My Second kiss

Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

I hadn't spoken to Drew for over a month. I sat on the opposite side of the room from her in German and did everything I could do to avoid her locker as I walked from class to class, which meant I was spending a lot more time at my own assigned locker in the dreaded eighth grade hall.

I needed to stop there before heading home, and as I passed all the unfamiliar eighth-grade faces, a tornado of fluttering butterflies swirled around my stomach when I saw Trace Weston standing at his locker.

Even though I had been using my own locker for a while, I had only seen Trace a couple of times.

I approached my locker and started turning the combination lock. I could smell the sweet aroma of Trace's cologne-he was probably the only boy in junior high that could wear cologne and get away with it. I finished the combination and lifted the locker handle. Darn! It was still locked. I hated it when I got the combination wrong. Those lockers were so temperamental, and of course I would struggle with it the one time all week that Trace was at his locker!

I started again from the beginning, twisting the lock a few times to make sure it was reset. I turned the knob to thirty-seven, then turned it the other way one and a half times to seven, then back the final time to twenty-four. I took a deep breath. Please open. Please open. Please open. I lifted the handle. Still locked! I shook the handle with a grunt of frustration. From the corner of my eye, I could see Trace put his last book in his backpack and zip it up. He was going to walk away, and I was going to be stranded here looking like the moron that couldn't open her own locker!

Trace closed his locker smoothly. It barely made a sound as it clicked into place. He lingered for a moment before clearing his throat. "Uh... " He was facing me when the sound came out of his mouth. Was he actually talking to me? Was Trace Weston actually talking to me? "Gemma, I think you are trying to open the wrong locker."

"What?" I looked at him with the most utterly disgraceful look of confusion, and then I turned back to the locker handle that I was holding between my fingers. He was right. I was one locker off. In my nervous and excited state, I had actually gone to the wrong locker! And failed at opening it! Twice!

Humiliation swept over my body as I let my head fall against the locker that wasn't mine. "It's been a long day," I muttered mostly to myself-not thinking that Trace really even cared. I was amazed to find him still standing next to me when I finally lifted my head again.

"All the lockers look exactly the same." He was smiling and leaning casually against his locker as he spoke. "I went to the wrong locker about five times during my first couple weeks here."

I couldn't believe what was happening. Besides the one moment in the hall when he teased me about the German video, we had never said a word to each other-not ever. "Yeah, you'd think they'd paint them different colors or something," I answered hesitantly. I kept waiting for him to decide that I was boring or annoying and walk off down the hall.

"Or write our names on them at least." He chuckled at his joke, and I thought he looked cuter than he ever had before.

"I would need mine in big flashing letters," I added.

"Maybe a neon sign. Or an audible voice recorder calling your name." He cupped his hands around his mouth and pretended to talk through a speaker, "Gemma Mitchell, your locker is right here. No, you're at the wrong locker, Gemma. This is your locker; the bright purple one with the neon sign!"

I didn't know what surprised me more; the fact that he was so funny, or that he knew my full name. Wasn't this the same guy that rejected me at last year's Valentine's dance? The same guy who had said two words to me during an entire year of German together? Why was he now suddenly deciding to acknowledge my existence?