Another thought occurred to me. “Stacey, do you have a crush on someone over there?” Her cheeks heated with embarrassment and she looked down at her lunch to avoid eye contact with us. Please don’t say you have a crush on Jagger, please don’t say you have a crush on Jagger ...
“Brett Cooper is taking art this year. He sits at my table and actually talks to me,” she said, throwing a pained expression over her shoulder. “He’s nice to me in class, but it’s like I don’t exist outside of the art room.”
Then Brett Cooper is a jerk and not nice at all.
Then again, Jagger didn’t know my real identity yet. Once he found out I was quiet, lame, average Olivia Miller he might prefer to only talk to me in his head, too. After all, in high school image was everything.
In the grand scheme of life, high school was only a blip on the radar. Why waste my time on the perfect clothes, perfect haircut, right friends, or flashy car when there was somebody in the world that hunted me and wanted to study me in a lab like a rat?
People lived until they were ninety years old or older. What you did or did not do in high school was no longer relevant once you were out of it. When you go off to college and leave your friends behind, you could be anyone. College was much more accepting than high school—or so I was told.
High school was a special sort of hell. You had friends that you knew in kindergarten and you all got along with each other. You kept those same friends through elementary school and then came the black hole of middle school that sucked you in, ripped you apart, and then sent you spiraling to whatever level of the social atmosphere you’d be parked on until high school graduation. I was currently in the stratosphere where nothing happened. It was a good place for me all things considered.
“He doesn’t smile at you or acknowledge you in any other way ever?” Megan asked. “Do you have any other classes together?”
Stacey shook her head. “No, just art. I’m pathetic, I know.”
“You are not pathetic,” Megan insisted. “He’s the pathetic one if he thinks it’s cool to talk to you and be friends in art where his friends can’t see and then treats you like a pariah the rest of the day. You’re better than that, Stacey.”
It was true, she didn’t deserve that treatment. No one did, but the hive mind of the clique was an enigma. Not only did the popular crowd act like they were better than everybody else, but other kids were so unsure of themselves that the clique could make them think they were better than everybody else. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Clearly, she did not have to tackle high school as we know it today.
My mind started to wander as the lunch hour crawled by. Stacey picked at her food and Megan continued to lecture her about the way boys should act. In reality, Megan was jealous that Stacey had a crush—and one that sort of spoke to her—and Megan was basically in romance exile. She was beautiful, with deep auburn hair and bright green eyes. She was brilliant, in all honors classes, up on current events in the federal government, foreign policy, and social issues trending in the country today. She was also a hardcore feminist. Most of the guys in our class thought she was a lesbian, which was a total stereotype. Either way, she scared the hell out of them.
When the bell rang, I hung back and watched Jagger. He’d barely engaged with his friends the entire lunch hour. I gave him his privacy. Maybe that was the problem. When he crossed the cafeteria, I stopped myself from sighing over how good looking he was. Jagger was about five-ten and ripped. He stayed in shape during the off-season between football and baseball. He also had a black belt in martial arts. That, he had done for me. And I am not going to lie, it made my heart go a flutter when I discovered he was learning it just in case he ever had to physically defend me.
I may have been utterly repulsed by the social hierarchy that existed at Alpine Valley High, but I was still a girl, and my heart still melted over his devotion.
He paused at the door, turned his head over his shoulder, and looked directly at me. Crap. That was unexpected. My gaze locked on his, and I was sucked into those eyes. From this distance, you couldn’t make out what color they were, but I knew they were chocolate brown. He hated them because he thought they were ordinary. To me they looked like tiger eyes with little flecks of gold in them. All he saw when he looked in the mirror was ordinary brown hair and brown eyes.
He was anything, but ordinary.
“Tell him.” It was the “voice” of my grandfather, and I was jolted by his sudden presence in my mind. I could also feel Jagger prodding, trying to get in. He was checking to see if it was me. If I was his Supergirl. My grandfather was insistent. “I need him to know now, Livvy! Either you tell him yourself or I do, and he gets mad that it didn’t come from you. It’s time.”
Jagger squinted his eyes just a bit. This was the first time he got this close to guessing who I was. I should have known he would eventually figure it out. I grabbed my stuff and hurried out the other door, but in my haste, I slammed into somebody walking by. We went down in a tumble of curses and grunts. Jagger was instantly at my side and trying to gather up what he thought might be mine.
“What the hell?” The boy I had knocked over said, standing up. I looked up. I didn’t know the guy’s name, but he was a junior. “Look where you’re freaking going.”
Then Jagger stood up to his full height. He had a few inches on the kid and the other boy cowered. “Sorry, DeWinter. Didn’t see you. No worries.” Jagger wasn’t a bully, but he could intimidate the hell out of someone with just a look. The kid scrambled off, not willing to get on Jagger’s bad side.
Then it was just the two of us.
I held my breath as Jagger and I stared at each other—me on the floor and him standing above me like an avenging angel. He was, to use the simplest word, lovely. He held his hand out extended down to me, and I glanced at it before looking back up to him. This was the very moment both of us had dreamed about—and at the same time, a moment I had never wanted to happen. Once I took his hand, he would be in danger too. I didn’t know why my grandfather had decided to fully expose us to Jagger. Grandpa knew how I felt about involving him. When I had first connected with him, I was too young to understand the consequences of my actions. I was just so happy to finally find someone like me. Proof that I wasn’t as weird as I thought since here was this boy—this wonderfully, amazing boy—that not only understood me but could communicate with me.
His hand still hung in front of me, and I looked at it like it was a lifeline and a hot burner all at once.
“Please.”
My gaze snapped up to his, and I scrambled to my feet without touching him. “Don’t do that,” I said in a harsh whisper. “You have to talk to me. Nobody can have the slightest inkling of what is going on between us. Our lives depend on it, Jagger. Do you understand me?”
Only I don’t think he heard a word I said. His eyes traveled over my face like he was looking at a priceless work of art—like van Gogh’s Starry Night or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel—with a reverence I had never seen before. I realized that this was a much bigger moment for him than it was for me.
He dropped his backpack off his shoulder and both hands gently came up to cup my face. “Olivia Miller,” he said softly, his fingertips just lightly grazing my skin. “It’s you, you’re real.”