Audry Blue is just trying to get through high school alive and breathing armed with her books and lots of coffee in hand. Her older sister Cameron doesn't understand Audry and her fictional worlds, insisting that a social life is everything. As if h...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The next afternoon at lunch, finally on Friday, I sit in the cafeteria reading my book and thinking about how in the past few days my life has just completely turned upside down in the blink of an eye. It's amazing how just one person can ruin your whole life when you're not even the one they're trying to get to. I start wondering why I even agreed to help out Jace with impressing my sister so she can like him enough to talk to him and he can ask her to prom. Like that was even a good enough reason for helping him. I must have been hungry or something or just really pissed off because he interrupted my reading time. Whatever the reason is, I am seriously starting to regret it. Not only that, but now that I'm tutoring Mr. Perfect I'm being forced to give him my cell number so that if he has any questions about anything in the world, he can just call me right then and there. Knowing Jace, I wouldn't put it past him to just call me to ask something stupid just to annoy the heck out of me. Or even call me at the most ungodly hour of the night possible just because. I hope my phone explodes or falls into the ocean before that can happen. Or maybe I'll move to Yemen.
"Hey, study buddy," Jace says sliding onto the bench across from me with his tray full of food that could probably feed an entire army. Most of the food is stacked on top of each other and I feel sorry for the sandwich that sits at the bottom of everything else. It amazes me just how much one person can eat. But that's about all that amazes me about him. That and his ability to annoy me by just his very existence.
"Please don't call me that. Ever," I say flatly, looking at him over the edge of my book. The one thing I will never let him describe us as is buddies of any kind.
"Fine. Smarty pants, then. So anyway," he says, "When does the studying start? At your house would be best since, you know, Cameron lives there too. Also, Sunday doesn't really work for me and neither does Saturday actually, now that I think about it. You know, with football practice and all."
"I'm sure throwing a ball back and forth can wait until your grades come up," I say. "Which is the whole point of this tutoring thing. If you don't get at least a C on the final test before school ends, you can kiss the green fields and the cheerleaders goodbye."
"All the cheerleaders?" he asks with a small smile on his face. I look at him and slam my book closed. I slip it into my purse and start to stand up when Jace surrenders. "Audry, wait okay? I was just joking." He gives me an apologetic look and it makes me wonder if it's even genuine. Even if it's not I sit back down and wait for him to finish his bite of chicken. "Look, I wanna bring my grades up. I really do. If I fail this test, not only will I be kicked off the team, but my parents will kill me. Literally kill me," Jace says with such certainty. "They probably have a whole playlist already figured out for when they dance on my grave."
"Tell them to tape it for me," I reply. "And to call if they need help hiding your body."
"Will do. So are you going to work with me or not?" he asks disregarding what I said entirely. I roll my eyes at him, already tired of this conversation since he doesn't seem to be taking it as seriously as I expected from him. And that was a very little amount of seriousness that I expected.
