Shut Out(45)

“Lissa—” Cash began.

But I was already stumbling away.

“Where are you going?” Chloe asked.

“I’m, um, not feeling well,” I said. “I’ll see you in class later.”

Before she could ask again or I could convince myself to chance a look at Cash, I grabbed my purse and hurried toward the cafeteria door, wondering how I’d been stupid enough to think he liked me, and why it was so hard not to fall for him.





chapter twenty


“Did you really think I was going to let you get away without explaining that one?”

I blinked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, surprised to see Ellen standing behind me. She smiled and walked over to the sink next to mine.

“Chloe wanted to come,” she said. “But I told her I hadn’t been on a Lissa-in-crisis mission in a while, so she let me take this one. So what was that about?”

“Nothing.”

“Lissa, I’ve known you for eleven years. I can tell when you’re lying. Something freaked you out enough to make you run out of the cafeteria like that. Was it Randy? Are you upset about him being with that girl?”

I shook my head. “No… I mean, yeah, I am, but that’s not it. It’s… it’s Cash.”

I don’t know what made me decide to tell her the truth. Maybe I was just sick of holding it in, or maybe it was the nostalgia effect, missing the days when Ellen and I would share our darkest secrets with each other. Either way, I spilled my guts to her right there in the girls’ bathroom. I told her about the party over the summer, how Cash had never called me, how I couldn’t fight the feelings I still had for him even though, especially after what he’d just said at the lunch table, he clearly didn’t have those feelings for me. By the time I’d told her everything, the bell for third block had already chimed and we were late for class.

“Screw him,” Ellen said.

I stared at her. “What?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I like Cash. He’s friends with Adam, and he’s a nice guy, but if he can’t see how special you are, then he doesn’t deserve you. Screw him.”

“Oh.” My brain was in the gutter, because that wasn’t how I’d thought she meant it at first.

“The last thing you need right now is boy drama,” Ellen said, picking my purse up off the bathroom floor and handing it to me. “So don’t bother. You’re awesome no matter what he thinks, okay? Just relax a little.”

She didn’t understand that that was part of the problem—I was too relaxed around Cash. It was too easy to say things I shouldn’t. Like what I’d blurted out at the lunch table.

“Maybe use the extra energy to focus on taking care of the rest of us,” Ellen continued as we walked out of the bathroom. “This strike has gone on longer than we’d anticipated. We all thought it would be two weeks, but it’s been almost three, and I know they didn’t show it, but a few of the girls are getting antsy. Instead of worrying about the stupid boys, why not focus on finding a way to lift morale? How does that sound?”

“Right,” I said. “The strike. I’ll focus on the strike and stop worrying about Cash and Randy. That shouldn’t be too hard.”

She gave me a reassuring smile and squeezed my arm before we separated in the hallway.


But the whole idea of not thinking about Cash got overturned the next night at work. I was doing well there for about five seconds. It was hard not to notice certain things, though. Like the way he seemed to be staring at me more than normal.

I worried that he was going to confront me about what I’d said at lunch the day before, about how no one was good enough for him. But when he decided to strike up a conversation in the Religion section, I was relieved that he’d chosen a different subject.

“So have you been reading Lysistrata at all?” he asked, walking up behind me as I reorganized the shelf of Bibles.

“What?”

“That book I told you to read. The Greek play about the sex strike.”

“Oh, right.” Stop blushing, I told myself. I shouldn’t be embarrassed to talk about this. “No, I haven’t yet. Sorry.”

“Too bad,” he said. “I’d love to hear your take on the battle-of-the-sexes aspect, since that’s kind of what’s happening in real life.”

I laughed. “It’s not really a battle,” I told him, readjusting the last Bible on the shelf so that the spine faced properly outward. It struck me how inappropriate it was to have this conversation in front of so many Bibles. “If anything, the battle is one-sided, since the boys aren’t really doing much about it.”

“That’s about to change.”

I turned around, and my breath caught in my chest when I realized just how close he was standing to me. My back was pressed into the shelves, but our chests were almost touching. I had to tilt my head to look up at Cash, he was so close, and I was surprised when he didn’t back away from me. Instead, he held his ground and grinned down at me.

“W-what do you mean?” I stammered, trying to stop my heart from beating out of my chest. I cleared my throat and inched to one side.

Cash blinked and stepped back a little, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Sorry. Personal bubble, radii, all that.”