Free Unspoken: The Lynburn Legacy by Sarah Rees Brennan Page B

Angela!”
    “I had to work myself up to it,” Jared said. “I may have lost my head.”
    “I was acting on an impulse!” Kami said. “I still feel it was a sensible impulse.”
    “So what you’re saying is, we’re both crazy,” said Jared. “Well, this is going to be fun.” He risked a glance down, and the tension eased from his shoulders when he saw Kami was fully buttoned. The corner of his mouth went up again.
    Kami smiled up at him. Amusement passed between them, neither of them sure which was whose.
    The bell rang and Kami beamed. “Thank God, I have English class. I don’t have to explain things to Angela yet!” Since the bell meant Angela would be emerging from their office any minute, Kami set off at top speed. “Come on, Jared,” she called. “Time’s a-wasting. We don’t want to be tardy.”
    He followed her, keeping pace easily as she hurried down the stairs. “Look, you probably have the wrong idea about me. I mean, I read books, but I do it because I want to—because it’s like an escape in my head, like being with you. I always get in trouble in school.”
    “That’s because you’re a delinquent who punches people,” said Kami. “Not because you’re not smart.”
    “I’m not smart like you are.”
    “You’re not dumb.”
    “I was put in the year below you after they took one look at my records. I have to take some horrific exam called the GCSEs, whatever they may be. You sure about that?” Jared murmured.
    “Yes,” said Kami. “Keep up the pace. Angela moves like a jungle cat when she’s riled.”
    “So, my class is over that way,” Jared commented, making a vague gesture in the opposite direction to the one they were heading.
    “So go to it,” Kami advised.
    Jared continued to head the wrong way.
    Kami blinked and said, “I’ll see you at lunch? Angela and I are meeting up at the headquarters.”
    “Okay,” said Jared, and stopped. “No, wait. This hot girl with a bike. She asked me to have lunch with her on Monday.”
    “This hot girl with a bike,” Kami repeated. It certainly sounded better than “this creepy Asian girl.” Then she realized who he meant. “Holly. I’m an idiot.” She looked up to see Jared had his arms crossed over his chest and was frowning.
    “She seemed different than the way you think about her,” Jared said.
    “I imagine a guy would see Holly a bit differently than I do, yes,” Kami said. “All the guys love Holly.”
    “See, like that,” Jared said, and thought,
Dismissive
. “Like she’s not important.”
    “As opposed to ‘this hot girl with a bike’?” Kami said. “That was a deep observation.” She heard her own voice rise and saw people passing by on their way to class glancing at them with interest.
    Jared shrugged and scowled. “I barely know her. It’s just …”
    Thought and memory hit Kami, in a tangled rush, of being the kid in class with less money, being the one who people thought of as rough, dumber than the others.
    “No, wait a second,” Kami exclaimed, outraged. “I
like
Holly. And I’ve never thought about her having less money. I mean, I know she does, but I don’t think about it! It’s just she’s more—sort of more a boys’ girl than a girls’ girl, if you know what I mean. She’s not like you.”
    “I should hope not, I’m not anybody’s girl.” Jared raised an eyebrow. “If you’re calling her a floozy, I’m by way of being a bit of a floozy myself.”
    “Oh, Jared,” said Kami, who was well aware of his romantic experience, or total lack thereof. “You are not.”
    “Well, I have floozy ambitions.”
    Jared was leaning against the lockers now. Kami wondered if she should remind him that she was actually there, and he didn’t have to pretend not to be talking to someone. She also wondered how his floozy ambitions tied in with the fact that he’d said they should go out. But it was becoming clearer by the minute that that wasn’t really what he wanted.
    “Maybe you