Chapter 8 YOUR ONLY WARNING
"I wanted to check you were still alive."
He stared at me. Then he narrowed his eyes.
"Miss Lily," he said slowly.
"Jake," I said innocently.
He poked me back.
I shrieked and grabbed his hand to stop him and he used his other hand and I grabbed that one too and suddenly we were both laughing and trying to stop each other from poking and the whole back seat was now a mess of elbows and laughter.
"I am driving," Alexander said from the front.
We ignored him.
Jake got one hand free and went for my ribs and I twisted away still laughing. "That is cheating!" I said.
"You started it," he said.
"I was checking on your health!"
"By assaulting me!"
"It was just one poke!"
He laughed and leaned back against the seat and I leaned back too, both of us catching our breath. My hair was everywhere. I pushed it out of my face.
Jake was looking at me.
Not the way he looked at girls who walked past in the corridor. Not that automatic appreciative look that boys like Jake gave without really seeing who they were looking at.
He was actually looking.
"You are genuinely fun," he said quietly.
Something warm filled my chest.
"You sound surprised," I said.
"A little," he admitted. "You were always so quiet before."
"I was quiet because nobody talked to me," I said.
He looked at me for a moment. A new emotion moved across his face too. Something that might have been guilt if Jake Sinclair ever felt guilt.
"I should have talked to you sooner," he said.
My heart did something completely embarrassing and I blushed, looking down and twiddling my thumbs.
"You are talking to me now," I said.
He smiled and I smiled back.
From the front, Alexander changed lanes for no apparent reason.
I glanced at the rearview mirror. This time his eyes moved away just a fraction too late.
I caught the quick shift of his gaze back to the road, the tension in his jaw and the way his hands adjusted on the wheel even though the wheel did not need adjusting.
I looked back at Jake and said nothing but I filed Alexander's reactions away.
Jake had leaned closer now. His shoulder was almost touching mine.
"Can I tell you something?" he whispered.
"Yes," I said.
"I used to think you were just Alexander's person to torment," he said. "Like a habit he had. And I felt bad but I also figured you were fine with it because you always seemed fine."
I looked at him. "I was not always fine with it."
"I know that now," he said. "I am sorry I did not know it sooner."
It was a genuine apology. I could tell. Jake was many things but right now in the back of this car, he was being completely real with me.
"Okay," I said softly.
"Okay?" he said.
"I accept it," I said. "The apology."
He exhaled. "Good. Thanks."
Then he bumped his shoulder against mine gently.
I bumped him back. He bumped me harder. I shoved him sideways and he laughed and nearly fell against the door.
"You both are acting like children," Alexander said from the front.
"You are just jealous you are not back here," Jake said.
"I am the one driving," Alexander said.
"Exactly," Jake said. "You should have let me drive. Then you could sit back here and have fun."
"I do not want to sit back there," Alexander said.
"Why not?" Jake asked.
There was a pause.
"Because someone has to drive," Alexander said.
Jake shrugged and turned back to me. I glanced at the mirror one more time.
Alexander's jaw was tight. His eyes were still fixed forward as always.
And in the rearview mirror, in the last sine of the evening light, I watched an emotion flicker across his face that he would never in a million years admit to.
I looked away before he could catch me looking.
"So," Jake said. "Pineapple on pizza or no?"
"Absolutely no," I said.
"Finally," he said. "A reasonable person."
"I thought I was defending pineapple on pizza?" I said.
"You were being a menace," he said. "This is you being reasonable."
I laughed.
I think I was beginning to get Jake's humor gradually.
And the car carried us through the evening with Jake's voice filling up all the space and Alexander saying nothing with the rearview mirror catching small quiet things that nobody would believe could ever happen.
It started with a note.
I found it in my locker one Friday morning, folded into a small square.
I opened it and it said.
"Stay away from Jake and Alexander. This is your only warning if you don't want to die, weak whore."
There was no name but I did not need one for I could already guess who it was.
I folded it back up, put it in my bag, and went to class.
I had been getting looks all week. I knew that. Every time I walked into the cafeteria and sat at their table, I could feel the temperature of the room change slightly.
Girls who had never looked at me before were suddenly looking at me all the time.
I told myself it was fine. I told myself I could handle it. I was wrong on both counts.
It happened after school.
I was cutting through the east corridor because the main hallway was always impossibly full of vampires after the last bell.
It was quieter back here. It just consisted of lockers and the smell of old floor polish and the distant sound of the football team heading to the field.
I had my bag on one shoulder and my lunchbox in my hand and I was thinking about what everything Jake had said in the car yesterday about my smile.
I was not paying attention. I should have been paying attention.
"Well...."
I heard it from behind me and I stopped.
Caitlyn was leaning against the lockers at the end of the corridor, arms folded with her butt length hair down today, falling over one shoulder. She looked like she had been waiting for a while and had enjoyed every minute of it.
Behind her were four dangerous girls, glaring at me with clenched fists.