Page 39 of Falling Like Snow

He pulls on his coat and opens the front door.

“Night, Sloane Sullivan,” he calls as he slips out into the cold.

I stare at the empty foyer, my heart thumping and my toes curling. Then I grab my pillow from behind me, bury my face in it, and squeal.

Because Micah freaking Cook might actually be interested in me.

After a long shower and ten more hours of sleep, I feel way better, but I’m so behind on schoolwork it isn’t even funny. During lunch the next day, the Bramble Falls High library is filled with the sounds of pencils scratching over paper, muffled music pouring from someone’s AirPods, Hannah’s occasional crunching, and my incessant sighing.

“Are you going to let me help you yet?” Asher whispers from beside me after my ten thousandth frustrated exhale in the last twenty minutes.

“No. You have your own work. Stop worrying about me.”

“You can help me,” Hannah says.

He eyes her across the table. “You don’t want help. You just want me to do your homework.”

“That is helpful,” she says.

“You both should go eat,” I tell them.

Asher pokes my arm with his pencil. “So should you.”

“I still don’t have much of an appetite. There’s no reason for you guys to starve because I have extra work to catch up on. Go enjoy lunch with Preeti.”

Hannah waves me off. “I keep sneaking bites of my granola bar. I’m fine.”

I tap my pencil on my math paper. “Hey, would you guys want to go to the hockey game tonight?”

Hannah stops reading whatever is on her laptop screen and looks at me. “Why?” Then her eyes widen and her voice gets an octave higher. “Oh my god. Are you going to watch Micah?”

“It’s not like that. Exactly.” I crack my knuckle and look at the table. “He asked if I’d come, but I don’t want to go alone. Hockey isn’t exactly my thing, and I have no idea if anyone I know will be there. I need my friends.”

“But it’s cold in ice arenas,” Hannah says. I shoot her a look, and she huffs. “Yeah, fine. I’ll go.”

“I can’t,” Asher says. “I’m tutoring.”

I’m dying to ask if that means he’s spending his night with Daphne. But I don’t. Because why do I care? Even if he is, she’s our friend.

“The game isn’t until eight,” I tell him. “You’ll be done by then.”

“Daph has plans after school, so we had to schedule it for later.”

And there’s the answer to the question I didn’t want to ask.

Hannah lifts a skeptical eyebrow. “On a Friday night?”

“Finals are coming up,” Asher says, looking at me. “She’s panicking.”

An unexpected need to scream comes over me, but calmly, I say, “Okey dokey.”

Unsure why I’m suddenly so cranky, I begin solving the next equation. Well, trying to, anyway.

Asher’s finger taps my paper. “Nope. That should be three because if you—”

“I said I don’t need your help!” I snap. Blood rushes through my ears as I focus on the paper. Asher pulls his hand away slowly. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Sorry,” I mumble. “Maybe I wasn’t ready to come back to school today.”

“It’s okay,” he says quietly. I finally work up the nerve to face him. He doesn’t seem mad or upset. Instead he looks worried and confused—as he should be. I have never snapped at him. Not when he put a stink bug in my tangled hair despite knowing how much they creep me out. Not when he finished the last Oreo but left the empty package on the counter, leaving me immensely disappointed later. Not when I got my first period and was unreasonably annoyed and mortified. Not when Dad died, and I was so angry that his dad was alive, even though I knew it was messed up to feel that way.