Page List


Font:  

“That's very healthy of you,” he said.

“I think so.”

With that, I yawned huge­ly, feel­ing as if about a liter of my adrenaline had been drained right out of my body. My eyes drooped and I leaned over to rest my head on Josh's shoul­der.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Yeah. Kind of.”

Here.

He lift­ed his arm and let me cud­dle in­to him. My pulse raced at the in­ti­ma­cy of this ges­ture, but it al­so felt per­fect­ly nor­mal. Nat­ural. If noth­ing else, Josh had been a good friend to me over the past few weeks, and now I found I was to­tal­ly com­fort­able with him. More com­fort­able than I'd ev­er been with Whit. Cer­tain­ly more com­fort­able than I'd ev­er been with Thomas, who con­stant­ly kept a girl guess­ing, both in good ways and bad.

I last­ed about two sec­onds be­fore my neck de­vel­oped a strain. I moved my head around, try­ing to find a com­fort­able spot, and Josh lift­ed his arm again and nudged me, di­

rect­ing me down un­til my head was rest­ing on his thigh.

Ah, yeah. That was com­fort.

“Thanks,” I mur­mured.

252

“Not at all,” he replied.

As I start­ed to drift off, lis­ten­ing to the hushed sounds of my friends' whis­pers, the lulling rhythm of the train, I could have sworn I felt Josh's fin­ger­tips slow­ly, gen­tly, brush­ing my hair back be­hind my ear.

And I smiled.

253

SO DEAD

By the time we got ev­ery­one off the train and trudged our way back through the streets of Eas­ton prop­er, the last traces of dawn were fad­ing away, leav­ing a nice, thick mist in their wake. High heels sank through the dewy grass in­to the soft earth, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to walk. Fi­nal­ly I just pulled them off, caus­ing my feet to sigh in re­lief. I hooked the shoes over my fin­gers and wig­gled my toes as I walked. The re­lief last­ed about ten sec­onds. Af­ter that my feet were frigid blocks of ice.

“Are you okay?” Josh asked, bump­ing me light­ly with his arm.

“Fine. Just can't wait to get home.”

Home. Eas­ton was home. Billings was home. It was the first time I'd re­al­ized that.

Even­tu­al­ly we ar­rived at the fence that sur­round­ed Eas­ton's grounds. We felt our way along the iron bars un­til we reached the crag­gy open­ing, hid­den by ev­er­green bush­es. Each of us ducked through, one by one, hold­ing skirts to keep them from get­ting snagged, whis­per­ing di­rec­tions so that no one bumped their

254

heads. Now that we'd had the night of our lives, no one had both­ered to change back in­to jeans and sweaters. If we got caught now, it would make no dif­fer­ence what we were wear­ing, and ev­ery­one had been too tired to change.

Once on the oth­er side of the fence, I stuck close to Josh's side, not want­ing to lose him in the fog. As we as­cend­ed the hill, I could hear the voic­es of the oth­ers but couldn't quite make them out.

“Eerie, huh?” Josh said.

I shiv­ered and hugged my bare arms. “Yeah. But at least it might keep us from get­ting spot­ted.”

If this par­ty hap­pened ev­ery year, if thir­ty kids traipsed back to school drunk and in par­ty clothes ev­ery year at dawn, how they nev­er got caught was a mys­tery. The clos­er we got to the class­room and dorm build­ings, the more my teeth chat­tered and my bones shook. If we got caught, I was dead. If we got caught it would all have been all for noth­ing.

We cut across the soc­cer field and ducked along the tree line that would bring us up be­hind Billings and the oth­er up­per­class­men dorms. We paused en masse to catch our breath. There was no sound ex­cept the sound of our breath­ing. The fog mut­ed ev­ery­thing.

“Ev­ery­one ready?” Dash whis­pered.


Tags: Kate Brian Private Young Adult