Puzzled, I looked over at Bo. His head was turned and he was looking back at the picnic table he’d been sharing with Savannah. There was no mistaking her dark red hair glistening in the bright sunshine, but she wasn’t alone. Devon sat across from her, laughing at something she was saying.
“How is that the fruit of my labor?”
“You stood up to Trinity,” he said with a shrug, as if that explained it all.
“That has nothing to do with Devon, though.”
“Maybe not directly,” Bo answered meaningfully. “You’re like an unsung hero around here.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking around at my own little spot in purgatory. “It sure looks like it.”
“You can’t see it now, but you will.”
We spent the few remaining minutes of lunch in companionable silence. Afterwards, out of habit, I went to my locker. It wasn’t until I was almost there that I remembered what Trinity had done to it. I nearly turned around, but I stopped myself. Going back the other way would take me longer to get to class than to just go the way I usually went, so I headed on.
My mouth dropped open when I rounded the corner and got a good look at my locker. It was perfectly clean. Well, mostly clean. Some of the words were still visible, but the pictures were gone and it had been scrubbed clean of poop, which was the biggest thing anyway.
I looked around, searching the faces for some idea of who’d cleaned it up. My eyes stopped on sparkling chocolate ones staring at me from the end of the hall. It was Savannah. She held my gaze for a few seconds and then winked at me and walked away.
I didn’t need for her to tell me that this was her thanking me for standing up for her, and for the first time since it happened, I was actually glad that I did it.
Turning back to my locker, I reached for the lock, but it was gone. I could only assume that it had been too soiled to save.
“Looking for this?”
I jumped again at Bo’s voice. He was standing behind me holding a shiny new combination lock.
“She had the janitor come and cut it off right after lunch so nothing would get stolen until you got here,” Bo explained.
I felt more than a little ashamed at how jealous I’d been of Savannah. She was obviously a decent person, and Bo really seemed to like her. Devon, too.
“She didn’t have to do this,” I stated quietly, finding the painted toes peeking out of my shoes very interesting all of a sudden.
“She wanted to,” he replied.
“When did she have time to clean it up?”
“She has third period study hall.”
I felt near tears again and it didn’t help when Bo tilted my face up to his. His eyes made me feel so amazing it almost hurt.
He’d been smiling, but slowly, his smile died as he stared into my eyes. For a moment, I saw exactly what I was feeling reflected in their lush depths—an attraction, a need, so great it was overpowering.
“Why can’t I stay away from you?” With his whisper, he rubbed his thumb back and forth across my chin.
All I could think of was that I didn’t want him to stay away, that I couldn’t survive it if he did, and though some part of my brain registered that such a sentiment was utterly ridiculous, I knew it was true nonetheless.
“Why do you try?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Do you always do the right thing?”
His lips twisted up into a wry grin. “Almost never.”
He made me want to smile, so I did. “Then why start now?”
In a rich sound that seemed to steal all the air from the hallway, Bo laughed. But somewhere, behind the sparkle in his eyes, was a sadness that I was noticing more and more often.
Before I could delve into the intrigue of it, the bell rang, rudely interrupting our moment. With a sigh, Bo said, “See you in Chemistry.”
I watched him go as if he was carrying a piece of me away with him.
CHAPTER FIVE
I watched the moonlit scenery fly by as the bus carried us home. For three days now, I’d managed to block out Trinity’s wicked digs and nasty comments. Luckily, though they’d abandoned me and chosen to take Trinity’s side, the others were a little less demonstrative in their shunning of me. Apart from the snickers behind my back, they more or less just ignored me.
Despite the fact that I’d known for a long time that I was surrounded by sharks, it still hurt to see them turn their backs on me so quickly, so easily. And it was all for the sake of popularity no less. It was a sickness, really, and they were fatally infected. I guess I should’ve been feeling sorry for them, but it was very hard to feel pity for them when they were all piled up in the back of the bus, laughing and making fun of me.
The fact that I was there at all was a monumental surprise to me. Not only was I still a member of the squad, I was also still its leader, at least for the time being anyway. Fortunately, my cheerleading fate had ceased to bother me anymore. It would be great to keep the status quo and get my scholarship to Stanford, but if I didn’t, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. My feelings for Bo had put that, along with many other things, in perspective.
In the last few days, my focus had shifted. My usually Stanford-focused tunnel vision was now a wide angle lens that captured all things Bo. When I wasn’t with him, I thought of him. When I wasn’t awake, I dreamed of him. When he was near, I could feel it, and when he wasn’t, I ached for him to come back. It was like he’d invaded my entire being, right down to my red blood cells, which seemed to swell with a longing for him that I couldn’t describe.
The closer we got to school, the more I could sense him. He’d be waiting for me when the bus pulled in. I was certain of it.
With a loud groan, the bus rolled to a stop in front of the school at the bottom of the parking lot. Being seated at the front (essentially exile in bus seat pecking order), I was the first one out the folding doors.
I wasted no time getting to my car at the top of the lot. I wanted to run, but somehow refrained from doing so. My pulse leapt when I saw Bo leaning up against the passenger side door of my car. It’s where I’d found him the last two nights after practice, too.