Part 16 (1/2)

I wanted to do it, but if she decided Nate and I weren't really together, I was sure her interest in me would end. Plus spilling would be way too non-DangerZone.

”Whatever,” I said.

I channeled Nate's way of walking and kept my eyes straight ahead and my expression blank. I could tell Trista was still looking at me, seeking more.

Then she gave up. ”Got it. See you.”

She quickened her pace until she could link arms and fall into step with a Senior Penultimate down the hall.

So I was on the Populazzi's radar. Very, very cool. Claudia would love this. I called her at the start of lunch, once I'd settled into my car, turned it on, cranked the heat, and busted into my daily Zone bar and Diet c.o.ke. That was one of the many beauties of the new me: I no longer needed to eat in my cement-stairs bunker. I wasn't hiding anymore. I was a DangerZone now, and DangerZones were ent.i.tled to weird behavior like hunkering down in an idling car to scarf a meal. Besides, it had gotten way too cold to sit outside and eat.

”Work the Ladder and the Ladder works!” Claudia crowed after I'd told her about my Trista conversation. ”How's the new coat?”

”You cannot seriously be connecting the word 'new' to this coat.”

The coat was a purchase Claudia forced me into over the weekend, after I asked if it was possible to get frostbite on one's rear end. After a week of sitting on Nate's increasingly frozen rock wrapped in nothing warmer than jeans and a hoodie, it seemed as if the answer was yes. Not that I was against it-if I did get frostbite of the b.u.t.tocks, I imagined the doctors would have to shave off the frozen portion and reshape the rest, perhaps leaving my tush smaller and sleeker-a cheerier posterior.

Claudia, however, didn't see this as the same happy outcome I did. She thought I needed a coat, but one that fit into my DangerZone style. She dragged me to her mom's favorite thrift store, an unsavory hole in the wall where Lenore liked to pick up ragged old clothes and repurpose them as quilting materials. I'd never liked it there. The place reeked of musty despair, which-Claudia reminded me-is the exact cologne in which a true emo girl would ache to bathe herself.

She found it immediately: an old black men's wool pea coat, frayed and tattered in places and worn to shapelessness. Blotches of odd discolorations from G.o.d-knows-what Rorschached its surface. Claudia thought it had character. I just hoped it didn't have lice. The very idea of throwing this behemoth over my new outfits seemed like a crime, but Claudia was positive it would enhance my mystique. Plus it was January, and the temperature was due to take another nosedive. We might even get snow.

I'd kept the coat in my car all morning, but I'd promised her I'd wear it to Nate's rock. So after she and I clicked off, I tugged the eyesore around me and trudged to the main building. The icy wind tortured my face ... but the rest of me was cozy. I really should've known by now not to question Claudia's genius.

”Nice coat,” Nate said as I perched next to him. He had barely looked up from his guitar, but a sly smile played on his face. I was still trying to figure out if he was being genuine or sarcastic, when in a single motion he slid the guitar to his side, wrapped his arms around me, and pulled me in for a kiss.

Did I say ”a kiss”? That didn't do it justice. Our lips seemed to melt together, and his tongue rolled over mine in a way that made me dizzy.

A beautiful eternity later the kiss ended, but Nate still held me and my blanket of a coat tucked close under one arm. ”I had a great time Friday,” he said.

”Me too.”

Do not ask why he didn't call, I screamed inside my head. Don't do it. Do not ask why he didn't call.

”I was kind of surprised you didn't call, though,” I said.

WHY? Why did I say it? No good could come of that statement!

”Whatever,” Nate said.

He peeled his arm off me, spun his guitar back around, and started playing.

”Not that I would have answered if you had,” I said, trying to dig my way out. That sounded mean, though, so I added, ”Not that I wouldn't want to talk to you-it's just that I was away from home and I forgot to pack my phone cord, so I couldn't charge it up after it ran out of power, which it did pretty much right after I saw you...”

What it really came down to was that I couldn't be trusted to function on my own as anything close to a normal human being. Nate hadn't moved since I'd started babbling, but I could feel him pulling further and further away. I thought about Claudia's football players and hot dog eaters and realized I had only one hope to save this encounter.

I let the silence take over for a few minutes as Nate strummed, then casually stepped away from the rock.

”I'm gonna take off,” I said. ”See you around.”

Nate stopped playing. ”Why?”

I shrugged, lifted my hand in a bored farewell, and turned back toward the school.

”Wait. Stay,” Nate said. ”I want to play you something. I wrote it Sat.u.r.day. I was thinking about you.”

Hold up-he wrote a song because he was thinking about me? This was huge! I couldn't show it, though. I folded my arms and silently dared him to impress me.

”I don't have the words yet,” he said. ”It's just a melody.”

He started playing.

It was the most beautiful song I'd ever heard. Of course it was-it was the first song I'd ever had written for me. And writing a song wasn't a quick thing, was it? If he had been thinking of me when he'd written it, he must have been thinking about me a lot. I imagined him sitting in his room, strumming his guitar as he replayed every second of our evening together.

”Did you like it?” he asked.

”It's beautiful,” I told him. I sat next to him on the rock again. ”Thank you.”

”I meant getting high,” he said. ”I could tell you really liked it. That's what I was thinking about when I wrote the song: your trip. I've never seen anyone get so high that they couldn' t move. You must have some kind of super-sensitivity. It was incredible, right?”

”It was ... you know.” That was the best I could do. Terrifying, horrifying, the-closest-thing-to-being-buried-alive-I-ever-want-to-experience were all more accurate, but I was pretty sure they weren't what Nate wanted to hear.

”Yeah, I know.” He smiled.

He started playing again, and I felt so sad for him, because I got it. Of course being so overcome by pot that you couldn't function sounded like heaven. Look what he had to deal with when he functioned. This was the perfect time to start helping him, to talk about everything he was masking with his DangerZone persona.

I put an understanding hand on his thigh. ”You know,” I said gently, ”I've been thinking about your mo-”

”Shhh,” he said. ”This is my favorite part.”

Nate shushed me. I had never been shushed by anyone but Karl. Was he shus.h.i.+ng me because he knew what I was going to say, or was he really just that into his song?

I wasn't sure, but I shushed. When he finished the song, the bell rang.

”I'll be here tomorrow,” he said. It was his usual line, but I thought I picked up something else in it this time. Like he knew he'd see me tomorrow and was looking forward to it.

”Actually,” I said, ”I thought maybe we could study together after school. You know, with finals next week and all.”

This was off-script. I had a feeling it might be a little aggressive for Claudia's taste, but I couldn't help it. If Nate and I were going to be together, I wanted more of him. I wanted to get to that easy place I'd had with ... well, with Archer. Except it would be better with Nate, because Nate was attracted to me. He and I would have something deeper than Archer and I ever could.

”Sure,” Nate said. ”You know the place. Come by after school.”

I was a little worried when I called Claudia on the way to Nate's place. She wasn't one to hold back when she disapproved. She surprised me, though: she didn't seem bothered by the plan.

”It's so beautiful,” she said, sniffing back fake tears. ”Baby's First Booty Call.”

”Shut up! I'm going there to study!”

I was not going there to study. I had all my studying props: texts, notebooks, a six-pack of Diet c.o.ke, and my iPod with the noise-canceling headphones. With a stash like that, I could spend a whole night studying.

But I wouldn't.