Free Crave (Harlequin Teen) by Melissa Darnell Page A

bumps and a prickling sensation raced up my arms and across the back of my neck. Someone must have cranked up the air-conditioning or something. Shivering, I rubbed my arms.
    When Greg looked back down at me, his smile wasn’t quite as blinding. “Yeah, sure. Next time.” Then he walked away.
    I cringed, hoping I hadn’t hurt his feelings. Though why he’d care if I came to one of his games or not was beyond me.
    I glanced at my friends and grinned. Their shocked expressions matched how I felt. “Did that just happen?” I asked, a short laugh slipping out.
    Silence at our table, even as the other nearby tables recovered.
    In the continuing silence from my friends, I leaned forward and looked more closely at them. “Um, hello? Anyone care to comment on that?”
    Yeesh. Yes, it was true that boys never talked to me, and definitely none had ever made a point to come up to me during lunch. But my friends were acting like he’d also jumped up on the table and performed a song and dance for us or something. I’d never seen them all this speechless at the same time. I had the strong urge to snap my fingers under their noses just to bring them back to planet Earth.
    I met Anne’s stare first, then Carrie’s, then Michelle’s. Without fail, each girl’s eyes widened as I met their gazes. Okay, this was getting weirder by the moment.
    “Look at me.” Anne’s command, an echo of Dad’s demanding tone on Saturday, reminded me of my changed appearance. And of the crazy family secrets I wanted to forget as quickly as possible.
    “Oh, yeah.” My good mood faded. “I forgot, you haven’t seen how weird I look.” Now Anne would tell me what an imaginative idiot I was and how I looked the same as I always did.
    Her eyebrows drew together. “You don’t look weird. But you do look different, that’s for sure. What’d you do to your hair? It looks like a flippin’ Garnier commercial. Did you get it colored? It’s not so orange now. And it’s…poufy.”
    Oh. So maybe I hadn’t imagined the changes in my appearance.
    Feeling like a circus sideshow, I blushed. “I know, it’s kind of odd. But I swear I didn’t do anything new to it.”
    “And your eyes,” Michelle whispered.
    I looked at Michelle, who reminded me of a nervous rabbit today for some reason. Her gaze darted away.
    Oh, crap, that’s right. Dad had mentioned that my gaze might have a strange effect on others. But he hadn’t said what kind of effect. He should’ve warned me that my friends would treat me like an alien that had crash-landed at our table.
    “What do you think, Carrie?” I met her stare head-on, my hands clenching into fists under the table as fear battled with a tiny bit of curiosity. Exactly what did they see when they looked into my eyes now?
    Carrie was the calmest, coolest, most levelheaded member of our group. She had a mind like a scientist, or the doctor she claimed to want to become someday. She could offer some practical, objective feedback.
    I held her gaze for several seconds as something like the weekend’s panic threatened to overwhelm what little curiosity I’d had. Maybe I didn’t want to know, after all.
    Then I saw it…that same fearful widening of the eyes just before Carrie looked away.
    Ohhh, crap. And according to Dad, that was a vampire thing.
    I tried to remember how to breathe past the growing thickness in my throat. The noise of the cafeteria ramped up, roaring in my ears like an angry ocean during a storm, even as too many different emotions from others rushed in waves over my skin. I wrapped my arms around myself in a futile effort to block them out.
    Did this mean I was turning into a vampire?
    “Here, let me see again.” This time, Anne’s voice was far from its usual command.
    And suddenly, I did not want to make eye contact with her. I didn’t want to see my best friend look at me and become afraid. Then again, maybe it was all in how I was looking back at them, and I just needed to relax. Maybe