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eight

If Dean was late to pick me up one more time, I was going to kill him.

In fact, I might just kill him tonight. I checked my phone for the fifth time, waiting for him to call me back, even though I knew by now that he wasn’t going to.

Less than three weeks into the school year and he hadn’t picked me up on time once—and I was pretty sure he had only actually picked me up at all twice.

At some point, I should probably just tell my parents that he wasn’t picking me up.

It wasn’t really fair that he got full access to the car when he wasn’t doing the one thing that they asked of him.

But I also didn’t want to be that sister who tattled to her parents every time something went wrong, so I kept ignoring it and just sat on the wall every day, watching the cars go by.

My solutions of getting home changed day by day, usually ending up with me catching a ride with one of my friends who stayed late.

Clementine was always ready to help me out, even though she lived on the other side of town and had to go way out of her way, but she left before me today.

There was one time I managed to catch the school bus that ran for people with extracurriculars, but it meant running from swim practice without washing my hair and I didn’t want to do that every day, especially when I didn’t know if Dean would bother showing up on any given day.

But this was three swim team days in a row that he hadn’t shown up, which was making me wonder if he’d just stopped caring when I didn’t make a fuss about it.

I should have said something on Friday, after I had to get a ride home from Sebastian.

I’d been so focused on not making Dean mad about it that I hadn’t thought about how that might actually convince him to start showing up.

If he didn’t want me to be alone in a car with his best friend—and I was sure he didn’t—all he had to do was pick me up instead.

I picked up my phone again and searched for the contact that I had never once used: Sebastian Novak (Neighbor) .

As if there was any way I would forget who he was.

The profile picture on his contact was an embarrassing close-up photo that I’d taken of him at his parents’ garden party last year.

I clicked the message button then stared at the blank screen, the cursor blinking at me like it was impatiently waiting for me to start typing.

But what was I going to say? Hey, Dean abandoned me again, so I need you to pick me up instead ?

I didn’t want him to think I was pathetic or unable to take care of myself.

But he had to know that I only had my learner’s permit and no car to drive anyway, and that the walk from school to our house was insane.

And the worst thing he could say was no.

At least then I would know that I tried.

Before I knew what I was doing, my fingers were flying over the keyboard, typing out three simple letters.

Hey . I pressed send before I could second guess myself.

And then I stared at the message, the small blue bubble staring back at me.

I held down on it, waiting until the option popped up to undo send.

But if I did that, he would get a notification that said I unsent it and that was even more embarrassing, wasn’t it?

He probably didn’t even have my number in his phone anyway and so he would think that this was just some random text from somebody.

Maybe a girl he had met at a party. Maybe a scammer.

Who knew? He probably wasn’t even going to. ..

Sebastian

Hey Nellie

Okay, so he did have my contact saved. My heart thundered in my chest as I typed out my next message.

Nora

Feel like going for a drive?

Sebastian

You at school?

Nora

Yea

My hands were shaking so bad that I could barely get the letters right. I was texting Sebastian Novak. I was texting Sebastian Novak. How the heck did this happen?

Sebastian

Be there in 15

I almost screamed when I saw the message come in, but I took a deep breath and stuck my phone in my bag.

That willpower only lasted so long because then I pressed my face into my hands and did actually scream.

Luckily, there was nobody around to see it since the school was basically abandoned at the moment.

I felt like the seconds ticked by as I waited for Sebastian to show up. The problem with him being fifteen minutes away was that it gave me way too much time to question what was happening. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he’d been kidding when he said that he was coming.

By the time that his car pulled up, I was a nervous wreck.

I tried to jump off the wall, like I’d done a million times before, but the back of my shirt got caught on some loose nail and I was yanked back just as my feet landed on the ground.

My shoulder slammed into the wall and I narrowly avoided smacking my head into it too.

I didn’t see Sebastian get out of the car but the next thing I knew, he was standing in front of me, with a concerned look on his face.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He put one hand gently on my shoulder like he was checking it wasn’t dislocated.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, shrugging his hand off of me.

At any other time, I never would have pushed him away, but right now I was too embarrassed to even look him in the eye.

Sebastian grabbed my bag off the wall for me, then walked me over to his car with his hand on my back like he’d done in the hallway today.

He opened the car door for me to slide in, then put my bag down at my feet before closing the door and coming around to his own side as well.

My traitorous brain started to wonder whether this was what it would be like to go on a date with Sebastian—to have him pick me up, open my car door, drive us to the movies or a restaurant or wherever it was that he took girls on dates—and made my face heat up even more.

By the time he got in the car, I probably looked like a tomato.

“You sure you’re okay?” Sebastian asked as he got back into the driver’s seat.

I just nodded, still not daring to look at him.

Then I realized that he hadn’t needed to turn down the music for me to be able to hear him, like he usually did.

And on the same note, the music he was playing wasn’t his usual genre at all.

“This isn’t your playlist,” I said. It took me a second to identify the music as a Take Five song—one of my favorite boybands, that I happened to know for a fact Sebastian didn’t have on any of his playlists.

Did he have somebody else in the car with him before that he’d been listening to music with?

My first thought was Tiffany, which made my heart sink.

It was ridiculous to be upset at the idea of him being in the car with his girlfriend, but I hated to think about it anyway.

I hated to think about them even dating at all.

But then I realized the time—assuming Ainsley had dance after swim practice today, he must have had to rush from his soccer practice to drive her to dance and then just got home in time for me to text him.

Now, he was going to have to drive all the way home again, to then go pick Ainsley up from her dance class afterward. The poor guy was going in circles.

“I know,” Sebastian said, bringing my attention back to the music. “It’s yours.”

And then he took off before I had the chance to ask any further about that.

“Have you ever considered,” I yelled over the sound of the music and the engine revving, “driving like a normal human being instead of a manic?”

Sebastian looked at me with a glint in his eye. “Don’t say you’re going weak on me now, Nellie.”

Honestly, the fact that he didn’t think I was weak before this was surprising. Everyone else sure did.

“Just trying to get through high school without a concussion—” I screamed as he took a corner so fast that his tires squealed. “And without dying!”

“I promise you will never die in my car.” He dropped one hand from the steering wheel and held out his pinky like he was trying to make me a promise.

At any other time, I probably would have revelled in the idea of Sebastian Novak making me a pinky promise, but right then, all I could think about was my life.

I slapped his hand back toward the steering wheel.

“Could you focus on driving for just a little bit? Please ?”

His only response was to turn the music up to its usual volume, AKA trying to burst my eardrums. I turned it down using the dial.

He turned it back up with the button on the steering wheel.

I glared at him—knowing anything I said right now would fall on deaf ears, because he either wouldn’t be able to hear me over the music or would pretend he couldn’t hear me to be annoying.

He turned it back down for long enough to say, “What? The music helps me focus on driving.” Then turned the dial so fast that the volume made me think I would never hear again.

I noticed that he didn’t stop me when I turned it back down a few notches, but knew better than to point it out .

I got thrown to the side as he whipped around a corner, and I glanced over my shoulder at the backseat as I tried to right myself again.

I was half-expecting to see Ainsley’s bra in the backseat again, but instead, there was only a girl’s navy school tie.

Our school colours were blue and silver, but while the younger grades all had silver ties, seniors were required to wear navy ones.

That meant the tie couldn’t have been Ainsley or Imogen’s.

It could be Lavender’s, except that Mom said she had her own car now, so I didn’t see why she would leave it here. Which left only one girl.