Page 40 of Fostering Chemistry
That peace ended the moment I stepped into the house.
"There you are!" Aaron rushed over. Cody gave me a quick glance and jogged up the stairs.
"I’m not late, am I?"
He looked upset, and his brown hair was sticking up at odd angles, as if he’d been absently running his fingers through it. "I’ve got some bad news. Two pieces of bad news, actually."
"Uh-oh." I set my bag down on the floor by the door, and then remembered we weren’t supposed to leave them there. I hung it on the hook behind the door instead.
"What’s the first one?"
"All scavenger hunt teams have to wear costumes. Since it’s Halloween."
"Costumes? I don’t have a costume."
"It doesn’t have to be much. Like, you could wear an eyepatch and call yourself a pirate."
"I don’t have an eyepatch, either." The only thing I did have were the cat ears on a headband I’d worn to the party three weeks ago—and no way in hell was I ever going to wear that again. Especially not anywhere Diego might see.
This scavenger hunt was starting to be more trouble than it was worth. "Wait, you said there were two pieces of bad news."
"Yeah. Um... I can’t participate because I’m on the student council."
"What? You can’t?” To my surprise, I was a little disappointed. I’d been looking forward to spending the afternoon with Aaron. I liked the idea of the two of us being a team.
We walked slowly to the dining room. Diego sat at the end of the table with a pile of books in front of him. He looked up when we came in. I didn’t want to bother him while he was studying, but Aaron had no qualms and sat down at the opposite end. A moment later, I did too.
"I didn’t have anything to do with planning it, but they say I’m still not allowed to do it.”
"Well, that’s okay.” I mentally rearranged my afternoon, trying to figure out a way to keep Aaron a part of it. “We can do some homework. And maybe later, we could watch television,” I whispered the last word. “As long as Diego doesn’t find out.”
Diego looked up from his work and shot me a quick grin. To my surprise, he had on black-rimmed glasses that I’d never seen before. They looked good on him.
But Aaron wasn’t on board. "No, I want you to still get to do this. I think you’ll have a lot of fun. We’ll just have to find someone else to go with you." His brow wrinkled as he thought it over. “What about, uh, that friend of yours... Terry?"
"Tori? I don’t know what she’s up to today, and she lives about 45 minutes from school, so... I don’t think she could get here in time. It’s okay, Aaron. I don’t need to?—"
"What about you, Diego?" Aaron asked him.
He looked startled. "I’ve got a paper due Monday."
“Damn it.” Aaron pulled out his phone. I peered at the text he was typing on the screen.Get your ass down to the dining room,it said. "We’ve got an hour before it starts. We’ll find somebody."
"It’s really okay." There was no way I was going to find someone else to go with and come up with a costume in the next hour. I opened my mouth to tell him that, but then I hesitated. Aaron seemed to really want me to do this. Maybe he thought it was important to me? I couldn’t think how to tell him that it wasn’t, not without hurting his feelings. He just seemed to really want to do this for me, so it would’ve been rude to say it wasn’t a big deal.
Cody appeared, looking not at all ruffled by the abrupt summons.
"What’s up?" he said.
"Mia needs a partner for the campus scavenger hunt this afternoon."
"Scavenger hunt?" He said it in the exact tone of skepticism I’d used last night. "Why would you want to do that?"
Okay, Cody and I had more in common than I thought, and I couldn’t help smiling at him when Aaron wasn’t looking.
"Because it’s fun. Can you go with her? You don’t have to do anything. She’ll do all the work,” Aaron said, greatly overestimating my scavenger hunting skills, which were non-existent.
Cody shook his head. "I can’t. I have to accompany Suzanne."
