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I won’t. I won’t do that. Not over him.

20

Over dinner on Sunday, I ask if I can attend the dance with my friends, since my father will be there. Perhaps it’s because I sound so ambivalent that Dad agrees without a long list of ways I’ll need to earn the privilege.

I’m face down in bed, trying not to cry, when Hope throws herself on my mattress alongside me, distraught that Nico might take someone else to the dance and will leave for college next fall. “What if he meets someone there?” she asks. “What if he’s taken before I get a chance?”

My nerves are frayed, and it’s hard to be kind in response. “Hope, you don’t even know him,” I say, sitting up. “Maybe he’s dumb or mean. Maybe he’s a murderer. You’ve created this whole fantasy about him based on his looks.”

I know well how easily it can happen.

“He’s not,” she hisses. “I know who he is, or I wouldn’t like him so much.”

I don’t tell her how easy it is to fool yourself when you really want something.

Kappy stands by my locker when I enter school the next morning, excited that we’re going as a group, although you’re really going with Alex, she adds. She ignores me when I assure her it’s not like that.

She talks about our dresses until Alex joins us, and then the conversation turns to limos instead.

I’m grateful for their chatter as we walk into English. It makes ignoring Ford, who’s leaning back in a chair and watching me enter, less awkward than it otherwise would be.

His jaw is clenched, and his eyes are narrowed, and I don’t care. What right does he have to be mad? My stomach curdles when I think of him taking Amanda to the dance.

I manage to avoid his stare at lunch, sitting across from me three tables away, but it’s harder in journalism when we’re directly opposite each other. I start working on my Spanish homework when he enters, just to give myself something other than him to focus on. His books hit the table.

“You’re not even going to say hi to me?” he asks.

I don’t glance up. “Hi.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Nope,” I reply, the word bitten into two syllables.

“You blocked me,” he says.

“Yep,” I reply.

The bell rings, ending the conversation, but halfway through class he slides me a note.

We need to talk.

Is it stupid to be hurt by the fact that he asked someone else to the dance? Messing around with him in a supply closet was brand new for me but is probably all in a day’s work for him. I’m angry anyway.

I grab my pen.

No, we don’t, I scrawl beneath his message.

I’m in the library that afternoon, studying. I pull the scrunchy out of my hair and run my fingers through it, frustrated by my complete inability to focus. Everything just feels...a little pointless. I’ll leave for Bolivia and forget everything, and the church won’t care that I’ve forgotten everything because they won’t necessarily care if I go to college. They probably prefer that I don’t—what’s the point in having a degree when I’ll just spend my days serving a man who kicks back in an ergonomic chair?

A book lands on my table and I jump at the sound, looking up to find its owner looming over me.

Ford.

My heart is beating too fast. I’m not sure if it’s because I might get grounded again or because I can’t stop reacting to his proximity. “Please sit somewhere else,” I hiss. “I’ll get in trouble if my father finds out we were talking.”

“Then we’ll go around the corner.”

I raise a brow. I assume going around the corner is a euphemism for something else. Something I won’t be doing with him, ever again. “I’m busy.”