Pivot Point (Pivot Point, #1)(2)

“I want to talk to Addie.”

I bent over and rummaged through my backpack, hoping he’d get the hint. He didn’t. I pulled out a yellow highlighter and set it on my desk. Still, he stayed. Finally, with a sigh, I looked up. “Bobby, please, just leave me alone.”

“I thought now that the dance was over, you’d talk to me, tell me why you went from friendly to cold the minute I asked you.”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, so leave,” Laila added.

He walked away, glancing back once. The look he gave me said he wasn’t ready to give up yet. I hoped my look said, You’re going to have to. I also kind of hoped it said, I hate your guts, but as long as it said one of the two, I was satisfied.

“Addie, you can’t punish someone based on a Search. He has no idea what he did wrong.”

“It’s not my fault that if I went to the dance with him, he was going to shove his tongue down my throat and his hand up my dress,” I whispered.

“I know, and I’m so glad you didn’t go with him. But he didn’t actually do that.”

“But he would’ve.” I nudged the highlighter. It rolled over the glass surface of my glowing keyboard and inched toward the edge of my desk before rolling back to safety. “That’s who he is, and I can’t look at him without seeing that Search.”

“Do you want me to Erase it?”

“Have I asked you to Erase something before?” Every time she offered to Erase a memory, I asked her that question.

And every time she always answered, “If you did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

I made a face at her. “You’re a brat.”

She began painting her nails with a black Sharpie. “So, do you?”

“No. Because then I’ll forget what he’s capable of and his puppy-dog eyes might convince me to go out with him.” I shuddered. I couldn’t imagine ever thinking that his greasy brown hair and holey jeans meant he was misunderstood. But without the memories, I was sure, once again, I’d believe a good shampoo would wash the appearance of creep out of him.

“That’s true.”

“Hey, can you give me a ride home today?” I asked, ready to move past the Bobby subject.

“Sure, your car didn’t start again this morning?”

I scrolled through the diagrams on my monitor until I found our current assignment. “No, fog.”

“Ah, of course.” She didn’t need further explanation. My mom’s overprotectiveness had affected a lot of our outings. She turned toward her monitor because Mr. Caston started pacing the rows. Up on the screen was a diagram of frog innards. “Where is the kidney?” she asked.

I pointed, and the bean-shaped organ blackened as the heat from my finger touched the screen. Mr. Caston passed our desk.

“So, back to Duke,” she whispered when he was out of hearing range. “Tell me all the details.”

“There’s nothing to tell. His football knocked me down. He apologized.”

“And you said?”

I thought back. “I said, ‘Yeah, I heard you, Duke.’” A look of horror came onto her face, and I cringed.

“Addison Marie Coleman. You get handed an opportunity to flirt with Duke Rivers and you blow him off? All these years of being my friend and you have learned nothing. That was your chance. You could’ve acted like he hurt you and made him walk you to the nurse’s office.”

“He did hurt me. But he annoyed me more. He let a football hit my head.”

“How do you know he let it?”

“Hello? Because he’s Telekinetic. He could’ve easily knocked it out of the way.”

“Come on, Addie. He can’t use his powers all the time. Give him a break.”

“He let a football hit my head,” I repeated slowly.

“All right, all right, perhaps he’s not the most gentlemanly guy in the world, but he’s Duke. He doesn’t have to be.”

A loud sigh escaped my lips. “Laila, don’t make me hurt you. It’s girls like you who let guys like Duke get away with their behavior.”

She laughed. “First of all, I’d like to see you try to hurt me, Miss Skin-and-Bones. Second of all, if I were with Duke, he’d be cut down to size in seconds.” She leaned back and let out a dreamy sigh, as if a mental image of her with Duke played through her mind. “Hotlicious.”

“What?”

“It’s hot and delicious combined. In the dictionary it would be listed as a noun and wouldn’t even have a definition attached, just a picture of Duke Rivers.”

“Please. There are plenty of real words Duke’s face is probably already attached to in the dictionary … conceited, egocentric, arrogant. And besides”—I smiled—“hotlicious would be an adjective.”

“Girls,” Mr. Caston said, “I don’t think much studying is going on in your corner.”

Laila pointed to the monitor. “We’ve located the kidney, Mr. Caston.”

When I got home, my parents were both in the living room. They sat on opposite couches, hands folded in their laps, looking grim. My cheeks numbed as all the blood in them suddenly left.

My house was what Laila always described as old-fashioned cozy—overstuffed, mismatched furniture; plush carpet; honey-colored walls. The kind of house that was easy to curl up and relax in. I had the opposite feeling at the moment as tension spread across my shoulders.