Bookishly Ever After (Ever After #1)(24)
“I didn’t.” I could have sworn I’d taken my ‘in case of an emergency’ book out of my bag.
“Oh, wait, it’s just a notebook,” Em pulled my teal glitter notebook out of the bag and her expression grew even more confused. “Why do you have a notebook in your knitting bag?”
My whole body froze as if a giant snowball had fallen on top of me. Please don’t open it, please don’t… “It’s my, um, knitting project notebook. You know, lots of boring pattern instructions...”
Em ignored my silent pleas and grinned as she slowly opened the cover. “You don’t want me to look at this because it probably has plans for our Chris-Yule-akkah presents in it, huh?”
“She knits presents for you? Now I’m really feeling left out,” Dev said with a mock hurt look, fake pout and all.
I couldn’t focus on him or even fake a laugh. “Not knitworthy yet,” I said absently. Wishing I were telepathic like Evie in the Daydreamer books, I stared at Em and added with a frown, “Can you put that away before Osoba sees it?”
Em’s expression as she flipped through the notebook jumped from confusion to understanding, a little smile spreading across her lips before she snapped the notebook shut. She handed it to me, eyebrows arched and one side of her lips turned up a little higher than the other, like she was stopping herself from grinning. “You’re right. Just a whole bunch of Ks and Ps and YOs. It’s like you knitters have your own language or something.”
For someone who refused to learn to knit, she must have paid more attention to my patterns in the past than I’d ever realized. “It’s Y.O. for yarnover,” I corrected her, trying to sound light but also shooting her a “please don’t tell anyone” look as I stuffed my reference notebook back into my bag. When she gave a barely visible nod, I let out my breath in a puff of white cloud and squished my bag between my feet where Dev or Em couldn’t go for it.
“I thought stage directions were weird, but I should have known your hobbies would be weirder. Dev, you need to help me get this girl into this century.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but was interrupted by someone yelling out, “Third down. Louie-Louie!” In a Pavlovian reaction from almost three full seasons of football, we all quickly grabbed our instruments, I flipped back my mitten tops, and we started rattling out the familiar notes.
An elbow jabbed me in the side midsong and I looked over at Em, who tilted her chin at Dev and winked without skipping a note.
I “accidentally” poked her in the arm with the end of my piccolo.
The moment we got into the band room to prep for the halftime performance, Em grabbed my arm and pulled me into one of the soundproof practice rooms. “Is that notebook what I think it is?”
On the other side of the glass door, the marchers were scrambling into their uniforms while the nonmarchers thawed under the heating vents. I stared longingly at the closest vent for a minute before turning back to Em. “Thanks for not saying anything.”
“What could I possibly say beyond telling Dev you’re absolutely insane?” Em invaded my personal space and reached into my bag before I could stop her. She pulled out the notebook and flipped to one of my carefully laid-out pages where I’d taped a scene I’d copied from Golden. My handwriting was all over the page in little notes and annotations that analyzed every single word in the scene where Maeve first met Aedan.
At that moment, I had to become Maeve. Brave, bold, and with my eyes trained on Em so she wouldn’t see how I wanted to snatch back my notebook and curl up behind the snare drums. “Don’t criticize my way of figuring out how to deal with guys and I won’t criticize yours.”
“You’re so…bookish.” Em pursed her lips and flipped through to another section. “You know people have been hooking up for millennia without the help of books, right?” She turned the page and her eyebrows shot up again, “Whoa, but I totally approve of this one. You should totally just march up to Dev right now and pretend he’s this Aedan guy because this,” she poked at the page enthusiastically, “is make-out gold.”
I snatched the composition book out of her hands and hugged it to my chest. “Don’t you have lines to memorize or something?”
“Later. Right now I’m too busy memorizing the look on your face so I can use it the next time I have to act really embarrassed.” Another look at my face and she reached out to give my arm a comforting squeeze before opening the door onto the overwhelming, clashing noise of marchers warming up. “Sorry. But you’re kinda asking for it.”
I made my way towards the double doors that opened closest to the football field, where a lot of the marchers and nonmarchers were already clumping in groups. “No, I’m not.”
“You don’t use this, uh…method…for everything, do you?”
“No.”
“It would explain a lot about you.”
This time, I poked her in the arm. “You walk around in character all the time.”
“That’s for roles. I’m an actress. It’s completely different.” Another look over her shoulder at me and she shut her eyes with a “saints preserve me” expression. “Fine. Do your bookthing, bookworm. I’ll be here to help when you decide to embrace reality again.”