”Christmas holidays.It’s hard to believe, but it won’t be long now before the break, when I’ll fly back to New York again.To my family.I don’t know how to feel about that,but I’m ready to find out.“And I’ll be able to bring Cleo right back with me.”
“So that’s settled?”
“Yeah.”I grin.“She’s starting in the second form in January.”
“Lucky thing.She’s got so many Dunbridge years ahead of her.”
I can’t help noticing Olive’s eyes turn thoughtfully to her friends, who are a few paces ahead of us.Next summer, they’ll do their A levels and leave Dunbridge Academy.
“I wish I did too.”She smiles at me, equal parts sad and serene.
“We still have eighteen months,” I say.
“You’ve changed your tune, Fantino,” she teases.
“Oh, shut it, Ms.I-Belong-in-the-Upper-Sixth-Really.”
“Gutting that my plan failed,” she says, not taking her eyes off me.
“What a nightmare.”
“Well, you can’t always get what you want, but whatever you get instead, you get it by the bucket.”
I laugh quietly.“I’m exactly what you wanted.You were just too proud to admit it.”
“True.”She shrugs.“And you know what you’re talking about there, don’t you?”
“I love your smartass mouth, Livy.”
“Hey, since when has he called her that?”Tori exclaims.
“Since he fell for me,” Olive replies, with an impish grin and a warning note in her voice.“And he’s never going to stop.”
“I obviously never stood a chance against the pair of you Scorpios,” Tori says with a sigh.
“Don’t be sad, Victoria,” I say, which makes Olive giggle.I don’t need to mention how much that pleases me, do I?
“We have to hurry,” Henry says.“If we miss the bus, we won’t be back for wing time.”
“That would be a disaster, Henry,” says Grace.Their eyes meet, then Grace looks at the ground.I’m well aware there’s a complicated history between them.
Olive told me that they were together for ages before Henry fell in love with Emma.That must have been miserable for all three, but Grace seems to have found someone in Gideon who gives her what Henry couldn’t.But Olive is still worried about her friend.
I don’t know exactly where things stand between Grace and Gideon, but I hope the two of them can have a fairy-tale ending too.Not that this is a happy ending for Olive and me.Happy, definitely, but this is not the end.Anything but.
Other things will come to an end, though.The time we still have with Olive’s friends at Dunbridge.I’m sure she’s thinking about that as we sprint for the bus, barely catching it, and all pile into seats at the back.Olive’s gaze wanders from Emma and Henry, to Tori and Sinclair, to Gideon and Grace.I don’t like how expressionless her face is.
She doesn’t look at me until I put my arm around her and give her a squeeze.“How do you feel about them leaving soon?”I ask quietly.The others are deep in conversation and don’t hear us.
