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A weight lifted from my shoulders. “Cool. Talk to you later?”

“On what phone?” she asked, and then grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll probably get a new phone before you get ungrounded.” Then she leaned forward. “But if anything—anything—happens in your chem class with Liam, figure out a way to let me know.”

“Keep an eye out for smoke signals rising from the west at 6 PM then,” I said with feigned solemnity.

She laughed. “Bye, babe,” she said, shouldering her bag.

I wondered if Ryan knew that I’d been ‘bye, babe’ first.

CHAPTER 13

Ifought to stay with this version of reality, the one I could feel solidly under my feet—but the other kept calling me. There were blurs in my vision like water drops caught in my eyelashes every time I stopped and stared up at a wall, feeling the cables pulsing behind it—I had a sudden silly image of impossibly long ferrets running through the walls—and everyone’s phones were sparkling now, like everyone had a jar of fireflies on them but me.

I wanted to touch them—but I was afraid. I didn’t want to break anyone else’s phones—or accidentally read all their texts or see all their photos. I’d been on the internet long enough to know that some things couldn’t be unseen.

So the rest of the day was one long nervous ramp up to chemistry. I got there before Liam arrived, in the hopes of giving him the opportunity to continue whatever conversation we’d been about to have earlier before Darius walked up.

But I didn’t want to look like I was stalking the door, so I made sure to be staring off into space in that ‘I’m not really here’ way that I got at crowded places to cover when you really were staring at someone over something but didn’t want them to know. So I saw him walk in, pretended to be glazed,then blinked back to life, and did some sort of weird smile-nod of acknowledgement that I instantly hated myself for doing afterwards—for the half-a-second it took for him to return it back. Then I felt myself flush and ducked down to busy myself bringing my textbook out of my bag to hide behind my hair.

He took his seat behind me and I could swear I felt him there.

Not just his phone—which I did feel, along with everyone else’s in the class—but him.

I didn’t have like a super lot of reasons to be looking behind me? But once I yawned and twisted like I was stretching, and another time our teacher pointed back and I made sure to look, and another other time I dropped my pen and leaned over to get it in a complicated fashion.

Each of these times only served to confirm what my new sixth-sense was telling me. Liam was looking at me. A lot.

Had he always been looking at me? I mean, I’d been looking at him since 6th grade, turn-about was fair play, but, if he was, I figured I should put on a show. I went through assorted moods over the course of all fifty-minutes. I pretended I was a beautiful super model who of course tossed her hair back over her shoulder and smiled blandly at nothing in particular with a soft pout. I felt stupid doing that and slouched into being a punk, tucking my seat forward and my hunching my back, like I was too cool to be here. I pretended to be studious, I pretended to be insane, I eventually got tired of overthinking things and wound up being my plain old self and generally feeling like an idiot by the time the bell rang. I packed up my books without thinking, and stood to find him beside me.

“You’re doing good in this class, right?”

I brushed my bangs out of my face. “I’m doing well in this class, yes,” I said, wondering if he’d catch my correction.

“Our final’s coming up—think you can help me study?”

“Sure?” I said, like it was a question.

“Cool. Thanks. We’ll work something out.” He gave me a smile and brushed by me. Our arms touched and a spark jumped between us—and then ran up and down my spine. Suddenly all I could think about was working-something-out with him. I clamped down on it before it could go anywhere.

“Static—sorry,” he apologized, then turned away.

“No problem,” I lied.

I rode the shame train home, and Kortney ignored me in that overly-ignoring-you way where you knew you were being ignored and occasionally laughed at. It didn’t matter. All I could think about was Lacey—and Liam—and Lacey at Liam’s. Between that and my phone-zapping powers, I’d never been so confused.

But by the time the bus reached my park I had a plan. I’d go home, check in with Allie, avoid my mom, and then head over to Lacey’s, where I’d somehow avoid her mom and talk to her. Several parts of it were impossible—the avoiding moms parts—but I had to try.

Luckily for me, Lacey was waiting at the bus stop.

The snickers on the bus stopped, replaced by silence before starting up again, redoubled.

“It’s her?—”

“How dare she show her face?—”

“It’s the puke queen!”

I stood and walked off the bus right toward her as she stood stiff-backed glaring past me. The cretins in the bus behind me hooted like animals as Lacey stared them down.