Free Undecided by Julianna Keyes Page B

Two emphatic underlines.
    Chicken.
    I’m
boring now, remember?
    I
certainly do. Zzz.
    I kick him under the table and he
yelps.
    I dare
you, he writes. Triple double dog dare you.
    “How old
are you?” I hiss.
    He leans
in. “Not a hundred and five like you’ve been acting.”
    I recoil,
offended. “I have not—”
    “You’re
killing yourself. If you’re not going to do anything fun, the least you can do
is spy on the people who are and report back to me.”
    “I think
you have some kind of once-removed voyeur fetish.”
    He grins.
“Guilty.”
    But I
really don’t need any more prompting. You can’t get arrested for accidentally
noticing a couple getting it on in the library. It’ll only take a minute, my
grades won’t suffer. No phone calls to my parents, the Dean, or the police.
What’s the harm?
    Plus I’m
so bored.
    I inch
back my chair and stand, my sneakers making no sound on the worn old carpet.
The moans increase as I approach the aisle stuffed with books on capitalism,
and I glance over my shoulder at Nate. He gives me the thumbs up as I turn one
aisle before the lovebirds and crouch as I creep along. Halfway down I spot two
pairs of legs—one in denim, one barely covered by a miniskirt—and I ease
closer, their heavy breathing more than masking any noise my approach might
make. Hell, I could topple over a shelf and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t
interrupt the makeout.
    I’m about
twenty books away when the female half of the equation moans, “Oh, Crosbie.”
    His low
chuckle, the one I’ve been missing all week, is immediately, terribly,
unwelcome. My skin prickles with nauseating goose bumps and I feel a strange,
achy clench in my chest.
    “I got
you,” he murmurs.
    Any
fleeting hope I’d held that it was a different Crosbie shatters. It’s
him.
    And it’s
certainly his reputation.
    Somehow,
when I thought it was Kellan, I didn’t really care what I’d find.
    But this
hurts.
    Instead
of wisely returning to my table and telling Nate we have to go, I retrace my
steps to the end of the aisle, snatch a book off the shelf, and take a breath
before turning into the occupied aisle as though searching for an interesting
book on capitalism.
    And there
they are.
    Ten feet
away, grinding against the shelf, his hips pinning hers to the row of books I’m
never going to touch. They’re fully clothed, at least, only their lips involved
in the encounter, and even though they look like they’re glued together,
Crosbie jerks away the second he spots me.
    His
partner in library crime looks dazed and confused until she follows his gaze to
discover the problem, and even though I knew what I’d find before I rounded
that corner, I still hear myself stammer a pretty convincing, “Sorry, I didn’t
know—” before I race back to the table where Nate waits.
    “Pay up,”
he says, holding out his hand.
    “Joke’s
on you,” I say, trying to act like I find the whole thing amusing and not
appallingly, horribly painful. “It wasn’t Kellan.”
    “It was
too.”
    “It
wasn’t. I swear.”
    He frowns
as he realizes I’m jamming my books in my bag like there’s a fire and they’re
the only thing I need to rescue.
    “What are
you—”
    “I just
remembered I have to do something,” I lie, utterly unconvincing.
    “Nora,
what—” His eyes focus on something over my shoulder and I know that Crosbie and
his Crosbabe have fixed their clothing and emerged from the aisle.
    “Don’t,”
I say tightly, when the look on his face changes from confusion to concern.
“Don’t say anything.”
    “Nora,
I—”
    “Please.”
I think I might cry. And it’s so stupid—I don’t care about Crosbie, I don’t want to care about Crosbie, and I never thought he cared about me.
    I grab my
bag and stride toward the stairs at the far end of the floor, my route keeping
me parallel to Crosbie and his friend. But their pace is no match for mine and
I reach the top of the stairs just in time to hear her demand to