It’s midnight when Shaun finds a spot two blocks from campus, far away from any streetlights. When we’re both out of the car, he grabs my hand and pulls me toward the school. “We’re already late,” he reminds me.
“Thank you again,” I tell him as we head down the darkened sidewalk. “I didn’t know if you’d come get me. Most of the time, you don’t even answer your phone.”
“Most of the time, you don’t have anything important to say.” He grins at me and I grin back.
“Did you text Lily and Darbs?”
“Yep, but I don’t think they’re coming.”
We circle the flagpole and go down the east side of the school, away from the main entrance. A couple of “guards”—Danny Hollander and Sara Francis—are stationed outside the art suite. They beckon us over and explain that we’re going in through a window several yards down, behind a pair of spruce bushes. “Don’t turn on any lights,” Sara tells me. “Feel your way through the room and close the door behind you. Things are happening on the second floor.”
Getting through the window is easy. Getting through the pitch-black art room—slightly less so. Edging our way down the hallway toward the staircase is downright terrifying, but by the time we reach the steps, we can hear laughter from upstairs and it starts to feel more like a fun caper and less like a low-budget horror movie.
We arrive on the second floor to find lanterns placed all around and students everywhere. There are tons of senior athletes and—surprisingly—tons of nonathletes, too. Ainsley is there (natch). She is at a table piled high with combination locks and is handing them out to a line of perky cheerleaders. She waves me over. “Bo Reeves scored the universal key. We took the locks off every single locker in the school and now we’re mixing them up and putting them back.”
I stare at her—“That is genius.”—and she beams in return.
“I know, right? Everyone will have to try all the lockers in the school just to find their own lock. We could use some more hands, but before you jump in, go check out the third floor. It’s seriously magical.”
“Go on,” Shaun tells me. “I’ll help with the lockers.”
I hesitate only a second before running off.
Apparently I’ve been kept in the dark for a long time, because a lot of work has been done. A lot. It looks like our seniors have enjoyed some major crafternoons, because there are zillions of snowflakes stuck to the walls and dangling from the ceiling. Shaun will love it. Students are going in and out of several open classroom doors, so I peer inside one of them.
It just keeps getting better.
The first thing I see is a glittery silver disco ball that I’m sure was once a globe of the world. It sits beside several glittery silver pens and what appears to be a stack of individually wrapped glittery silver documents. All of those are perched atop a glittery silver desk, which is beside a glittery silver trash can.
Suddenly, I understand why Cash had to make a special trip to his local market on the way to our house for dinner. This is why there was no aluminum foil at the store near school. Everything in this room—like, everything—has been individually encased in foil. Desks, whiteboard, wall hangings, dry-erase markers. Everything.
I walk all the way inside and stare around. Not only is it pretty—in a strange, spacey kind of way—but absolutely nothing was hurt in the creation of this prank. No property—school or personal—and definitely no animals.
There’s a noise at the doorway and I look over. It’s Itch. “Oh, sorry,” he says, and turns to leave.
“Wait!” I say really fast and a little too loudly. Itch stops moving but he doesn’t come any closer. He slumps against the doorframe and waits. “I haven’t seen you around,” I tell him.
“Really? Because we go to the same school.”
I try again. “I’m surprised you’re here.”
He folds his arms. “Oh, you can suddenly be a joiner, but I can’t?”
“Itch.”
“Let me guess,” he says. “You want forgiveness. You want us to be all friendy.”
“I broke up with you,” I remind him. “I didn’t stab you.”
Itch lets out a short bark of pissed-off laughter. “Right. No stabbing, no big deal.” He shakes his head. “Forget it, June.”
This time when he turns to go, I let him.
I finally find Oliver after Theo points me in his direction. (“You know his girlfriend’s here, right?” “Bite me, Theo.”)
There are orange traffic cones placed at the entrances to North Hall. Oliver is there alone, in the lobby, threading yellow caution tape around the entire area. He smiles really big when he sees me. “How’d you get here?”
“Shaun.” I watch Oliver loop the tape around the radiator twice and tie it so it stays in place. “Do you need help?”
“No. I’m almost done.”
“Oh. Okay.” I’m disappointed but I can’t complain. After all, I’m the one who showed up late. “I’ll see if they need anything on the third—”
“Don’t go,” Oliver says, so I don’t. “How do you like it?”
I duck under the caution tape and join him in the center of the North Hall lobby. There are snowflakes taped to the walls here, too. “It’s pretty.”
“Pretty? That’s all I get?”
“Someone spent a lot of time with paper and scissors.”
“For sure.” He stretches his right hand toward me and points to his index knuckle. Because he seems to expect it, I run my fingertip over the small hard spot. It’s polished smooth. “I cut roughly a million snowflakes while waiting for you to take your turn in Mythteries.”
I get a sudden flash image of Oliver on one of the stools in his basement, hunched over the bar with a pair of scissors, and I go clenchy inside. I realize that I’m still sliding my finger gently against him and I start to pull away, but Oliver catches my hand before I can. I look up into his eyes and the clenchiness increases.
“You could have called,” he says. “I would have come back for you.”
And that’s when it happens.
In that moment, the world turns and everything around us dims. Oliver’s eyes are focused right on mine and his shock of angel-blond hair is the only light in the room. It’s not just about how he looks; it’s about who he is and my heart cracks wide open. I am slammed with the absolute, painful knowledge that somehow, accidentally, this boy has squeezed in. Against all my plans and denials, I missed a spot when I was setting up barriers around myself. There was an opening somewhere, and then there was Oliver.
I gasp with the realization, and this time when I pull back, he lets me. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asks.
It’s like he can actually see my mind spinning, or maybe it’s that he can hear my heart flinging itself against the wall of my chest. I shake my head, because Oliver has a girlfriend, one who is pretty and popular and nice, and I am the one who is at fault here; I am the one whose feelings changed, and—
“No animals.” Oliver spreads his arms wide. “No vandalism. No destruction of property.”
He’s talking about the prank.
Just the prank.
Not us.
Because there is no “us.”
I’m just the charity case he drives to school.
So I nod. I force a smile. “Great job. Really, really great job.”
“Good news.” Oliver beams huge. “You’re here for the coup de grâce.”
“Amazing. You’re even bilingual when Theo’s not around.” Since I’m clearly not going with honesty, I guess I’ll rely on my old friend Glib. I want to leave, run, escape, but there’s no way to do it without Oliver’s wondering why.
Oliver jogs to a duffel bag by the far wall. I watch him, finally admitting to myself that I like the way his body moves, that I am the same as any other girl watching his muscles and his hair and his…Oliver-ness.
If I could punch myself in the soul, I would do it right now.
Oliver hefts a gallon jug from the bag and carries it back to me. I squint at it. “Vegetable oil?”
“Don’t freak out.” He turns it upside down and thick oil glunks onto the floor.
I jump out of the way. “What are you doing?”
The oil oozes, spreading out into a big, slick circle, and Oliver tosses the empty jug to the edge of the room, where it clunks against the wall. “Come on, you’re more observant than that.”
Apparently not observant enough to notice I was falling hard for the school jock.
“It’s a winter wonderland,” Oliver explains. “Hence the snowflakes.”
I point to the widening circle. “And you’ve made a wintery, wondrous oil spill?”
“This is the ice-skating rink.” I think he mistakes my avoidance of his eyes for recrimination. “It’s not hurting anything. Easily cleaned up with soap, and there’s caution tape around so no one will be surprised by it. It’s what you wanted, right?”
Except that everything I thought I wanted has suddenly been turned on its head. “Sure,” I say with what I’m pretty sure is a sickly grin. “It’s great.”
Oliver grabs my right hand and pulls me into the slick circle of ooze. I skid toward him, nearly falling, and he catches me against his body. For the briefest of seconds, I’m circled by his arms, my entire length against him, and I know every other girl has had it right this whole time, because even my shins are tingling from the nearness of him. My left hand is against his chest and—totally acting on their own—my fingers flare out, feeling the muscles beneath them, feeling Oliver’s hand slide over mine.
And surely—surely—this time he has to hear my breath catching in my throat, but he doesn’t mention it. He only pushes me backward, holding both my hands in his own. “We’re skating,” he says, and pulls me into a spin. I squeal and he laughs, but his laugh is cut off, because now he almost falls…and then I’m laughing, too, because even though none of this is real and even though it’s going to end in pain…for this moment only, I’m holding hands with Oliver Flagg and we’re skating together in a winter wonderland.