Page 80 of Secret Obsession
“Well, for your information, this is Computational Linguistics 101. It’s an elective. See you… later, I guess.” She steps into the room, leaving me alone in the hall.
Notalone-alone. The hallway is full of students moving between classes.
But… alone enough that I want to follow her.
24
WILLOW
My reprieve comes in the form of Aspen Monroe.
She finds me in the library, where I’ve been hiding out instead of going back to the hockey house. Miles and the rest of them have practice right now, so intheory, I could have the place to myself.
But then I imagine someone following me, and I haven’t been able to work up the nerve to leave campus.
Funny how a little fear can totally paralyze you.
I frown. Violet was stalked. I could go to my best friend about this feeling that keeps rattling around in my chest. Aspen knows how to deal with fear, too. We were there to help her through her trauma, and now she’s… well, maybefinewould be the wrong word.
But she’s better.
She flips her dark hair off her shoulder and braces her forearms on the table across from me. “You look sad.”
I’m not sad. I’m miffed, since my sister hasn’t been answering any of my texts. Neither has Violet. Not that I’ve sent either of them that many. Something about pushing mymaybe-sadnesson them has me backing off more than I should.
“We’re going to the pizza place on the corner,” Aspen says when I don’t respond. “And you’ve been weird lately.”
It’s the second week of the semester. I watched someone die. My place was broken into and ripped apart.
Of course I’ve been weird.
“When I feel weird, I go watch the hockey practice,” she confides in me. “I’d say we could do that, but their coach closed practices for the time being.”
Well, I’m not about to tell her that was my fault.
“No, thanks.” I open my laptop, switching assignments. My second week of classes, and I’m already swamped. “I’ve got some coding to do…”
“Is it about Knox? Or Miles?”
I close my laptop again. “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “I don’t want to give either of them a bigger ego than they already have.”
She snorts and taps the table. “So, no on the pizza?”
“Rain check,” I reply.
She nods and wanders off.
I scan my phone again, but there’s nothing from Violet or Indie.
My sister is seventeen. She’salwayson her phone—and yet, she never responds to anything except that obscure app that deletes your messages and pictures after you send them. I don’t know why anyone likes that. It’s so ephemeral. I want to keep the photos she sends me. The ones of her in school with her friends, or at cheer practice, or doing whatever it is that seventeen-year-olds do.
I’ve lost touch with that in the past few years. Being away has only heightened the divide between us. So much that not even summers together could rectify it. We used to be close. Best friends and sisters. Now we’re just… blood relatives.
She looks like me, a bit. Her hair is a lighter shade of blonde. More white than gold. She pulls more of our father’s features. His height—so she’s already a couple of inches taller than me—and her eye color. Hazel. Her lankiness, although that might be attributed to the growth spurt.
I wouldn’t say I have curves. But while I at least have a hint of a figure, Indie is a string bean. She says she hates it, but she does gymnastics. It gives her an edge, and I think she tries to hone that. She does workouts that focus on lean muscles. She runs a lot.
She’s got a billion friends, while mine seem to have dwindled down to a handful.
