Chapter 5 #2
After forcing Ainsley and Nora to be the ones to go in, I still managed to run into him. Fate really had a sense of humor.
I tried not to fidget under his unimpressed stare.
I could only imagine what he was thinking about my uniform right now.
He was probably going to call me a poor little rich girl and find some way to make fun of me for being out here by the rubbish.
I started to get angry just at the thought of it and came close to just turning around and leaving again, when he spoke.
“When did you have time to change?”
That wasn’t what I was expecting, and it took a minute for my brain to recalibrate. “What?”
“Your outfit,” he said as if that was the part I didn’t understand. When I stared at him blankly, he added, “You had pins on your blazer when you were inside. What, did you have a second one in the car or did you find a way to drop another eight coffees down the front?”
“Oh.” I glanced down at myself, then back up at him. I cleared my throat. “That was my twin sister,” I said, ignoring the quip about the coffee in a desperate attempt to never hear about it again. I hated the way he was watching me silently.
His eyes dropped to my face again, sharper now. Studying. “Huh.”
Something about the way he said it made my shoulders tense. I shifted my weight, the receipt crinkling in my hand.
“I’m just—” I lifted it a little, uselessly. “Throwing this away.”
He stepped aside, nodding toward the dumpster. “Be my guest.”
I hesitated, then tossed the receipt in. It fluttered down, landing on top of the black bags inside without making a sound.
“Impressive,” he muttered.
I looked from the dumpster to him. “What is?”
“You throwing away your own garbage instead of having your butler do it.”
I rolled my eyes, backed away quickly, desperate to get away from Cole and his attitude again.
“As much fun as this has been, I better go,” I said, jerking a thumb over my shoulder. “My family’s waiting for me.”
He didn’t respond and I was tired of making a fool of myself, so without another word, I turned and fled back to the car, cursing myself for getting out of it in the first place.
My timing was perfect, since Nora and Ainsley came walking out the front door just as I walked up, leaving me no time to think anymore about Cole.
You know, until Ainsley brought him up again as we walked up to her locker twenty minutes later.
“I just can’t imagine going to school with somebody who’s been to juvie,” she said. “Like he’s so in a different world than us.”
“Only if the rumors are true,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I believed. There wasn’t anything about him in particular that screamed juvie, other than maybe his whole attitude, but the rumor had come up for some reason. “Maybe he wasn’t even expelled from his old school.”
Ainsley gave me an oh please look, and I couldn’t exactly blame her.
“Okay,” I conceded, “he probably was. But expulsion and a criminal record are two different things.”
“They go hand in hand pretty well,” she said. “I mean—”
“Hey Novak!” a boy’s voice called. And just like that, my day got a million times worse.
I pretended I didn’t hear it. Ainsley was with me after all, so the voice could as easily be referring to her.
It wasn’t that I was in the habit of ignoring people when they called me, but when Mitch Prescott was trying to talk to me, he only ever had one thing on his mind—and it was not something I had any interest in dealing with now.
“Imogen.”
Okay, harder to ignore. I sighed and squeezed my eyes shut for a couple of seconds, mentally steeling myself for a conversation with one of the most annoying boys at school. As I turned around, I caught the smile on Ainsley’s lips, as if this was hilarious, and resisted the urge to shove her.
Mitch was leaning against the lockers like they were built specifically for that purpose.
His blazer was unbuttoned, his tie was loosened just enough to look rebellious without actually risking a dress code violation, and his hair was gelled back in a way that I knew some girls swooned over but just made me think of a Lego character with how little it moved.
“Hi, Mitch,” I said, because I believed in being polite. Then I turned back to my sister. “I need to drop these books off before class. I’ll see you at the volleyball game at Northern tonight?”
Ainsley nodded, but her eyes flicked between me and Mitch in a silent question.
I just subtly nodded back, telling her I didn’t mind being alone with him.
There were some days that I just didn’t have the energy to deal with him alone and she was happy to stick by my side and help steer him off from asking me out, but today I would be okay.
The moment I stepped away from my sister, Mitch pushed off the lockers and fell into step beside me as I headed toward my own.
“So what’s your schedule like today?” he asked as he swaggered by my side. I kept my eyes forward and tried not to cringe.
“Busy,” I said.
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.”
I reached my locker and spun the combination. He leaned an elbow against the door before I could open it fully, grinning like he’d won something.
“What do you want?”
He put a hand to his chest. “Isn’t it obvious? Your time. Your attention. Maybe your phone number.”
“You already have my phone number.” I’d given it to him for a group project last year. He hadn’t texted me a single time for that project but suddenly was very interested in chatting with me once it was over.
“And you’ve never answered a single text.”
“Most boys would take that as a hint.”
He ignored me. “Tell me something real. One thing about you I don’t already know.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you’re smart,” he said. “I know you have a twin sister. I know your last name is Novak.”
“Amazing how none of that has to do with my personality.” I nudged the locker open farther. “Now, move.”
He didn’t budge. He just grinned wider like it was going to finally win me over. “After you answer.”
I sighed. “Fine. One real thing?” He leaned closer, like this was a secret. “I hate when people assume they’re entitled to my time.”
He blinked, just once. Then smiled again. “That felt pointed.”
“It was.”
“Well, then that hurt,” he said. “I’m wounded. Deeply.”
“Then you should probably lie down,” I said. “Preferably somewhere far away from me.”
He laughed, actually laughed, like this was all part of a charming routine we’d rehearsed together instead of something I’d been trying to shut down since September.
“I know how you can make it up to me,” he continued, leaning an arm along the shelf of my locker so I couldn’t close the door. “Friday night.”
“No.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“I didn’t need you to.”
“I was going to say Friday night, I take you out, you tell me I’m insufferable, I tell you that you secretly love it—”
“I don’t.”
“—and then we—”
“No,” I said again, sharper this time.
He tilted his head, studying me like I was a puzzle he’d already decided had a solution. “You always say no.”
“And yet you persist.”
“That’s commitment.”
“That’s a lack of hobbies,” I countered. I pushed his arm out of the way and closed my locker harder than necessary. He let me this time, hands raised in surrender.
“Why not?” he asked. “Seriously. Just one date. Dinner. Movie.”
“That already sounds like a nightmare,” I said.
He smirked. “You don’t even know what movie I’d take you to see.”
“I don’t need to,” I said. “The answer’s still no.”
The warning bell rang and I started for the stairs. I wasn’t about to let this idiot make me late for class. I was pretty sure his class was on this floor—and oh, how I hated that I knew his schedule—but he followed along beside me all the same.
“Give me one good reason why you don’t think we should be together,” Mitch said.
“Because dating in high school is a waste of time.”
“Well, that’s bleak.”
I shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
I said it like it was a fact, like something everyone already knew.
What I didn’t say was that I knew that dating never stayed simple.
I’d seen how it had taken over my brother’s and sister’s lives over the past few months.
Sebastian and Lavender each seemed to have found a way to let it fit into their lives without losing time for school, but I didn’t trust myself to be normal about it.
If I liked someone, I’d really like them.
I’d think about it too much, overanalyze every look and text, let it get under my skin.
No boy could have that much power over me right now, not when I was so busy with school. Not to mention all the time I was busy putting into fixing Mum and Dad.
“You don’t think you might be missing out?” Mitch asked.
“On what?” I asked. “Awkward dinners? Forced conversations? Breaking up right before finals?” I stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to face him, ignoring the mumbles of people who had to swerve around us. “I can’t make this any clearer. I’m not interested. Not now. Not later.”
I spun back around and hurried down the hall, hoping I would disappear into the sea of blue-and-silver uniforms before he had the chance to try and follow me.
“You’ll see, Imogen! Someday. We’re meant to be together and you know it,” he called after me. I didn’t respond.