AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My lips part, but all I can come up with is, “It’s true.”
“I am going to cry under my bike helmet on my way home now. I appreciate your friendship. If I call in sick tomorrow, it’s because I broke into a lab and contracted a plague. Please don’t cancel school. No one needs to know you’re breaking the law by not having two adults present.”
I gape a moment, then say, “Please don’t contract a plague. I will have to cancel school.”
Zahra heaves a sigh. “You’re such a goody-two-shoes. Fine. Catching up missed school days around the holidays is annoying. In that case, I request that we watch educational movies all day and assign nothing that needs to be graded. I recommend The Ritual. It’s a comprehensive guide of what not to do when hiking. After that, The Forest, which teaches us that when our family members go to Japan without us, we should abandon them if they go missing because they aren’t good people if they didn’t invite us in the first place.”
“I don’t even think I want you to summarize those lessons for the kids.”
“Darn.”
“I love you, Zahr.” Tangling my fingers in front of my dress, I try to force at least half a smile. “If my love counts toward anything at all.”
Her eyes narrow. “Stupid. Of course it counts.” Sniffing, she marches past me. “Idiot. I don’t have my helmet on yet.” Her voice wobbles with the onset of tears. “You suck. Goodbye. Be good. I love you. You’re the best.” She swears and disappears beyond the school building.
I give the playground a final look before I take myself inside.
The last thing I expect to see after I’ve closed things down for the day and dragged myself out to my car is Pollux and Andromeda sitting on the sidewalk in front of the school.
The sight alone stops me in my tracks, but when Pollux turns and his eyes meet mine, I lose all my air. My mind paints the whites black and the deep browns red. It threads veins of ink across his pale skin and tips each finger with a claw.
He rises and dusts off the seat of his jeans—not that I’m watching or anything. For the record, I’m actually looking at my shoes. My feet are very interesting.
And.
Like.
Kissable.
Apparently.
Red explodes over my cheeks.
“Kassandra,” he states.
Smile. Smile. Smile. Smile.
I can’t do it. Not after this morning. Not after forcing myself to in front of the kids all day. Not after the conversation I just had with Zahra.
I can’t do it.
So I just lift my attention to his face and hope I don’t look quite as hopeless as I feel.
Making matters so much worse, he says, “Can we talk? The three of us?”
Because I don’t have the energy for anything else, I simply nod.
Chapter 18
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tantrums are age-appropriate behavior.
I’m sitting on one side of a red booth in my favorite Italian restaurant. It has low lighting and faux leather menus and authentic Italian music whispering atmospherically from a speaker somewhere. It’s familiar enough that I hoped it would bring me calm. Unfortunately, I’m seated across from Pollux and Andromeda and fighting not to fidget. Or move. At all. Because I have secured the one place I know for certain I am not bumping knees with Pollux under the table, and everything else is a Battleship game I am not prepared for emotionally.
Andromeda hasn’t said a word.
She’s coloring the plain back of a child’s menu a vicious, unexplained blob of red.
