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  Freedom.

  I made sure I had my resting bitchface fully activated before I stepped into the AP English classroom on Monday. Still, a few people looked up and whispered to each other.

  “Oh, hello, Stella,” Mr. Hurley said. I’d had him my freshman year for English, so at least I didn’t have to worry about dealing with a new teacher. I handed him all the makeup work and he gave me a smile. He reminded me a lot of my dad, only he was a few years younger and a little less put together. His glasses were always a little askew and his sweaters usually had at least one hole by the cuffs or the hem.

  “Well, you were busy,” he said, licking his thumb and then flipping through the pages of essays and handouts I’d nearly killed myself to get done this weekend.

  I didn’t answer him.

  “And you got all the books for this semester?” he asked. I nodded and pulled my copy of Jane Eyre out of my bag. It was a worn copy that Dad had given me. I’d read it a few times already. Having an English teacher as a father was a literature class in itself. I’d already devoured most of the required reading list in my younger years and had copies of all of the books at my disposal.

  “Great, why don’t you take a seat and we’ll get started.” I turned and looked around. I wasn’t friendly with any of the people in this room and as fate would have it, there was only one open seat near the door. Right next to Kyle Blake.

  She was doing her best not to look at me, keeping her eyes on the surface of her desk, tracing a pattern with one finger over and over. I heaved a sigh and sat down next to her. She didn’t acknowledge me and Mr. Hurley got class started a second later.

  “Okay, so we start Jane Eyre this week,” he said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together as if he’d announced we were going to Disney World. God, he was like my dad. I smiled a little to myself and looked to my left. Kyle had been looking at me. She quickly fixed her eyes back on the front of the class and her cheeks went red.

  Weird. I looked back at Mr. Hurley just as he announced that we’d be pairing up to discuss the first three chapters of Jane Eyre and filling out a worksheet with our partner. And he pointed to me and Kyle to pair up.

  I almost sighed again, but restrained myself. I slowly turned to face her, and she didn’t look happy about it either. Mr. Hurley handed out the worksheets and I grabbed it first. Never rely on someone else to do the work in a group project.

  “Okay, did you do the reading?” I asked, scanning the questions. They weren’t too hard. Just basic information. I could answer all of them by myself, which was good.

  “Um, yeah,” she said, flipping through her book. The spine was worn and there was some clear tape holding it together. Huh. It was probably one of the school’s crappy copies and not a personal copy.

  “What are you doing in this class?” she asked as she chewed on her bottom lip and pushed her glasses further up her nose. Had she always had green eyes? I didn’t think I’d ever noticed them before. The glasses somehow hid them.

  “I transferred,” I snapped, starting to work on the first question.

  “Hey, what are you writing?” She reached for the paper, but I jerked it away.

  “I’m answering the questions. My father is an English teacher. I could do this in my sleep.” She gave me a skeptical look and I glared back. This was going so well.

  “Well, we’re supposed to be doing it together.” She waved her hand to indicate the other pairs who had pushed their desks together and were talking.

  “Fine,” I said, getting up and dragging my desk closer to hers. “Happy?”

  For a second I thought she was going to laugh, but she just grabbed the paper out of my hand and put it on her desk, sliding it over so we could both see it.

  “There. Okay, so what do you think for the first one?” She bent her head over the paper and I swallowed and leaned closer. I’d never been this close to her and I could just barely smell her perfume. It was like a mix of coconut and vanilla. Like dessert. I tried not to think about it.

  She started talking, but I wasn’t really listening. I blinked a few times.

  “Wait, what?” She gave me a confused look and repeated herself. She pushed her glasses up again and I wondered if it was a nervous habit. They were black plastic frames, but they totally worked for her.

  I forced my eyes back on the paper and slowly but surely, we got through the worksheet. I was so relieved when Mr. Hurley asked for us to pass them in and I could move my desk back to where it was supposed to be. But then he made us have a group discussion, which meant moving the desks again into a lopsided circle.

  Kyle was having a bit of difficulty getting her desk flipped around so I just grabbed it and did it for her. Instead of getting a “thank you,” she looked pissed before slumping into her seat, jaw clenched.

  What the hell did I do?

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  “I didn’t ask for your help,” she said through clenched teeth. I couldn’t figure out why she was mad, but I had to admit, she was kinda hot when she was pissed. She had an amazing jawline.

  Mr. Hurley cleared his throat and I had to shove my head back into the discussion so I didn’t sound like an idiot.

  Kyle didn’t look in my direction for the rest of class and when it was time to move our desks back, I just went ahead and let her do it, putting my stuff in my bag and leaving without another word.

  This class was going to be so much fun.

  Seriously. Stella was a straight up bitch. I had only ever had one class with her freshman year; since then we hadn’t had much contact, except for last week when we’d kept colliding. Grace was right, though. She was an asshole.

  I was still mad about her “helping” me without asking when I met up with Grace for lunch.

  “Whoa, you look like you’re super pissed. What happened?”

  “Stella Lewis is now in my English class. For some reason. No idea how that happened, but she said her dad was an English professor so maybe he pulled some strings for her or something. Basically it means that she’s going to be glaring at me and giving me the cold shoulder for the rest of the year,” I said, barely taking a breath. I’d been holding onto that rant since I left class.

  “Tell me how you really feel, Ky,” Grace said, slinging her arm around my shoulder.

  “She’s just so irritating,” I said as we dropped our backpacks at our table and went to get in line for food.

  “Uh huh,” Grace said, prodding me in the back.

  “No I didn’t,” I said, looking over my shoulder at her. She just smirked and I had no idea what the hell that meant.

  “What is happening right now?” I asked as I handed her a tray.

  “Oh, nothing, nothing,” she said, fiddling around for the silverware. I tried to prod her about it as we got food and then again when we sat down, but she just pretended to zip her lips and refused to talk to me.

  I chatted with Molly instead, but I couldn’t help but look over at Stella’s table. She was sitting with her back to me, her hair draped perfectly over her shoulder. She really was pretty. That kind of easy but polished pretty. And she didn’t have to wear a massive amount of makeup to achieve it. The raw materials were all there. I bet she looked amazing with no makeup on.

  Yeah, I needed to put a stop to those thoughts like yesterday. I made myself stop looking at her by reminding myself how annoyed I’d been earlier. I just needed to distract myself with something, so I started going through the steps to create different effects in Photoshop. It worked well enough that by the time lunch was over, I had only looked at Stella a few times.

  “So, anything new happen today?” my mom asked at dinner and I nearly choked on my asparagus.

  “Not really,” I said after I sipped some water to clear my throat. I hadn’t told them about Stella joining my class because it didn’t seem important or relevant.

  “You okay?” Dad said, rubbing my back.

  “Yup. Just went down the wrong pipe.” I changed the subjec
t and then my mom changed it back to my college applications. She’d been into the guidance office at least three times already, begging for applications. They weren’t due for months, but she wanted me to “get a jump” on them. Mostly this required me writing tedious essays about my high school experiences and the volunteer work I’d done since I was eleven. It had been mandatory, but I’d enjoyed it. Soup kitchens, building houses, walking shelter dogs, that kind of thing. They wanted me to do it for college, and I just thought it was a nice thing to do. My parents had one-track minds.

  I escaped to my room as quick as I could and went back to working on the web design for the blogger. I was so close to being done, I was just doing tweaks and testing to make sure that everything was going to work out and that there weren’t any bugs.

  I had my headphones on and was blasting Halsey so I didn’t hear it when my mom knocked, and I nearly bit m tongue in half when she tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Oh my God, Mom, don’t do that!” I put my hand on my chest and tried to get my heart to beat at a normal level. She handed me a cup of tea.

  “I thought you could use some tea. How’s it going?” Um, what? We’d already talked at dinner not that long ago.

  “Fineeeee,” I said, drawing the word out.

  She smiled, but it was one of those placating smiles that parents used right before they dropped bad news.

  “Good, good,” she said, sitting on my bed. Uh oh. That was the second bad sign.

  “Mom, is everything okay?” I asked, knowing I was probably going to regret the answer.

  “Oh, fine, fine. Just making sure everything’s going to okay. You seemed a bit off at dinner.” Shit. My parents were too observant for their own good.

  “No, I’m fine. Just busy. Start of the year, you know?” I laughed a little and cringed at how fake it sounded.

  Mom patted my arm and I sipped my tea so I wouldn’t have to look at her.

  “Well, you know that you can talk to your father and me about anything.” Okay, this was getting weird. They couldn’t possibly know anything about . . .

  “Yeah, I know, Mom,” I said in a voice that was a little too loud. “I have to get back to work, okay?” I said, pointing at my laptop.

  “Sure, honey. Sure.” She gave me another smile and put a kiss on the top of my head before leaving and shutting the door quietly behind her.

  Um, weird.

  Practice that night was brutal. Everyone was off, even me. I kept having difficulty with my heel stretch, which was nuts because I’d been doing them fine since I was eleven.

  Coach ended everything early so there weren’t any permanent injuries.

  “I don’t know what is wrong with all of you, but I hope it’s fixed by next practice. None of those stunts should have been falling. You’ve been doing them for years. Go stretch out and then go home.” She walked away, muttering to herself.

  I shared a look with Midori.

  “Ouch. It’s like there’s something in the water,” she said, stretching her neck out. I got down and started working on my hips and then sunk down into my spits, right, left and middle.

  “You okay?” Midori asked as we gathered our stuff and headed out to the parking lot.

  “Yeah, just feel off. Maybe it’s PMS,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t that. She gave me a weird look as we got in the car.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to talk to me about?” I shook my head.

  “Okay, okay. Then will you give me some advice?”

  “Of course, you don’t even have to ask.” She took a breath and proceeded to tell me that she had a huge crush on Nate Klein. I had suspected as much, since I’d caught her staring at him during lunch at least ten times in the past two weeks.

  “But I don’t know if I should go for it. I mean, what’s the point? We’re just going to end up dating and then breaking up when we go to separate schools. And I’m not in the mood for just a fling.” I knew what she meant. Not that I had my eye on anyone. I wasn’t dating boys anymore. It sucked and I hated it and I always felt like a liar when I did it. When I first realized that I was attracted to girls, I thought maybe I liked them in addition to boys. And then I’d dated a few boys and realized there was just nothing there for me. But girls? Oh, yeah.

  “Well, I guess you have to decide if it’s worth the risk. Maybe you won’t break up at the end of the year. Maybe you’ll stick it out for the long haul. And maybe not.” She laughed a little.

  “You’re so practical sometimes.” I guess I was. I never really thought about it much. Sure, romance was fun and wonderful, but it was also work and didn’t just happen by magic. Or at least I didn’t think it did. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d ever really been in love. I’d had feelings for the guys I went out with, but they were only ever friendly. I was just waiting for that one girl to knock me off my feet and then I’d be all in. Just had to get through this last year of high school and then I could go to college and start looking for her.

  Kyle was pissy again when I sat next to her on Wednesday.

  “This is the only seat in the room, so it’s not like I can sit anywhere else,” I said, low enough for her to hear, but no one else.

  She just made a grumpy sound and I risked a look at her. Cute. She was dangerously cute. I watched as she took down her hair, combed through it with her fingers and then put it up again, exactly the same way. She caught me looking, so I quickly turned and pretended to pay attention to Mr. Hurley, who was going on and on about the paranormal aspects of Jane Eyre but I wasn’t paying attention. My focus narrowed to one particular point. And she was sitting right next to me, taking notes with her left hand. Had I noticed she was left-handed before? Probably not.

  There were a lot of things I discovered about her in that period. Like the fact that she had large, looping handwriting. That she pushed her glasses back up on her nose. A lot. That she had just a few freckles on her nose. There were also several holes in her ears, but only the bottom hole on her lobe had a silver stud in it.

  At the end of class, I’d barely taken any notes on the material, but I’d made a hell of a lot of notes about Kyle. This was going to be a continuing problem.

  I packed up slowly so we could leave nearly at the same time. I wanted to say something to her, but she just ignored me and kept walking. That made me realize that I couldn’t say something to her. I couldn’t be friendly toward her. That was definitely out of the question. I had to put Kyle Blake out of my mind. Nothing was ever going to happen, so it was crazy to even try.

  Yeah, the not-thinking about Kyle lasted until Friday, when I walked into English and realized just how cute she was. How in the hell hadn’t I noticed her before this year? She was a neon sign in front of my face and not looking at her was nearly impossible. Somehow she’d flipped a switch and it didn’t matter what she did, I was aware of it. I swore I could smell her even after I’d left the room. And at night . . . I thought about taking down her hair and running my fingers through it. It looked soft and smooth. Just the image of wrapping it around my hands was just . . . yeah. I was terrified that she was going to somehow find out that I was thinking about her like that. So my only option was to be ice cold to her. Well, colder than I already was.

  That became a problem when Mr. Hurley kept pairing us up to do things in class. Kyle treated me with open disdain, which made being attracted to her even harder than it already was. I had come to the realization that glasses made any girl about five thousand times hotter than she already was. And Kyle had all the raw material. She barely wore any makeup, but I liked that. Sloppy sexy.

  “What is your problem?” she hissed at me when she caught me staring.

  “Nothing,” I said, keeping my tone cool. “Just wondering if you actually read these chapters, or just skimmed Cliff’s Notes online.” It usually gave me no qualms being like this with most people because the alternative was getting hurt again. I would do whatever it took to not go back there. But I did have a twinge of gui
lt for being snappy toward Kyle. Didn’t stop me from doing it, but it did make me hesitate a little.

  “Yes, I did read the chapters,” she fired back and grabbed the paper from me. “God, why are you like this?”

  I shrugged one shoulder.

  “Because.”

  Her jaw got all clenchy and pretty and I wanted to run my finger along her cheek.

  “I get it, I get it. You think you’re better than everyone.” She rolled her eyes.

  “I don’t,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. Shit. I tried to slam my bitchface back on, but she’d caught me. Her eyebrows flew up and she narrowed her eyes as she looked at me.

  “You don’t?”

  I cleared my throat and grabbed the paper back from her, trying to think how to change the subject.

  “Hey,” she said, her voice so soft that I couldn’t ignore it. I shut my eyes so I couldn’t see the way she was looking at me. If I did, I didn’t think I’d be able to deal with it. What was wrong with me? I’d barely spent any time with her at all. She was an easy target for a crush, that was all. She was new(ish) and she was here. It was opportunity. And she was cute. Nothing more. Hell, I didn’t know anything about her, other than what I could observe. I didn’t know what she ate for breakfast or if she was a morning person, or what she wanted to do when she graduated. That was what made a crush. This was . . . nothing. It was nothing.

  I opened my eyes and narrowed them.

  “Let’s just get this done,” I said. Instead of reeling back, she gave me what was almost a smirk. As if she knew she’d gotten under the surface that I glossed on for everyone else. I was going to have to work twice as hard now to undo that. Great. Just fantastic.

  Interesting. Very interesting. Not that I really cared about Stella, but I could have sworn she had a moment of humanity. I didn’t know it was possible. That meant one of two things. Either it was a fluke, or it was a moment of weakness. I’d never considered the fact that she might not be a total asshole. The only question was, if asshole wasn’t her default setting, then why did she do it?