Free Blackwood: A Hexed Story by Michelle Krys Page B

realize I’m a loser and ditch me, but it’s already halfway through September and so far that hasn’t happened.
    “Hey, Jess. What’s up?”
    “Ugh, I stayed up until, like, one o’clock watching
The Vampire Diaries
when I should have been studying for the history test. This is going to be ugly.”
    I laugh. “I’m sure you’ll do fine, Miss 4.0 Average.”
    “Seriously, this time I think I’ll be lucky if I get a C.”
    I roll my eyes. Jessie is this total brainiac who never studies and still gets all As. I’d think it was annoying if she weren’t so damn nice. It’s impossible to dislike her.
    “What’d you do last night?” she asks.
    “Nothing interesting. Read a book.”
    “Oh yeah? What?”
    “It’s this really cool book about…”
    My words stutter to a halt when I spot He-Who-Can’t-Be-Named, play tackling one of the other football players against a locker while a half-dozen mindless cheerleaders watch on. He’s wearing a white T-shirt that stretches tight against his broad chest and a letterman’s jacket that’s faded on the elbows. His bright red hair sticks up in adorable tufts all over his head, and his freckled cheeks are rosy from the workout.
    Jessie clears her throat, a mischievous smile on her face. “Jarrod’s looking cute today, don’t you think?”
    “What? Oh, sure…if you go for that sort of thing.”
    She raises an eyebrow at me.
    As if on cue, Jarrod looks over and gives me a little grin that makes my cheeks burst into flames. I smile back at him, this shy smile I didn’t even know I was capable of.
    Jarrod isn’t what you would call traditionally good-looking. He’s got an interesting-shaped nose, his eyes are just a little bit too close together, and he’s the type of tall that’s a bit oafish, like he doesn’t know what to do with all those extra inches. But despite all that, my stomach goes into Cirque du Soleil mode at the mere sight of him.
    “Care to tell me what’s going on?” Jessie asks.
    “Nothing,” I insist, but it sounds like a lie even to me.
    “Please,” Jessie says. “You guys were like, totally eyeball-screwing each other just now.”
    I bark a laugh. “Please, we were so not ‘eyeball-screwing’ each other, whatever that means.” Were we eyeball-screwing each other?
    “You were biting your lip,” she points out.
    “I was?”
    “Yep.”
    Ugh. How mortifying.
    “So what’s this about? Do you
like
him like him or what?” she asks.
    “No, it’s just…”
    Just what?
    I don’t know how it all happened. I signed up to tutor students for extra credit in the summer. When I walked into the library and saw Jarrod waiting for me, I almost turned right back around. Hanging out with Bianca’s crowd?
So
not high on my list of priorities. Teaching algebra to the guy who blows spitballs during lessons seemed especially unappealing.
    But then, somewhere between sine and cosine, I discovered that Jarrod’s actually a really sweet guy. By our third meet-up, our chemistry was off the charts—math had never been so stimulating. I kept expecting him to make a move, ask me out or just do
something
, but he never did. In my mind, we had steamy makeout sessions on top of the copy machine in the library, but in reality, the closest we’d come was being huddled over the same textbook, our fingers “accidentally” brushing each other’s as we both went to flip a page.
    I glance over my shoulder and catch him looking at me again.
    “Look who it is!”
    Bianca’s voice stiffens my spine. She leans against a bank of lockers next to Jarrod, flanked on either side by Dumb Cheerleader A (aka Julia) and Dumb Cheerleader B (aka Thea). Her arms are crossed over her chest so that her already-huge boobs get pushed up together, her white-blond hair falling in glossy waves over her shoulders.
    “You know, someone should really stage an intervention for you,” she calls over. “Friends don’t let friends wear pinstriped shorts.”
    Julia and Thea burst