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That makes sense.
I thought he was better than that. Wasn’t there some rumor that he and Ally were, like, a thing?
Please. She is way too good for him.
Seriously.
If he’d gone there, I might have reconsidered
the hidden depths.
But he didn’t go there.
No, he did not.
And he didn’t go here either.
No. He did not.
Sigh.
jake
The prom was even lamer than predicted. The theme, first of all, was Twilight, voted on by the mousy losers on the prom committee who apparently thought they couldn’t get any unless they got it from a dead guy All the decorations were black and red. There were movie posters of some pale, scrawny dude staring out from every corner. The DJ sucked, the food was lame, and there were chaperones everywhere. Carrie A
She looked happy. Which made me want to punch someone. Preferably Marshall Moss.
“Hey, Jake! Having fun?” Chloe perched on the chair next to mine.
Ally had just thrown her arm around Marshall’s neck. I tore my eyes away. Chloe looked at me knowingly. She was wearing a short white dress that was half-angelic, half-sexpot. Low cut, but not form fitting. I bet every guy in the room had thought about tearing it off once or twice. But that was the point of a dress like that, right?
“You like her, don’t you?” she said.
I swallowed, busted. My knee-jerk reaction was to deny, deny, deny, but then I decided, screw it. I was too pissed off to care anymore. “How’d you know?”
Chloe shrugged and took a sip of her sparkling cider. “Sha
“Why not?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I just didn’t see you two together,” Chloe said, gazing past me at Ally. “I mean, I’d never seen you talk or anything, but then I guess you did do that detention together. Was that where it all happened? Like some kind of prison romance?” she joked.
I laughed. Why was she being so cool about this when it had been drilled into my head over and over again that Ally was untouchable? “No. I don’t know when it happened. It’s not like it matters.”
“Why not?” She took another sip of her drink, smiling at Hammond as he passed by with a couple of guys from the team. “Doesn’t she like you back?”
There was an uncomfortable knot in my chest. “I don’t know. I thought she did. But now—”
We both looked at the dance floor. “Marshall Moss? Oh, please,” she said. “Who would want Marshall Moss if she could have you?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “What’s with you? I thought you hated her.”
Chloe took a deep breath. She leaned forward, her elbows resting on the table, her posture as straight as ever. “The truth is, Jake, that was never me.”
“What?”
Chloe nibbled on a strawberry, then placed it down on her plate, her expression chagrined.
“I never hated Ally,” she said with a sigh. “It was just that Sha
“Really?” I asked. I had wondered about that the night of her birthday, when she’d said she wished Ally were there. And she had kept the secret about Ally’s father way before any of the rest of us had been forced to start keeping it. “So all this time . . . you would have been hanging out with her.”
Chloe lifted her shoulders, then sat back in her chair again. “She was my best friend. It wasn’t her fault, what her dad did. It all seems so long ago now, anyway.” She touched her hair and sighed, then leaned her chin on her hand. “It’s exhausting sometimes, isn’t it? Caring so much about what other people think?”
She glanced over her shoulder at Hammond, who was laughing loudly over something one of the guys had said. I blinked. There couldn’t actually be trouble in Chlammond-land, could there?
“Whatever.” She sat up straight again. “The point is, I think you should go for it.”
This was unbelievable. Chloe, the girl who every other girl at this school worshipped, the person who could turn around opinion of Ally Ryan with a snap of her fingers, didn’t hate her. Even though she was the one person who had a good reason to. Not that she had any idea about that.
I felt guilty, suddenly, knowing something she maybe should have known but didn’t, and looked away.
“What’re you losers talking about?” Sha
“Whether or not Jake has the guts to ask out Ally,” Chloe said matter-of-factly.
Sha
I clenched my teeth. “Oh, so now you’re talking to me?”
It had been two months of dead silence from her. Ever since the morning after my birthday. Not a single word.
“Come on, Sha
“That’s not what this is about,” Sha
Chloe sighed and dusted off her fingers. “Then what is it about?”
Sha
“Sha
She looked at me, startled, as if she were just waking up.
“You know what? Fine,” Sha
“Sha
She grabbed her bag and rolled her shoulders back, taking a deep breath. “No. I’m serious, Jake. I’m done. If you want to go slumming, that’s your problem.”
Then she turned and walked off to the bathroom in a huff.
“Don’t listen to her. She’s drunk,” Chloe said.
“I know,” I said with a sigh.
“So? Are you going to ask her out?” Chloe asked, leaning forward on the table to better see Ally.
“I think it’s too late for that,” I said.
“Why?”
“I fucked up,” I told her, toying with some of the silver vampire-fang confetti that was all over the table. “It’s a long story, but . . . I think she kind of hates me now.”
“So, make her not hate you,” Chloe said.
Like it was that simple. “How?”
“You need a grand gesture,” she told me. “The big romantic moment. Girls live for that stuff.” She got up and touched my back lightly, picking up her little round bag with her other hand. “You’ll figure it out.”
“But what about—”
“Everyone else?” she said with a smile. She lifted her arms casually. “Look at them. Do you really care what they think?” She looked at the guys, who were sneaking sips from a flask, then almost spitting the drink out their noses from laughing so hard. “Or them?” We glanced at the girls, who were dancing and gossiping at the same time, laughing behind their hands at some chubby girl’s dress. “Maybe we should both stop caring what they think.” Then she turned and sauntered off toward the bathroom after Sha