Dominion (Guardian Angels) - By Melody Manful Page 0,39
returned with a tray of food, which he placed in front of me. Smiling up at him, I took the juice from the tray and started to take a sip, but the moment I did, someone shouted from behind us. Half the people in the cafeteria looked toward the voice.
“Yes, I’d love to!” Behind us knelt a guy, giving a girl a bouquet of flowers.
“That’s so sweet,” Sarah swooned.
“What just happened?” Gideon asked.
“The school’s thirtieth anniversary is next Friday, and he just asked her to go with him to the dance the school is throwing,” Danny explained. “You guys will be going, right?”
“Do we have to?” Gideon asked.
“No,” Jake answered, “but I’m going to be taking Doreen,”
“Dude, the girl has a restraining order on you,” Sarah said, and we all laughed. “She wouldn’t go with you if you were the last guy on the planet.”
Jake took a bite of his sandwich, ignoring our laughter. “Who are you going with, Danny? Asked Lois Lane yet?”
“I’ll ask someone, and she will say yes.”
“You forgot the fork, Gideon,” Tristan said as he looked at the salad sitting on my tray.
Gideon shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”
He leaned toward me and said, “You have something behind your ear.” Then he pretended to pull a fork out. Everyone at the table gasped in surprise when his hand actually revealed a fork.
“Wow, Houdini,” Jake exclaimed, “where did that come from?”
“Here you go,” Gideon said as he held the fork out to me with a flourish.
“So, Great Bikini, are you—” Danny started.
“It’s Houdini, genius,” Jake corrected Danny. “Bikini—where do you come up with this stuff?”
While we laughed, Caleb, the captain of the football team and a handsome charmer, walked over to our table. A few of his teammates stood behind him.
When Caleb called Sarah’s name, we turned around to see him go down on one knee. He and a few of his teammates were dressed in suits, and they all held flowers. Sarah gasped when she saw them. Caleb asked her if she would do him the honor of being his date to the dance. She screamed, “YES!”
Then, one by one, his teammates handed her the flowers, and some people in the cafeteria clapped.
“I can’t believe even you have a date,” Jake said, frowning.
Sarah said to me, “I so wish you would go.”
For some reason, I felt sad that no one was going to do something that nice and special for me.
Tristan sounded surprised when he asked, “You’re not going?”
“No one ever asks me to these things. The last time someone did, my bodyguards ended up interrogating him and scared him away.” They laughed.
“I’m sure someone will ask you,” Sarah said. She was always hopeful. “If not, you can share my date.”
“Thank you, but I just ordered a new book.” I had convinced myself that I didn’t care about going to the dance. I would be fine staying home. After all, my father had promised to visit.
“Well, I think that even though you’re not going, you deserve to have a rose.” My heart leaped with joy when Gideon said this.
With a wave of Gideon’s hands, a beautiful red rose appeared.
“Dude!” Jake shouted, while both Sarah’s mouth and mine fell open. “That is amazing. Teach me that so that I can do it for Doreen.”
Gideon faced me.
“A rose for a rose,” he said as he handed me the rose.
And without as much as a breath, I did it—I allowed myself to fall.
LA BELLA E LA BESTIA
*Gideon*
“It is better to be feared than loved,
if you cannot be both.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
“It seems as if your fake friendship with Abigail is working,” Tristan said a few moments after Abigail walked out of the classroom with her friends. “Are you going to ask her to the dance?” I looked around the empty classroom.
“Oh,” I said. “You’re talking to me.”
“Yes. Are you planning on asking her to the dance so you can keep pretending to be her friend?” Why was he talking to me?
“You give me the creeps, you know that?” Everything about Tristan made me nauseous.
“I figured.” He walked over to where I sat, smiling as if he’d just won the lottery. “So?”
“Why would I ask that stupid human girl to a useless human event?” I asked, quite annoyed. I spend some earthly time with him, and all of a sudden we were friends? “You know that the only reason I’m entertaining her is so that I can—”
“Abigail!” Tristan blurted, and I turned to the door just in time to see Abigail run