Last Year's Mistake - Gina Ciocca Page 0,33

mittens over her undoubtedly manicured hands.

Seriously, mittens? Call me crazy, but I preferred not to have my hands melded into a unifinger if I could help it.

I looked past her and sent a feeble wave in Maddie’s direction. She responded with a limp flop of her hand that looked more like an attempt to flick snow off her glove than a greeting to someone she’d known forever. Maybe it made sense. She knew me, but I didn’t know her at all anymore.

“Hey, David,” Isabel said with an unmistakably flirtatious lilt. I pretended to brush off the sled as I rolled my eyes. Ever since things with David and Amy had cooled, Isabel had been eyeing him the way a hungry vulture eyes fresh roadkill. Apparently she’d chosen her moment to swoop in for dinner.

“Thanks again for helping me with my math homework on Friday,” she cooed.

Exactly what had I missed when I’d been out on Friday?

“No problem. Let me know if you’re still having trouble, and we can go over it again,” David replied.

Oh, of course. David and I had the same free period, and we always went to the cafeteria to do homework. Normally we were in one corner while David helped me with my math homework. He was in all honors classes for math, and it was disgusting how he could make perfect sense of the problems with almost no instruction. Isabel’s group sat in another corner—painting their nails, flipping their hair, reapplying their makeup. Definitely not doing homework. More than once I swore I caught Isabel giving me dirty looks, but I always thought they were residuals from the sloppy joe incident. Now I realized she’d been waiting for me to get the hell out of her way.

I stifled a laugh as I pictured a vulture screeching toward spilled innards on the pavement.

Isabel’s grin stretched wider, revealing even more of her white teeth. “I might take you up on that. In the meantime, we noticed, um, your sled is kind of puny—” She peeked around him at our sled, studiously ignoring Miranda and me as if the Walmart-issue “puny” thing were standing up in the snow of its own accord. “And I thought I’d ask if you want to ride with me this time. We brought a toboggan. It’s huge.”

David glanced over her shoulder to Maddie and Jared and company. Their faces lit up and arms stretched into the air in greeting. Okay, so Maddie did remember how to execute a proper wave. Good to know.

“Come on over!” she called. “You’re missing out!” She patted the toboggan the way a cowboy would pat the rear end of his trusty steed.

“Oooh, a toboggan,” I said under my breath before I could stop myself.

Isabel’s head snapped toward me, and she finally looked at me. “Is there a problem, Kelsey?”

She knew my name? Isabel was a junior, and I always assumed she knew me as Maddie’s Friend or the Sloppy Joe Girl.

“Nope, no problem. Isabel.”

Using her name didn’t rattle her at all. She gave me a bored look before breaking out another smile for David. “So come on. If you want, we can race your friends.” The word “friends” came out flat and was accompanied by another cursory glance in my direction. Like it physically hurt her eyes to look away from him.

David turned to me, an almost guilty look on his face. “Would you guys mi—”

“Nope,” I interrupted. “Go ahead. We’ll catch up with you later.”

He shook his head. “Nah, I should stay—”

“David.” I said it a little more sharply than necessary, then purposely softened my tone. “It’s fine. We’ll be here when you get back.”

His face broke into a grin. “I know. I’m your ride.” With that, he turned to Isabel, and I swore her lip curled in smug triumph. As they started off together, I heard him say, “So are you pretty comfortable with linear equations now? They’re not so bad, right?”

Oh, David, David. Did he honestly believe she’d needed help with her math homework? For someone so smart, he could be pretty dense at times. Unless, of course, he was playing along. Flirting back. The thought made me frown.

“You’re the one who said it was okay, dummy. Don’t pout now.” Miranda’s arms were folded across her chest, as if the look on my face had personally offended her. Sometimes that child needed a major attitude adjustment.

“I’m not pouting! I just—don’t like her that much.”

“Do you even know her?”

“I know enough.”

Miranda smiled. “Don’t worry. I don’t like