brought us to a stop. His warm brown eyes met mine. “We played soccer outside for PE.”
That explained it. He not only smelled like outside, his hair was windblown, and his cheeks were flushed. “Did your team win?”
That made him grin. “We did.”
Of course, they did. But now what? He still held me in the circle of his arms. The hall had thinned out as people hurried out to their cars or to catch the bus home.
“Do you have practice?” It was weird. We’d had so much fun together Saturday night wrapping the principal’s house in plastic wrap, but that had been a few days ago. I hadn’t seen much of him or talked to him since then.
Taggish sighed and let his arms slide from around my waist to drop at his sides. “Yeah. I have to get going, too, or Coach will have my butt.” He grinned, reminding me of how charming he could be. “I was just thinking about our next thing. You still want to do it, don’t you?”
I bit the inside of my lip to keep myself from smiling at him so hard. “Yeah. I mean, I think so. What did you have in mind?” At this point, I’d probably agree to just about anything, but just in case.
“I can’t tell you,” he said as he began walking, grabbing my hand and tugging me along beside him. “Because then, I would have to kill you.”
I bumped his hip with mine. “I don’t know if I should agree to do anything else with you without knowing what I’m up against first. I learned my lesson last time.”
Taggish gasped playfully. “What? You don’t trust me? I’m hurt, Mara. Besides, the whole point of all this is to get you to loosen up. You’re going to have to take a leap of faith.”
Take a leap of faith?
When did I ever do that? I hated leaving things up to chance. I liked being in control. I liked knowing the outcome of things. Get good grades—get into a good school. Obey the rules—never get in trouble. Follow the instructions—never be embarrassed by mistakes. It was how I lived my life.
But I hadn’t done any of those things on Saturday. On Saturday, with Taggish, I’d thrown caution to the wind when I got out of the front seat of his car and wrapped the principal’s house with a giant roll of plastic wrap.
And what had happened?
I’d had fun.
I’d trusted Taggish, and he’d been right. It was fun, and we didn’t get in trouble. In fact, principal and vice-principal Gentry had posted a photo of our handiwork on the school’s Twitter account. #seniorprank
They had known who’d done it. And no one had even gotten detention.
What could be the harm in trusting Taggish one more time?
“Okay. I’m in. Just tell me when and where.”
Taggish grinned and squeezed my hand before letting it go. We’d reached the door leading to the student parking lot, and he needed to get to practice.
“I’ll let you know.” He started walking backward. “Soon. So be ready.” With one final, wicked grin, he disappeared around a corner, leaving me staring after him.
Who would have thought? Little miss uptight and the class troublemaker.
I didn’t hear from Taggish again until the next week. At least, not about that. I did see him, though, and we talked a couple of times. I found out the baseball team won their second game and that he’d scraped the entire side of his left leg sliding into first base. He showed me his battle wounds when I spotted them from my upstairs window as he took out the trash.
But he hadn’t made any move to engage in conversation or spend any time with me, and I realized I was disappointed. Which was silly. Taggish might have kissed me, but he’d only done it to get back at me for being on his case all the time. It wasn’t like he liked me.
And taking me with him to prank the Gentrys? Well, he'd dared me to do something outside my comfort zone. It had nothing to do with either of us liking each other. Though I thought we’d both had fun.
Even in the car, when he held my knee, and I’d held his arm, or when he’d hugged me outside the art room the other day—I figured he was just a touchy-feely guy, and none of those things really meant anything.
At least, not to him.
I arrived at school on Friday morning, almost a week after our prank,