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“Not me,” I muttered, moving down the line. “I quit band this morning.”
“What?”
I took some chicken tenders and ranch, not bothering to look at her.
“My grandmother is sick,” I explained quietly. “Or sicker, I mean. I’m needed at home now.”
I didn’t even bother to talk to the director in person. I emailed her, pretty confident my brother would agree that concentrating on my studies and my architectural projects would be a better use of my time.
The less I was at school—or games or on buses—the better.
“I’m going to go sit with Gabrielle today,” she said suddenly. “We have to talk about a… a project.”
She took her tray and walked past me, toward the cashier, and I didn’t look up or respond.
The one friend I might’ve had…
I didn’t care.
I paid, walked to an empty section of a table in the corner of the room, and sat down, slipping in my earbuds and turning on some music from the iPod hidden in my pocket.
I raised my eyes for a split second, immediately locking gazes with Damon. He sat twenty yards away at a circular table filled with his friends. Chaos went on around him, but he remained still and calm like the eye of the storm, the tears and rage from last night almost like they had never happened.
I’d been waiting for the guilt to start eating me up, but it didn’t. The worry sat there, but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it now, and I wasn’t sure I would’ve done anything differently if I could go back to last night. He had as much to lose, and he was sloppy. There was probably evidence of him all over her.
Somehow, I felt more in control not caring than I ever did.
Dropping my eyes, I opened my milk and my ranch, starting to eat as “Army of Me” played in my ears, but then the air around me started vibrating, and I heard a different beat in my ears.
Pulling out the earbuds, I looked up and saw Will on top of his lunch table.
His friends sat or stood, looking up at him and laughing as he started dancing to some pop 80s or 90s tune, stripping off his school jacket as his shirt and tie hung on him like a god.
He was going to look amazing in a suit someday.
He jumped off the table, moving around the room as students hooted and howled, and he looked like…
I laughed under my breath, a smile spreading across my face.
He looked like Jean-Claude Van Damme in Kickboxer.
Hang around more and maybe you’ll find out.
The smile slowly fell, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. This was for me.
Needles pricked my throat, watching him dance and loving the smile on his face.
I flashed my gaze to Damon again, seeing that he wasn’t looking at me anymore. His head was turned and his eyes fixated on another table. I followed his gaze, seeing Winter Ashby and Erika Fane sitting and eating, surrounded by other kids.
What was he doing with her last night on that motorcycle? We might’ve bonded in ways most people never did, but I wasn’t an idiot, either. Damon screwed, abused, used, and there was no one and nothing on which he didn’t prey. I didn’t know what his interest in her was, but I was pretty sure it would hurt her.
“Get down!” someone shouted.
I looked away from Winter and over to Will, seeing Kincaid bark at him as he stood on the table. The music over the loudspeakers died, and everyone laughed as he smiled and jumped down from another table.
The cloud that had been sitting in my head the last twelve hours started to fade a little, and for a moment, I missed him.
Wouldn’t he love it if I made the grand gesture next? Snuck into his room tonight? Hung out at the pool every afternoon, waiting for him to show up?
