Slamming the front door shut, I headed down the path in the front yard, and took off on my usual route to school.
What a strange day that had been. Not to mention Jupiter Reeves.THEJupiter Reeves spoke to me. Actually, he did more than speak to me. He gave me a ride home – in his truck.
Jupiter Reeves gave me a ride home in his truck.
When I’d walked in the front door, I’d sneaked a look out of the window and he’d still been sitting in it outside my house. I waited thirty seconds before he drove off, then ran upstairs and wrote it all down in my journal, just in case I forgot.
Not that it was likely that would ever happen.
And I don’t know what he did after he got home, because later that evening I had a message from Josh Ridley with a very profuse apology forbehaving like a total dick,as he put it, insisting he would never behave like that again, and would turn up to all his allotted tutoring sessions if I took him back.
I was going to reply, but when I got to school the next day, he’d already been assigned to someone else. And I had a funny feeling that was also to do with Jupiter Reeves.
So, yeah, weird day, and I’ve had a fair share of those.
I kept it to myself. If I had anyone to tell, no one would believe me anyway. I mean, I had people to tell, Lena and Byron – my Astro study buddies – but given they didn’t know who Jupiter Reeves was it would fall on deaf ears anyway. And as I hadn’t seen him since, I was beginning to wonder if maybe I did imagine it.
There were worse things to imagine.
I dug into my pocket for my iPod and earphones, stuck them in, and pounded my feet to the beat for the rest of the way to school while I was thinking about calculus and the challenge Professor Sureta had given us yesterday. He’d asked us to come up with an integral formula to solve the distance multiplied by the diminishing heat issues when delivering a pizza.
It was a hard one.
I’d planned to start it last night and then take a nap before the sky was at its best for viewing, but following the storm last weekend the sky had been much clearer than usual, and I’d been distracted... Hence no sleep and no homework completed – and the rush I was in.
I was so deep in thought about pizza, not to mention the music loud in my ears, that I didn’t immediately notice the vehicle driving beside me – or the hollering from the driver.
My breath caught slightly as I turned, and not in the same way it had when my mom scared the shit out of me when she’d been standing at the bottom of the stairs.
If it was possible, Jupiter Reeves was even cuter today than he’d been last week, especially with his cap turned backward. It somehow sharpened his cheekbones and highlighted the freckles spread across his face.
In fact, I hadn’t noticed before how similar his freckles were to the Milky Way. Probably because I’d never been close enough to him, but even in all the pictures of him posted around school they weren’t that visible.
It took me a second to realize his mouth was moving, and I needed to remove my headphones to hear him.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“I was saying you need to pull your earphones out,” he grinned, which made a dimple pop in his cheek. “Honestly, Stars and Stripes, I’ve been following you for, like, three minutes. That must be good music.”
The familiar heat which lanced through me whenever I was put on the spot came back with full force, and I knew my cheeks were no longer my usual skin color.
I looked at my earphone, like it held all the answers. “Yeah, I guess.”
“What is it?”
“Coldplay.”
His lips rolled as he pondered it. “Coldplay, huh? Yeah, I could go for a bit of that this morning. Hop in.”
His head jerked sideways to the front passenger seat.
“What?”
“Stars and Stripes, get in the truck. I’m giving you a ride to school. You’ve already been in here once so I’m no longer a stranger,” he explained, like I was in remedial class. I hurried around before he asked again.
He pushed the door open just like he had last week, and I climbed in. Without making it too obvious, I took a deep breath and inhaled. It smelled just like it did before, not that it shouldn’t have, but I wanted to remember it better this time. It smelled like sunshine, and boys; some kind of deodorant – sporty – and it made my belly flutter.
Way better than how my brother smelled, that’s for sure.
