Wish You Were Her(26)
“Truth.”
“How much money do you have?”
Simon hollered at Skye’s question. Everyone else laughed also, albeit a little more nervously. Jonah was the only one glaring at the remark.
“I make enough,” Allegra said quietly.
“What was your last pay check?” Star asked, joining in with the interrogation.
Allegra smiled a barely-there smile. “My last one? Three seventy-five.”
“Thousand?” demanded Hillary, one of the other ballet girls. She looked awed at the prospect, eyeing the fellow eighteen-year-old with reverence.
“No. Just three hundred and seventy-five. My dad pays us weekly at the bookshop.”
Jonah found himself grinning at that, while Skye glowered in distaste.
“Is it my turn then?” Allegra asked, reaching for the bottle. She spun somewhat clumsily and it landed …
… on Jonah.
“Dare,” he said, before she could ask.
She regarded him for a moment. “I dare you to say something nice about every person in the group.”
There were audible reactions to this command, people hooting and hollering at the dare, while Jonah found himself wondering how he had so swiftly managed to convince this girl that he was an uncharitable person. The kind who never gave compliments.
“Fine,” he said, suddenly determined. He glanced around and his eyes locked onto Simon. “Simon is…”
Everyone waited.
“Oh, God,” Simon said, squinting at his friend. “Jonah’s got the memory of a computer. He has so much bad stuff on me.”
Jonah snorted, despite trying to look pensive. “Simon is a good friend. I’d do anything for him. He’s the one who made school bearable.”
There was a beat of silence. Simon gently bumped his friend on the bicep, with a small smile servicing as thanks.
“Next,” Jonah pushed ahead. “Grace Lancaster. Best dancer I’ve ever seen.”
Grace blushed and when Jonah stole a glance at Allegra, she was smiling almost smugly. She was also clearly triumphant at the forced generosity her dare had created.
“Skye.” Jonah could hear the strangled desperation in his voice as he tried to muster up something nice about one of the meanest girls in Lake Pristine. “Skye is very … confident. Oh, and she’s also a really good baker. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner during that cooking class they made us take in school.”
Skye smiled, but Jonah’s difficulty in settling on a kind remark had been noted by some of Grace’s dancer friends, as they exchanged knowing looks.
Jonah fired off the last of his required compliments with diligent conviction.
“Kerrie is nice to everyone.”
“Hilary is … also a good dancer.”
“Eva has really great taste in books.”
“Lucien is the best football player in town, if you care about stuff like that.”
“It’s not a compliment if you add ‘stuff like that,’” Lucien said, but he was laughing.
Jonah smirked, then looked to Skye’s sister. “Star is … smart? You always won a lot of prizes in high school.”
Star shrugged one shoulder, unashamed of her academic prowess.
“Only Allegra left,” Simon prompted.
Jonah forced himself to look at Allegra. Her expression was unreadable but she gave him a small nod, almost as though she were giving him some kind of permission.
“It’s okay,” she said, her tone jovial. “I know you don’t have anything in the compliment bag for me, wizard. I’ll let you off with what you’ve given.”
“No,” Simon insisted, ignoring Jonah’s obvious discomfort. “Jonah, give Allegra one, too.”
Expectant faces looked between Jonah and Allegra, while they stared at each other in discomposure.
“You don’t have to,” Allegra finally said quietly, when the silence had stretched for far too long. “I know we haven’t exactly hit it off—”
“I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
* * *
Allegra was good at analyzing different kinds of silence. It was a skill lots of performers possessed. There were awkward silences, silences of condemnation, sympathetic silences, silences of awe, silences of derision. Punishing silences, designed to make someone deeply uncomfortable and unwelcome.
And there were silences of complete shock, where everyone was suspended in time.
As Allegra stared at Jonah, she could see he was as astonished by his own words as everyone else, and she suddenly felt guilty for bringing this part of the game to life.
She felt other things too, but they were beautifully colored potions inside her that she couldn’t identify—and was perhaps too cowardly to drink.
It was a silly, unfashionable thought, but when she had been diagnosed, by doctors who had looked at her as though she was an alien they had watched fall from the sky, she had felt all of the heavy unwantedness of the world. Girls like her were studied, not admired. They were diagnosed, not loved. They were the subjects of academic papers, not great paintings or love stories. They were spoken about, not spoken to. They were projected onto. They were whispered about. They were sometimes shunned for being too different or ignored for being too good at camouflaging.