Free Wicked Games by Sean Olin Page B

she said. “Todd used to just laugh when I talked like this. He’d tell me I should stop thinking so much.”
    Their eyes found each other and she sensed some sort of fire burning in Carter.
    She couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Hey, can I ask . . . is this . . . are we on a date?”
    Carter blushed. Then he winced and she knew she’d gone too far. A sadness flushed through his face and the skin between his eyebrows furrowed with nervousness.
    “Can we call it hanging out? Doing stuff together like friends?”
    They locked eyes and a charge of emotion flowed back and forth between them, strong enough for them both to feel it gripping their hearts.
    “Sorry,” said Jules. “I shouldn’t have asked that.”
    “No, it’s . . .” Carter searched for a graceful way to navigate out of this awkward moment.
    He picked up a handful of popcorn and shook it like dice. Then with a glimmer in his eyes, he lobbed one at Jules.
    “Popcorn war!” he said, lobbing another one.
    Jules grabbed a handful of her own. “Is that how it’s gonna be?” she said. She threw two kernels like darts atCarter. He caught them with his free hand and threw them back. Then he was up, ducking and weaving around the rapid-fire assault of popcorn she was shooting his way.
    They were both laughing now. The awkwardness had passed.

14
    Earlier that evening, Lilah had gotten a sense—an intuition—that Carter was hiding things from her again. Hanging out with his “buddies” was just too vague.
    She’d been following him from a distance ever since she’d seen him lingering around the Native American sculpture on Shearwater. She’d seen him stand up and awkwardly say hello to Jules. She’d watched them walk along the promenade, chatting, listening so sickeningly intently to whatever each other was saying. She’d watched them turn into the Harpoon Haven amusement park and play carnival games and eat popcorn and laugh at each other’s jokes.
    She’d watched and watched and watched and eventhough they never did anything overtly, never kissed, never held hands, never even really touched each other, there was something in the way they looked at each other, some shyness, some overcharged nonchalance, like they were consciously
not
touching each other, avoiding the thing that they wanted most, and it made Lilah sick to her stomach. Literally. Her body felt weak and dehydrated. Her stomach acid rode at the back of her throat. She was nauseous.
    And yet, she couldn’t turn away. She couldn’t leave. She felt compelled to punish herself for as long as it took for Carter and Jules to prove all her worst fears true. When they did, she’d explode. She’d spontaneously combust, like those Buddhist monks in Thailand or Cambodia or wherever.
    When the moment came it was so subtle that she almost missed it.
    Carter and Jules had been leaning against a bright-pink, low cement wall, talking—who knows what about. Something had been decided—that was clear from their body language. They’d reached the end of whatever it was. And Carter had looked down his hand for a second; then he’d looked back at Jules. She’d begun digging in her purse, in search of something. He watched her. He just watched her, not saying a word. And then he’d reached up, slowly, and with one finger, he’d tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear.
    That was it. That was all it took for Lilah to realize that Carter was falling for this girl. That he was no longer hers.
    What she felt was fear. And rage. And a despair so huge and heavy she felt like it might smother her, weigh her down, pull her into the ground, where she’d be buried forever. She was dizzy with it. She couldn’t breathe.
    Tears streaming down her face, she fled to her mom’s car. She watched her hands shake as she pulled out of her parking spot and drove slowly, slowly, slowly home. She kept losing herself in thought, catching herself just as her car listed one way or another. But she