Fake Skating(24)

“Whoa,” Kyle said, laughing. “Did the new girl just destroy you?”

“I think she tried,” I said, torn between irritation and wanting to smile.

“I think she succeeded,” Cassie said around a laugh.

“I’m telling your mom,” I said, dropping her book on the table in front of her.

“Snitch,” she said with a tiny smirk, and then I watched as she realized what she’d just said.

Oh, the fast blink of regret.

We’d used “snitches get stitches” for an entire summer because it’d been hilarious in the way that middle school jokes were hilarious when on repeat.

It was interesting that the words had naturally fallen out of her mouth.

She might’ve left me behind, but she hadn’t forgotten.





CHAPTER ELEVEN Dani




“Come eat, kiddo!”

I set down my pen and stretched, because I’d been working on homework since I got home at three thirty and it was almost seven. Southview’s AP classes were no joke, and I needed to stay on top of the curriculum because I had no room for anything less than an A+.

But I was starving and something smelled really good, so I ran down the stairs.

When I got downstairs, Grandpa Mick was twirling spaghetti around his fork, my mom doing the same beside him.

“Oh, praise God, spaghetti,”I said under my breath, starving. I was famished because I hadn’t eaten lunch at school.

It’d been years since I’d consumed lunch in a cafeteria.

It was another one of those important lessons of starting a new school. Far better to lose yourself in a library book over lunch than navigate a crowded cafeteria. It was peaceful and unthreatening, and a little bit of hunger beat a heaping helping of mortification every time.

Although today the mortification had nearly happened inthe library.

Even after discovering he’d become some arrogant jockish version of his former self, I was still surprised that he’d seemed to find it entertaining to mess with me.

I would’ve assumed our family connection would at least make him ignore me, since he’d clearly decided I wasn’t worth his jock-star time, so his plopping down and inserting himself in my life just for funsies had been a total surprise.

I hated that a tiny part of me just wanted to know why. And why he so clearly didn’t want to be my friend anymore. Maybe Zeuswas just too cool for me now.

It was also driving me crazy, wondering if he’d laughed to all his friends about the postcards.

“How was school today?” Grandpa Mick asked, pulling me out of my spin.

“Good,” I said, glancing over at him because the way he’d asked didn’t feel like small talk.

Did he know something?

“How do you like Southview?” he asked, picking up his garlic bread and taking a bite.

“As much as I like any school,” I said, grabbing a plate and scooping a pile of pasta from the colander still in the sink. I didn’t recognize the pot or the colander or the smell of the sauce—had he made dinner?

My mom was all jar sauce, all the time.

“It’s Grandma’s recipe,” my mom said, reading my mind as she lifted a forkful of noodles to her mouth. “He nailed it, and the meatballs are to die for.”

“You made this?” I asked my grandpa.

“What, you think I can’t cook?”

I couldn’t tell if I’d offended him or if he was messing with me.

“I think I have no idea,” I said, which was the truth, but as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized they sounded like a jab about his absence from our lives.

Which was deserved, I supposed, but unintended.

“Did you make friends today?” my grandpa asked as I sat down across from him and my mom, but he was looking at his phone.

Why was he asking me questions about school?

“Sure,” I said, even though the only person who’d been friendly to me was Cassie and it was because it was her job.

“Are there any concerns you have that you would like to, um, to talk about?”

Was he serious? Maybe my interaction with Alec—ugh, Zeus—made me suspicious about everything, but why all the questions?

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I think he’s just checking in to see if you want to talk about anything,” my mom said, reaching out to grab a piece of bread while giving me a be nicelook.

But he was stilllooking down at his phone and not at me.

“Is… that what you meant?”

He sighed and finally looked up. “Hell if I know.”

So I shrugged and said, “I’m fine,” just as the words “how to talk to your teenager about school” caught my eye before his phone buzzed with a notification and he snatched it up.

Wait. Was he googling how to talk to me?

I watched him looking at his phone, and I was dying to know if that was the case. Can that be it? Something warmed in my chest at the thought of it, because the idea of him actively trying to know me better was… well, nice.

But my body immediately sent a dose of anxiousness to my stomach, because it was foolish to toss hopefulness into this wildly confusing relationship, right?

“Oh shit,” he said as he read whatever message had just come through.