“I’m here because my friends conspired against me. Someone sent the brochure to my parents and they shipped me off. They didn’t ask if I wanted to be here or if this was even a school I’d be interested in going to. But I’m a screwup, so I don’t get a vote anymore,” he said, his face flush with newfound steam. He shook out his hair and started to pace the aisle, shoving Survivor and Little Brother back into their places. “Also, if you want to go here so badly, then why don’t you let me take all of the dives? If I won that Rubik’s challenge, then you wouldn’t have. Now I want you to win the scholarship. How is that supposed to help anything?”
I caught his wrist as he tried to pace by me. His arm was hot under my palm. I set my other hand against the back of his neck. His hair bristled against my fingertips.
The kiss had seemed like my idea a moment ago, but somehow his mouth met mine when I was halfway to where he had been. Our lips bumped, awkward and mismatched. My stomach plummeted to the floor, then buoyed, as Brandon slipped his arm from my grasp and wrapped it around my waist, gripping me tight as we readjusted our bodies in the narrow space between the bookcases. I combed my fingers through his hair, leveraging him closer—closer lips, closer tongues, closer hands and legs and bodies. It was a kiss that couldn’t be portioned out in sips. We took in heavy, gasping chugs of each other that only got thirstier.
When I came up for air, I found my hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt. I left them there as our chests rose and fell, hammering heartbeats pressed together. Our panting breaths turned the air around us humid. Brandon’s gaze was sharp with surprise, but his thumb was sweeping arcs on the small of my back. The inside of my head was thrumming, past runner’s high and into stolen sips of champagne on New Year’s giddy.
“You are one of the things I already miss.” I stole another urgent kiss from his stung lips. “So I want you to win, too.”
“I will memorize baroque composers for you. Not just three examples. All of them. Once I figure out how to go back to studying after this. I don’t want to stop the this part.” He gave me a jittery grin and squeezed my waist. “I wasn’t studying with you so that this would happen. I never thought that this would happen, that you would want—I mean, you know I’m a nerd, right?”
“You’re a nerd?” I pushed the hair away from his forehead. “We are standing in the science fiction section of the most selective liberal arts college on the West Coast. If there was gelato nearby, this would literally be my heaven.”
“Get gelato. Noted,” he said, inching close enough that the syllables brushed against my lips. “I really like you, Ever.”
I could feel my heartbeat from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.
“Ever is a nickname. My real name is Elliot,” I murmured.
He smiled. “I really like you, Elliot.”
I wound my arms around his neck, pulling his face down to mine again. My eyelids closed. My tongue licked at his lower lip, requesting permission.
The lights flashed like lightning as a familiar screech lacerated through the former silence. Brandon and I stumbled apart, staring up at the ceiling at the fire alarm.
“Do you think it’s real this time?” I asked.
“Does it matter?”
It didn’t. We grabbed our binders and ran.
24
Goose bumps raised on my arms and legs as Brandon and I hustled into the cool evening air. The sky was sapphire streaked with orange clouds, the setting sun hidden somewhere behind the administrative buildings, where windows burned white in time with the alarm.
“This is probably a bad time to ask,” Brandon said, power walking beside me. “But if the school doesn’t burn down, do you want to maybe go out? Like actually out? Off campus out?”
I looked at him, worried that my tongue had dislodged some of his IQ. “We’re stuck here.”
He tripped over a seam in the pavement. “Only technically.”
“Eventually we’re going to have to talk about how cryptic all of you Messina Academy people are.”
“The Mess,” he corrected, and then gave an agitated shake of his hair. “That’s not the point. If I could get us safely off campus, would you want to go?”
“Safely as in ‘not getting caught and disqualified from the Melee’? Remember before we made out, when we were talking about how much I have to get that scholarship?”
He snorted. “Remember how all of my friends are counselors and it hasn’t been useful for anything? It might be useful for this one thing. I thought of it when you said gelato. There’s a gelato place downtown, across the street from this movie theater that shows old movies and serves food. I could get us there with limited blackmail.”
I hitched my binder higher against my chest. “You thought of all of that while we were making out?”
“Not all of it. Just the gelato part. I was going to get off campus anyway because the theater does an Independence Day limited run during Fourth of July week that I don’t want to miss. And you love science fiction and I love Irish nachos—”
Our binders knocked together as I stopped short and turned to him. “Independence Day? The nineteen ninety-six Will Smith movie? My dad and I have watched it together every Fourth of July of my life. I’ve seen it more than I’ve seen real fireworks. I thought I was going to have to stream it in my dorm this year.”
“Is that a yes?”
I kissed him quickly and scooped up his hand, pulling him down the path. The closer we got to the residence hall, the stronger the alarm got. The sound made my molars buzz.
“‘I know how to run without you holding my hand,’” Brandon quoted loudly.
I grinned at him over my shoulder. “If you start quoting Star Wars at me, we’re never going to get anywhere.”
“When you catch my references, I really don’t care if we get anywhere. Did you say yes to going out with me?”
“If the school isn’t on fire and you can outline exactly how effective your blackmail is and you actually learn the names of three baroque composers, then yeah. I’m in.”
“You had to throw the composers in there.”
“You promised!” I laughed. “And I didn’t include any rules about the typewriter, so…”
We rounded the corner, the quad coming into view in short bursts of light from the surrounding buildings. I dropped Brandon’s hand as I saw the somber crowd standing in front of the dining hall. No one seemed to be in team formation, just scared clumps. There were people visibly crying together, but no one seemed to have taken charge of consoling them.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
“This way,” Brandon said, and took a turn for the grass that separated our residence hall from the dining hall. A cluster of counselors stood at the edge of the green, keeping watch over the campers. In the pulsating light, I recognized some of the Messina counselors.
“I thought we only had the alarm disconnected from the fire department for amoeba tag,” Lumberjack Beard said.
“We did,” Cornell said. He ran his hands over his scalp. The noise seemed to be getting to him, too.
“Well, then someone had better go start a fucking fire,” Meg snapped.
The Perfect Nerd Girl rubbed her arms and bounced a little for warmth. “I’ll be so glad when this year’s experiment ends. The swearing is wearing on my nerves.”
“Don’t start with me, Beatrice Lea,” Meg said. “You guys are so close to getting us all fired—”