Page 12 of The Playbook

She turned to me slowly, the frown I was becoming all too familiar with on her face.

“Why?”

“What?” It was my turn to frown.

She let out a sigh. “Logan, we’ve gone to school together since kindergarten. Not once, unless you count the time you ruined my birthday Barbie, have we ever spoken. Now, you want to? Excuse me, but that freaks me out a bit.”

She was talking. That was good. Better than I’d hoped. I’d take it.

“I wanted to apologize to you about your Barbie back then, but Lana scared me,” I said, hoping to lighten the conversation.

A tiny smirk curled her lips up, and I let out a breath of relief. We were finally getting somewhere.

“It’s senior year. We should be making the most out of it, you know? I want to get to know more people.”

“You’re not popular enough?” She raised an eyebrow at me.

Shit. I was losing her. I had to step it up.

“That’s not what it is at all. I only want to be your friend. We’re even lab partners now. So I think us being friends wouldn’t be the worst thing. We can be secret friends if the thought of being public friends with me grosses you out.” I offered a playful smile. I held my breath, waiting for her to tell me off again.

Instead, she gave me a small smile before nodding. “Fine. Truce.”

“OK, can I get your number then?” It was on my task list. This was perfect. “In case I have homework questions?”

She regarded me carefully before holding her hand out for my phone. Excited, I placed it in her hand. She made a few taps then handed it back to me.

“What are you doing?” she asked as I typed a message out to her and hit send.

“Making sure you didn’t give me a fake number.” I grinned at her.

She rolled her eyes as her phone went off. She flashed it in front of me, my text notification on display.

“See? Real number. Weirdo.” She shoved her phone back into her pocket and shouldered her backpack. Turning, she walked away from me without so much as a goodbye.

That was fine. I’d gotten what I’d wanted and then some. Grace Matthews was a challenge. And if anything fueled my fire, it was a challenge.

CHAPTER7

Grace

You’re beautiful when you smile.

I scoffed every time I looked at the message Logan had texted me in the hallway after I’d given him my number. I didn’t know what game he was trying to play, but I wanted no part in it.

Thankfully, he didn’t press the subject, and I didn’t seek him out to ask about it, even though reading those words had made my heart flutter just a bit. But it was Logan. That was his thing. He was always telling girls what he thought they wanted to hear.Well, screw you, Logan Walker.I wasn’t going to fall for it. So I put that stupid heart flutter of mine in place and pushed his text out of my mind.

Logan acted weird the rest of the week. He’d actually cooled it on the whole trying to be my friend thing. He’d nod to me or toss me a quick smile here and there, but he didn’t randomly approach me anymore. And there were no further texts. I hated to admit it, but I was sort of disappointed about it. Maybe I was the weirdo, enjoying that first day back when he’d irritated me.

He’d stepped up his chemistry game. He wasn’t screwing up the labs, and he’d actually offered helpful input on the homework assignments. My dad had been talking nonstop about Logan’s rocket arm and how with it, they were going to make it to state championships.

And me? Well, I’d been practicing pretty much every chance I got for our drum line performance at the game and was feeling pretty upbeat about life in general. I hadn’t been targeted by Nikki and her fem-bots yet. The entirecliquehad been relatively quiet all week.

I thought maybe this yearwouldbe my year. But then I was walking to my table with my tray in my hand. The courtyard was full—of course, it was. I saw Nikki stick her foot out too late to react. It was an unavoidable crash. My tray flew up in the air as I tumbled to the ground. Shouts of laughter rang out as I hit the ground, my lunch raining down on top of me.

My first thought waskarma.My second was that I was hurt and wanted to cry. My third wasrun.

I climbed shakily to my feet amid the jeers and cackles. Hastily, I wiped the mess of nacho cheese and Jell-O out of my eyes before turning and fleeing the area.

---