MEG
SOMEWHERE PEOPLE DON’T THINK I’M A FAILURE. THAT’S THE PROBLEM.
I failed my math test. I failed to keep Stephen-the-Leaver from leaving.
And now I’ve failed to live up to Kat’s ridiculous standards. Even in her eyes, I’m a failure. A screwup.
The bus is taking forever to arrive, so I run the however many blocks to catch the 7 instead. It stops five blocks past Grayson’s, so by the time I run up to Grayson’s front step, I’m gasping like a slimy trout at a fisherman’s rubber-booted feet.
“Grayson!” I half shout, half wheeze as I pound on his door. “Grayson, open up!”
The door swings open as if he was waiting for me, though he couldn’t have been, since I was too busy jogging myself to death to text him. Maybe we’re developing a psychic connection. Maybe every time I kiss him, it makes it stronger.
“We have a doorbell, you know,” he says, hooking his thumbs into his pockets instead of throwing his arms around me.
“That’s some greeting,” I say, pushing past him. “Aren’t you happy to see me?” I push my bottom lip out in my saltiest pout—no, that can’t be right. Sultanest? Is that a word?
His face softens. “Of course. Sorry. I just—I’m about to head to the range.” He steps back to close the front door, wobbling like a peg-leg pirate. He only has one boot on. As usual, he’s laced it halfway up, tying it in a loose, single knot at ankle height.
“Guess I got here just in time, then.” I lean down and yank at the pathetic knot, unraveling it.
“Meg!” He pulls his foot away and frowns at me again. “I have a competition in two weeks, remember? I have to practice.” He leans over and snatches up his other boot, wiggling the tongue back and forth to loosen it. He doesn’t even look at me.
I’m losing him. Maybe I’ve already lost him. Maybe “archery” is slang for “some blond-haired, white-skinned preppy chick who’s smarter than you.” On the way over here, I’d thought of asking him to do the LotS speed runs like Kat and I had planned before I got the idea to do all of mine at my family thing, but when he’s grumpy like this, I’m not about to ask. He doesn’t love LotS like I do.
I step closer to him. I’m not failing at this too. Am not. Will not.
I place my hand lightly on his boot-holding one and pull out my sultriest voice. (That’s the word—sultry.) “But your parents aren’t home.”
He sucks in a breath. I draw even closer, slip my hand into his back pocket. Am not, will not, cannot fail.
I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him on the bridge of his nose. Then on the mouth. He lets the boot drop.
Success.
Upstairs in his bedroom, he shoves a book and some clothes off his bed and we stretch out along it, hands and lips falling swiftly into ravenous patterns. I think about his fingers gliding up my back and the bed’s occasional creak and his kisses electric along my neck and hardly at all about my chocolate-stained surveys strewn across Kat’s kitchen floor.
I grab the hem of my shirt and yank upward, over my head. Grayson has to dart backward to avoid an elbow to the face, but when I emerge from the fabric, his eyes are not angry, but devouring.
“You are so sexy,” he whispers.
I’m not going to tell Kat about this, about taking my shirt off for Grayson for the first time. She doesn’t deserve to know.
Grayson’s fingers reach out toward my chest, and I look down in a burst of panic. What bra am I wearing? Purple and green stripes with white lace. Thank goodness. If I was wearing some grungy sports bra, this could’ve been embarrassing. And very not sexy. When I get home, I’m throwing out every nonsexy bra I own.
Grayson presses his body against mine, and his fingers feather up and down my shirtless back. It doesn’t feel much different from having his fingers sneak up under my shirt, but I lose myself in his touch anyway. Because I am not a failure.
KAT
I’M NOT SCARED.
Yes, I worry. And yes, I get nervous. And yes, I have panic attacks.
But I’m not scared.
And Syth is definitely not my “whipped boy toy.”
Still, I don’t play LotS for the rest of the weekend. I don’t even play LotS when I sit at the library computers on Monday during lunch period. I just pull out my notebook and pen like I have research to do, then stare at the screen and type random things into Google without clicking on any of the links. Lightning storm. Pickle sandwich. Anxiety disorder.
Here’s the thing: true does not equal right. I could walk up to Granddad and say, “Just so you know, you are old and frail and probably going to die soon.” And even if it was true, it’d still be wrong. It’d still make me a jerk.
Which is why I’m not eating lunch with Meg or any of her jerk-by-extension friends.
The freckle-faced librarian coughs, a fake, pointed “ahem,” and when I look up, she’s glaring at me, though I don’t know why. I’m not playing LotS, and I scarfed my food down in the hallway before coming in. I even put my juice bottle in the recycling bin.
Then the clickclickclickclickclick noise reaches my ear. I set my pen down, and the librarian releases me from her stare of death and returns to her book.
My search results blink out at me from the screen. Wikipedia. WebMD. Answers.com. This is stupid. I close the search and pull up LotS. Sythlight is at school right now and won’t be online anyway. And even if he was, I have no reason to avoid him.
I log on to our server, and of course, it’s empty. I’m the only one on.
As if he’s a monster who feeds on the worries in my brain, the first thing Mr. Carter does in Monday afternoon’s science class is remind us that our next check-in is in two weeks, and that we need to have met our first testing goal by then.
Our goal was twenty tests. Out of thirty. We only have fifteen. Out of thirty. I don’t think I know five more people, and I definitely don’t know fifteen more.
My throat tightens.
One Sesame Street . . . two anaphylactic shock . . .
Thirteen days is not enough time to start a new project. We have no choice but to push forward. Maybe Meg’s come up with a brilliant plan that she hasn’t told me yet. I glance at her. She’s facing forward instead of in her typical sprawling posture of legs in the aisle, one arm on my desk. Her usually relaxed shoulders are rigidly straight. She didn’t look at me when she sat down, hasn’t looked at me this entire class.
Meg’s hand shoots into the air. “Someone,” she says, so pointedly that it’s obvious she means a very specific someone, “is clicking their pen a lot. . . .”
I don’t listen to the rest, just drop my pen on my desk with a thunk as the entire class turns to stare—thirty sets of eyes burning into me. Seven center of attention . . . eight this is all her fault . . .
So Meg isn’t going to be any help, isn’t going to talk to me at all, apparently. However I do this, I’m going to have to do it alone.