TANGLED PLANS

50

I don't know where I stood with Max.

When I return to school the following Monday, I find him at his locker with a frown on his face. His right hand is playing with the combination lock, while his left hand is by his side. Both of his hands are fiddling with something, and I could see from here that he was having a hard time thinking about something.

Don't go to him, Daisy. You don't even know what he wants from you.

And still, I go. Ignoring the voice in my head, I head in the opposite direction of my class and stand by his locker. "Hey, Max, are you okay?" I ask him as soon as his eyes flick up at me. His frown is evident when he starts to open his mouth, but he closes it when his eyes travel away from mine and see something behind me.

His eyes move back to my face, where he picks the corners of his mouth up and says, "Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?" I glance away from him and over my shoulder. There were more people around, and my guess was that Max hadn't wanted to talk about something this private out here.

I nod, and even though it makes me nervous to do so, I extend a hand and wrap it around his arm. His muscles flex at my touch and only slightly more when I squeeze them. Forcing myself to look into his eyes, I say, "Okay, have a good day."

He swallows and then croaks out an answer. After I wave at him, I turn away and head to my class. This was going to be hard, huh? I wanted to talk to Max about things unrelated to our status while trying to figure out where we stood. I don't know what to do about it. I knew that I wasn't going to go out of my way to talk to him about it. I guess he will come around once he is feeling better.

Once lunch comes around, I welcome talking to Maria and Keilly. I needed to stop thinking about Max. Maria and Kelly fill me in on what I missed during their sleepover. It turns out Hunter had called Keilly back the next morning, and the girls had been ecstatic about it. Keilly has a date this weekend with the guy. I liked how he wasn't leading her along.

"That's a good thing to have," I add to what they were talking about. "Having a guy who actually likes you and isn't leading you on is great."

"Agreed," Maria says with a smile. "I'd want a guy to be this interested in me." Kelly puts a hand on her presumed flaming cheeks and says, "Stop guys, I'm blushing!"

Maria decides to take that as an attempt at changing the subject or smoothly moving it along. "Speaking of," she says with her hand on mine and her eyes moving past my shoulder. "How are you sitting here so cool, Daisy? Someone has been glancing at you every five seconds."

I look past my shoulder really quickly and say, "Who?" When I catch Max's eyes, my words die down, and I feel my nerves coming in again. Why was he staring at me? I didn't know. He looks away, and I swear he has to force the smile to stay on his face. I could see the corners of his lips twitching as he did so.

I tuck my hair away from my face and give the girls a shrug. Maria cocks her head to the side and says, "So what's going on there now?" I keep my imapssive look on my face, as I didn't know how to react to this. There hasn't been anything I could say about Max's or my situation.

"Nothing?" Keilly asks in a soft voice as she leans closer to me. Maria takes a different approach, as she thinks I'm lying. She squeezes my hand and says, "Well, there has to be something."

I look behind my shoulder again to find Max now laughing about something my brother was saying. I smiled a little at that; he didn't look to be faking his laughter. I watched his eyes circle around the corner, and I knew that it was real. I look back on Max and on my friends.

"Nothing happened," I tell Kielly and Maria. Maria only raises an eyebrow at me, and I sigh before deciding to tell them a little bit. Leaning forward in my spot and tucking my hands under the table, I say, "Um, Max and I started talking again."