Shut Out(30)

“Maybe.”

“Well, I’ll let you get going. See you later, Lissa.”

“All right. See you,” I said, moving toward the library door, holding the copy of Lysistrata to my chest. I was sort of curious to read it. “Okay, Logan, let’s go…. Logan?”

I glanced over my shoulder. Logan was talking to Jenna at the front desk, and she was totally chatting it up with him. Flipping her hair, batting her eyes, smiling. Ugh. My skin crawled. Jenna didn’t smile. Not unless she really wanted something.

Like my brother, apparently.

“Logan,” I said too loudly. “Hey, come on. Let’s go.”

“All right, all right.” He sighed, stepping away from the desk.

I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath, trying to erase from my memory the image of Jenna and my brother flirting.

“You don’t have to be so demanding, you know,” Logan said, walking out to his Jeep with me at his side. “It really isn’t very attractive.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it. Now can we just get out of here?”

I took a look back at the library as we drove away. I could see Cash walking across the parking lot, a streetlight casting his shadow across the pavement. When I looked away, I realized I was hugging the copy of Lysistrata like it was a prized possession.

Quickly, I stuffed the book into my backpack and, before Logan could notice anything was up, I started commandeering the radio dial.





chapter thirteen


I dreamed about Cash that night.

Not a prophetic dream where he died in a fiery car accident, or a goofy dream where we walked on Mars and ate cotton candy or something stupid like that. No, this dream was… Well, it involved me, Cash, and that library sex scene from Atonement that I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about whenever Cash was around—even though I couldn’t help it. And in my dream, there was nothing uncomfortable about the bookshelves.

I rolled over and slapped the snooze button, but lying there, as the dream flooded into my conscious brain, I discovered that the extra seven minutes of sleep wouldn’t do me any good this morning. The shame would keep me awake instead.

I climbed out of bed and headed for the bathroom, turning off my alarm clock along the way. I couldn’t get my mind out of the dream. Even after I was done showering and getting dressed, or when I ran downstairs to catch the bus.

Somehow, having a dream like that about Cash made me feel… guilty.

“Why would you feel bad about that?” Chloe asked in our first-block computer applications class after I confided in her. “It’s not like you can help what you dream about. And damn, the boy is hot. Who doesn’t have raunchy dreams about him? Too bad he’s such a tease. He could be the ultimate stud if he wanted, but he won’t even move beyond the flirty stage with girls. Maybe he’s part of some crazy religion or something.”

I blushed and opened up an Excel spreadsheet to start the project we’d been assigned. I always told Chloe everything. About my family, my relationship with Randy (the parts that weren’t too private, at least), my college plans, and even my dirty dreams. But there was something she didn’t know about: what happened between Cash and me at Vikki McPhee’s party over the summer.

“Seriously, though,” she pressed, leaning over to see what buttons I was clicking to start the arithmetic functions on the spreadsheet. “Why do you feel guilty?”

“I don’t know…. Because I have a boyfriend?” I offered, not mentioning the fact that I’d never had that kind of dream about Randy. “Doesn’t that make it sort of wrong?”

“No,” Chloe said flatly. “It doesn’t. You can’t help who or what you dream about. It’s not like you’re cheating on him. Besides, boys can do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, checking my screen again to figure out how I’d created the assigned bar graph, “boys check out girls, talk about girls, and totally dream about girls they aren’t dating, and it’s cool as long as they don’t actually act on it. But when a girl like you does the same thing, she feels dirty or guilty or whatever. I don’t get that.”

“Yeah,” I murmured. “I guess I don’t, either.”

There were a lot of things I wasn’t getting lately. Like how it wasn’t okay to like sex too much because then you were a slut, but not having it made a girl weird. Or how boys like Cash could get away with flirting too much but a girl would get trash-talked for doing the same thing. Or how my boyfriend seemed to think it was okay for him to put me second to this rivalry crap, but when I decided to do something about it, he wouldn’t take me seriously.

I was starting to think I just didn’t understand anything. Like there was some handbook to adolescence and dating and boys that was passed out in middle school on a day when I was absent or something. I wondered if other girls were as clueless about all this stuff as I was.

“Lissa, I’m clueless,” Chloe whispered as our computer teacher, Mrs. Moulton, walked past. For a second, I was really weirded out, totally thinking she’d heard my thoughts, but then she added, “What’s the difference between a bar graph and a line graph? And why does it even f*cking matter? Help me over here!”