She had no idea how he did that—acted as though she didn’t exist. Especially when her entire being realigned in his presence like iron filings around a magnet.
Mrs. Hayes started talking, but Aubrey’s stare didn’t budge. A month ago, she’d looked at Nick and seen frailty. Now she understood there was nothing wasted when it came to him, nothing extra. He was all longing and fire and fight, a lit furnace that incinerated anything unnecessary.
She just hadn’t understood what she was looking at, at first. She hadn’t realized how breathtaking he was.
Aubrey let five whole minutes pass, then raised her hand. “Mrs. Hayes, can I move? This desk keeps wobbling. It’s making it hard to concentrate.”
Mrs. Hayes expelled the world’s longest sigh, probably because Aubrey never concentrated. But the puzzle book had stayed at home for the past few weeks, which hopefully counted for something.
“Be quick,” Mrs. Hayes snapped. “And no interruptions from anyone else hoping to play musical chairs, please.”
Triumph coursed through Aubrey’s bloodstream as she toted her things to the desk beside Nick’s. She sat, then stared at him so hard he would have no choice but to feel her laser concentration boring into his skin.
Mrs. Hayes turned her back, squeaking some kind of chart onto the markerboard. Nick studiously refused to acknowledge her.
“Hi,” Aubrey whispered.
He mashed his lips together and hunched over his notepad. The handwriting there kickstarted her heartbeat. She could have traced it in her sleep.
Still, not a glance.
“I need to talk to you,” she breathed. “Tonight. I’m cheering the boys’ basketball game, but I can find you afterward, if you’ll come. Please?”
Nick closed those beautiful, elongated eyes of his, as if in pain. When he reopened them, he looked straight at her, and she had the most ridiculous urge to fist-pump the air.
Incredible. A boy hadlookedat her, and she may as well have gold-medaled in the Olympics.
“Fine,” he said.
Victory dawned inside her. She gathered her breath to answer, but Mrs. Hayes’s strident tone sliced through the quiet. “Is there a problem, Miss MacLean? Because if this desk wobbles, too, I’m sure the desks in the principal’s office are more sturdily built.”
Aubrey ducked. “No, Mrs. Hayes. Sorry. No problem at all.”
In a show of contrition, she actually took notes for the rest of the period. But she fisted a hand against her mouth the whole time, trying to hide her grin.
The gym stank. Mostly like sweat, but also like the limp, boiled hot dogs the chess club was hawking in order to raise money for the state championship at year’s end.
Aubrey had bought one of the rubbery things in the first quarter, if only to support a game so blatantly based on mathematics, then promptly dumped it in the trash. Now, with the second quarter running down, she huddled on the bottom row of bleachers with her squad.
As Megan chattered about the halftime routine, Aubrey resisted the urge to look around again. She hadn’t spotted Nick, but he could have been anywhere amid the sea of colorful jackets filling the gym. Or not there at all.
The timer buzzed. As the basketball team jogged off thecourt, Aubrey sprang up. The band blared as her squad took to the floor.
Raucous cheers sounded. She burned with the need to scan the stands, but as one of the bases for Megan’s liberty, she couldn’t look away, not even for a moment. The stunt required her total attention.
Aubrey lifted, tossed, caught. The heated atmosphere scorched her lungs, her muscles catching fire. Megan came down safely, then tumbled away.
Finally,finally, they made it to the dance portion of the routine, and Aubrey whipped her gaze across the bleachers, seeking—
There.
Nick sat in the top row, his elbows draped over his knees, staring at her with such intensity she swore she felt athunkwhen their eyes connected.
The crowd dissolved to a wash of color. Time slowed to a trickle.
Then it didn’t just feel as if she performed for him, shedidperform for him. The dance couldn’t come close to reciprocating all he’d shared with her, but with every pull of muscle and lift of her body, she scripted a response to his letters. She told him every last secret she’d ever kept. She sank her whole self into the routine in a way she never had before.
Those infinite eyes never looked away. Aubrey swore she glimpsed words within, calligraphy scrawled atop itself until the ink bled black as midnight.
