Page 12 of Lost and Found

“So are we,”I replied.

He’d only sighed and taken another step. So close I had to lift my chin to look into his eyes.

“So. A group thing, huh? I guess that sounds cool.”He put on his best good-sport smile.“On one condition.”

Back in the gym, I hear the song change to something slow. The air behind me shifts.

“Time to pay up, Marshall,” Silas says at my back.

I close my eyes and gather my nerve. A dance. It’s just a dance. All I have to do is give him one dance, and Merritt won’t ever have to know he asked me to be his date. If she comes out of the bathroom and sees us, maybe she won’t even think too much of it. Maybe she’ll assume I looked lonely and pathetic on the sidelines, and Silas simply wanted to be a good friend.

I turn on a heel, grabbing him by the wrist and hauling him deeper into the crowd. When I think we’re shielded on all sides, I throw my arms over his shoulders with a huff. His amused laugh brushes across my sweat-dampened temple.

“Try your best to endure it, Red,” he says with a low chuckle.

I make a critical mistake by looking up at him. I experience the same jolt I get around him sometimes, like the snap of a rubber band between my ribs. It was the same when Merritt sat in his lap three weeks ago at a bonfire on the beach and his eyes immediately cut to mine, and like any other time we’ve been in a group and I’ve looked his way, only to find him already looking at me. Like we’re in on some secret no one else is. It’s the same every time he’s ever touched me, too. Like when I nearly stumbled on some rocks at Founder’s Point until his hands caught me from behind, fingertips slipping under my shirt. When his knee pressed up against my thigh in organic chemistry last week.

It frazzles me, and I refuse to let someguyfrazzle me.

Especially the guy my best friend has carried a torch for since we were ten.

“Silas, I’m not interested in hurting my friend,” I say. He laughs again, and I bristle. “I’m not sure why that’s funny to you.”

His face goes uncharacteristically serious, and my heart starts to race. It is such a rare expression on him that I find it even more disorienting.

“Because I know you don’t want to, and I don’t want you to, either, but I thinkinterestedwas . . . aninterestingword choice,” he says.

“If you don’t want me to, why’d you make me agree to this?” I complain.

“If you’ll recall correctly, I said I’d agree to the group thing if you agreed to a dance,” he says, just this side of frustrated.“You’re the one who then said you’d dance with me if I never told Merritt I asked you.Iwasn’t the one who made that a condition, Bea. All you had to do was ask me not to tell her, and I would’ve agreed.” He searches my face and clenches his jaw once. “I think you’re projecting whatever guilt you’ve got onto me because you do, in fact, feel guilty.”

We’ve stopped moving, but our arms are still wrapped around each other. “Why the hell would I feel guilty?! I turned you down.”

His nostrils flare, and something swoops in my stomach.

“Good question. Why would you feel guilty unless you actually had something to feel guilty about?” His palm presses harder into my lower back. One of his thumbs sinks into the flesh of my hip. “I think maybe because part of you wanted to say yes. Maybe because part of you wasinterested.”

My mouth falls open before I snap it shut. There’s a heartbeat in every place his hands are on me.

I don’t know why I don’t lie. Why I don’t roll my eyes at him and make some quip about his inflated ego.

“It doesn’t matter” is what I say instead. “She’s my best friend, and I would never. I will never.”

His eyes soften again. He looks away briefly and moves us back into a rhythm. “You know what they say about nevers.”

“I mean it,” I tell him, my voice melancholy. Resigned. “Not ever.”

A quarter smile lifts at his mouth. “I got it. Guess we better just enjoy our dance, then.”

So, we do. After the chorus comes around again, I try for small talk. I ask him if he’s excited for his postgraduation plans, and he says yes. The last time we had all spoken about it, he’d said he was going to get into the nearest fire academy to become a firefighter like his brother. He asks me if I’m excited for senior year, if I’m excited to be the official Queen Bea. I brush it off,telling him I’m more excited to get through one more year so I can head off to college, wherever Merritt and I can both get in.

“I don’t know,” Silas says. “I bet you’ll miss this place.” I don’t dignify this with a response other than an unimpressed, doubtful shrug.

“I get that this probably doesn’t make me very cool,” he adds, “but I hope someone will keep me posted on Whitley and Halsberg. I know there’s something going on there.”

I let out a laugh at that. He’s convinced our principal and English teacher are secretly dating. He is also convinced that Miss Whitley is moonlighting as an erotica author on the side.

“I’m telling you, I know I sawG. K. Whitwritten in a doc on her laptop that one day. And she asked me if I knew a synonym forswelledthat other time.”