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Barry must’ve contained her. I heard his low voice murmuring something and then there was nothing else. I was free to escape. I had barely closed the door, pressed my back to it and clamped my eyes shut when my bag rang, or rather my phone inside my bag rang.
Who in the world could be calling me?
I dropped my bag off my shoulder and rummaged until I discovered it was Bridget.
“Oh, thank God,” I moaned, answering immediately. I needed to hear my best friend’s voice right then. My sanity depended on it.
“You will not believe the day I had,” I gushed instead of my usual greeting.
“Tell us everything.”
I paused, a small frown marring my eyebrows. “Us?”
“Hi,” the voices of Schy and Adam chorused from Bridget’s line.
Hearing all of them together deflated my relief. I know it was selfish, but the idea of them being with each other, without me, hurt. Reasonably, I understood it’d be silly for the nerd herd to disband and float off in lonely, separate directions once I had to leave. But irrationally, I felt betrayed. It was as if my absence hadn’t even left a smudge. They were still as tight as ever.
“So did you see him?” at least two voices asked.
Slumping toward my bed, I sat on the edge of the mattress, my enthusiasm to tell all deflating. “See who?” I closed my eyes even as I answered. The innocent, whatever-are-you-talking-about tone in my voice was a bit too obvious.
“Number forty-two,” Bridget nearly shouted, just as Schy did shout, “Ryder Yates. Duh.”
“Oh.” Him. As of five minutes ago, I did not want to talk about that guy. Or even think about him. “Mmm hmm, I saw him. I, uh, talked to his friend who was sitting directly in front of him during second hour. The friend introduced us.” For some reason, I couldn’t tell them about the encounter I’d had with him after school. Still stung too much.
“Holy Hosanna. You have a class with him?”
“Chemistry,” I answered then bit my lip as soon as the word crossed my lips.
Schy had to be the one to catch the irony. “Grace and Ryder have chemistry together.” She snorted.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah. His girlfriend doesn’t have the class with us, though.”
“This is going to make Adam’s song for you two so much—wait. Did you just say girlfriend?”
I gave a decisive nod, though no one could see me. “She’s a sophomore and is already, like, the most popular cheerleader to ever attend Southeast. Oh, and the two of them are known as the most sexually active couple in school.”
After dropping that little information bomb, I held my breath, waiting for the fallout. Silence breezed through the connection.
Finally, Adam of all people was the one to speak. “They’re what?”
“Well, dang,” Bridget muttered. “Guess that’s a dead end.”
“Grace,” Schy groaned, putting two syllables in my name. “That’s so not right. He was supposed to be all single and…and perfect, just waiting for you so you guys could run off into the sunset together and have a romantic happily ever after.”
“Yeah, well… Sorry.”
“This sucks,” Bridget exploded, her tone of voice telling me exactly what her facial expression looked like at that moment.
A hot needle of loneliness pierced the center of my chest. I didn’t want to sit on my bed alone and simply listen to them. I wanted to be with them, relaxing on the floor with my knees bent and my face down as Schy drew designs on the back of my neck and Adam fiddled on his guitar and Bridge commandeered her computer, looking up odd facts.
“Want us to come over?” Schy offered.
“Yeah,” Bridget chipped in. “We can be there in twenty minutes if Adam drives fast.”
“Grace,” my mother called, rapping on my door hard enough to open it with her knock. Then she butted her big head into the wedge of space. “Five minutes,” she said with a severe, dictating arch of her eyebrows. “Then it’s time to ge
t ready for supper. Your night to cook, remember?”
