was reacting in all kinds of weird and crazy ways which I was trying desperately to ignore as he found my pulse.
“Hmm,” he murmured. “Your pulse is jumping all over the place. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said tightly, trying not to look at him because I was afraid I’d get that same freaky optical illusion of his face that I had when I was touching him a minute earlier. “I’m just fi—”
And that’s when my cell phone started to ring.
I knew it was mine because the ring tone was the Bach Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude. Yeah, I know I’m a geek but it so happens that I like classical music and I’m not ashamed of it.
Or I wasn’t until my phone started blaring in the middle of AP Biology.
Mr. Barron’s head jerked up at once like a dog on a scent.
“All right—whose is it?” He sounded like a dog too—his voice was a low, angry growl.
I felt my stomach drop all the way down to my school-issued Mary Janes. Mr. Barron had actually been known to suspend people for cell phone infractions and a suspension does not look good on a college application. Especially when you don’t have the money for college so you’re trying to get a scholarship to get out of this crappy little town in the first place.
In an instant I saw my whole life flash before my eyes.
I saw myself suspended for my cell phone, then refused any kind of scholarship, then stuck waitressing at the I-Scream, U-Scream ice cream parlor slash diner, which is currently my after-school job, for the rest of my life.
All because I forgot to put my damn cell phone on silent.
Bran seemed to understand at once what was going on—I must have looked really panicked and guilty. That or else my pulse, which he was still taking, had suddenly gone into overdrive.
“It’s yours?” he asked me in a low voice.
I gave a quick, jerky nod, unable to speak.
“All right,” Mr. Barron snarled, slapping down his cup of coffee so hard that the bitter brown liquid slopped over the side and splattered his newspaper. “I said whose is it?”
“Which pocket?” Bran asked me softly.
I frowned at him, what was he planning to do?
“Number seventeen,” I whispered back.
He nodded and then looked at the shoe rack, concentrating so hard it almost seemed like he was trying to burn a hole in the plastic pocket which held my phone with his eyes. I thought I saw him whispering something to himself but none of the words I heard made sense to me. They sounded like they were in some other language—one I’d never heard before.
Suddenly my phone cut off in mid-ring. I threw an amazed glance at Bran. Did he do that or was it just a coincidence?
Whichever it is I wasn’t out of hot water yet. Mr. Barron was stalking over to the phone holder, a scowl still on his face. He looked like he was dying to suspend someone.
“Whose was that?” he demanded, glaring at the class. “I don’t care that it stopped ringing, whoever owns that phone had better come up here and turn it off now so it doesn’t ring again. If you get up here quick I might only give you detention for a month.”
Detention for a month? That would spell the end of my after-school job and then I wasn’t sure how Mom and I would make ends meet. She earned enough as a medical transcriptionist to pay the rent on our crappy little apartment and keep the electric on but my salary from the I Scream was what mostly bought the groceries and paid the water bill.
Still, detention was better than suspension. Maybe my boss, Joey down at the I Scream would let me take a leave of absence or maybe just come in an hour later. I doubted it—he wasn’t exactly the most understanding manager—but I had nothing else to hope for.
Slowly, I began to raise my hand.
Only to hear Bran say, “Excuse me, Mr. Barron—I’m afraid that was my phone. It sounded like my ring-tone, anyway.”
“All right then get up here and turn it off, O’Connor,” Mr. Barron snarled. “And you can count yourself lucky all you get is detention.”
“Yes, Sir.”
As I stared incredulously, Bran made his way to the front of the room, fished my phone out of pocket seventeen, and turned it off. Thank goodness I didn’t have an overly-girly phone case like Morganna’s. My plain green case really did