Chapter 2

He wasn’t wrong. Riva could come up with a million specific excuses, but the real reason she didn’t want to do what he’d asked was that it scared her. She didn’t like the way he saw her, but he was close to her. Maybe he saw what she didn’t want to admit.

Riva would notlive her life as a boring coward.

Back to Emmy it was.

She read over what she’d already written. Leaving Benton entirely out of the note seemed like lying by omission. She added one more line. “Maybe if we hit it off, you could meet my boyfriend, too.”

Riva’s heart pounded. She hadn’t come out and said anything about making out in front of him, but even the little she’d written made that idea seem real. She watched Madame Bellamy with a studious expression, hoping her pulse would slow down again. She couldn’t shake the thought that everyone knew what she was trying to set up. The things she hadn’t actually put into the note might as well have been written on her forehead.

After a minute or two, Riva realized that she wasn’t going to calm down. She told herself not to be a boring coward, signed and folded the note, and wrote Emmy’s name on the outside. She underlined the name and drew a couple stars to either side of it. That made the whole thing look friendlier, she thought. She doodled a little more, hoping people would assume she took art with Emmy or something.

The hands on the clock zipped forward. Class was almost over, and Benton would definitely text her after school to see if she’d made any progress finding a girl to hang out with them. Riva took a deep breath and nudged the guy in front of her. When he glanced back at her, she slid the note under his elbow, careful to do it at an angle Madame Bellamy couldn’t see.

She held her breath and watched the note progress three desks forward and one to the right, where Emmy sat. Her blonde eyebrows lifted as she took it, but she knew the score. She tucked the folded sheet of paper under her notebook and waited until the next time Madame Bellamy turned her back.

Riva bit her lip as she watched Emmy smooth the note flat and begin to read. The older girl stiffened suddenly, her relaxed spine straightening into military school posture. She shot Riva a look over one shoulder.

Hoping things weren’t going terribly wrong, Riva tried a smile, but she knew without needing to see it that Emmy would read it as fake and awkward. Emmy snapped her head forward, re-folded the note, and wrote something on the outside in large block letters.

Riva’s stomach was twisting and sinking. Why hadn’t she had the guts to go up to Emmy and talk about this out loud? Then she might have had a chance to laugh this whole thing off, or explain something, or at least find out right away exactly how ridiculous Emmy thought she was.

The next several minutes were slow-motion torture. Emmy finished writing whatever it was, glared one more time at Riva, then passed the note to the girl on her left, not bothering to be discreet this time. The girl glanced down at the note, guffawed, and covered with a cough when Madame Bellamy fixed her with a stern expression.

“Excusez-moi,” the girl said quickly, then staged more coughing. The near miss slowed the progress of the note, as the other students waited for Madame Bellamy’s attention to return to her lesson before shunting it back onto the path to Riva.

Finally—finally—the boy in front of Riva bent to scratch his calf and, in the process, slipped the note under the toe of Riva’s sandal. She leaned down immediately to retrieve it, so anxious to relieve her suspense that she barely remembered to keep track of Madame Bellamy. He met her eyes as she snatched it off the floor, and smirked.

“Let me know how that works out for you.”

Riva jerked upright as if he’d slapped her. Her hands shook as she placed the note on the desk in front of her. Emmy’s reply made Riva fling her elbows onto the desk in hopes no one else would see those giant, easy-to-read letters.

“Sorry, you’ll have to find someone else to have a threesome with you and your gross boyfriend,” Emmy had written. She’d added a sarcastic, “Thanks, bai!!” complete with a smiley face and stars to match the ones Riva had drawn.

How had Emmy known? Riva had worried that the note sounded sleazy, but she hadn’t actually written anything sleazy.

Frantic, Riva counted and recounted the desks between herself and Emmy. At least three people had definitely seen the note. All of them, plus Emmy, were sneaking glances at Riva, obviously dying to know her reaction. She wished the floor would open below her and allow her to fall to an immediate and face-saving death. She wished she’d approached Emmy any other way. She wished she weren’t a boring coward who had also failed.