Dead Silence

“You ready?” Jay asked when he found them, and Violet lifted her eyebrows at Chelsea, silently asking her if she was through.

Glaring, Chelsea made a disgusted sound and studied Violet with pinched lips, but she didn’t say anything else.

Then, just as she was about to leave them, to go the opposite direction toward her class, Chelsea lifted her first two fingers up to her eyes and then pointed back at Violet, the universal sign for I’m watching you.

Jay looked confused. “What was that all about?” he asked.

Sighing, Violet leaned into him as they walked, feeling the burden of too many secrets weighing on her. “Chelsea thinks I’m hiding something from her.”

He snorted and pointed out the obvious. “If she only knew.” But before Violet could punch him in the arm, they reached her classroom and he stopped short. He scowled, but not at Violet; it was meant for Rafe, who was waiting for Violet, leaning against the wall, wearing a smug grin on his face.

Jay had accepted the fact that Rafe would be at their school every day, but she knew it bothered him. How could it not? It bothered her, and he was her friend.

“You okay?” Violet asked, shifting on her feet to block his view of Rafe, forcing him to look at her instead.

Jay exhaled noisily. “Everything’s . . . fine.” He smiled at her, and Violet’s heart shuddered. She didn’t try to stop him when he closed the gap between them, his lips finding hers in a deep—and territorial—kiss.

When he was finished, she couldn’t find her voice for a long, breathless moment. “That was for him, wasn’t it?”

“The kiss? Nah, that was for you, Vi. Only for you.”

She giggled. “I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of some kind of tug-of-war. Only I’m the rope and you two are trying to pull me apart.”

“Don’t kid yourself, you’re not the rope, you’re the prize.” Jay’s lazy grin reached all the way to his eyes. “And, for the record, I’ve already won.”

Violet shook her head. “It’s not a contest, Jay,” she replied as she started to walk away.

But Jay put his hand over hers, pulling her back for one final kiss. “I know, Vi.”

When she passed him on her way into the classroom, Rafe scowled. “Nice show,” he bit out acerbically. Violet tried to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about as she headed down the row of desks to her seat.

“Whatever,” Violet answered, not wanting to have this discussion.

Guys are ridiculous, she decided as she kept walking, glad Rafe was behind her and couldn’t see the scowl on her face.

If only it were that simple, because then it was Rafe stopping her. Rafe with his electric touch, and when his fingers reached for hers, she couldn’t help jolting. “Sara told me,” he said, his voice so quiet Violet could barely hear it above her music-box imprint. “About what you read in your grandmother’s diary.” His eyes were deep and mesmerizing, and Violet told herself it didn’t matter because Jay already had her. “She also said you told her your friend didn’t do it,” he whispered.

Violet glanced around, wishing that everyone had heard the truth in those last words, but knowing they couldn’t. Yet all she could say was, “He’s not my friend.”

Through the cafeteria window, Violet could see Chelsea and Rafe sitting on the grass in the quad, rather than at their usual table. While the weather cooperated, the grassy area out in the courtyard, and benches surrounding it, was crowded during the lunch hours. After that, when the rain returned, or when it was too cold to be comfortable, only the loners—either by choice or by circumstance—would continue eating out there, sitting alone and thumbing their noses at the rest of the school for forsaking them.

But for now, as the sun beat down, and students crowded every open space, eating outside didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Violet had expected to interrupt another lopsided conversation, in which Chelsea talked and talked, and talked some more, while Rafe only half listened, nodding occasionally so she wouldn’t think he was a total D-bag. As far as Violet could tell, that was about as far as his social charms extended . . . to attempt to tolerate those around him.

Except that wasn’t what she walked into at all. It wasn’t until that very moment, when Violet approached the two of them, Chelsea sitting with her legs crossed in front of her, and Rafe sitting up, leaning one elbow on his knee, that she realized just how chummy the two of them had gotten. So much so, that she heard Rafe, his voice as low as ever, actually responding when Chelsea asked what he was reading.

When he told her it was Catcher in the Rye, Chelsea cast him a knowing grin and said boldly, “‘In my mind, I’m probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw.’”

Rafe laughed then, and Violet froze in place, trying to figure out what had just happened. Trying to unsort the jumble of emotions that knotted tightly in her chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe.

Rafe’s laugh was such a foreign sound. Of course Violet had heard him laugh before, but never that kind of laugh. An encouraging one. A flirtatious one. And that’s what that laugh had been, Violet was sure of it. They were sitting there, in the quad at school . . . flirting. With each other.

Violet took an uncertain step backward, thinking that sitting outside might not have been such a great idea after all. Suddenly all this fresh air was making her woozy. Or possibly it was the company. Either way, her head was spinning and she felt like she might be coming down with something.