Page 3 of Choosing Her

“But graduating high school might help it,” Poppy said lightly. Where Lilah looked like math made her want to spontaneously combust, Poppy looked incredibly at ease as she scribbled down equations, kicking her feet in the air absentmindedly.

There was a knock on the door, and before I could even think of standing up, the door swung open and my sister stepped inside, her eyes immediately zeroing in on me.

“I need a favor,” she said.

She always just walked right into my room like this, as if we were in our house instead of at boarding school.

I’d tried to tell her that the etiquette was different in dorms, but she rolled her eyes and said that since she’d been at boarding school longer than me—by one year—that she would know better than me.

She chucked a canvas bag onto the ground and it landed heavily next to Poppy’s textbook.

“Thanks?” I said, although it came out more as a question than a statement. Naomi grinned like I’d said something funny.

“It’s Caleb’s stuff. I need you to give it back to him.”

Lilah and Poppy both looked up at that, sharing a wordless glance.

I didn’t need to look at them to know what they were thinking—why was my sister making me talk to her ex-boyfriend, when I disliked him even more than she did?

And the answer would be simple: she didn’t know how much I hated him, because I’d never told her anything about us.

How exactly was I supposed to explain to my sister that before she met her boyfriend, I’d kissed him?

Not that Poppy and Lilah knew that story, either.

I’d let them believe that I just didn’t like Crossy because he annoyed me, not because he’d done anything terrible to me.

And they already knew Naomi’s history of dropping boys the moment she got bored of relationships, so it wasn’t like their relationship had gone up in flames in a way that meant she couldn’t stand to see him due to their personal history.

“I’m not sure I can,” I said. “I’m studying and?—”

“Well, I can’t do it,” Naomi said. She always steam-rolled over people’s arguments in disagreements, so we couldn’t have rational discussions. It was a tactic I knew well, since she’d learned it from our mother. “I can’t see him.”

“Well, I?—”

“Besides, I’m going out tonight,” she continued.

She wasn’t even looking at me now. She’d pulled out her phone and was using it as a mirror as she fluffed her dark brown hair.

Two more things she’d learned from our mother: looks mattered more than anything and never let someone have your full attention.

Everything she did was a power move of some sort to make the other person feel small.

“I won’t have time to give it to him before curfew. ”

I looked over her outfit of the tightest skinny jeans I’d ever seen and a crop top that pushed her cleavage up, and guessed that she was going on a date with a new guy, which meant she was probably going by the boys’ dorms anyway to meet him.

Meaning, she absolutely did have time and just didn’t want to do it.

“Well, why does he need it tonight? You must have had it for months, so?—”

“Look, I just don’t want it in my room anymore, okay?

” Naomi said. She put her phone away but stepped all the way into my room so she could stand in front of the full-length mirror and look at herself.

I could see myself behind her in the reflection and though we had similar features, I looked as far from her as I could get right now, with my hair falling flat around my face and being dressed in flannel pajama pants and an old tank top. Not really a going-out look.

“Fine, I’ll give it to him in class tomorrow,” I said.

Once I looked like a normal human being again, instead of just a puddle of sweat.

I couldn’t say that part to her, though, or she would go on about how she didn’t understand why I liked horseback riding and that maybe I should quit.

As if I would do that in a million years.

“No, I want it done tonight,” Naomi said immediately. “I need it off my mental conscious.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant or why twelve hours would make such a difference, but it was obvious that she wouldn’t be letting this go and I was just wasting my breath by arguing.

Besides, I knew from Poppy that the hockey boys had plans tonight—that was why she was doing homework in my room instead of spending time with her boyfriend.

I bet if I went now, I could just put the bag down in front of his door and get away without running into him at all.

“Fine,” I said. I grabbed the first pair of shoes I could find—a pair of ratty old flip-flops—and slipped them on my feet. "I'll go now."

“Thank you,” she said, and she blew me a kiss and skipped off without another word. I was sure she hadn’t been worried for even one moment that I would say no, because she knew I never did. Not to her.

“I guess I'll be back soon,” I said to Poppy and Lilah. And then I stepped back outside, off to do my sister’s dirty work for her.