The New Guy (and Other Senior Year Distractions) Part 15

"That's the worst thing about me!"

"Nah." He grins some more. "Doughnuts?"

"You're obsessed with doughnuts," I say.

"So are you." He touches my mouth with his so softly it feels more like a whisper than a kiss. "At school you eat healthier than anyone at our table. And then the second you're through with the dogs..."

I laugh. "Not the very second."

I thought I'd have to have a delicately worded conversation with Alex about the secrecy we require, but there are too many notes in lockers and foot touches under tables to mistake his intentions for public. We don't even text during school hours.

We do text once school's out for the day, but I have a.s.sociated Student Body, and by the time I'm out, Alex has to help his mom with ch.o.r.es. Anyway, I have a huge stack of homework as well as student submissions for the Crest. We don't even have our next idea for increasing readership, and I don't want to lose momentum on real goals just because the TV-hacking incident felt so successful.

Oh my G.o.d, the TV-hacking incident! Should I apologize to Alex? Should I explain I didn't really have anything to do with it? It doesn't seem fair to give up Carlos, or even the Crest, but can I spend so much time kissing someone while my organization plots his organization's downfall?

I could really use secret-relationship guidance.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

"Do you want to go out?"

Our Sat.u.r.day shifts have just ended at Stray Rescue. I'm positive Santiago doesn't know we're back together because he gave me an empathetic little glance as Alex arrived. We managed to pull this off last night too, so much so that when Sadie and I were in the bathroom of Oinkster at the same time, she apologized for Alex being around so much.

"Yes," I reply to Alex. "But somewhere people won't see us."

He laughs. "I'll try not to take that personally. And is that possible?"

"People we know, I mean," I say. "Not people in general."

"My parents are home right now," he says. "Or I'd tell you to come over."

"Oh, you'd tell me?" I smile and slip my hand into his. We're standing outside, where theoretically anyone could see us. The moment is full of so much more illicit danger than I ever thought I'd experience.

"I'd ask you," he says.

I decide to drive us to Old Town Pasadena. It's only one city over from either here or from Eagle Rock, but when people from school want to hang out, they don't head away from LA proper. If I were Sadie, I'd probably know something cooler to do than hang out in and around shops and restaurants built into old and historic buildings, but even with a secret relationship, I'm not cool.

"How'd your SATs go?" Alex asks me while we're waiting in the long line stretching out the door of 21 Choices, which has twenty-one different ice-cream options every single day. Normally I don't think that it's worth the wait, but today the wait involves holding Alex's hand in the sunshine.

"How did you know I took them?" I ask.

"You mentioned a while back you were going the first week they were available," he says. "Hey, I pay attention."

I smile. "Good! And they were fine. When are you going?"

"Soon," he says. "I guess. I don't know where I want to go to college or what I want to study or... anything in that whole area. Which I guess I should deal with at some point."

"Twenty to fifty percent of college freshmen are undecided," I say. "So you can just pick a good school."

"Everything sounds so simple when Jules McAllister-Morgan declares it," he says with a grin. "Why are you so set on Brown?"

"Oh my G.o.d, basically everything. They really emphasize learning for learning's sake, not just to get good grades or have a good resume later. You get to design your own program, but since it's Ivy League, I know I can't go too off course, and I know my degree will be taken seriously after I graduate. And their campus is beautiful, and when I visited..." I shrug. "It felt right."

"You'll get in," he says.

"Don't jinx it," I say. "But thanks."

My phone beeps in my purse, and I take it out in case it's one of my moms or anything else that's urgent.

What are you doing?? is lit up on my screen. The message is from Sadie. It could mean anything. Well, it could mean two things. Obviously she could want to know if I'm free so we can do something. But also maybe somehow she knows where I am and with whom.

"What's up?" Alex asks.

"Nothing," I say as I type back an answer. Just running errands after Stray Rescue. "Alex... I know I probably shouldn't mention this. But I didn't have anything to do with your video last week."

He shrugs as we finally step from the outdoors into the shop. We're so close to ice cream now. "It's okay if you did."

"Okay, but I really didn't."

We step up to order. Alex gets peanut b.u.t.ter brownie, and I get mango sunshine, which Alex apparently thinks is the funniest sorbet name he's ever heard, based on his laughter when I order, at least. Once we've paid, we exit and hunt down an open bench. We can't hold hands while eating ice-cream cones, but sitting side by side, I still feel like I'm in another scene straight out of a romantic comedy.

"I know I was supposed to be embarra.s.sed when it happened," Alex says. "Yeah, everyone staring kind of sucks. But I liked being in Chaos 4 All. I'm not saying I want to be again, and it was weird, for sure. But it was cool too."

"You were good," I say. "Great, I mean! I'm glad that it was cool."

"I thought I'd get to do it forever," he says. "Back then, at least. It felt like we were the biggest thing in the world. I thought my dad could quit his job and not be gone all the time."

I like the small moments where Alex doesn't sound full of the confidence the world gave him a couple of years ago. On-screen for TALON he has all of it back. Maybe cameras hold all his old magic, so when he's filmed it's like it never went away. But Alex is this guy too, who isn't about to throw a wink to an adoring crowd.

I like both Alexes.

Alex leans over and kisses me. Our lips are sticky and sweet, like Popsicles in summer.

"That was a real ray of mango sunshine," he says, and I laugh so hard I accidentally snort. That sets him off, and then we're both laughing too hard for kissing or for ice-cream cones. I never would have known before Alex that laughing with a boy could sometimes feel just as perfect as kissing one, if he's the right boy.

I guess technically Alex is the wrong boy, but I'm pretending for now that that isn't true.

When I drop off Alex at his house, it hits me that I haven't looked at my phone in a couple of hours. Have I ever not looked at my phone for a couple of hours, except to sleep? Alex and I wandered in and out of shops, took photos with Alex's phone in front of City Hall where they shoot TV shows, and snacked at more places than I could ever deem healthy. We barely stopped holding hands. It felt like a real, actual, perfect date.

It felt like how I thought falling in love might feel.

But that all disappears the moment I see my screen full of messages, mostly from Sadie.

Today sucks, call me?

Are you still running errands?

Are you ignoring me?

OH MY G.o.d ARE YOU SERIOUSLY IGNORING ME?.

Jules! Are you OK???

And then a message from Mom: Is everything okay? Sadie called to see if you were with me. Which you aren't. Text or call me or Darcy so we know you're alive.

I start to text Mom, then I think I should respond to Sadie first, and then I realize the best move is probably to just drive home. Luckily Mom and Darcy are both there, and-even luckier-they only look slightly relieved to see me. Peanut and Daisy, on the other hand, circle around me as if I've been gone for a decade.

"My phone died," I say as I sit down to pet the dogs. "I just plugged it in in the car and saw your message. I'm sorry."

"We aren't that strict," Darcy says. "But we need to know if you won't be home."

"I know," I say.

"Is everything okay?" Mom asks.

"I... made up with Alex," I say, because it sounds like the best way to phrase it. I'm not sure if I can say that we're together again when in public we can't be.

"Oh," Darcy says. "Well, we don't mind if you're out with Alex, and there probably isn't much we wouldn't let you do."

"No!" I say. It might have come out as a yell. "I mean, yes, I was out with Alex, but we just went to Old Town."

"Regardless," she says with an eyebrow arched, "please just let us know you'll be out. And if one of us texts or calls, respond."

"Okay?" Mom asks.

"Of course. I'm sorry. I screwed up. Can I go call Sadie?"

They dismiss me, and I run upstairs-flanked by the dogs-to my room. Sadie's phone goes right to voice mail when I call, so I text. Sorry. My phone died. Are you okay?

There's a long pause before I can see that she's typing back. I'm fine. I'm out with Em. See you Monday.

I guess that sometimes Sadie or I go out with only Em, when the other is busy, or out of town, or sick. But I'm not sure I've ever just not been invited. It's fair, since I was unreachable, but I'm reachable now.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

As usual, on Monday I'm the one to open the boxes of fresh copies of the Crest. This is one of my favorite parts of the week.

But as I'm flipping through, I see something unfamiliar. "There's a printing error! Check all the copies! I repeat, check all the copies!"

"Jules, calm down for a moment." Mr. Wheeler walks up behind me and takes another copy. "Everything looks fine to me."

"That's not a printing error," Carlos says while looking over my shoulder. "That's layout tampering."

"But we saw the proofs on Friday! We approved them on Friday! They were fine on Friday!"

"Jules, please."

Ms. w.a.n.g, who teaches creative writing in the next cla.s.sroom, leans into the room. "Is everything okay in here? We heard a lot of yelling."

"Things are fine," Mr. Wheeler says as other staff members crowd around me. The headline to the guest post for the week isn't "Why I Love the E.V.A. Library," which is what we approved for the issue, but "New Media Is Our Future."

And the guest writer's photo is Natalie's incredibly sleek head shot.

I have two questions immediately: First, how did this get into the paper, and, second, do I need head shots?

"We didn't approve this," I say. "This was supposed to be that piece on the library."

"Natalie's such a good writer," Marisa says, softly, but I hear her. After scanning the first few sentences of the piece, I can't deny this truth, though of course that isn't the point.

"Oh, geez," Mr. Wheeler says, because apparently it's taken him a bit longer than the rest of us to realize this is TALON's doing. "Could you guys all knock this off? I thought we were past this."

"We didn't do anything!" I say.

"Yelling, Jules," Thatcher says softly.

I adjust my tone. "Mr. Wheeler, this was their doing and not ours. Obviously. We wouldn't disgrace our own paper with their biased viewpoint."

"Well..." Mr. Wheeler looks over Natalie's article. "It's a good essay. No one sneaked in anything about b.u.t.ts, ha-ha! Don't worry about it, guys."

"How did they even do this?" Carlos asks.

"They must know someone at the printers," Thatcher says. "They've got a man on the inside."

A whimpering sound erupts from somewhere in the crowd.

"You?" Amanda shrieks.

"I'm sorry," Tessa says through tears. "I'm so sorry. Natalie promised me-"

"What?" I ask. "What did she promise?"

Tessa's now crying so hard she can't answer. Amanda talks to her quietly for a few moments.