Chie flicked her bangs out of her eyes. She wasn’t exactly glaring at me, but I was clearly not her favorite person right now. “What, you don’t think those are valid stories?”
Next to her, Michael tugged his sleeves over his hands, his right foot jiggling. He was taller and skinnier than David, something that hardly seemed possible, and his dark hair was thick and shaggy, lying over his collar. In the few months I’d been working in the newspaper room, I wasn’t sure he’d said more than a dozen words to me. I got the sense that I might have scared him a bit.
“It’s not that,” I said to Chie, tucking my hair behind my ears. “But . . . both of those stories seem depressing.”
And boring, I thought.
David frowned and drew his knees up to his chest, circling them with his arms. “The news isn’t always cheerful, Pres.”
“I get that, but . . .” I looked around at the three of them, all regarding me seriously. “This is a tiny school paper read by a few hundred kids. If that. Gotta be honest, when y’all hand those things out, most of them end up in the trash can. Or the recycling bin,” I hastily added when Chie’s shoulders went up. “But my point is, maybe more people would read The Grove News if it were, like, cheerier. Funnier. When the SGA was doing a newsletter—”
“Maybe we should print it on pink paper,” Chie muttered under her breath, and David sat up straighter.
“Hey,” he said as he pushed his glasses up with one finger. “Harper is a member of our staff now, and she might have a point.”
Michael nodded but Chie rolled her eyes and stood up. “David, please. She’s on the staff because, for some reason none of us understand, she’s your girlfriend. So sorry if I don’t exactly feel like taking advice from her.” Leaning down, she scooped up her bag and jerked her head at Michael. “Let’s go, Mike,” she said. “We can let our fearless leader and his first lady debate the principles of journalism without us.”
Michael’s blue eyes darted back and forth between me and David still sitting on the ground and Chie looming over him. Eventually, he gave a mumbled “Sorry,” and the two of them walked back toward the building.
David and I watched them go.
“I’m sorry,” I said at last, picking an imaginary piece of lint off my skirt. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I mean, she’s right. I’m only on the paper to be closer to you.”
But David shook his head, his gaze still on his friends. “No, you have every right to an opinion. They shouldn’t have been jerks.”
Over at their table, Mary Beth and Ryan were laughing. As we watched, she rested her head on his shoulder and he slung an arm around her neck, pulling her in to kiss the top of her head.
“Get a room!” I heard Amanda cry as she tossed a napkin at them.
“It’s not like my friends would be that much nicer to you,” I reminded David.
The wind was blowing softly through the leaves over our head, and I remembered earlier this morning, thinking what a pretty day this was. It was still gorgeous, but I had to admit, my mood was not nearly as sunny.
Then the toe of David’s ugly shoe nudged my thigh. I glanced up and David leaned closer. “Our forbidden passion has transgressed social boundaries, and now we pay the price,” he intoned with a somber nod, and I giggled, batting his foot away.
“Shut up.”
But David only released his knees and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me sideways. “We shall be shunned!” he continued, squeezing me tight. “Driven from the lands of our birth, forced to wander the wilds—”
I was laughing now, even as I reached down to keep my skirt from riding up my thighs. “You are insane,” I informed David, twisting in his embrace.
He grinned at me, and in that moment, there was no gold in his eyes, no feeling of danger. No prophecies or powers or magic. Just us, laughing under a tree in the courtyard.
My laughter faded and I reached up to push a lock of hair off his forehead. “I like you kind of a lot,” I said quietly, and David’s arms tightened around me.
“You’re not so bad yourself, Pres,” he said, and I wondered when the nickname that used to annoy me so much had started sounding so sweet.
I was still pretty firmly anti-PDA, but when David kissed me—quickly, but firmly—I decided that every once in a while, it wasn’t so bad.
I was still smiling when I saw Brandon come out the front door, Bee right behind him. “Oh, there she is,” I said, standing up. I walked quickly toward the sidewalk where they were standing, and only then did I realize how pale Bee had gone, how big her eyes were.
And Brandon was staring at her in obvious confusion.
“Brandon, it’s me,” she said. “Why didn’t you wait when I called you?”
He flicked his hair out of his eyes, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “Um, because I don’t know who you are?”
Chapter 8
BRANDON WAS BLINKING at Bee, his handsome face scrunched up in a puzzled frown, one hand running over the back of his neck. “I mean, you’re pretty hot,” he said with a shrug, “so I’d think I’d remember you, but . . . yeah, not ringing any bells.”
David had jogged up beside me, and I could hear him blow out a long breath. “Crap,” he muttered.
People were starting to stare. There was a group of freshman girls sitting at a nearby stone table, clearly paying a lot of attention to what was going on right now. All three had dark, shiny hair, and I watched one lick yogurt off her spoon before leaning in to whisper something to her friend.
Taking Bee’s elbow, I tried to draw her back from Brandon a little bit. “It’s okay,” I said in a low voice, but she looked at me and shook her head.
“It’s not okay, Harper. Mrs. Carter in English didn’t recognize me either. That didn’t seem like such a big deal, but then on the way to lunch, Lucy McCarroll stopped to welcome me to Grove Academy.” She reached out, wrapping her fingers around my wrists, her grip tight enough to hurt. “It’s like I never existed.” Her voice wavered on the last word, and there was real panic in her eyes. I stood there, helpless, and wondered where the heck Ryan was. This was his spell, after all. Maybe there was something he could do, some way to—
“Be a real shame if a girl as fine as you didn’t exist,” Brandon practically leered, and Bee whirled on him.