“I’m happy for her. I’m glad she has a friend.”
Logan raised his eyebrow as he gave me a pointed look.
“I think they’re a little more than just friends,” he said, holding his thumb and index finger a few inches apart.
“Just a little,” I agreed, spreading my palms two feet apart, and Logan laughed—probably thinking of the billions of times we’d caught them sucking face in the library. “But, seriously, I think she’d be just as happy if she and Travis were platonic,” I continued, feeling the need to champion my friend.
“Dottie was lonely before. Really lonely. She was so sad, so resigned to being miserable and scared and alone. The fact that she’s actually making jokes about her death is so crazy to me,” I said, frowning when I thought about how forlorn Dottie used to be. Now she had company—company she clearly enjoyed, based on her magically disappearing hickeys—and I supported it entirely, even though the smoochfests surprised me at first. I hadn’t expected Dottie to throw herself with such...unrestrained abandon...into another romantic situation considering how the last one turned out. But she’d explained to me how it felt to finally have someone to share her life. Someone to understand how she felt. Someone to make the dark hours in that Dark World a little brighter.
“All I want is someone to hold me and tell me it’s going to be okay. That’s all anyone wants, I guess. He does that for me. And I actually want to do that for him,” she’d explained to me when I asked her about her seemingly overnight relationship with Travis. I couldn’t find any flaw in her logic. I didn’t know how long they’d be trapped there together, but at least Dottie and Travis had each other now.
“Hey, guys!” Travis called merrily, causing both of us to jump—Logan literally, since he scrambled to his feet, his hand flying behind his shoulder to grab his sword. The sudden movement caused the students at the table next to us to stare in surprise, and Logan hopped from foot to foot, pretending his leg fell asleep.
“Chill, dude. I didn’t mean to ruin the moment,” Travis said, his palms raised defensively.
“Right, because we’re the ones giving each other mouth-to-mouth every chance we get,” Logan retorted, and Travis puffed out his chest in reply.
“Don’t hate. Besides, can you blame me? My chick’s hot.” he said, throwing his arm around Dottie’s shoulders, causing her to giggle.
“Get a room,” I teased. The table next to us began whispering again, and I sighed, twirling my bracelet around my wrist as I waited to hear the inevitable “Bellevue Kelly” nickname get dropped.
“Oh, Pa-ige,” Dottie said, her singsong voice stretching my name out to two syllables. “They’re not whispering about you.”
She pointed toward the entrance of the library, where Pepper and Matt hovered by the door. It had been a month, but Matt’s very public betrayal—and Pepper’s apparently immediate forgiveness—was still one of the most popular topics of discussion. It sure was at the table next to us, where they talked about Pepper and Matt as if they were characters on TV.
“I can’t believe she stayed with him!” sniffed a girl from my physics class with shoulder-length blond hair.
“Yeah, get thome thelf-rethpect!” lisped Tabitha Nakamura, who’d recently added a tongue ring to her catalogue of piercings.
“You know how the girl Matt cheated with disappeared? Well, I heard it was because Pepper had her jumped by some gang. And Matt’s still in love with the other girl—that’s why he looks like crap,” Shani Robinson added, nodding her head knowledgeably as she repeated what sounded like the plot to another “very special episode of an important teen drama.”
They weren’t the only ones talking about Pepper and Matt as they made their way to the front desk to return some books. Matt—whose dark hair was still threaded with some strands of white—at least had the decency to look embarrassed, casting wary looks in our direction, but Pepper held her chin aloft, her face emotionless. I found myself begrudgingly respecting her for it. I knew how hard it was to act like the gossip and words didn’t hurt, when, in fact, they chipped away at all your confidence and sense of self until you felt like every day was an act. And then you were merely numb.
“I feel sorry for Pepper,” I admitted in a hushed voice. “Is that wrong?”
“Yes,” Logan, Dottie and Travis all replied in unison.
“What? I feel bad for Matt, too. It’s not his fault that he was hypnotized by a demon,” I maintained, peeling back another piece of the laminate. “Does he even know what happened?”
“He just thinks it was an uncontrollable attraction,” Logan explained, then clenched his teeth, the muscle in his jaw twitching. “And don’t waste your time feeling sorry for him. You’re not stuck in the locker room with him. He’s loving this. Cheats on his girlfriend who takes him back. He’s the hero of the douchebag brigade at this school.”
“It still doesn’t excuse what that succubus Della did,” I maintained, and Travis snorted at my comment.
“Seriously, Paige. You should hear what Matt and some of his friends have said about you—”
Logan silenced him with a look, and I felt a creepy chill down my spine. I was used to people talking about me—I was Bellevue Kelly, after all—but something told me this locker room conversation would make me want to gag.
“I mean, they talk about all the girls,” Travis hastily explained.
“Not anymore.” Logan’s voice was low and lethal.
“What did you do?” I turned to face Logan as he slouched low in his chair, glaring across the library. He kept his arms crossed over his chest, and I’m pretty sure he cracked a knuckle.
“Logan? Why are you doing your best impression of a mafia enforcer right now?” I asked, both amused and confused by the sudden display of testosterone.
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied, sitting up to adopt a less threatening pose. He grabbed my backpack and took out my physics book, idly turning pages.
“Now, Travis, you’re good at physics, right?” Logan said, not-so-subtly changing the subject. “There’s some stuff I don’t understand with, um—” he looked down at the random chapter he’d flipped to “—electromagnetism.”
I narrowed my eyes at Logan.
“What did you do?” I repeated, and he just ignored me, pointing to the physics book with an innocent look on his face.
Scowling, I returned to my English homework, vowing to find out what Logan had done as he pretended to struggle through an old physics assignment he’d already aced. He rarely attended a normal school, but Logan studied on his own, saying he wanted to know more than just “demonslaying stuff.”
Twirling a curl around her finger, Dottie mooned over Travis as if he were explaining the wonders of the galaxy. Which I guess he sort of was, but...still. I really hope this works out, because if there’s a way to make hell worse, it’s by throwing a scorned ex into the mix.
I finished English and wanted to get a head start on math, since we still had about twenty minutes left before the bell rang. I’d left my textbook in my locker, so I excused myself from the table, heading to the front of the library where copies of all our texts were kept.
“If I were a math book, where would I be?” I wondered aloud as I scanned the row of books, finally finding the bright blue cover shelved incorrectly among the art history texts. My fingers had barely brushed the spine as a hand reached out and snatched it before I could get it.
“Hey, I was about to— Oh. You,” I said dryly as Pepper held the math book to her chest, a smug look on her face.
“You,” she replied, pursing her lips as she regarded me. “Talking to an invisible person again?” she asked, a satisfied smile on her face.
“Actually, I was talking to myself, wondering where the textbook I found first could be.” I braced myself for a classic Pepper retort—probably something about how I might as well be invisible because I had no friends, blah blah blah. Been there, done that, took the souvenir photo.