Complete Nothing (True Love #2)(39)

“No, it’s . . . I’m fine.” I put my new phone back in its box and then suddenly didn’t know what to do with my hands. My stomach was in knots, so eating the macaroni salad in front of me wasn’t an option. Finally I placed them awkwardly in my lap, folding them together like some nineteenth-century student at a convent school in Italy, elbows out, back straight, ready to listen and learn.

“How’re your classes?” Charlie asked Orion, reaching for his iced tea.

“Pretty good,” Orion replied. “I don’t know why they stuck me in art ninth period, though.” He glanced over at me. It was one of the many classes we shared. “Mrs. Fabrizi’s kind of out there, right?”

“I like her,” I said. “She says what she thinks.”

“Saying what she thinks is one of True’s special talents,” Charlie said with a laugh.

“Oh yeah? What do you think of me?” Orion asked confidently, leaning his elbows on the table.

I gulped. My throat suddenly seemed the size of a drinking straw. I think you’re incredible. I think there’s no one in the universe like you. I think I want to spend the rest of my existence by your side.

But instead of gushing, I shook my hair back and narrowed my eyes at him. “I think you’re cocky, but in a good way. I think you’re going to get everything you want in life. And I think you’re going to find true love.”

“That’s her other special talent,” Katrina said, reaching for Charlie’s hand. “True’s a matchmaker.”

“Bonus,” Orion said, his eyes sparkling. “So who do you think I should—”

“What about me?” Wallace interjected.

I turned to look at him. He sat straight in his chair, his dark bangs shoved back from his forehead.

“What about you what?” I asked.

“Do me. What do you think of me?”

I smiled. “I think you’re sweet and giving and caring and very smart.”

To my right, Orion shifted in his seat and shoved a fistful of french fries into his mouth.

Wallace’s eyes widened. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“I’m gonna go get you some ice cream.” Wallace pushed his seat back and stood.

“That’s really not necessary,” I told him. “You’ve reached your gift quota for the day.”

“No. It really is necessary. No one’s ever said anything that cool to me before,” he replied. “Anyone else want anything?”

“I’m good!” Katrina and Charlie said as one.

“No, thanks,” Orion mumbled.

“Be right back.”

Wallace took off for the front of the room and I faced forward, trying as hard as I could to act natural when Orion’s skin was mere inches from mine. I reached for my new phone and realized that I was smiling. Here I was, with my friends and the boy I loved, eating lunch, playing with my new cell phone. For five whole seconds, I felt like a normal teenage girl.

And I kind of liked it.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


Peter


Nothing. I knew nothing. I was the dumbest dumb-ass in the history of dumb-ass Lake Carmody High. I tossed my quiz paper onto Mr. Flannery’s desk, walked out into the hall, and punched the first locker I saw. It made an awful, loud clanging noise, and my hand exploded in pain as if every one of my fingers had just been blown to bits.

“What the hell was that?” Gavin asked, coming up behind me.

“I thought the quiz was on the 1950s, not the sixties!” I shouted. Up and down the hall, people were staring in my direction. Of course they were. I’d just dented some poor kid’s locker and probably looked like a maniac. Near the doors to the stairwell, some dude in a Superman costume was hugging his girlfriend. Another happy couple going to homecoming. “I studied the wrong effing decade!” I said through my teeth.

“We already took the fifties quiz last week,” Gavin told me, grabbing the arm of my varsity jacket to turn me around—away from the spectators and the Man of Steel. “How did you study the same shit again?”

I squeezed my eyes shut as I shook my head. “I don’t know. I usually study with Claudia. She would never’ve let me do that.” I stopped near the end of the hall and leaned back against the wall, smacking the back of my skull against the hard brick. It hurt, but I didn’t care. “I’m such an *. I completely flunked.”

Gavin sighed and looked back toward Flannery’s room. “Maybe you should tell him what happened. He might let you retake it.”

“Then I’ll look like an even bigger idiot,” I protested. “Who doesn’t remember that they already took a quiz on something?” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes hard enough to pop them into the back of my skull. “I was just so tired. . . . I knew it sounded familiar.” I banged my head into the wall again. This time I saw actual stars. “I’d rather just fail.”

With a groan, I rounded the corner and saw Claudia standing at her locker with Lauren. I froze. She looked so beautiful in a red dress with short sleeves and a wide collar that showed off her long neck. Suddenly I needed to talk to her more than anything. I had to. There was no getting around it.

Without giving myself a chance to double-think the decision, I walked right up to her, leaving Gavin in the dust. She turned to stone as she saw me coming and tried to keep talking to Lauren, but I knew she’d seen me, because her cheeks turned bright red. My heart was in my throat.