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I feel like I’m on a sugar high. Tate Coleson is a chocolate caramel sundae injected straight into my bloodstream. I have so much energy during my hour in the library that not only do I finish tomorrow’s Math practice paper, I also finish my French assignment for nextmonth.
I’m a junkie. Gimme, gimme, gimme.
When the bell for last period sounds I consider skipping another class. I could easily be ill and in the bathroom – my disappearance from Music would match the alibi. I want to mill around the Detention Office and see if he’s still in there. I want him to grin at me again. I want to be so close to him that I can see all of the colours in his eyes.
I also want to push that dirty blond friend of his out of the window.
Why is Tate friends with him? He seems like a jerk.
I go to my Design and Technology class and end up making a mock-up poster for the Homecoming dance. It’s mainly dark navy except for the text, and in the centre I overlaid an in-motion shot of a girl twirling so fast that all you can make out isher waistline and the lifted hem of her baby pink dress. Cliché but cute. It probably won’t get picked anyway.
My good mood exceeds the final bell and I’m still a little shimmery when I’m cleaning up the dishes after dinner with my mom.
I hear the door slam outside from across the street, but I’m so zoned into my History notes that I don’t go to the window and check. Okay, the main reason why I don’t check is because I’m scared that one of these days I’m going to see him with a girl. It’s a fully-fleshed out nightmare that I sometimes traumatise myself with for about an hour and a half before I go to sleep.
I am truly insane.
Once I finish highlighting and annotating my History notes I stuff the work into its binder and kick back my chair. I’m just stretching my neck, hair cascading down my shoulders and my arms lifted over my head, when I notice him.
It’s literally eight p.m. and I swear that Tate left his house at around half six. I leave my lamp on, because I don’t want him to notice the change, but I sink down further in my chair so that he’s less likely to catch me as I stare.
He’s sat on the top of his porch steps in his hoodie and track shorts, and with what looks like a homework binder and paper pad laid out behind him, under the shield of the porch roof. His elbows are bent up on top of his large tan knees and he has his hands splayed over his ears on the outside of his hood. His eyes are shut tight and his fringe is falling over his face, dripping a little from where the rain has caught him.
What. The. Hell.
I thought that after his sports practices he came home to eat and then left again to hang out with his friends.
Has he been sitting out there aloneevery night?
Cautiously I stand up and reaching out slowly I turn off my lamp. Tate senses the change like an animal and his eyes shootup to my bedroom window. I wonder if he can see me. As I contemplate this I remember that I didn’t change out of my uniform tonight and, suddenly impish, I decide that maybe now is as good a time as any.
I slip my fingers into the knot of my school tie, gently ease the length through the loop, and then I throw it onto the floor next to my school bag.
Tate sits upright.
So youcansee me, Tate.
I’m feeling bold and I like it. I tug my sweater vest up at the sides, slide my fingers beneath the hem, and then I pull it over my head, before dropping it to the floor with the tie.
He’s really on the edge of his seat now. Shirt? Skirt? What could possibly be next?
I move over to the ledge so that I can see him clearly through the rain that’s streaking my window. We’re watching each other like two primates in the wild. Neither of us has blinked in the past thirty seconds.
I’m going to be sneaky this week. Every day that I hear the slam of the door I’m going to wait for ten minutes and then see if he’s still outside. Then I’ll wait an hour and check again. By Friday, if I realise that he’s been sitting outside of his house every single night, I’m going to do something about it.
But for now?
I flick the top button of my shirt through the hole and then I whip my curtains shut.
Chapter 5
Present
Tate’s former bedroom is in the attic.
Although I did start silently haemorrhaging when Mitch told me where I would be sleeping, I am quietly buzzed about residing in the attic, as it will really facilitate my hermit agenda.
But I couldn’t stay to check it out after dinner. I was weirdly wired and there was this energy in the house that was getting too charged, so I decided that, after Mitch took me for my hand appointment this morning, I would permit myself an unaccompanied house tour. In solitary. Completely alone. Every stalker’s dream.
