“I’m really sorry about my mom,” Luke says, digging his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Stop it,” I say. “Your mom’s great. She’s friendly and she fed us. She’s basically a goddess.”
“If I tell her you said that, she’ll”—Luke pauses and looks down—“well, I can tell she already really likes you.”
“I’m hard not to like,” I joke. I say it because I feel the need to defuse something here, something that feels like Luke is saying he really likes me.
I keep my hands shoved in the pockets of my coat, as if that will stop me from doing something I’ll regret, should it come to that. There’s about six inches between Luke and me, and he’s not wearing a coat, so I can still smell the dish soap on him. A slow song is playing from inside, something about smoke getting in your eyes. We’re both slightly swaying in place to it, trying to stay warm.
“You’re really good at the weather reporting,” he says. “You sound just like the weather people on TV, I’m not even kidding.”
A feeling of warmth blooms inside me and I can’t help but smile. “Thanks. It’s stressful, but I think I’m slowly getting the hang of it. Any tournaments coming up?”
“Not till after the holidays, so it’s all training till then.”
“Well, that just gives you more time to nerd out about Christmas, then,” I say.
Luke gives a small chuckle, but his smile doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “I didn’t think of that. I almost forgot it’s December next week. I’ve been preoccupied, I guess.”
It hits me then: Has Luke been sad, too, and he’s just better than me at hiding it?
A swath of headlights illuminate the street, and my mom pulls up alongside the curb. She waves to us from the driver’s seat and Luke waves back.
“Have a good Thanksgiving tomorrow. And thank your mom again for dinner,” I say, which makes Luke smile a little bigger.
“She’s going to adopt you if you’re not careful,” he says. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
When I climb in the car, there’s an overwhelming scent of pine trees and I make a gagging noise.
“Sorry, the last passenger went a little overboard with his cologne,” Mom says.
I instantly feel bad, because I know Mom doesn’t love driving people around. “Was he at least nice?” I ask.
“He was going on a date and he was nervous. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he overdid it with the, uh, scent,” my mom says, cringing.
As we drive home, Mom asks how everything went and I brace myself for her to ask me about Luke again, like that morning before the races, but she doesn’t. Still, I’m reminded of that sad look on Luke’s face.
He’s a liar. He doesn’t get to be unhappy, the rational part of my brain argues.
But the other, ridiculously empathetic part of my brain is like, Maybe he misses you.
My phone buzzes then, and my heart starts to race, thinking it might be Luke. But it’s actually a text from Alisha.
Jared went nuclear.
There’s a link to The Buzz and there’s one massive entry. And unlike all the other posts, no one’s mentioned in veiled blind items. No, their names are outright used. I skim posts about a girl’s alleged nose job and one about Bryce Pratt’s family giving him an intervention over steroid use. There’s one about Greta struggling in her training runs because “she’s not getting any vitamin ‘D.’” And then I see it.
A.J. Johnson is so poor, he was spotted dumpster diving in the Gardner’s Deli parking lot. Hope he found some good meals. I mean, deals!
“I’m going to kill him,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Yikes, what’s going on?” my mom says.
“Nothing,” I say, squeezing my phone so tight I’m shocked it doesn’t shatter in my hands. “Nothing at all.”
CHAPTER 23
Mrs. Sanchez has given us permission to come in the Sunday before the Feast-Off to prepare our turkey, since it has a very specific marinating time of “overnight.” In fact, Mrs. Sanchez looked pretty impressed when we said we wanted to do it on a weekend, even though it meant she had to come in and unlock the school and classroom door for us. “You’re a very resourceful group. The rest of the class should be watching out for you.”
“I think she wants us to win,” A.J. says when Mrs. Sanchez retreats to the teacher’s lounge while we work on our turkey. Our job is to follow A.J.’s grandma’s recipe for soaking the turkey in a “brine” and leaving it until tomorrow morning.
It also means it’s the first time I’ve seen him since The Buzz’s post—which was deleted about an hour later, but still survived via screenshots—went live.
“I just want you to know, I never said anything to anyone about the day at the shoe store,” I say as we take the turkey out of its packaging.
“I know you didn’t,” he says with a shrug. “And I was trying to fish out a plastic milk crate I accidentally threw in the dumpster during my shift. So what Jared said was a complete lie. I’m not that bothered.”
He’s chewing his inner cheek, so I know he is bothered. I have to wonder if any of Jared’s other stories were out-and-out lies, too—I keep thinking of Greta doing poorly in her training and can’t help but feel guilty over that.
“I’m sorry Jared takes all of his BS out on you, though,” I say.
A.J. sighs. “He’s still pissed at me for laughing at him in eighth grade when he was doing this monologue in English. He was doing this whole thing about his mom cheating on his dad, and I thought he was acting out a scene from a play or something and that he was being over the top on purpose. Like, I thought I was supposed to laugh. And then my laughing made the whole class laugh. But it turns out he was actually talking
