Where the Staircase Ends(19)

Mrs. Johnson was pretty impressed with Justin’s delivery. She turned to me and said, “Great job, Taylor. Very thoughtful analysis.” I had to wonder if she would have felt the same way if Justin hadn’t stood up for me.

I slid back into my desk, relief flooding over me now that my afternoon of public humiliation was finally over. My hands were still shaking, so I slid them under my desk before anyone could see and shot one tiny sideways glance in Justin’s direction.

He was staring at me again.

It was moments like those, when Justin’s eyes burned into me like he was searching for something, that I wished I could be more like Sunny. She would have held his gaze. She would have offered him one of her seductive smiles. She wouldn’t have looked away or blushed the way I did.

But Sunny wasn’t the one he was staring at. I was.

When the bell rang, I gathered my books slowly, trying to draw out my proximity to Justin as long as I could.

“Hey,” he said, reaching down next to my desk to pick up a pen I’d dropped on the floor.

“Hey,” I said, letting a small grin escape despite my best effort to hide it.

“I hope you didn’t mind me chiming in on your analysis. I just didn’t want Brandon to rip into you.”

He sat down on the desk next to mine and ran a hand through his hair, his mouth doing the half-smile thing it always did so I couldn’t tell if he was really smiling or just looking at me.

“No, it was great. You saved me. Thank you.”

“You didn’t really need saving,” he said, and this time I was sure he was smiling at me. “You were doing fine.”

“How are you so good at this stuff?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at him. “Do you secretly study a lot, or do the answers just come to you?”

He laughed really hard, like I said something extremely funny, only I was serious. I wanted to know the answer. He shrugged, shaking his head at me with a smirk. Whatever the secret to his genius was, he wasn’t going to share it with me.

“Hey, listen,” he said. “Would you want to hang out sometime? Outside of school?”

I was so surprised by the question that I needed time to process. My brain wasn’t registering the words coming out of his mouth because it sounded like he was asking me out. It sounded like he finally asked me to do something with him other than talk about school and the music I pretended to like for him.

I blinked at him several times, not sure whether I should laugh, cry, or yell at him for waiting so long to ask me. He must have known he knocked the wind out of me because he smiled and took his time responding to my dumbfounded look, like he wanted to make sure I didn’t faint before he spoke again.

“Are you going out to The Fields this weekend?” he finally asked. “Maybe we could meet up there.”

The Fields were exactly as the name suggested: a bunch of empty fields. During the day, the area was under development for a new housing complex, but at night the whole place was deserted with the exception of a few half-finished houses peppered around the newly paved streets. It was the perfect place for parties—plenty of space to hide empty keg shells and far from the watchful eyes of parents.

“That would be cool,” I said, trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal. “I think Sunny said something about going out there on Saturday night.”

He nodded and stood, motioning with his head for me to walk with him. We walked out of the classroom with our shoulders almost touching, Justin looking like everything was the way it always was, and me with a grin the size of Texas stretched across my face.

“So then I’ll meet you there Saturday.” He waved before turning toward his next class, which unfortunately was not with me.

“Yeah, Saturday,” I said, but I was pretty sure he didn’t hear me because I’d barely whispered it. I could barely breathe, let alone speak.

“What’s Saturday?” asked Logan, sliding up beside me like a stealth bomber. “And why are you meeting Justin there?”

My mouth went completely dry. My lips stuck to my teeth, and my throat filled with a fist full of cotton balls as I weighed the pros and cons of telling Logan the truth. He narrowed his eyes in the direction Justin had walked and mumbled something under his breath. He never explicitly said anything to me, but I wondered if deep down he knew about Justin, or at least suspected more was going on between us. There was something about the way his eyes always landed on Justin when they would pass each other in the hallways, like he wanted to shove him into a wall.

“The Fields. A bunch of people are going out there on Saturday. He wanted to know if I was going.” I tried to sound nonchalant. Logan frowned.

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?” I shifted my bag to the other shoulder so I wouldn’t have to stand so close to him. I tried to make it sound like I’d already forgotten about The Fields, like they were the most boring thing on the planet and I could give a rat’s ass about them.

He rolled his eyes and exhaled hard, not buying my innocent act one bit. “Are you going to The Fields on Saturday?” he asked again, this time saying his words all slow and robotic, the way my mom did when she spoke to our Ukrainian cleaning lady.

I shrugged and stopped in front of my classroom, peering in the doorway to see if Sunny was already there. It was one of two classes we had together, and any other day I would’ve been excited to see her and start our normal note-passing session, but I didn’t want her to know about Justin and The Fields, and I certainly didn’t want her to overhear Logan grilling me like a cheese sandwich about it. She would immediately know something was up, and I’d be forced to listen to her stupid cake analogy again. I really wasn’t in the mood.