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“What?!” Gwen shrieked. “Why don’t you want to talk about it? This is my chance to, like, live vicariously through you!”
Maddy squirmed. “He came in, sat at a booth—”
“Which booth?!”
“I don’t know. He ordered—”
“What did he order?!”
“I can’t remember. Then some people came in, and he left. That’s it.”
“Okay, tell me exactly what he said to you.”
Maddy thought about the lies. “Nothing. He didn’t say anything.”
“He must have said something.”
“I think he said, ‘Can I get the check?’”
“Can I get the check?!” Gwen exclaimed in astonishment. Maddy watched her melt as she pictured it. “‘Hey, it’s Jackson Godspeed,’” she said in her lowest male voice, “‘Can I . . . get the check?’ Maddy!” she screamed. A few people nearby turned to look.
“So you really didn’t know it was him?” Gwen asked incredulously.
“No, like I told you. I don’t follow that stuff.”
“Okay, but you must have known he was an Angel,” she pressed. “I mean, wasn’t he impossibly, amazingly fine?”
Maddy’s mind flickered to back to Jackson’s divine features and the electricity that seemed to pass between them when they touched.
“I promise,” she said, making her tone apathetic, “he was nothing special.”
The bell buzzed. Gwen looked unfulfilled. “Okay, you can tell me the rest at lunch!”
“I have lunch detention,” Maddy reminded her. Gwen frowned.
“Want me to try and bring you something from the cafeteria?”
Maddy smiled, grateful. “Sure.”
A ping went off and Gwen was looking at a blog alert on her BlackBerry again. She crinkled her nose. “Ew,” she said. Maddy looked over her shoulder and saw a picture of a man with a wild, dark beard and
short hair. His eyes were black and intense, almost—the thought occurred to her unbidden—infernal. The blog headline read: HDF leader William Beaubourg releases new video, threatens Angels.
“Those guys are such losers,” Gwen said. “Why do the Angel blogs ever even mention them?”
• • •
Maddy’s classes crawled by. In AP History she sat in the last row, hoping it would make it harder for her classmates to stare at her. Somehow, they managed. At least Mr. Rankin didn’t call on her again. He had learned his lesson. In English she asked questions about Hamlet to which she already knew the answers to pad her participation grade. In Spanish she listened to the whir of the overhead projector fan. Finally, the lunch bell rang.
She reported to the administration office and was taken by the assistant principal, Mr. Leihew, to an empty classroom.
“No visitors,” he said, sounding sort of apologetic about the whole situation. “But you’re free to study, of course. I’ll check back in on you in a few minutes.” Maddy thanked him and he left. She fished a stack of college applications out of her bag and paged through to an essay prompt.
Please describe what you consider to be the most difficult moment of your life. Maddy groaned. She heard the click of the door opening. Mr. Leihew must really not trust her, she thought. When she looked up, her heart nearly stopped in her chest. It wasn’t Mr. Leihew.
It was Jackson Godspeed.
He stood there in an untucked white collared shirt rolled up at the sleeves, designer jeans, and tie. Even dressed casually, he looked like he had just stepped off the cover of a magazine. Maddy was a statue of a girl in a desk. She couldn’t make sense of him in this place. Jackson Godspeed and Angel City High—they were like puzzle pieces that wouldn’t fit together in her mind.
