We Don't Talk Anymore (The Don't Duet #1) - Julie Johnson Page 0,38

escape this conversation.

Interrogation.

Grabbing a blank notebook, my lab goggles, and the first pencil I see, I shut my locker with a metallic slam and walk away without a word.

“Rude,” Ophelia declares.

“Totally,” Odette agrees.

Overhead, the tardy bell rings. I’m officially late for biology.

I sigh.

It’s going to be a long day.

Archer and I don’t share any classes together — something that normally annoys me. Today, it’s a blessing in disguise. I slug through biology lab, only half paying attention to the frog I’m supposed to be dissecting. Unfortunately — for my GPA as well as the amphibian — I end up extracting its liver instead of a kidney.

My teacher, Dr. Gilmore, seems more upset than I am. She’s accustomed to me being her star student, not phoning it in like one of the stoners.

“Are you feeling well, Miss Valentine?” She’s staring down at the liver-less frog in my tray, an indent between her auburn eyebrows. “I know you were out sick, yesterday…”

“I’m fine.”

“Well. I suppose even valedictorians have off days,” she clucks. “I’ll get you a fresh specimen so you can start over…”

I pull myself together long enough to survive the rest of the anatomy workshop, along with Chemistry and Physics. But in the back of my mind, lunchtime looms like an ever-darkening shadow. The whole senior class eats at the same time; no matter where I sit, I’m certain to cross Archer’s path.

As the clock marches onward toward noon, I fidget in my uniform, crossing and uncrossing my legs so many times, I’m sure the kid sitting next to me thinks I have a urinary tract infection. When the bell rings, I bolt from my seat like a sprinter off the blocks.

The Exeter cafeteria offers a meal service that makes most five-star hotel spreads look shabby. (Our exorbitant tuition fees, hard at work.) I typically load up my tray at the salad bar, then eat with Archer beneath our favorite tree in the courtyard — a spot we staked out at the start of senior year.

Right now, that’s definitely not an option.

I head for the parking lot instead. Sitting in the Porsche, I munch on stale trail mix, sip a grapefruit seltzer, and tell myself I’m perfectly fine.

So what if I have no other friends to sit with? At least I’m not a total loser, eating alone in a bathroom stall — which seems to happen in every high school movie I’ve ever seen.

So what if the boy I’ve loved forever doesn’t want anything to do with me, even in a platonic way? At least I never embarrassed myself by telling him how I really feel.

So what if the future I thought was certain is now nothing but a question mark? At least, in a few months, I’ll be away at college, starting fresh somewhere new.

I’m fine.

I’m fine.

I’m fine.

Except I’m not fine at all.

Chapter Twelve

ARCHER

Josephine Valentine is avoiding me.

Josephine Valentine is driving me insane.

Yesterday, there was the fake-sick routine. And I get it, I really do. I was a dick that night at the boathouse; she was understandably upset.

But when this morning rolled around, I went to pick her up at her front door only to have my father inform me — quite merrily, I may add — that she’d already left. In the Porsche, no less.

She knows how I feel about the Porsche.

I pulled into the parking lot just in time to see her walking into school with Snyder, practically swooning as the fuckhead held the door open for her. I almost crashed my truck, craning my neck to keep them in my sights.

Since then, she’s turned into a goddamn ghost — never in any of the places I look for her. Not the courtyard at lunch, not her locker between classes, not the Creative Arts wing where they keep the industrial sewing machine she uses for her fashion designs. I hit dead end after dead end, never catching more than a glimpse of her across a crowded hallway.

The flash of a fishtail braid.

A fragment of her laughter.

You can’t be anywhere near her, I remind myself over and over, stalking the halls like a penned-in tiger at the zoo. Not until things with Jaxon are under control. Not until it’s safe.

But taking care of Jo is an impulse ingrained so deeply inside my psyche, it’s not easy to shake. I can’t stand the thought of her being isolated at school; left alone at the popular kids’ mercy without me there to intervene. It’s driving me to utter distraction.

And distraction is