“Really, Charlie?” Carter snorted. “Enforcing study hall? You sound like Steve.” He then grabbed the remainder of the chips and guac and left before I could do anything.
More food, I thought.Next week, I’ll get more food and leave half of it outside the door. With a sign that says, PLEASE TAKE ONE.
“Steve?” Luke asked.
“Stephen Carver.” I rose from the couch to retrieve dessert. “He’sone of the other prefects. Lives on the third floor.” I grabbed a white bag from on top of my fridge. “Wears noise-canceling headphones when he does homework.” Seniors didn’t have mandatory study hall, but I had no doubt Stephen was upstairs with his head buried in a book. “He had the second-highest GPA in Dag last year.”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “Who had the highest?”
I dropped back down next to him and ignored the question. Instead, I handed over the bag. “There’s a bunch of flavors,” I told him, “but raspberry isn’t my thing, so you have to eat those.”
Luke reached inside and pulled out a chocolate macaron. And then, he gave me this look. “You do know I was kidding, right? You seriously could’ve gotten pretzels or goldfish and I would have eaten them. You didn’t…” He took a bite and groaned. “Oh god, these aresogood.”
I laughed. “They aren’t legit, but Pandora’s does a hell of a knockoff.”
He munched. “Thank you.”
I let myself smile. “You’re welcome.”
By midnight, the only homework I’d accomplished was an econ problem set, something that should’ve been done in forty minutes, but ended up taking an hour and some change.
Because I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
AfterSurvivorended (Luke was right: Alyssa had no choice but to play her idol), we got to work on our map assignment, and it came together pretty quickly. The text we chose was an 1803 letterThomas Jefferson wrote to Meriwether Lewis, appointing him to head up a cross-country journey to explore the Pacific Northwest. It was several pages’ worth of material, and one second, Luke was laughing as I read the letter aloud in my President Jefferson voice (which sounded a lot like Mr. Magnusson), and the next, we were both hunched over Luke’s laptop, surfing the internet for examples of FBI dossiers. “Because that’s totally what this is!” he exclaimed. “I mean, come on, Lewis is the agent, and Jefferson’s briefing him on the operation—telling him to cipher his notes, providing him with foreign passports, and to abort if something goes wrong…”
“An expedition?” I mused. “Or a covert mission?”
Luke looked up from the screen—our eyes met. “That’ll be the title for the essay.”
I laughed. “You really like this stuff, don’t you?”
“What stuff?” he asked, now pounding his keys.UNITED STATES OF AMERICAappeared in the top left-hand corner of our blank Google doc, and underneath,CONFIDENTIAL!
“This stuff,” I repeated, thinking of all the movies and TV shows we’d talked about: the Jason Bourne trilogy,White Collar, James Bond,Bones, etc.
He understood what I was getting at, nodding. “Yeah, Ireallylike this stuff.”
After we finished, I walked him downstairs, and Mrs. Shepherd intercepted us in the front hall. She was on duty tonight, and I’d forgotten she also was Luke’s math teacher. “Are you ready for the test tomorrow?” she asked, total news to me. Had he even studied yet? Mrs. Shepherd wasn’t exactly known for being the easiest teacher in the math department.
“One can only hope,” Luke said smoothly, but his shyness was creeping up. I felt him take half a step closer to me, the backs of his fingers brushing against mine.
At 12:30 a.m., I gave up on French and texted Paddy:Milk and cookies?
Oreos okay?he responded.
Fine, I wrote, even though it didn’t matter. I wasn’t hungry. And I didn’t even wait for his usual thumbs-up emoji before unlocking my trunk and digging through winter sweaters until I found what I was looking for. I’d already downed one splash of whiskey by the time he slipped into my room. He tossed the package of Oreos at me and went to grab a glass. I was stretched out on the chesterfield, so after helping himself to the bottle and taking a few cookies, Paddy settled down in my swivel chair. I poured myself another two fingers. We did this sometimes, just hung out and drank a little to take the edge off.
But never in the middle of the week.
And Paddy wasn’t an idiot.
“So…” he said. “What’s up?”
I didn’t answer.
“Something wrong?”
I stared at the ceiling.
