Select (Select #1)(36)

Reading John’s mind did feel invasive and manipulative, but I told myself not to feel bad. I wasn’t hurting him. It would have been so much easier, though, if this ability worked on someone besides John. I was still disturbed by the fact that I could put a mental barrier between myself and outsiders so I wouldn’t be distracted by them, but John always broke through, like he did the first day I met him. Either he broke through or I let him in. Neither was a comforting thought.

It was taking him longer today than usual. I looked at the time on my phone and then threw it back in my bag. I was going to have to leave pretty soon if he didn’t show. We’d silently fallen into a routine. Every day we met up after practice and talked, lingering until we had no excuse and had to start walking to the parking lot together, our teammates’ eyes on us.

I heard steps and turned around, trying to hold back my smile. Jesus, Julia. But it wasn’t him. It was his brother.

“Hey.” Alex nodded at me and then looked over at the locker room, like he was waiting with me for John.

“Hello.” I wasn’t sure what to say.

“I’m Alex.” He turned to me and looked at me hard. Oh my God, he was protecting his brother. That was funny. Alex looked almost identical to John, but he had light-brown hair. The kind of light brown that only lasts through childhood and eventually turns dark. He was cute, but his good looks didn’t have the depth that John’s had. Alex’s were simple, easy, what you see is what you get. John’s were layered and deceptive. At first he looked almost plain, but when you studied him more closely, he became even better looking…especially with the way he would look at me, the expression on his face so completely calm and totally in contrast with what he was really thinking.

Alex was staring at me expectantly, which snapped me out of my reverie.

“I’m Julia,” I said. I was glad when John walked up just then.

“Sorry,” he apologized to me, acknowledging for the first time that we did have some kind of standing date. “What are you doing here?” he asked his brother.

“I blew off the workout today,” Alex said.

John was annoyed and shrugged. I felt all of his irritation. He thought he was being spied on, that his parents had asked his brother to see how he was doing at practice. And I assumed Alex was here because he thought John was going down the tubes hanging out with me. Nice.

“I have an appointment,” I blurted out. I needed to get out of there. These two had a major bond. Best friends. I hadn’t known that. I didn’t want to get in the way. That’s what I used to have with Liv, and I knew their parents’ crap was interfering. I didn’t want to be one more thing.

But it made John even more pissed at his brother, thinking Alex was chasing me away.

“No, really, I have an appointment at five thirty.” No one said anything, but they were staring at my hand.

“What happened?” John took a step closer and reached out as if he was going to examine my hand. But he seemed to remember himself and didn’t try to touch me.

“What?” I glanced down, surprised to see I had blood on my hand. The glass water bottle I’d been holding had shattered, the shards contained in the perforated rubber casing. I’d crushed it with my hand and hadn’t even noticed. Maybe Alex had made me nervous. It was extremely hard to break one of those bottles with your hands, but I was more concerned about my blood being everywhere than the boys being suspicious of my strength. It was my paranoia. They didn’t know it was a big deal for me to leave behind traces of my blood.

I walked the remains of the water bottle to a nearby trash can and saw there was an ugly gash on my palm. We all started looking around for something to stop the bleeding. John quickly rifled through his bag and came up with a clean T-shirt.

“No, I can’t,” I said when he tried to hand it to me.

“Take it,” he said.

I did, reluctantly, knowing he wouldn’t be getting the shirt back. “Thanks. It’s fine. I’d better go.”

“Are you sure? It looks bad.”

“No, it looks worse than it is. Really.”

“Okay,” John said gently, “I’ll call you tonight?”

He froze the second after he said it. It had just slipped out. John looked completely nonchalant—I thought he really should be an actor—but he was absolutely freaking out inside.

I needed to respond.

“Of course,” I said, not knowing what else to do. In spite of everything I knew was smart, I stood next to him, his shoulder close to my cheek, and watched him put my number in his contacts while his brother looked on.

I felt John’s mood change to pure happiness. It was nice to know what that felt like.

As I walked away I heard his brother ask, “What was that?”

John said, “Nothing.”

“You like her.”

“She’s from a whole different world.”

“Well, now she’s in ours.”



I stood by and watched my phone buzz, the unfamiliar number lighting up the screen. Right before it was about to go to voice mail, I grabbed it.

“Hi,” I said in a completely normal voice, as if he called me all the time.

“Hi,” John said.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Nothing. Well, not nothing. I just finished dinner with my family. I have a lot of reading to do. What are you doing?”