“You’ve become pretty good friends with her, right?”
“Sort of. I guess. I mean, she’s been pretty nice to me. She has to be nice, because of the Magnolia thing.”
“Right. Well, sometimes I feel like she gets… distracted by something. It’s hard for her to focus on things like school. I mean, she’s really smart. Her grades are perfect, despite the fact that she never opens a book.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“Well, she indicated to me that she’s not even interested in going to college. She hasn’t even registered to take the SATs. But she’s so smart. I want her to be the first Magnolia to go somewhere. It’s time to break the trend.”
I nod. Sounds to me like a good one to break.
“So, if she wants to go to a good school, she needs to study and focus on the extracurricular stuff.” He looks at me coolly. “What do you think? Can you influence her?”
Wow. Hot-and-Weirdly-Shy Thaddeus wants my help? I turn red. “Hayes just has a lot going on,” I say. “Jason… her friends…”
“She doesn’t have that many friends.”
“She has us. And Orang-Anna… and those other girls who follow her around.”
“Orang-Anna?”
“Anna. The girl who’s always orange from the spray tan.”
Thaddeus’s lips quiver in a reluctant smile.
Score! Chunky Hippie Girl: 1 Smile Point.
“But I’ll talk to her. Sure. If you want.”
Thaddeus nods. “It would be great for her to get your perspective, because you’re so out there.”
“Out there?” I feel my cheeks getting hot with embarrassment. Does he mean that I’m fat? Or ugly? Do I smell weird?
Crap, crap, crap!
“You’ve been out there, I mean,” Thaddeus says, looking at the hoopers again. “Living on a farm in California… that’s a singular experience. Most kids in this country just hang out at the mall. It’s probably why you’re so comfortable with yourself.”
“Oh.” Now my face is totally purple for completely different reasons. “Well, that’s true. I’m… not really a mall queen. Or a shopper. Or whatever.”
Oh God, I’m such a dork.
“I really admire that about you.” (You do?) “I want my sister to get out there, too, you know? She’s beautiful, she’s bright, and she has financial freedom. She could be spending her summers in New York. Or Europe. There’s a summer program at Oxford that I know she’d love. But she seems completely uninterested.”
I kick at a rock with my toe. Does he know about the MGs? It’s obvious to me that Hayes doesn’t want to leave Savannah because she’s learning about the power of the spells. But my grandmother said the League’s hoodoo practice was a secret. It seems that Thaddeus is in the dark too.
“I’ll talk to her. Oxford sounds pretty cool.”
“Don’t tell her that I told you to do this,” he says. “She hates my involvement.”
“Okay,” I say, wishing I had a family member who cared enough about me to plot a scheme to bust me out of town.
We’re back in front of my grandmother’s house now. “I’d better get going,” he says. “I don’t want to run into Miss Lee.”
“Okay. See you at—” I stop mid-sentence. Thaddeus is suddenly looking at me intently. He leans closer.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Is he going to—
Then his reaches out and touches my necklace.
“What is this?” he asks, rubbing it with his fingers. He’s so close that I can smell his shampoo. Pert Plus, I think. Or maybe Pantene.
“Uh…” Focus, Alex. Focus. “A necklace. My mother’s, I mean. She always wore it. But it fell off before she died.”
“I see,” he says, turning it over in his hand. “It’s nice.”
“It’s supposed to be good luck or something.”
“Oh.” He drops the pendant. “All right. I should go now. See you.”
“See you.”
Thaddeus turns and heads down the street. Just hanging out with him for twenty minutes has bred an army of butterflies in my stomach.
Alex the hippie digs Thaddeus the prepster? Interesting. Veeerrrry interesting.
As I watch his retreating back, I reach up and touch my necklace. The rock is still warm from his hand.
Of course, once I think about it, I can’t seriously hope that a guy like Thaddeus would really like me, anyway. At school he never says anything to me but “hey.” Plus, it seems like he’s got other irons in the fire. A couple of days after our walk, I see him in a seriously intense talk with Madison. When they spot me biking toward them, they stop talking and walk away.
Whatever.
I manage to do what Thaddeus asked, though. And it’s not just because I have a crush