If I wanted to know Nate's feelings, I had to test them.
Since I wasn't Claudia, my test wasn't baroque. The next day, Friday, I simply didn't go out to the rock at lunchtime. Not right away and not after my usual lag time. I forced myself to stay in my car and eat my Zone bar with teeny, tiny bites, chewing thirty times before I swallowed. It was meditative, actually, and gave me something to concentrate on other than how Nate might—or might not—be reacting to my absence.
With five minutes left to the period, I hunkered down in my beast of a pea coat and made my way to the rock. My heart pounded. I glued my eyes to each skeletally leafless tree I passed, stretching time before I'd see what I wasn't sure I wanted to know: whether or not Nate had cared enough to leave the rock and look for me.
My insides deflated when I saw him, same as always, playing his guitar without a care in the world. I had another physical flashback to last night, but this time I didn't feel a shivery jolt. I felt stupid and embarrassed.
I was close enough now for Nate to notice. He smiled up at
HIT › me. Hey.
Normally, this was when he'd pull me close for a kiss, but I purposely stood out of his reach. He beckoned for me to come closer, but I didn't move. For the first time with Nate, I didn't have to concentrate on squelching my normal curly-haired energy. I had never felt less curly and bouncy than I did now.
"You don't look worried." I tried to sound nonchalant, but even I could hear the bitterness in my words. Not cool, but I couldn't help it.
"About what?"
"I always meet you during fifth period. Today I didn't."
He looked at me pointedly, clearly noting that I was indeed right there in front of him during fifth period. The fact that he was right didn't make me any less upset.
"Okay, I'm here now, but didn't you wonder where I was? What if I'd been sick, or hurt?"
"You weren't," Nate said.
"Yeah, but I could have been!" I screeched just as the bell rang. Without a word, Nate rose and strode toward the building. Halfway there he turned and looked back at me.
"I'm around later if you want to come over and study," he said, then kept walking.
I was floored. Seriously, I couldn't have been more offended if he'd asked if I wanted to go drown puppies. He didn't get it! Like I would actually want to go wade through pot smoke and get half-naked with him when he didn't care about me at all!
My shock didn't wear off. I spent the rest of the afternoon with my mouth hanging open. Our whole situation—our whole relationship, if that's what you could call it, which clearly you couldn't—was exactly what I'd feared. No matter how close we were physically, emotionally I meant absolutely nothing to Nate. But did that matter to him? Did that stop him? No. Nate Wetherill was evil. Pure, unadulterated evil. By the end of seventh-period AP U.S. history I had proof. Know what you get when you rearrange the letters in Nate Wetherill? HATE WILL ENTER.
Halfway through eighth-period physics, I had transformed my pencil and some paper clips into an excellent Nate Wetherill voodoo doll and was mercilessly grinding another paper clip into its groin. The whole enterprise felt immensely satisfying.
"Cara Leonard!" called Mr. Feinhorn. "Why does that not disprove Einstein's theory of relativity?"
Uh-oh. Apparently we were in the middle of a lecture, but I hadn't heard a single word of it. I palmed the voodoo doll and racked my brain for any information that didn't have to do with my undying animosity toward Nate. I found none.
"Um, because ... because..." I scrunched my whole face as if struggling for the answer. I practically broke a sweat.
Mr. Feinhorn wasn't impressed. He sighed, then called on Seth Minkoff, who dutifully responded, "Because it was an invalid test."
"Yes," said Mr. Feinhorn. " That is the answer, Cara. It was an invalid test."
Mr. Feinhorn looked me in the eye as he said it, and suddenly I understood. Not the Einstein stuff—I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about there. But the invalid test— that made sense. Nate had failed an invalid test. He and I hadn't made specific plans to meet at the rock today, so it's not like I'd actually missed a set appointment. Sure, I usually