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“You’ll protectme.”
“Carly and her minions can bevicious.”
Tyler lifts a brow and Icontinue.
“We just finished our annual charity drive, which means Oakwood kids getting their parents to write big checks and posing with them in designer dresses at the holiday gala for the society section. This year, I suggested we actually go into the community and work for a day on the front lines: cleaning up municipal parks of trash, soup kitchens, literacy programs for at-riskyouth.
“Carly lobbied against it on the basis that it would pose a health risk to students to be in environments with ‘substandard sanitation’. And because her dad’s the head of the board, she got herway.”
Tyler shakes his head and I hold up ahand.
“It gets better. Her minions also filled my locker with the smelly contents of a days-old dining hall garbage bag, and a note saying ‘if you want to hang with trash, here you go.’ I’m still scraping rotten banana out of the edges of my locker and fantasizing about spreading it into her blondhair.”
"Damn.”
“Youasked.”
“I did. Okay, tell me about the musicscene."
A little thrill works through me. "There are some bands at school. The best one is Brandon Bowers’, but there's no way he'll let youin."
“Sign, join, orjilt?”
My chest expands as I remember our oldgame.
When we discovered a new band, we’d have to say whether we’d sign them, join them, or leave them. It was our own version of “Kiss, Marry, Kill” and worked way better since Tyler’s into girls and I’m into guys, meaning our preference gap on the dating front wasirreconcilable.
I tap a finger against my lips. “Join. Those guys are going into banking or something serious, so there’s no point signing them. But they’re prettygood.”
Tyler tosses me a reckless smile before crossing to the desk, opening a drawer and pulling out a notebook and pen Haley must’ve stashed in there. “How many of these boys have youkissed?”
My jaw drops. “None of your business. Besides, musicians are arrogant and smug andunattractive.”
He leaves the notebook on the desk and crosses to me, lifting up the hem of his shirt to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of cut abs, and holding out thepen.
“What are you doing?” I mutter, my breathcatching.
“Always wanted a tattoo. Seems like a good one to keep megrounded.”
Oh myGod.
He’s sohot.
Honestly, he was always smoldering, but it’s as if turning eighteen set him onfire.
I call his bluff, starting to scrawl a happy face on his chiseled stomach, but he laughs and grabs my wrist before I canfinish.
“You didn’t answer me.” He doesn’t release me, just strokes a thumb down my wrist in a way that makes me step closer. “How many of those guys did youkiss?”
“I told you. No musicians. I’m saving myself for the head of debate team. He has a 4.0 and a crewcut.”
His eyes change color. “That’s a damnedwaste.”
The pen hits the floor and I curse, dropping to my knees to retrieve it. I scrub at the invisible smudge on the bare floor with mythumb.
“So what’re you screwing around with? Musically, I mean,” he goes on with a grin when I gawk up athim.
“I spent last summer working on an essay for this statewide competition on the decline of social mobility—how the rich stay rich and the poor staypoor.”
