AUBREY LOST HER PHONE PRIVILEGES AGAIN IN February when her parents caught her texting outside the designated time frame they’d set up for her. Because of this, we’d resorted to an old-fashioned method of communication—leaving notes in each other’s lockers.
Studying in library after school but I’ll be done by 3:45. Wait for me? Need to talk.
I examined Aubrey’s latest note as I stood at my locker after last class. Her familiar slanted scrawl looked slightly wobbly, like she’d written it in a hurry. What now? I thought, shutting my locker. She’d seemed fine the last time I’d seen her, three hours ago at lunch. Was she fighting with Justin again? God, I hoped not. If she begged me to intervene like she did last time, I’d refuse. I wasn’t their relationship mediator.
Stuffing the note in my backpack, I made my way through the emptying halls to the library. I knew Aubrey was expecting me to head to the main doors, where we met most days before walking home together, but I was too curious and impatient to stand around waiting. Maybe seeing me would inspire her to finish studying faster.
When I entered the library, the first thing I noticed was the back of Aubrey’s dark head, bent over a mess of papers on the table in front of her. And sitting next to her, twirling a pencil between two fingers, was Travis Rausch.
“What the hell?” I mumbled to myself as I approached them. They had their backs to me, so neither of them registered my presence until I plunked down in the chair across from Travis.
“Shepard,” he said, his neck turning red like it did when he was embarrassed. “Where’d you come from?”
I glanced at Aubrey, who had paused in writing down what looked like an algebra formula, and then at the papers and work sheets scattered on the tabletop. “Since when do you two study together?” I asked. “You’re not even in the same math class.” Aubrey took advanced math, of course, and Travis and I were in the same regular, non-genius class.
“We were both here at the same time, so . . .” Aubrey shrugged and flicked a look at Travis, whose gaze stayed locked on the pencil in his hand.
They were acting weird. I wondered if Paige knew Travis was here, sitting mere inches from Aubrey. She hadn’t said anything about it in biology last period. And Justin . . . I didn’t think he’d like the idea of his girlfriend huddling together with another guy in a virtually deserted library, even if the guy in question was Travis.
“I gotta get home.” Travis stood up and slapped his math book closed, then shoved it in his backpack along with the pencil. “See you tonight, McCrae.”
“Sure thing, Rausch,” Aubrey replied with a smile.
Travis grinned back and gave us a small salute as he turned to leave. Once he was gone, I leveled a what-the-hell-was-that look at my best friend. “‘Rausch’?” I asked. Calling people by their last names was Travis’s thing, not hers. How much time did they spend together if his quirks were already rubbing off on her?
Aubrey shrugged again. “I say it to tease him.”
I picked up a paper and scanned its contents. Algebra formulas, like I’d thought—the same ones I’d learned last week in math class. “Do you think he has a crush on you?”
She frowned and took the paper from me, placing it on top of a small pile of others. “Who? Travis? Of course not.”
I gave her a look. “Aubrey. Travis doesn’t study. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s failed every math quiz our teacher gave us so far this year. Yet here he was, sitting in here doing practice problems with you. Maybe he secretly likes you.”
“No, Dara. He doesn’t. Not like that. He’s with Paige, and I’m with Justin.” She gathered the sheets and her calculator and tucked them into her backpack. “And speaking of Justin, I really need to talk to you about something.”
I was only vaguely paying attention. Something Travis said right before he left had just caught up to me. “Wait. What’s going on tonight?”
Aubrey zipped her backpack and stood up. “Huh?”
“Travis said he’d see you tonight. What’s tonight?”
“Paige didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Mrs. Kirkland, the librarian, shot me a dirty look as she strolled past, a silent warning to use my inside voice. I hooked my arm through Aubrey’s and hauled her out of the library. “Tell me what?” I asked again once we were in the clear.
“We’re going glow-in-the-dark bowling tonight,” she said, gently extracting her arm from mine. “Paige and Travis and me and Justin and a few other people. She didn’t mention it?”
I shook my head. It seemed like there were a lot of things being kept from me lately. “So it’s a bunch of couples?”
She threw me a sideways glance as we walked down the hallway. “Yeah. Maybe that’s why she didn’t bring it up. You’re always saying how much you hate being a third wheel. Or a fifth wheel. Or whatever kind of wheel.”
“And you’re always saying how much Paige hates you,” I spat back at her. “Now you’re best friends and going bowling together?”
Aubrey stared at her shoes, looking chastened. “She’s not so bad. We’ve gotten to know each other a little better over the past few weeks.”
I made a snorting noise and quickened my pace. Aubrey kept up with me despite her much shorter legs and we stepped outside into the frigid winter air together. The icy wind was like a balm on my flushed face.
“Sorry,” I mumbled a few minutes later as we skidded down the slippery sidewalk. “I just feel a bit left out sometimes.”
“I’m sorry too. I don’t mean to make you feel that way.” She was silent for a moment, biting her lip. “How about I skip bowling and we’ll go to a movie or something instead? Just me and you.”
I stuffed my mittened hands into my coat pockets. “No, thanks. I’d feel like your charity case. You should go bowling.”
“Well . . . you come too, then. No one said you couldn’t go. I mean, it’s a free country. Hey!” She turned to me, her nose pink from the cold. “I saw Grant Livingston checking you out at lunch yesterday. Maybe he’d like to come with us too. That way, you’ll have a bowling partner.”
The bright eagerness in her expression drained most of my anger. She was so desperate to find a solution that would please everyone and make things right again. The dread she felt at the thought of hurting me made it virtually impossible for me to stay mad at her for long.
“Thanks, Aubs,” I said, “but Grant Livingston is like a foot shorter than me. And he wasn’t checking me out; he was staring at the huge chocolate milk stain on my shirt.”
She snickered. “You have an amazing talent for finding something wrong with every guy I suggest.”
“That’s because I have high standards.”
“No, it’s because you’re holding out for Micah,” she said, elbowing me in the side.