Bookishly Ever After (Ever After #1)(7)

Em was still waving at us while slow dancing with the foreign exchange student. Maybe going to the cupcake table with Jon would make her happy.

“Sure.” I followed, awkwardly holding onto his sleeve to keep from being separated while we navigated through the crowd.

Just as we reached the three point line, the music changed abruptly. The twang of a sitar filled the air. “Is that—” We stopped and I laughed as Dev slid out on his knees into the center of the floor and started to sing. “What is he doing?”

The whole gym froze and stared as, one by one, other people broke into dance, their voices joining in with his.

“You’re effin’ kidding me. A flash mob?” Jon laughed and shook his head. “Leave it to the theatre geeks to come up with something like this.”

“Even better, a Bollywood flash mob. This is awesome.” Some of the girls from the dance team twirled by in matching genie-like outfits. More and more people joined in, mostly theatre, the school choirs, and the dance team. Even some of the chaperones got into the dance until they were a solid formation making patterns across the gym floor. Jon started pulling me towards the cupcakes again, but I swatted at his hand. “I have to see this.”

“C’mon. This is the best time to go. Everyone’s watching right now.”

I ignored him. Some of the teachers had jumped into the dance.

“Look at Mr. Hayashi. I didn’t know he could move that fast,” I said as I tried to ignore Jon’s insistent tugging and kept my focus on the dancing AP History teacher. “I really want to see this.”

Then Dev was in front of me, dragging me away from Jon and onto the dance floor while still keeping in his character of a crooning Bollywood hero. He twirled me right into the center so my skirts flared around me in an impressive circle of green chiffon. “Uhm, Dev,” I said between my teeth, feeling my face grow supernova-hot, “I can’t dance. And I don’t know—”

His lips quirked upwards and he winked at me before breaking into the next round of lyrics:

“Your hair like fire, eyes like embers,” he lip-synced, finger tilting up my chin and amused eyes meeting mine, “soul like a blaze burning through the room.” His arms gestured dramatically at me and the dancers as he sang. He pulled me in, wrapping his and my arms around me, “I am captivated, drawn in, a moth to your flames. Your fire is my doom,” and twirled me out again. My embarrassment melted away and I laughed at his exaggerated and cheesy movements.

As the chorus broke out again, he squeezed my hand. “Thanks, Phoebe,” he said softly. With another twirl, I fell right into a chair on the edge of the flash mob, as if I had been perfectly choreographed into the dance. Em looked down at me with a grin. “You looked good out there, Pavlova.”

“If you put that online, I will kill you.”

Em didn’t even bother to hide the fact that she was still recording the whole thing. “I won’t have to. Someone else will.” She tugged teasingly at the ribbon on my sleeve. “If it makes you feel any better, Dev did a good job of making you actually look desirable. You might get an Internet stalker or two out of this one.”

I twisted my nose up at her. “That’s comforting. Did you know about this?”

“No. He probably planned it the week I had to miss the theatre club meeting. Jerk. I could have gotten a better view of you actually dancing for once if he’d bothered to tell me.” She wiggled her phone at me. “Thankfully, with my ‘get to the front of a crowd’ superpower, at least I got some awesome blackmail material.”

I reached up to grab at her phone. “Let me see—”

She held it out of my reach and gestured towards the dance floor. “No way. Besides, look, he’s got Ms. Alexander out there now.”

When I turned around, he was promenading the little blonde gym teacher through an alleyway made by the other dancers. She was laughing so hard that she could barely stay upright. “Okay. That’s proof that Dev is absolutely certifiable.”

“Wanna take a guess about who he picks as the brunette?”

“Brunette?”

“Don’t you recognize it? It’s that song from the movie we watched at your house a few weeks ago. Viraag? The one where the guy dances with girls with different hair colors?”

Em was right—this was the point in the song where the movie guy had switched to dancing with the heroine, who was a brunette.

“Funny how he picked a song from this movie.” Em said, sounding a little distracted, “He didn’t seem to know about it when you were raving about it in band.”

“I guess we inspired him to check it out.” I giggled as Dev dramatically dropped to his knees and waved Ms. Alexander away like he couldn’t look at her anymore.

“Maybe.” She paused and narrowed her eyes, looking from me to Dev and back at me again. Then, she shook her head and said, “I guess Dev found English lyrics or something. Too bad it screwed up wherever you and Jon were going, but I think this was worth it.”

Jon. Oops. I craned my neck to see him standing on the opposite side of the gym.

“About Jon. I—”

“Huh? What about Jon?” Em let out a whoop as Ms. Alexander gracefully bowed her way out of the flash mob.

“Nothing.” I twisted the dangling end of my rope belt around my fingers like a one handed cat’s cradle. “I don’t think he cares if I’m over here,” I mumbled into my lap.