Freefall (17 page)

“There’s honestly not much of a play-by-play to relay for you.”

“Meaning what?” I asked hopefully. “Nothing really happened?”

Kendall closed her eyes for a long second, and then turned to face me. “Is right now really the best time for us to relive this?”

Shit. Now it was obvious what she’d been getting at. “Not much of a play-by-play” equaled one miserable play.

My face got hot. Actually, I was warm all over. And, God, was I ever wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. “That bad, huh?”

I tried to laugh it off, but I sounded like almost as big of a loser as I felt.

Kendall shook her head. “It’s just—”

I cut her off. “You don’t have to tell me,” I said, talking fast. “I’m sorry if it sucked for you. I was trashed and it was my first time. Not that I’m trying to make excuses. But I thought you should know. In case you want to cut me a break if you ever tell anyone about it?”

So pathetic.

Silence.

Kendall stared at me, her eyes open wide. “Wait a second. So you’re telling me you’d never been with a girl before?”

“No. Not all the way.”

“Oh!”

She was surprised. Which was . . . maybe an okay sign. I don’t know.

“So what about
after
that night?” she asked.

I didn’t see how that was any of her business, but I told her anyway. “No.”

A slow smile spread across her face. “Wow, Seth. That has to be the sweetest, most adorable thing I’ve ever heard.”

I looked away. “Shut up.”

She pushed the visor back up and shifted in her seat. “I’m
serious
,” she said, leaning close to me. “You’re in a band, and you have that ‘wrong side of the tracks’ thing going that the good girls love. I always figured you were getting action all the time. Just, you know, more discreetly than your friends.”

“Okay. But weren’t you just saying it wasn’t . . . decent?”

She shook her head.

“So you really had no idea, then?”

“None,” she said.

Relief. And then I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Are you ready to go to this stupid dance now or what?”

She raised her eyebrows like she wasn’t sure how she felt about the abrupt end to the conversation, but then she smiled. “If you’re going to get your ass out of the car and open my door like a gentleman this time, then yes, I am.”

“I can do that.”

8:32
P.M.

“You better not have been making a dumb face just now or I’ll kill you,” Kendall said two seconds after the photographer’s camera flashed. “I’m going to be cherishing these pictures for the rest of my life, you know.”

“Oh, me too,” I said. “Me too.”

She laughed and pulled me away from the backdrop. For almost an hour now, she’d been dragging me all around the gym, which looked about the same as always, except for the dimmed lights and the homecoming banners. She wanted to make sure her secret boyfriend saw us together in every possible place, I think. My face was aching from all the fake smiling, and she’d been holding on to me so tightly while we walked that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like
not
having her left boob mashed against my upper arm.
Making her guy jealous—whoever he was—was exhausting work.

“Where are we off to now?” I asked.

Kendall flashed a beauty-pageant smile. “Does it matter, darling?”

I sighed. “Well, I’m getting kind of tired of walking around. Maybe we can sit down and chill for a while?”

I’d been keeping up my end of the bargain, acting all cozy with Kendall and complimenting her every chance I got while she paraded me from group to group. Maybe some people would have been entertained watching Kendall put on this show, but I was wishing like hell not to be a part of it. Especially since it was putting a big crimp in my plan to surprise Rosetta. I still hadn’t been able to spot her—and believe me, I’d been looking—but I was getting paranoid that she might have noticed all this close contact going on with Kendall and me and was getting the wrong idea.

“I think we’ll dance now,” Kendall said, letting go of my arm just long enough to grab my hand and tug me toward the dance floor.

I was about to make a smart remark about how I’d thought she’d
never
ask, but Pete Zimmer chose that moment to stroll up in all his football-god glory and block our way. The smell coming off him was like beer cologne. I have to admit, right then I probably would have just about killed for a drink or two . . . or seven.

“You look good, Kendall,” Pete said in a low voice.

Kendall smiled and somehow managed to snuggle against me even closer than before. “Thank you.”

“No,” he said, looking her up and down slowly. “I mean, you look
really
good.”

Kendall giggled. “Again, thank you. I am having such an amazing time with Seth tonight. Do you know Seth McCoy? He’s in a band.”

She was so
weird
. Of course he knew me; we’d been going to school together all our lives.

Pete acknowledged me with a nod and then went back to staring at Kendall’s cleavage. If Kendall had been my girlfriend and he was pulling this shit, I’d have wanted to kick his ass. But I remembered having seen them together at his party at the end of summer, and I started figuring out what was going on here. She was
his
girl, even though he got his kicks by refusing to go out with her in public.

“Vicki isn’t having fun,” he said. “I can’t figure out why, and she isn’t telling.”

Vicki was the girl Pete had brought to the dance so no one would know he was secretly screwing Kendall. It was all coming together.

Kendall’s smile didn’t slip. “That sucks.”

I got the feeling Kendall’s plan was going to pay off in about thirty seconds: Pete would be ditching Vicki; Kendall would be ditching me. All as it should have been.

While I waited for it, I went back to scanning the area for Rosetta and Carr. Still no luck. Maybe Rosetta hadn’t been able to
figure out a way to avoid the Rolls-Royce and had to pretend to be sick at the last minute? This was the first time in my life I’d ever been disappointed
not
to see Carr.

Then a strange thing happened. Kendall didn’t let go of me. She didn’t disappear with Pete. Instead, she elbowed me in the ribs. My cue to say my thing.

Caught off guard, I looked at Kendall.

She stared back at me.

And then there was that elbow again.

I cleared my throat and said, “I’m really stoked that Kendall came to this dance with me. She’s one of the sexiest chicks here.”

Kendall’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

“Uh. Yeah.” Pete looked at his feet. “I’d better get back.”

And just like that, he was shuffling away.

Kendall turned to me, frowning. “Thanks a lot. That was your most uninspired performance yet. Even as drunk as he is, he
still
noticed that you sounded like you were reading from a cue card.”

“Sorry.”

But, really, I
wasn’t
.

It was hitting me just how ridiculous this whole deal was. In the car Kendall had talked about what a bad boyfriend Isaac had been, but what she had going on now was just as screwed up. All this stupid drama. And for what exactly?

A couple of Kendall’s friends walked by right then, so
she turned the smile back on for them and kept it going even as she looked at me. “Do
not
flake out on me, Seth. I’m paying you to help me sell this. Remember?”

9:27
P.M.

Kendall and I were right in the thick of things on the dance floor, and she was going crazy bouncing around with the crowd to a rowdy old country song that even all noncountry fans know. I’m not much into dancing—especially not while sober—but I was faking it to keep her happy. It seemed to be working too. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were bright, and her smile might even have been real.

“If you weren’t with me, who would you have wanted to come to this dance with?” she asked.

Yeah, she was all about the nosy questioning too.

“No one, remember? And I would have been fine with it.”

The DJ switched to another slow song, and I silently cursed him. So boring. I moved in close and put my arms around Kendall’s waist while she wrapped hers around my neck. One thing was for sure, I was getting good at going through the motions while feeling absolutely nothing.

“I know you weren’t
planning
to go,” she said. “Let’s put it like this: If you had to ask someone and were guaranteed a yes, who would you have chosen?”

I shrugged, even though I did have one person in mind, of course. “Why are you asking me this?”

“No real reason,”
Kendall said, propping her chin on my shoulder. “It’s just that there’s a girl who keeps staring at you, and I think she’s your soul mate. I’m sensing that you’re going to fall in love and it’s going to be romantic and intense. Probably tragic, too, but it will be worth it because it will change your lives forever.”

“You’re sensing all that because some girl looked at me a few times?”

She lifted her head and grinned. “Yes.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “You are one strange chick, you know that?”

“I’m going to assume that what you meant to say is that I’m nice to watch out for my nonenemy like this,” she said, patting my cheek. “Here, let’s rotate slowly so you can look at her. But don’t be obvious about it like you always are. Be cool. Be casual.”

We kept doing our slow-dance swaying, then Kendall started leading me into a turn. A very,
very
slow turn. Cool and casual, that was me.

“Who am I supposed to be looking at?”

“We’re not there yet,” Kendall said as we moved what felt like only a fraction of an inch at a time. “Okay. This should be right. Straight ahead of you, way over at the edge of the dance floor. Under the clock?”

In that second, I forgot all about this soul mate joke. Because, after looking all night for Rosetta, there she was. She had on a strapless silvery-blue dress and her black hair
was hanging loose in thick waves. There must have been twenty feet and more than twenty people directly between us, but she was looking so beautiful over there that I could hardly
breathe
over here.

“Do you see her?” Kendall asked, jolting me back to reality.

“I see Rosetta Vaughn having a conversation with Carr Goodwin.” I sounded much calmer than I was feeling. “I don’t see any girl staring at me.”

Kendall forced me to move so that Rosetta out of my view again. “That’s who I was talking about. She probably looked away while we were turning.”

Something weird was going on here. Maybe at some point Kendall had seen me with Rosetta at school? And maybe I’d been obvious, like I supposedly
always
am, and now Kendall was making up this whole Rosetta-staring story to mess with me? “I kind of doubt she could have been looking at me through all these people.”

Kendall rolled her eyes. “Seth, I know what I saw. Now, why don’t you go give the girl a thrill and ask her to dance?”

“Because I’m dancing with you. Just like you’re paying me to do.”

“It’s okay. You’ve done a good job tonight, all things considered. I don’t mind if you take a break from me and dance with her for a few minutes. Really.”

My heart started thumping away. Seeing Rosetta was what I’d been waiting for—and the main reason I was here—
but I now realized I hadn’t made a plan for what I’d say or do once it happened. Whenever I’d imagined it, Rosetta had been the one to come to me, I guess.

“How am I going to keep making your secret boyfriend jealous if I’m with another girl?”

Kendall smirked. “For all you know, he already left the building. Now, I’m giving you permission to go talk to the hot girl over there who totally wants you. You aren’t seriously going to be a wuss about it, are you?”

I whipped my head around to look at Rosetta again, ruining the cool and casual thing I’d had going on before. Rosetta had no clue, though; she was too busy smiling up at Carr to notice what
I
was up to.

Ugh. Maybe I’d be a wuss after all.

9:35
P.M.

At any point between Kendall grabbing my arm, nudging people out of our way, and marching me to the edge of the dance floor, I could have tried to stop her. But as nervous as this was making me, I didn’t try. Kendall had the balls that I seemed to be lacking at the moment, so I let her make my decision for me.

Now here we were. Standing in front of Rosetta and Carr. And for the first time since I’d helped Kendall out of my car, she’d let go of me.

Up close, Rosetta’s dress was more blue than silver
and made her eyes look even prettier than usual. Whether she’d seen me before that moment, I couldn’t tell, but she was seeing me now. Somehow, her face was communicating most of the feelings our IC class had listed for Mrs. D. after the first day: confusion, nervousness, curiosity, surprise.

I couldn’t quite pick up on whether she was thinking the surprise was a good or bad one.

“Oh, hi there!” Kendall said in a weird, shocked way, as if they’d appeared in front of us instead of us coming to them. “It is
so
nice to see you two here tonight.”

“Hi,” Carr said, looking at Kendall as if she were speaking a language he couldn’t—and didn’t want to—understand.

“Isn’t this DJ great?” Kendall asked. “Like, every time I want to hear a certain kind of song, he just happens to play it next. It’s almost as if we have a connection or something. You know what I mean?”

It isn’t every day that I get to see Carr at a loss for words or Kendall babbling like an airhead, but I couldn’t enjoy the moment; I was too busy trying to send messages to Rosetta with my eyes:
This isn’t what it looks like. Unless it looks like I’m here to see you. Then it’s
exactly
what it looks like. Okay?

But Rosetta’s forehead was still creased in confusion; she wasn’t getting the message.

Kendall kept it up in that same loud, phony-friendly way. “Anyway, we just wanted to come over and congratulate you on the great job you and your little group did organizing
this dance, Carr. Seth doesn’t even like school dances much, but he’s
loving
this one. Aren’t you, Seth?”