Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) - Maureen Johnson Page 0,45
themselves for a moment, until David came out of the dining hall, his unruly hair sticking up at odd angles. He still hadn’t changed out of the clothes from the night before. Stevie had that same quiver of recognition, like he was someone she knew well. But there was no way they could have met before.
“Hello,” he said much too loudly as he sat down. “You love looking at me. I get it. You didn’t drink that, did you?”
He pointed at the bottle of soda in front of Stevie.
“I got it for you,” Stevie said, pushing the bottle his way.
Ellie smiled and stretched out on the bench, putting her bare feet in David’s lap.
“Bad news, Hayes,” he said. “Someone was watching you last night.”
He passed his phone down the table.
“Looks like we have our own personal TMZ,” David said. “Someone named Germaine Batt?”
As he spoke, Stevie felt a ripple in the air around them. People had been looking, and now there was an undercurrent of chatter.
“Your girlfriend is going to be pissed,” David observed.
Hayes looked at the screen but didn’t seem disturbed by what he saw.
“Oh well,” he said, passing it back to David.
“Guess that’s what happens when you’re famous,” David said. “Eyes everywhere.”
For no reason Stevie could determine, Ellie put her foot in David’s face, and he bit it. She screamed with laughter. It just happened, out of the blue—something that weird and familiar. Stevie felt her insides flex and twist a bit, and a flush of anxiety run through her system.
Vi and Janelle exchanged looks. Nate stubbornly refused to look up. Hayes didn’t feel like he was really part of the group at all, somehow.
Stevie felt very alone, except for a bee that had decided to linger by her ear and buzz furiously. Stevie was all right with being alone, generally, but this felt like she was being severed from the group bit by bit.
You can always come home . . .
When she got back to her room, Stevie sat on the floor for a bit, looking at her research board.
What if this place wasn’t different? What if it was, as Ellie said, all bunnies on a hillside? She had come here because it was supposed to be different. What had she expected?
She drummed her fingers on the floor for a moment and stared at the faces of the Ellingham family. Then she pulled her computer out of her bag. She couldn’t sit there entertaining these kinds of thoughts. If she could learn some more about the people around her, maybe that would help.
First, David. What was his deal? His last name, she knew from the student registry, was Eastman. David Eastman was a fairly common name, so there was a lot to sort through, dozens and dozens of search results. She added Ellingham. She added California. She looked up and down through every social media platform. An hour passed, and her butt grew numb as she sat in the same scrunched position, her computer pressed between her chest and her knees. The more she looked, the less David seemed to exist. No profiles anywhere.
“Where the hell are you?” she mumbled to herself.
There was a knock on her door and a gentle push. Janelle appeared in the space.
“Hey,” she said. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Stevie slapped the computer shut.
Janelle fluttered in. She had a delicate way of walking on the balls of her feet, lifting the hem of her long sundress from the ground. Unlike Stevie, who was once again in black shorts (there had been a three-for-two deal and she got three pairs, all black), Janelle looked like a summer picnic. A faint scent of orangey perfume wafted from her as she moved. Her braided hair was coiled precisely on the top of her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said, coming and sitting on the floor opposite Stevie.
“For what?”
“I ignored you at lunch. I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s okay,” Stevie said. “You were . . .”
“Yeah,” Janelle said, unable to contain a smile. She tucked her long floral dress around her knees and pulled the material taut. “You know I broke up with my girlfriend in the spring.”
“You told me.”
“And I didn’t think . . . but Vi? I don’t know. I just . . . I don’t want to be that person who gets obsessed and ignores their friends.”
Stevie felt a warm sensation all over, and something in her released that she didn’t know she’d been holding.