Free My Blood Approves by Amanda Hocking Page B

sat next to me, but he didn’t
seem to be in a talking mood, so I put in my ear buds and decided
to pass the time listening to Rogue Wave on my iPod. Resting my
forehead against the glass of the window, I watched my breath fog
it up.
    Milo kept giving me the cold shoulder even
though I hadn’t done anything wrong, and this guy that I barely
knew but really liked had fought off a rabid dog last night. What
exactly had happened to my life over Spring Break?
    School passed more slowly than it ever had
before. I slept all through my second hour, but I managed to sneak
my iPod into my other classes. I just stared out the window, at the
chilly rain falling down, and tried not to think about Jack. By the
end of fifth hour, I had completely exhausted myself not thinking
about him.
    When I stopped at my locker between classes,
I managed to drop my History book on the ground. I bent down to
pick it up, and when I stood back up, Milo was standing right next
to me, scaring the crap out of me. He admired the clutter that
occupied my locker, including the obligatory collage mess of
magazine cut outs lining the inside of the door.
    “ God, you scared me,” I
grumbled, shoving my History book into my book bag.
    “ So are you gonna be at
home tonight or not?” He had one of his hands on my locker door,
and he swung it back and forth, just enough to make it
squeak.
    “ Of course I’m gonna be
there. I live there.” I continued fiddling around with something in
my bag, but mostly I was trying to look busy.
    “ I meant, are you gonna
hang out with Jack?” His tone was icy, and I didn’t understand what
he found so offensive about me being with Jack. Even if he was
having some kind of jealousy, shouldn’t he be trying to cover it up
better?
    “ Yeah, probably,” I
shrugged.
    We hadn’t actually talked yet, but Jack had
said that he would see me today, and I didn’t have any reason to
doubt him. Well, except for the fact that he was hiding something
major.
    “ So are you guys like
dating or what?” Milo asked, dripping with angry
sarcasm.
    “ No. It’s not like that.” I
slung my bag over my shoulder, and he just narrowed his eyes at
me.
    Suddenly, it pissed me off that I had to
explain myself to him. We weren’t dating, but it shouldn’t matter
to him anyway. It wasn’t my fault that Jack’s abnormal
attractiveness had made his sexual orientation even more confusing.
If he had told me he was having issues with it, I wouldn’t have
brought Jack around.
    “ Whatever,” Milo
muttered.
    “ What exactly are you
accusing me of?” I slammed my locker door shut. He let his hands
fall to the sides, looking startled. “Even if I am dating Jack, so
what? I can do that. There’s nothing wrong with being friends with
him or dating him or whatever it is I decide to do with him. He’s a
nice guy and it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do.”
    “ Whatever you say,” Milo
said, but he wasn’t as confident or angry.
    “ Milo, this is stupid.” I
readjusted the strap over my shoulder and looked at him softly. “I
get it, okay? I saw the way that you looked at Jack.”
    “ I don’t know what you’re
talking about.” He flushed and averted his eyes, shifting
uncomfortably.
    Outing him in the middle of the hall at
school probably wasn’t the best idea, but I just couldn’t take his
indifference to me anymore. He normally told me everything, and it
looked like he wasn’t going to talk to me about this unless I got
the ball rolling.
    “ It’s okay.” I lowered my
voice so other people wouldn’t overhear. “If you’re gay. It’s okay.
I understand.”
    “ You don’t understand
anything!” Milo shouted.
    When he looked up at me, tears filled his
eyes, and I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. I couldn’t
force him to come to terms with anything, and if he wasn’t ready to
talk about it with me, I should’ve respected that.
    “ Milo-” I started to say
something, but I didn’t really have anything to