Page 34 of Finding Her
The place was cramped, way too hot, and smelled so strongly of cleaning chemicals that it made me feel like I was choking. Idid my best to hold my breath so I wouldn’t start coughing, but then my lungs started to burn and my eyes watered from the smell anyway. If there had been enough light in here for Poppy to see me, she would have probably thought I was dying.
“What are we doing in here?” Poppy hissed at me. Her back had been to my chest from the way that I’d pulled her but now she was moving around. Something was knocked off a shelf and clattered to the floor, and Poppy cursed under her breath.
“Will you stop moving?” I whispered. Now that she wasn’t right in front of me, though, I shifted toward the door, pressing my ear up to it so I could hear what Claire was up to. I could still hear her heels clacking against the floor, but she wasn’t talking anymore, just making small hums of agreement and occasionally mutteringright. I didn’t hear anyone else speaking in the hallway, so I guessed that she was on the phone—and probably in this hallway so she wouldn’t get caught calling someone during school, because this place was normally empty during classes.
Poppy was moving again, this time closer to me, with her hand practically flailing around. As she smacked me in the face, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand down, against my chest so she couldn’t move it around.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Looking for a light!” She whispered back.
“We can’t. She’ll see it under the door.”
Even though I couldn’t see her properly, I could feel her confusion with the way her hair tickled my arm like she tilted her head and she stopped trying to pull her hand out of my grip.
“Who?” She asked. I guess she hadn’t recognized the voice in the same way I did. Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure if she even knew Claire. Poppy had been at the lockers a couple times when Claire stopped by to talk to me, but that didn’t mean anything, especially since the conversations were so short. Andthere was definitely no reason for her to know why I was hiding in a closet to avoid her. Nobody outside of our families knew the extent of what was going on between Claire and me. All my friends thought she was just a family friend who liked me more than I liked her and who was basically trying to force me into a relationship. It wasn’t entirely wrong, so I just went along with that assumption instead of explaining the way our families were pushing us together and were certain we would be getting married in ten years’ time. It was just too weird—and part of me thought that if I told people the truth, that would only make it more likely to happen. Like I would be setting my future in stone for myself.
“Claire Thompson,” I told her. The sound of Claire’s laughter broke through our tense whispers, coming from seemingly right outside the door. Poppy tensed, digging her fingers into my shoulder. I hadn’t even realized I was still holding her hand there. But for some reason, I also didn’t let go.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Claire’s voice filtered through the cracks in the door. Poppy and I were both still as statues. Her heels clicked against the floor, but didn’t get farther away. It was like she was pacing right outside the closet. “He would never go forher. I can’t lose.”
Poppy nails were digging into my skin now, so hard that it was almost painful. I tried to back away, but I smacked straight into a shelf, making it shake. I wasn’t sure what was on it but whatever it was began to rattle, like it was about to fall, and the next thing I knew, Poppy was pressed up against me, her arm reaching over my shoulder to stop the supplies from falling. We both froze again, waiting for Claire to notice. Waiting for her to come, to find us like this. I had no idea what she would do if she did, but I knew it wouldn’t be pretty. I waited with bated breath, sure that the doorknob was about to turn. But then Claire’s laughechoed through the hallway again, this time sounding further away.
“You’re so bad!” She squealed. With every word, her voice became quieter like she was walking off. “But maybe that’s a good idea. We can…”
Her voice became indistinguishable. Poppy sighed in relief, her head dropping forward onto my chest. My heart was thudding so loudly that I knew there was no way she couldn’t feel it.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “For pulling you in here. I just didn’t…”
“Don’t worry,” Poppy whispered back. Her head lifted slowly, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of where we were now standing or because my eyes were adjusting to the darkness of the room, but I could see her more clearly now, looking back at me. Not as well as if the light was on but enough that I could make out her eyes, staring back into mine, and her lips, parted ever so slightly. With both her hands against my shoulders and her legs pressed between mine, we were physically closer than we’d ever been before. All it would take was moving an inch and our faces would touch…
“Bear?” Poppy murmured, her voice so quiet that I barely even heard it. “Are you…”
The door swung open and the light from the hallway almost blinded me. Poppy screamed in surprise and jerked back, crashing straight into the shelf across from me and making more supplies come raining down around her head. I cringed and looked at the door, where a custodian was standing, looking thoroughly unimpressed.
“Sorry,” he said. “Needed a mop.”
CHAPTER 24
poppy
“Just tell me!”Lilah demanded.
“We have to wait for Saylor to get back,” I reminded her. I turned back to snooping around Saylor’s dorm. After living with her for a year, I was pretty sure I knew everything about her, but what else was I supposed to do when she left us alone in here?
“How long does making a stupid bag of popcorn take?” Lilah asked. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw her sprawled out on the bright pink rug in the middle of the room, her blonde hair going everywhere. I laughed and shook my head.
“I’m surprised you’re not taking advantage of this opportunity,” I said. I walked over to the dresser and started rifling through the stuff on top of it. A jewelry tree, too many bottles of perfume, a picture of her with her horse from two years ago. Nothing that interesting. I moved on to her desk. Her laptop had auto-locked in the couple of minutes she’d been gone so nothing there, other than the desktop picture—surprise, surprise—of her horseback riding last summer.
She’d taken her phone with her, so there was no going through that either. All I could do was go through the drawers of her desk again. Not all that interesting—mostly textbooks andbinders, things for school. I sighed and wondered aloud, “Who keeps school stuff in their desk?”
I put my hands on my hips and looked at Lilah, who just shrugged. “Whenever I want to keep something, I keep it in my nightstand.”
My eyes lit up. “Perfect.”
Lilah watched me a little warily as I walked over. “Are you sure you should be going through her stuff like this?”
“I never would have expected you to be the one to suggest that I shouldn’t go through people’s personal lives,” I said as I opened the top drawer. “In fact, I thought you’d be all for this.”
