3. Lilah
LILAH
“Hey, Little Byrd, didn’t think I’d find your hiding spot?”
I shrunk away at the yank on that thread between us. The one that had once felt like orbiting a bright, warm sun but was now an ever-growing black hole draining all lightness around me. Why was Mason here?
“Can’t be considered hiding when I’m here almost every day,” I said, not trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. I finished pinning the pattern on the freshman girl’s fabric.
Natalie, another scholarship senior, a freshman girl and a sophomore guy at the cutting table and machines whipped their heads from Mason to me and back to Mason.
He strode farther into the room wearing a winter-cold smile that made it hard to remember he had others—and that those sweet ones had once been directed at me.
I tried to harden myself for whatever his appearance meant.
Finish the school day, get home, work through mountains of homework and read through another college essay draft, sleep and wake up and do it all again the next day.
Mason or not, The Plan didn’t change.
Natalie needed help with her stitching. “What’s he doing here?” she whispered, eyes following him over my shoulder.
“No idea.”
She watched him like you might watch a rattlesnake. Not a bad idea. “Why’s he being such an asshole to you?”
“Do rich kids need an excuse?” A sharp tug hit at the center of my chest, and I forced my voice out steady and strong, not letting it catch. “Don’t worry about him. Let’s get this piece put together.” I forced a smile, grabbed some pins and helped her with the draping.
She looked at me with uncertainty. “I’m freaking out about submitting this.”
“Don’t be. Your sketches are beautiful. And you have until March to make the rest.” Natalie was applying for a full-ride scholarship to fashion school.
The Hawthorne Prep Future Fashion Award would get her out of her mom and stepdad’s house.
She probably spent as much time as I did in school just to avoid her house. Like I said, I was lucky.
“I feel like I’ve made and remade each one a hundred times in my head. I saved up all summer to buy this fabric, so I can’t screw it up.” She peered sideways at me. “Are you going to apply?”
I ran my hand over her fabric and snipped a stray thread. “No, I don’t—I’m going to med school. The Windsor Award is all I need.”
Natalie’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “At least I don’t have to go up against you.”
“Trust me, you’d kick my butt.”
She chuckled and gingerly turned the pinned-together pattern pieces, but her eyes widened and darted to me, which told me exactly who she’d been focused on.
Why was he still here? If I just got this whole interaction over with, maybe he’d get bored and leave.
Mason was no longer skulking around the edges of the room. Now he sat at my sewing machine, legs propped up on the table, leaned back in the chair, fingers interlocked behind his head, the picture of smug satisfaction when I walked over to him.
“Ignoring me, Little Byrd?”
The barb of the nickname prodded at a still-blooming bruise.
Two sides of me warred over how good he looked there.
A hint of Summer Mason, but that smirk—the one that lit up his eyes with laughter when he watched everyone jump up from any table I’d tried to sit at—filled my stomach with nausea.
My head was nothing but spiky white noise, cycling through a tumble of emotions.
My fingers tingled with the urge to slap him. Shake him. Scream in his face.
“Would you let me ignore you if I tried?”
“You’ve never tried. Even when you pretend I’m not there, I know you’re watching.”
In a side of the building farthest from the sports complex, I’d found my refuge. A haven to escape to and refortify myself, away from the sideways glances and not-so-whispered comments that followed me through the hallways and every class.
When I’d first walked into the room with twenty top-of-the-line sewing machines, adjustable mannequins, fabric storage, and enough thread, buttons and embellishments to bedazzle a marching band, I’d thought I’d found one of my favorite places in the world.
With his looming presence here, my quiet time in the Textile Lab turned to stomach knots. I dropped a hand on the desk to keep steady.
To think, there was a time I had looked forward to an unexpected Mason sighting.
A glance across the dining hall. Peeking at his profile in a class we shared.
Even brushing past him in the hallway. I’d never even attempted to get his attention because—well, I was me.
There were hundreds of girls vying for even a smile or his coveted #11 jersey for game day, and none of the ones he’d paid any attention to before had been anything like me.
Our weeks together over the summer eclipsed every fleeting interaction we’d had in the past two years. I would check my phone ten times, waiting for the hours to tick away so I could finally be near him.
A text during the day turned me into a giggling idiot.
The anticipation of spending a night with our fingers brushing, whispered words and stomach-fluttering glances, carried me through days helping my dad in the gardens or hand-finishing hems on twenty skirts.
Now the memories taunted me.
A switch flipped and I was dead to Mason.
No, not dead. A target.
How had I been so wrong? So stupid?
People in this school seemed to have learned more untrue things about me in the month since senior year began than they had in the two years previous years.
Beautiful people floated through modern science labs and a theater fit for Broadway shows here, and the parts of the school that weren’t shiny and new were old-money intricate and smelled of polished wood and brass, halls lined with busts of powerful alumni and ironed banners of their sports teams.
In a day, he’d turned the whole place against me.
According to 99 percent of the student body, I was (1) a stalker-slut who threw myself at Mason over the summer and crashed out when he turned me down; (2) a psycho who climbed onto Mason’s balcony to attempt to watch him shower; and (3) most damning of all, a traitor who tried to steal Hawthorne Hawk plays to give to Verona High.
I’d thought the hardest parts of this year would be getting into college and trying to build a stronger connection with my half sisters, Kelsey and Eliza.
I’d had big plans to introduce them to Hawthorne Prep and be a real big sister to them.
I didn’t even get a wave in the hallway.
No one knew we were related and they wanted to keep it that way.
Now, with Mason’s blistering stare boring into mine, all those plans were smashed against the jagged rocks of reality.
“Why are you here, Mason?”
“I realized I’d never been in here before and wanted to check it out.”
A raw twist in my chest sawed at the thread between us I hadn’t been able to sever.
The reminder came in blaring clarity that I didn’t belong. I’d been slapped with the realization that I’d been allowed to be here, but with a snap of his fingers, all eyes were on me with a vicious glint.
Hawthorne Prep was a school people would sell an organ to attend. But it seemed the heart was the most common price of admission.
I’d never regretted transferring until now, but there was nowhere to run. The Windsor Award was so close. Invitations to officially apply would go out in the next couple of weeks.
I reset. I could handle this. There were bullies in med school and residency—I’d heard the stories. Hawthorne Prep had now become my testing ground. No lives were on the line. I had to stick this out. There was no other option.
Whatever it took. That was what I was going to do to make it through this year, get into the best college I could and escape.
Only there wasn’t any escape this moment.
“If you want to sit and stare all day,” I said, “I’ve got better things to do. I’m working at that machine.”
“Is that right, Lilah?” The flinch-worthy inflection on my name hit like a curse. His legs yanked on the skirt, which I hadn’t been paid for yet, stretching the stitching.
“Please move.”
“Why would I do that?” His tie hung loose around the unbuttoned collar on his crisp white shirt.
I forced myself to meet his gaze, his eyes boring into mine with a wildfire crackle of intensity. Licking my dry lips, I forced the words out again. “Why are you here?”
He folded his hands in front of him. “Because it’s where you are.”
A split second of stomach fluttering happened before I gripped those feelings tight, not letting myself fall into whatever terrible trap he’d laid.
“Why do you care where I am?”
“You’re the sewing tutor, right?”
“Yes.” This conversation was as confusing as any I’d had with Mason since September. Actually, it was the longest we’d had since the night he’d almost kissed me.
I glanced over at the other people in the room. They’d abandoned any pretense of focusing on their work. Natalie kept shooting helpless glances my way. The other two had phones in their hands.
By the end of the period, this would be broadcast play-by-play to the whole school.
“Then I’m right where I need to be.” He was finding new ways to torture me. Now with riddle speak.
My anger bubbled up, swallowing my dread for long enough to force the words out. “We’re a bit far from the rink, Mason.”
“I’ve got a new interest. Independent study.”
“I-in what?” I sputtered.
“Textile design.”
Anvil-sized thuds reverberated in my stomach. “No, you don’t.”
He laughed, bitter and biting. His eyes glittered with malice-laced venom. “Weren’t you the one telling me to try new things?” He tossed the paper at me. It fluttered through the air and floated onto the desk between us.
“You’ve only ever played hockey? No football or karate or an instrument?”
Mason shook his head, his hair brushing against my thighs. “Never.”
“How is that possible?” I looked out over the pool with its own lazy river and a house I’d for sure get lost in without a map.