Midnight Sun(7)

To my horror, Charlie is still talking to me. “Hey, where are you going?”

“Home,” I tell him. “I gotta get home.”

It’s not a lie. My dad is probably all over Find My iPhone, tracking the little dot that is me. In fact, he has probably been tracking me the entire time I’ve been at the train station. I wouldn’t put it past him to ask Fred to broadcast my whole set on Facebook Live so he can watch me sing and monitor me all at the same time.

Charlie cocks his head and gives me a curious stare. I’d say he looks like the most adorable puppy ever, but he’s cuter than even the cutest pug, something I didn’t even know was possible. “Where do you live?” he asks. “You don’t go to Purdue High.”

I still can’t get the latch on my case closed. My bad first impression is turning into a worse second and third impression. I try to hurry away.

“Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Different high school,” I babble. Told you it was a bad habit. “But it’s graduation night and my dad’s a big worrier, so…”

The guitar case is finally locked up tightly. My escape is imminent. Maybe someday Charlie will forget how lame I acted tonight and we can start from scratch without all the mortifying word vomit on my part.

But then the case unlatches again as I stand up. My beloved grad present starts tumbling to the ground. My mom’s guitar is about to be smashed to bits.

Charlie catches it at the last second. He places it gently back inside the case and closes it tightly. Then he picks up the Skittles for a second time and hands both the case and the candy back to me.

His eyes stare into mine until I’m pretty sure I’m no longer a solid mass. I turn into some sort of a puddle person who will need to be mopped up later. If my life was a movie, we’d definitely start kissing now and, like, fireworks would shoot off in the background.

But it isn’t, so Charlie just says, “I, uh, graduated today, too.”

I will myself not to reply, I know! I watched on my computer from my weirdly darkened room!

Too bad what I actually say is even worse.

“Well, con-GRAD-uation!” Then I wince and mutter again, “Oh my God.”

Charlie cracks up. “That’s, like, the dorkiest joke I ever heard.”

I really have to give up now and get out of here. “Yep, that’s me. A dork. I gotta go.”

“What’s your rush?” he asks, staying in step with me.

I say the first thing that pops into my head. “Um, it’s my cat.”

Just to be clear: I do not now have a cat, nor have I ever had a cat. If my dad would allow it, I’d have a dog. A pug named Tug McPuggerson. But Dad says it’s not fair to keep a puppy cooped up in the house all day long, and he’s worried about the UV rays that would hit me every time I had to let the adorable guy out. So no go there.

“Your cat.” Charlie grins at me, like he can see right into my lying brain.

“Yep,” I continue, undeterred by the stupidity of what I’m saying. “It… died.”

His brow furrows adorably as a puzzled look crosses his face. “So you’re not actually in a rush, then…”

“No, I am, I have to… plan the funeral… for the cat that died,” I stammer.

I am hopeless.

So I make another break for it. I refuse to say anything more ridiculous than what has already come out of my mouth. And this time I finally succeed in ditching the boy of my dreams.

I hear him calling after me. “Wait… what’s your name?”

I don’t answer. If he finds out, I’ll never be able to deny I was the crazy girl talking about her fake dead cat the first time I met him. So I just keep going.

It’s only after I am safely at home, done exaggerating to my dad about how I completely killed it at the train station, and am tucked neatly into my bed that the regrets start to come fast and furious. How could I have blown my chance with Charlie Reed so completely?

Welcome to the most embarrassing night of my life.





5

Morgan stops by to get the full scoop the next morning on her run before I go to sleep. I’ve already texted her the overview of my exchange with Charlie—which is embarrassing enough—but now she wants the down-and-dirty details straight from the dead-cat owner’s mouth.

“A cat?” she screeches, making a horrified face at me.

I groan and shove a pillow over my head. Maybe if I bury myself under here for long enough, I’ll wake up later and find out it was all just a horrible dream.

“A cat funeral!” Morgan sputters, laughing so hard now she almost falls off the desk chair she’s spinning around in.

“Stop saying it out loud!” I yell from under the pillow. There’s no way this is going to turn out to be just a nightmare if she keeps repeating all the dumb things I said last night.

Morgan gets up, walks across the room, and plops down on the bed next to me. I can’t see any of this, but I know she’s there from the ripples of laughter shaking the mattress. She puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Katie. I’ve actually heard that dead pets are an aphrodisiac.”

I sit up and take the pillow off my face. “What was I supposed to say?”

“Anything else,” she tells me. “Literally any other combination of words in the English language.”