“Anyway, I should get back home,” he says.
Doubling back and grabbing the bag of corn, I tell him, “Here, take this with you.”
“Nah, keep it.”
“But your eye,” I insist.
He smiles faintly, glancing at the bag of corn but not taking it. “I think you’re actually supposed to do that when you first get hit, so… it’s not really doing anything at this point.”
“Oh. Right,” I murmur, dropping my gaze.
I guess it should have occurred to me to ask when it happened before trying to nurse him back to health, but I’m unaccustomed to dealing with any kind of violence or its aftermath. The memory of a couple minutes earlier replays, him straddling the chair and thanking me for the cold bag of corn against his face. Was he laughing at me on the inside, or just being nice?
“I feel stupid now. You could have told me that instead of just… letting me put frozen corn on your face.”
Hunter smirks. “Nah. It was sweet. It’s the thought that counts, right?”
My cheeks warm under his gaze, but I can’t quite meet his eyes now. I follow him to the door and lean against the frame to tell him goodbye and watch him leave. When he hits the sidewalk, I close the door and lock it.
Content in the belief that everything is under control and all the wrongs will be righted, I grab my busted backpack and set about doing my homework.
Chapter Two
The weekend flies by. My mom is off Sunday and the weather is still pretty warm for fall, so we grab some chips and sandwiches and head for the park. I get a splinter in my thigh from sitting at the bare picnic table, but getting some fresh air and catching up while we hike is nice.
When we get home, the sun is setting and the sky is a beautiful mix of pink and orange with blue splashes. I sigh contentedly, wishing I had a cell phone so I could snap a picture.
“Wonder what that is,” Mom murmurs as she cuts the wheel and turns into our driveway.
I glance away from the sunset and follow her gaze to the front porch. There’s a box propped up against our front door—a sizeable one. “I dunno.”
I grab the picnic stuff and both our water bottles while Mom walks ahead to retrieve the package. It’s a large box, so I also dig out my house key since she won’t be able to hold it and unlock the door at the same time.
“That’s odd,” she says, frowning as she reads the label on the box. “This is addressed to you.”
“Huh?
She shrugs and carries the box inside. “Were you expecting something from school?”
I shake my head, walking inside and unloading all the stuff I’m carrying. “It’s from Amazon,” I tell her, noting the tape.
“Where are the bomb-sniffing dogs when you need them?” she jokes.
“Sniffing out actual bombs,” I return. “I don’t think you can order those from Amazon.”
Wrinkling up her nose, she says, “What? I thought they carried everything. One star!”
I crack a smile and rip into the mystery box. There’s packing paper on top, so I rip that out to reveal a cute pink and gray backpack.
Grinning, I look back at my mom. “I love it! I didn’t know you ordered me a new—” I stop, because her confusion has deepened.
Seeing it’s a gift for me, I figured she was just toying with me before about not knowing what the box was so I’d be surprised, but she looks genuinely baffled.
“I… didn’t.” She grabs the backpack out of the box and inspects it suspiciously. “Let me look at the packing slip.”
As soon as she pulls the backpack out, I see there’s something else in the bottom of the box. My heart does a funny free-fall as I reach in and carefully draw out a sky blue, hardback copy of Mockingjay—the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy.
My stomach turns into a pit of warm goo, and a helpless smile transforms my face as I run my hand across the smooth cover of the book I’ve been dying to read. Aside from my mom, there’s only one person who knows how badly I wanted this.
“Who’s Venus Keller?” Mom asks, then her eyes widen as she recognizes the name. “Wait, why is Venus Keller sending you school supplies?”
“She’s not, her son is,” I explain, still unable to wipe the helpless smile off my face. I usually tell my mom everything, but because I was afraid I would over share, I did not tell her about my run-in with Hunter Maxwell. “He carried my backpack home Friday when he saw me struggling with it.” I hold up Mockingjay for her to see. “I told him he should start reading this series and that I didn’t have the last book yet.”