Bookishly Ever After (12 page)

Dev nodded. “It won’t hurt.” He nudged me in the side. “What do you think, Phoebe?”

I couldn’t even shrug since my hands were firmly and safely trapped under my butt. Logical. Maeve was calm and logical whenever she dealt with Deidre. “Would the school even allow it? If someone in the audience gets hit with anything, they’ll probably sue us all.”

Lexie stopped mid-drink, looking as if she had just downed sour milk. “You know, Em’s right. Maybe this should stay inside the theatre club. Pedestrians won’t understand.”

Deidre put her hand on Aedan’s arm. “I don’t think you should be discussing matters of the court in front of,” she threw
Maeve a distasteful look, “outsiders with the potential to turn on us.”

“Phoebe’s probably right. I’ve seen the bookends some of those guys in shop tried to make.” Alec said, looking up from his textbook and making a tilting gesture with his hand. Before Lexie could retort, he went back to ignoring her and saying things in mangled French to Grace.

Maeve dug her nails so deep into her skirt, she was positive the silk would never recover. Still, she wasn’t going to stoop to Deidre’s level—not now, and not ever. “Since you’ve hinted about my goblin blood at least three times just now,” she said calmly with a smile, “I think you need to remember that it’s the reason the court still exists.” Then, she stood and walked over to give Aedan a kiss, a small part of her taking satisfaction in how Deidre was seething mad. “But, anyway, I have class, so this is whole conversation is totally moot. I’ll see you later.”

“I think—” I started to say, but Lexie cut me off at the “I” and my voice faded away on “think.”

“Oh, please, it’s a rope with a pulley setup. I doubt they could screw that up.”

A hard kick landed on my shin and I looked up to find Em grinning at me. “Well, as much fun as this was, I’m getting out of this debate right now because I have a doctor’s appointment. But I totally support using Phoebe as much as you want.”

I kicked her back even harder. Too bad my ballet flats weren’t as hard as her boots. “I’ll walk you out. We need to talk.”

Another whack to my shin. I was going to be black and blue. Em’s smile looked a little bit forced. “Dev needs your help.”

Dev watched us like a bad ping-pong game. “I don’t—“

I narrowed my eyes at her. She moved her legs so my last kick didn’t make contact.

“I need to go to my locker anyway. I forgot my history notebook.” There was no way I would last two seconds against Lexie. She was witty and I would be the invisible third wheel, totally not like Maeve, who was able to effortlessly flip Aedan’s attention away from Deidre with only a few words. And Grace and Alec were too busy practicing for their French quiz to bail me out.

“
Mauviette
,” Grace broke away mid conversation with Alec to kick me, too. I stuck my tongue out at her when Dev wasn’t looking. I wanted to know which French teacher thought it was smart to teach her the word for wimp.

Em threw me a pointed look, and then softened when she saw my face. “C’mon codependent.”

I grabbed my bags and notebook and followed her away from the table with an apologetic little wave at a very confused Dev.

“I couldn’t stay there. It’s bad enough trying to be a part of the conversation when you’re there to help me. Lexie would eat me for lunch.”

Em shook her head at me. “You’re using me as an excuse because you didn’t know what to say? That kinda sucks.” She elbowed me. “You did fine in English class.”

“But that was different.” We passed the sixth grade camp counselor volunteer sign-up table and I stopped short, Coach Rentz’s words about volunteering running through my head.

“We really need to work on your witty banter.” Em had walked a few feet ahead before realizing I wasn’t next to her. Turning around, she made a face when she saw what I was looking at. “You really want to be a counselor for sixth grade camp?”

“It’s only a week.”

“In the woods. With no real showers. And ten year olds.” Em waved her pass at the door monitor as we made our way out of the cafeteria. The monitor didn’t even blink at me, one of the perks of being a notorious rule follower. “You’re not seriously thinking about it, are you?”

“You should be supporting me when I try to branch out to new experiences.” We reached the front entrance and I poked her in the side. “But, if it makes you feel any better, I’m not.”

“Good, because if you can’t even stand up to Lexie, I can’t imagine you standing up to a cabin full of kids.” She poked me back, then added, “Call me tonight. We need to talk about growing you a spine.” She waved her phone at me, and the sound of her pushing open the doors echoed in the empty hallway. “Later.”

I watched her back as she made her way out of the double doors before heading to my locker. Being spineless felt like a good option at the moment.

“What are the chances, between ‘No way in hell’ and maniacal laughter, that this might actually work?”

“In my time, we’d say we have the same chance as a cat in hell without claws.”

“Thanks for the confidence.”—
Marissa and Cyril—
The Hidden House series book 3, Found

I nocked my arrow and pulled back, anchoring at my chin as I took aim before letting it fly. Completely off the mark. “So, how are things with you and Wilhelm?”

Em handed me another arrow from her perch on the grass beside me and heaved a theatrical sigh. “Status quo. He wasn’t able to get another foreign exchange year. Something about visas or whatever.”

“That sucks.” I took aim again and this time hit slightly off-center. With a sigh, I dropped to the ground next to Em. “Do you want to try?” I asked, gesturing my bow towards Em. “Turning targets into Swiss cheese always makes me feel better.”

Em laughed, poking at my bow with her finger as if it were a snake. “I never hit the target.”

I gestured around us at the empty football field and
baseball diamond. With school out for the teacher’s convention, we had the athletic fields to ourselves. Coach Rentz never locked our practice shed and didn’t care if we dragged out the targets as long as we put them back again afterwards.

“No one’s here to see if you miss.” I wiggled my bow at her temptingly.

“I’ll probably stab myself, become one of Rentz’s horror stories, or shoot you. No, thanks.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing.” I rubbed my thumb gently along the smooth wood grain of my Maeve bow. It was hand carved and beautiful, no sight, no stabilizer, definitely not for competition, and Coach would have a fit if she saw me sneaking in a practice with it. Maeve would definitely love a weapon like this one.

Em’s burst of laughter made me look up. “Do you want me to leave you two alone? You look pretty cozy.”

I tossed a handful of leaves at her, most of which didn’t even make it half the distance. “You need to get a hobby. Preferably something that keeps you too busy to talk.”

“Oh, I have that. His name is Wilhelm.”

“Making out in the movie theater isn’t a hobby.”

“I disagree. Plus, the people who called it French kissing apparently never made out with a German.”

Em’s retort was so fast, it took a minute for her sentence to fully register. I resisted the urge to facepalm. “I really didn’t need to know that.”

“You’re the one who mentioned making out.”

“Believe me, I’ll never make that mistake again.” I
rubbed at a spot of dirt on my bow that had lodged in one of the carvings. “You’ll need something to keep yourself busy this summer when Wilhelm’s not around,” I said, trying to really lightly gloss over the “not around” part. “Are you going to do community theater again?”

“Actually,” she said, while pulling apart a clover, leaf-by-leaf, “I was thinking of auditioning to be one of those historical interpreters in Philly. How cool would it be to get paid to dress up, talk about the revolution, maybe sing a colonial song every now and then, and do improv all day long?”

It actually sounded like Em heaven. “Cool? In the city in the summer? Only if they let you wear ice packs under all those skirts.”

“I’ll just make sure I’m so dazzling in the audition, they’ll have to give me an indoor job.” She put her hand to her chest and put on a starry-eyed ingénue expression. “I could be the daughter of a wealthy merchant from the islands. Maybe you can teach me how to fake that I’m knitting something, like a sock. Or maybe embroidery—I can stick a needle in the fabric every now and then and make it look like I’m making a tapestry or something.”

“Or you can just learn how to really knit.”

She waved her hand dismissively. For someone who loved history, she wasn’t big on actually
learning
historically accurate handicrafts. “Who has time to do that? I have a life, you know.”

“I know,” I said dryly.

“So, what do you think?” She looked up at me, and a
little bit of insecure Em shone through her confident grin.

“It sounds awesome and you’re awesome, so how can they not pick you?” When the worry melted away from her features, I knew I’d said the right thing. “Can I sneak in when you’re on shift and play with the spinning wheel if they have one?”

“Maybe. Can you make it look like I was the one who used it so I can get extra awesome reenactor points?”

“Deal.”

“Great.” She leaned back on her elbows, letting the sunlight wash over her. After a minute of basking in the sun, she reached up to look over her sunglasses and said, lazily, “Looks like we weren’t the only ones who thought this might be a nice place to hang out.” I looked up to see Dev and a group of his friends dribbling around what appeared to be a soccer ball, then turned back to Em with a frown. She tried to shrug but only succeeded in wiggling her shoulders. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t tell them you were here.”

Dev seemed to say something to his friends before jogging over to us. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

I floundered for a good response. Witty. Maeve was always smart and witty. I changed around her prebattle comeback from
Glittering
to make it fit.

Rolling back my shoulders and tilting up my chin like she would in a situation like this, I said, “Do you think I just sit inside all day and read?” I did a mental inventory of my outfit. Sporty and loose, but nothing awful today. Grace would be pleased.

“Actually, yeah. And knit.” Dev said, and Em choked on a laugh.

“Well, then.” I tried to let my lips slowly grow into a smile like Maeve’s always did, and stood. Confident. This had to be awesome. “If I sat around eating bonbons all day, would I be able to do this?” I bent over to grab an arrow from the pile and ignored my racing heart. This was my turf. I could do this. Giving him one last glance, I took a deep breath and pulled back on my bowstring, counting my heartbeats. This wasn’t States, just practice. With a guy watching me.

A guy who, for some crazy reason, I was trying to impress.

I let out my breath and, with fingers that shook a little bit more than I would have liked, released the arrow. I grimaced as it skimmed the top of the target and landed somewhere in the grass behind it.

“Maybe you could.” Em said with a little note of snark in her voice. She looked over at the group of guys and sat up. “Is that Wilhelm?”

My sneaker suddenly planted itself right on the back of her sweater, jerking her back down. “No extracurricular activities, Em. We were supposed to hang out today.”

She extracted her sweater and rubbed at the dirt I had gotten on it. “God, just land a bullseye and impress Dev so I can go work on my German.” Both Dev and I stared at her. She rolled her eyes. “What?”

Dev shook his head and turned to me. He bent over to pick up an arrow and held it out. “Try again?”

All of my Maeve-esque bravado had melted into a slouch, a furious blush, and an overwhelming wish to roll back time. “I’m usually not that bad,” I said softly as I took the arrow. A little voice inside of me corrected that statement.
Never that bad.
At least not at this distance on this target.