Page 26 of Fake Skating

Me: I heard that cool chicks hang out in the library. True or false?

I watched Dani grab the phone out of her pocket and look down at the message, and then— dear Jesus— her shiny mouth curved up into a smile as she texted me back.

Dani: I heard the same thing so I’m going to say TRUE

I shouldn’t like her grin as much as I did—after all, she was my shitty ex-friend—but today I was all in on convincing her to help me, so that was my only focus.

Until graduation.

I still couldn’t believe she’d suggested that, although her reasoning was sound.

And fucking sad.

If I were in her situation, it’d never have occurred to me that people might turn on me post-fake-breakup. I wouldn’t have thought that far ahead, because in my experience—for the most part—people didn’t act like assholes.

But she’d obviously had a different experience.

I replied: Rumor has it hot guys like to swing by sometimes…

She was still smiling when she texted: Only douches call themselves hot guys

There she is, the old Dani.

I sent: WHOA. COLLINS. I’m simply telling you the rumors that travel within these halls. I would never think to call myself that. Also… totally unrelated… I just walked into the library.

Her head came up and she was grinning when she looked at me.

And whoa—her full-throttle smile was still exactly the same.

It made me feel kind of… off-kilter as I walked over to her table.

“Did you already eat?” she asked, pushing up her glasses as I sat down in the seat across from her.

I don’t know, what is eat? “I’m good.”

Her eyebrows scrunched together, probably because that wasn’t an answer. “And you want to hang out in the library instead of the cafeteria?”

I think I do. “Yes. I’m in need of a good book.”

“A good book.” That made her set down Invisible Man . “You didn’t like the history ones you got the other day?”

The ones I blindly grabbed so I didn’t look like I cared you were in the library?

“They were for school. I need a book for fun.”

Her eyes narrowed and she watched me for a second before asking, “Do you want me to help you?”

A laugh came out of me as I remembered all the summer mornings we’d walked to the library together. She’d always been annoyingly excited about getting a new book, whereas I’d always been annoyingly excited to log into a library computer and play Fortnite .

But, to appease my mom, Dani always found a book for me to check out.

“Do your best, Collins.”

“Come on.” She left her stuff at the table and gestured for me to follow her. The smell of her perfume was like my guide rope, leading me by the nose, and I cleared my throat and pushed that thought away because I couldn’t afford to lose focus.

“ Billy Summers ,” she said, moving through the book stacks with purpose.

“It’s actually Alec Barczewski,” I quipped, following her.

“The dad jokes, come on ,” she muttered, not slowing until we were standing in front of what was obviously the Stephen King section. She paused for a second, searching, before she pulled out a thick one. “ Billy Summers is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Read it. I know you’ll love it.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll start it tonight.”

“Aren’t you going to read the back of the book?” she asked, looking at me like I was nuts. “To see if you’ll like it?”

It was ridiculous how much I loved being taller than her now. It was like physical proof of the shift in our dynamic, a reminder that everything had changed.

“No, I trust you,” I said. “You’re the only person I’ve ever trusted to pick out library books for me.”

That made her forehead get a tiny crease. “Let’s go read.”

We went back to the table, and it took a lot of mental toughness to start reading the book when her smell was messing with me and her blond curls were in my peripheral vision. Her perfume reminded me of apple juice and flowers, and something about that combination wreaked havoc on my senses.

It was annoying as hell.

I tried popping in one AirPod to take the edge off, but every random song that came on made me think of the girl next door—“Famous,” “Gateway Drug,” “Picasso”—so I had to yank it out.

But once I focused on the words in front of me, I was immediately hooked.

Dani was right.

“Psst,” she whispered a few minutes later, and when I looked up, she was holding out a granola bar. “Eat this.”

“Why?” I asked, unsure why she was giving me a library snack.

“Because I heard your stomach growl and you have a game later and I’m fairly certain you’re blowing off lunch for this,” she said.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Collins,” I said, giving her an exaggerated smile. “I would never give up for lunch for you or for anybody. But I will take your proffered granola bar and devour it because I am fucking starving for no reason whatsoever.”

That made her laugh, a quiet little tinkle that did nothing to help the grip I was losing on my focus.

“You know,” she said, lowering her voice and leaning her face in a little closer, “there’s basically no one in here, so you don’t have to waste your lunch when we’ve got zero visibility.”

She wants me to leave.

“Yeah, but if we’re doing this whole thing, there needs to be a little bit of authenticity to it, right?” I asked. “We actually might need to spend time together if it’s going to work.”

“Probably…?” She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Same,” I said, and we both smiled because of course we didn’t know how to pretend date. It wasn’t a thing. “But trust me—we’re getting invisible visibility from this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I said, taking a bite of the bar, “Richie and Vinny couldn’t believe I was skipping lunch to go to the library, so I guarantee they sat their wiseasses down at the table and started yapping about the fact that I’d rather hang out with you in a foodless library than join them in the caf.”

“Oh.” She bit down on her bottom lip, and I could tell her mind was going a mile a minute.

“I know the stereotype is that girls gossip,” I said. “But no woman has anything on those dudes. They want to be in the know on everything and everyone.”

“So,” she said, leaning in even closer and lowering her voice to a true whisper. “Have you heard anything about the locker room? Is anybody talking about it?”

Her eyes were big as she waited for my answer, and I didn’t know what to say.

Because, for starters, her whispering to me while apple juice and flowers floated around my face made it difficult to think. But I actually hadn’t heard anything about it yet, if I was being honest, so maybe it wouldn’t become a rumor.

But if she knew that, would she back out on the plan?

“Some of the guys definitely know, but it hasn’t become a thing yet,” I said.

Which wasn’t really a lie, because Gordy and the coaches were, in fact, guys, right?

“Thank God,” she said, then picked her book back up and started reading.

The rest of lunch flew by, the library a nice break from the chaotic lunches I was used to, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed when the bell rang.

I waited while she put her books in her backpack so we could walk out together.

“Are you going to your locker?” I asked when we stepped out into the noisy hallway, because I needed to stop at mine.

“No, I’m going that way,” she said, pointing toward the south corridor.

I leaned my head closer to hers because she was so short that it was hard to hear her in the crowded hall and said, “Shit, am I going to have to memorize your schedule?”

She looked up at me like she wanted to smile—her eyes crinkled at the corners—but she kept it together. “Don’t burden that brain of yours when you have hockey to think about, Zeus. Trust me, I’ll let you know where you need to be.”

We agreed to meet at her locker after school and went our separate ways, but as I looked down at the scrap of paper in my hand where she’d written her locker number, I got an idea.

The best way to make sure she didn’t flake on our deal was to show her that it was going to be fun, right? That she’d not only get Harvard, but she’d also get the social interactions she’d been denied with all the moving.

I needed to go harder on making her see it’d be fun.

She used to be all about a good time, and it might be entertaining as hell to see just how much I could make her like Zeus.

I shot off a text to my mom’s cousin, who also happened to be the school’s maintenance technician.

Me: I need a favor. Are you in your office?