Bookish and the Beast (Once Upon a Con #3)(46)

Oh God.

He took what I said and he twisted it—again. I slide lower in my seat as half of the class turns to look at me. I angle a hand over my face, trying to pretend that no one can see me in my supreme moment of embarrassment. But people are looking at me, anyway.

I want to disappear.

“Vote for me, and let’s make our dreams come true!”

Never mind that I wouldn’t go with him even if he was the last person on earth, and certainly not now, but try telling that to the entire school.

Soon after the announcements end and the bell rings to dismiss us for the day, a girl from my English class comes up to me as I’m packing up and asks, “Why don’t you just go with him?”

I glance over at her, surprised. She’s never spoken to me once in our entire high school career. “I don’t want to.”

“It’s messed up that you’re playing with him like this,” she replies as she leaves.



* * *



—

QUINN AND ANNIE ARE WAITING FOR ME beside my locker. Quinn looks more than a little pissed, and I don’t blame them. They’re ranting to Annie as I come up and spin the dial on my lock. “And he just butted in! I had an entire thing I wanted to say!” they raged. “I want to win now more than ever. We’re not letting you go to Homecoming with him, no matter what.”

I put Twilight into my locker, beside Dracula—poor Dracula, discarded after three chapters because I found SparkNotes more helpful—and give them a surprised look. “I’m not actually going to go with that idiot—” From over Quinn’s shoulder, I see a flash of a red Spider-Man cap, and I slam my locker closed. “Hold that thought. I have someone to kill.”

I push away from my locker and head straight for Garrett Taylor.

“I hope she doesn’t actually kill him,” I hear Annie say to Quinn.

“I’d be okay if she did,” they say. “Thinning the competition.”

Garrett’s hanging back with a group of friends by one of their lockers near the science wing, high-fiving and relishing in his pretty sweet PSA. It was not sweet. It was not even charming.

He doesn’t see me before I grab him by the arm. “We need to talk—now,” I hiss, and before his posse can stop me from kidnapping their ringleader, I haul him into the open janitor’s closet and slam the door behind me. I feel for the light switch and flick it on.

Interrogation time.

He winces at the bright light. “Whoa, Rosie—it’s nice to see you, too—”

“Stop trying to ask me out.”

He gives a laugh. “Where did this come from?”

“Just stop it!”

“But I thought you said that the best way to like someone is to get to know them! You have no one else to go with. We’ve known each other for years. C’mon, Rosie, just give me a chance. You never know until you try.”

“What part of no don’t you understand?”

“Then what else do I need to do to prove to you that you deserve me?”

“What?”

“What else do I need to do?” he repeats. “Do I need to grovel at your feet? Write a song? Win a Homecoming vote?” That he laughs at, because he thinks he already has it in the bag. “C’mon, Rosie. Give me something here. Let me try.”

For a long moment, I stare at him, wide-eyed and wondering how in the hell anyone likes this guy. He’s getting something out of all this, if not my unwilling participation…then what?

I’m not sure, but I definitely do not like it.

I steel myself to say, “The answer is going to be no, Garrett. The answer is always going to be no.”

Then I reach up for the light switch and turn it off, leaving him in the janitor’s closet. He emerges a few moments later, but I duck into the girls’ bathroom before he can figure out where I went.

I breathe out a long sigh, locking myself in the farthest stall, and sit up on the toilet. I just have to survive until Homecoming. That’s it. Then after that, this entire nightmare will be over.

I just hope I can last until then.



* * *



—

THE DAYS GO BY QUICKLY, and the further Vance and I distance ourselves from that rainstorm and the pool shed, the more I can’t forget about it. And neither can he. We tend to orbit around each other like binary stars, trying so hard to avoid each other and yet somehow always finding ourselves in the same vicinity.

He’ll be in the kitchen when I get a glass of water, or he’ll come down the stairs as I walk in the front door, and every time he’ll turn on his heel and leave as quickly and silently as he came in. I never even have the chance to tell him hello.

After a week, it gets irritating trying to avoid each other, and he doesn’t turn on his heel every time I come within eyesight again. But he doesn’t really pay attention to me, either, even though it feels like I’m hyperaware of wherever he is while I’m in the castle-house—like a flesh-and-blood ghost that just won’t go haunt someone else.

Then, on Friday after a particularly bad world history test that I know I failed, I come to the castle-house and retreat into my haven—only to find him sitting crossways in one of the wingback chairs in the library. His long legs are stretched over the armrest, his hair tucked up into a dark blue beanie. He’s wearing a flannel shirt and frayed jeans and looks much more like the kind of guy I’d find at my local Starbucks than any sort of moody starlet—neither greasy nor sparkling.