Don't Kiss the Messenger (Edgelake High School, #1)(9)

“Hey,” I said.

She looked equally surprised to see me, even a little guarded, like I had walked into her house without knocking.

“CeCe,” I said, acknowledging that I finally knew her name. “It’s short for—?”

“Sparkles,” she said.

Smart-ass. A smile tugged at my lips. I studied her mammoth sized coffee cup and raised my eyebrows.

“Coffee enhances mental performance,” she stated. “Twenty ounces of the lightest roast contains 425 milligrams of caffeine. It’s a studying miracle.”

She reached for a lid and while she was distracted, I swiped her cell and earphones. I slipped them into my ears and looked around for her telltale red Adidas bag. I figured she had a table, and now she was going to share it.

She covered the lid over her cup and followed me.

“Hey. That’s stealing.”

I ignored her and scrolled through her playlists, listening to Jurassic 5’s Jurass Finish First while I browsed.

“It’s borrowing,” I said casually, and headed up the stairs. I looked around and saw her bag. She had scored my second favorite spot: a well-lit corner table, beneath a pop-art rendering of the Mona Lisa in cyan, magenta, and yellow.

I tossed my backpack next to an open chair and sat down.

“You could get your hands cut off in some countries for that, you know.”

I turned the volume down and looked up at her.

“For borrowing?”

She grabbed her backpack off the chair and sat down. I kept scrolling.

“Are you one of those ungodly organized people?” I asked.

She took a long sip of her drink and sighed happily, like her brain had suddenly snapped on. “What do you mean?”

“Your playlist titles,” I said. “Classic 90’s melodramatic ballads? Late millennial female vocalists?”

“I like to be organized.” As she said this, she opened a binder labeled Organic Chemistry. The pages inside were color coordinated and labeled in neat, block letters with file headings. She frowned at a clear transparency, which had bent a little in one corner and she tried to smooth it down. She looked up and caught me watching her.

“You better stay away from my bedroom,” I warned her. “Piles of clothes everywhere. Mostly organized by least-offensive odor.”

She shuddered at the image. “Then don’t come in mine,” she said. “The clothes in my closet are organized by season first, color second, and fabric material third.”

I looked as put off by that information as she was by my odorous piles.

I glanced down at her phone and caught another title.

“Stripper Mix?” I clicked on it with interest and read the titles out loud: “‘Doves Cry.’ ‘Amber.’ ‘Fever for the Flava’—” I started to laugh, and she grabbed her cell out of my hand. I pulled the earphones out before they were yanked away.

“It was a joke for a volleyball practice,” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

“Every girl has a stripper mix. Even the wholesome ones,” she defended herself.

“You don’t know how happy I am to hear that.”

My smile only seemed to irritate her. She shoved her phone in her backpack. Her dark eyes scrutinized me. They stood out against her flushed cheeks. “What are you doing here? I actually come here to study.”

I picked up my backpack and unzipped it. “They have classical piano players a couple nights a week.”

She nodded. “And you know this, why?” she asked.

“Some of the Edgelake music students play here to log practice hours. We have a recital festival at the end of the semester.”

She watched me, curiously.

“It’s studying music at its best,” she said.

I nodded. “I’m pretty sure Bach and Beethoven are the reason I’m making it through school.”

“Why don’t you study at McClain’s,” she asked, like I had stumbled into her territory and she was defending it.

I shook my head. “I can’t study at McClain’s. Too many distractions.” One distraction in particular. A distraction dressed in spandex shorts with legs that reached up to the ceiling. Bryn DeNeuville’s name bounced around the football locker room like a relentless echo. I hadn’t met her yet. We made eye contact once, briefly at the stadium, but she bolted for the weight room before I could introduce myself.

CeCe took a sip of her drink and nodded. “The overhead music they play is painful,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows in mocked surprise. “You mean you don’t enjoy the 50,000 different classical renditions of Billy Joel?”

CeCe belted out a laugh and a few people sitting in our proximity turned around to stare.

“You should try the Memorial Library,” she said. “It’s famous for its ‘stacks.’”

“As in their wide selection?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“As in their well-endowed librarians?”

She smiled. “Ha. No. They have these old metal cages that students can lock themselves in all day.”

“What? Why?” I asked.

“To force themselves to study.”

“That sounds morbid,” I said.

CeCe nodded in agreement. “There is something morbidly romantic about it. I wouldn’t mind being caged in with all my books and my music. If I died, at least I’d be surrounded by the things I love.”