“Have you found anything?” I asked, and he sighed again. I pictured him with his phone jammed between his shoulder and his ear, an enormous tome spread out before him. I could hear the rattle of pages, and figured my mental image wasn’t too far off.
“A few things,” he said. “Not much, but at this point, I guess anything is better than nothing.”
“Right,” I agreed, and then, before I could stop myself, added, “You could bring some of the books by my house later if you wanted. We should, um, make sure we’re both prepared for whatever comes next. Especially since that first trial was so intense.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone, but only for a few heartbeats.
“Sure,” he said at last. “After school?”
I glanced around. Chie was still facing her computer, but she wasn’t typing anymore, and I got the feeling she was trying to listen.
Lowering my voice, I said, “I have pageant sign-ups, but after that, yeah. If my parents aren’t home, you can use the extra key to let yourself in. It’s—”
“I remember where it is,” he said, and in the ensuing pause, I imagined him tugging at his hair.
Could we do this? Still act as Oracle and Paladin and pretend our hearts weren’t breaking every time we talked? Sitting there in the computer lab, surrounded by people who were David’s friends, I wanted to wish we’d never even tried to be together. That we’d made a mature decision that things were too complicated as it was, and that dating would make it worse.
But that would mean wishing he’d never kissed me the night of Cotillion. Wishing we’d never laughed together and held hands and all the other things that I already missed.
I wondered if David was thinking that, too, but in the end, he murmured, “See you then,” and hung up.
Chapter 19
THE AUDITORIUM at the rec center smelled like floor polish, upholstery cleaner, and that indefinable old-building smell. In this case, I thought the smell might be the bitter tinge of humiliation. So many major events in town happened at the Community Center, and I wondered how many lives had been ruined on that stage? In Leigh-Anne’s grade, there had been a girl named Sydney Linnet who’d puked during her eighth-grade graduation. And at least one kindergartner wet his or her pants every year during the Christmas pageant. I’d suffered the sting of defeat on that stage in sixth grade when David had beaten me in the spelling bee.
And now I was about to be humiliated all over again.
“You know we’re not walking to a guillotine,” Bee said, linking her arm with mine. “Besides, you like being in front of people.”
“I like talking in front of people,” I said, bumping her hip with mine. “Being in charge, directing things, not . . . performing.”
“Fair enough,” she said, glancing around the auditorium. “Is that the only thing making you look like you missed being valedictorian by a half a point?”
I tried to smile at her, but I know it didn’t look right. “I was just thinking.”
Bee puckered her lips briefly, brows drawing together. “About David?”
Sighing, I nodded, and Bee gave me a quick squeeze. “Look, I get that breakups suck, but . . . I mean, doesn’t this make things a little easier? Now it’s more like you’re coworkers.”
“Coworkers who are magically bound to each other. Forever,” I reminded her, and Bee’s big brown eyes blinked. “And, not to mention,” I added, “my other ex is also a Magically Bound Coworker. I’m permanently tied to two guys I used to kiss.”
Bee blew out a long breath. “Yeah, okay, that does make it tougher than a regular breakup. But . . . what were you going to do for the rest of your lives, anyway? Were you assuming that you’d always be a thing, and, I don’t know, get married, have little future-telling babies?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I said, meaning David’s Oracle powers, but Bee nodded and said, “Exactly. Look at me and Brandon and you and Ryan, and Mary Beth and Ryan . . . your parents may have met in high school, Harper, but for most people, it doesn’t work like that. You and David were probably going to break up at some point.”
“I guess I could always ask him,” I tried to joke. “See if he knew this was coming.”
There was no way to explain to Bee how fast everything had been, how complicated. For people dealing with a guy who could see the future, we sure hadn’t spent much time thinking about it. We’d always been focused on the present, on getting through one day, and then the next . . .
And look where we’d ended up.
I turned back to the stage, where a girl was practicing what might have been a modern dance routine. There were a lot of jazz hands happening, and a costume that was way too short. She’d probably learned to dance at the Pine Grove School of Dance over by the highway. Mom had sent me and Leigh-Anne to the Pine Grove Performing Arts School for our dance classes, since, according to her, the performances at PGSOD were too risqué.
As I watched the girl onstage stick her leg up behind her ear, I had to acknowledge Mom might have been right.
Then I tried to picture myself in that girl’s place. Me. Onstage, in front of the whole town, doing a “talent,” twirling that stupid baton. Taking a deep breath, I pushed my shoulders back and made my way down the slight incline to the stage. There was a long table set up just in front of the first row of seats, and a woman sat behind it, stacks of paper in front of her.
“Miss Plumley?” I asked, Bee trailing beside me. The woman turned around, pushing her glossy dark hair out of her eyes with manicured nails. A ridiculously huge diamond sparkled on her left hand, nearly blinding me as it caught the lights from the stage, and I remembered hearing that Sara was engaged to Dr. Bennett, a new dentist in town.
Sara Plumley had been friends with Leigh-Anne when we were growing up, even though she’d been a few years older than my sister. Still, she’d gone to our church, and when Leigh-Anne had been on the cheerleading squad her freshman year, Sara had been a senior.
She’d also won Miss Pine Grove several years back, and now she seemed to be the main force keeping the pageant going.
When she saw me and Bee, Sara gave a good-natured eye roll. “Oh, for heaven’s saaaake, Harper,” she drawled. “Do not call me ‘Miss Plumley,’ please, not when I’m only a few years older than you. It’s always Sara.”