Read Online Almost Final Curtain by Tate Hallaway - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tate Hallaway
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I snapped. “And it’s a break, not a break up .”
“What? He said things were over with you.”
I couldn’t believe this. Shoving the remains of my sandwich into my bag with trembling hands, I got up. “Look, I don’t even care,” I lied. What I meant was I couldn’t deal right now. My head hurt. My own best friend! Less than twenty-four hours later! “Okay, well, when you see him, say hi for me, will you?” I all but yelled, and stormed off.
“It’s not like that, Ana. I swear,” I heard her say, but I didn’t even turn around.
Could this day get worse?
During study hall, I slunk off to the back of the library again. This time, I sat on the floor in the dusty poetry section, my legs splayed out in front of me. Randomly pulling books off the shelf, I flipped through pages until I found one that spoke to what I was feeling. The poem was several thousand years old, from someone named Sappho, but it pretty much summed up everything:
“To Eros,” it was called, the god of love. The only line was, “You burn me.”
The words inspired me to pull out my phone. Though the signal was weak, I was able to get enough bars to send an angry text to Nikolai. It wasn’t nearly as succinct or cutting as Sappho, but I thought it held a certain poetry of its own: “Going out with B already? You suck!”
What else was there to say? I sent it, stabbed the Off button, and slammed the phone closed.
It wasn’t difficult to avoid Bea most of the day. We didn’t have any classes in common until drama, last period.
Seeing her standing with Taylor at her locker made my lips purse into a thin line of pure hate. To think that at the beginning of the day she was cheerleading me, trying to talk up tryouts, and by noon, she’d utterly betrayed me! I was so angry. I stomped right past the two of them without even a backward glance.
Mr. Martinez’s eyebrows quirked upward to see me come into the room without my usual entourage, but I ignored him too. I went to my seat, opened my book, and put my nose into it, like I lived to study My Fair Lady .
I looked up only when I heard Taylor say, “No, I don’t think so. Even if he is a rock star, friends should come first.”
Catching my gaze, Taylor gave me an “I’m with you” smile.
Ugh. I didn’t want it to come to the whole friends-choosingsides-in-the-divorce thing. It made me depressed and pissed off all at the same time. Damn Nik’s vampire-hunting family, and double-damn Bea for being such a flirt that she couldn’t leave well enough alone.
I refused to look at either of them. Instead, I concentrated on being a good student. I filled my notebook with salient bits about the Industrial Age in England, and doodled broken hearts and cartoonish pictures of Bea with X s for eyes and a halo of daggers around her head. Jinny tapped my shoulder. I thought about acting like I hadn’t felt it, but it wasn’t Jinny’s fight, so it didn’t seem right to snub her. Just as I twisted in my seat to retrieve the missive, Mr. Martinez swooped in between us and snatched it up.
“Perhaps I should read this out loud if it’s important enough to disrupt class time for, eh?”
Across the room, Bea made a gasping sound. Then, I felt magic tickling the air, like the cloying scent of lilies.
Mr. Martinez unfolded the note. I half expected it to burst into flames in his hands, but instead he adjusted the round glasses on his nose and frowned. “Code? You people are getting very clever. Ms. Parker,” he said to me. “You can retrieve your highly classified secret missive after class, understood?”
“Muh,” I said, because embarrassment had choked out any articulate response.
Bea let out a breath of relief that released the tingle of magic in the air. My nose stopped itching. We shared a glance and a conspiratorial smile flicked across her lips, like we were still friends. I sharpened my expression to remind her we weren’t.
The bonus was that when the bell finally
“What? He said things were over with you.”
I couldn’t believe this. Shoving the remains of my sandwich into my bag with trembling hands, I got up. “Look, I don’t even care,” I lied. What I meant was I couldn’t deal right now. My head hurt. My own best friend! Less than twenty-four hours later! “Okay, well, when you see him, say hi for me, will you?” I all but yelled, and stormed off.
“It’s not like that, Ana. I swear,” I heard her say, but I didn’t even turn around.
Could this day get worse?
During study hall, I slunk off to the back of the library again. This time, I sat on the floor in the dusty poetry section, my legs splayed out in front of me. Randomly pulling books off the shelf, I flipped through pages until I found one that spoke to what I was feeling. The poem was several thousand years old, from someone named Sappho, but it pretty much summed up everything:
“To Eros,” it was called, the god of love. The only line was, “You burn me.”
The words inspired me to pull out my phone. Though the signal was weak, I was able to get enough bars to send an angry text to Nikolai. It wasn’t nearly as succinct or cutting as Sappho, but I thought it held a certain poetry of its own: “Going out with B already? You suck!”
What else was there to say? I sent it, stabbed the Off button, and slammed the phone closed.
It wasn’t difficult to avoid Bea most of the day. We didn’t have any classes in common until drama, last period.
Seeing her standing with Taylor at her locker made my lips purse into a thin line of pure hate. To think that at the beginning of the day she was cheerleading me, trying to talk up tryouts, and by noon, she’d utterly betrayed me! I was so angry. I stomped right past the two of them without even a backward glance.
Mr. Martinez’s eyebrows quirked upward to see me come into the room without my usual entourage, but I ignored him too. I went to my seat, opened my book, and put my nose into it, like I lived to study My Fair Lady .
I looked up only when I heard Taylor say, “No, I don’t think so. Even if he is a rock star, friends should come first.”
Catching my gaze, Taylor gave me an “I’m with you” smile.
Ugh. I didn’t want it to come to the whole friends-choosingsides-in-the-divorce thing. It made me depressed and pissed off all at the same time. Damn Nik’s vampire-hunting family, and double-damn Bea for being such a flirt that she couldn’t leave well enough alone.
I refused to look at either of them. Instead, I concentrated on being a good student. I filled my notebook with salient bits about the Industrial Age in England, and doodled broken hearts and cartoonish pictures of Bea with X s for eyes and a halo of daggers around her head. Jinny tapped my shoulder. I thought about acting like I hadn’t felt it, but it wasn’t Jinny’s fight, so it didn’t seem right to snub her. Just as I twisted in my seat to retrieve the missive, Mr. Martinez swooped in between us and snatched it up.
“Perhaps I should read this out loud if it’s important enough to disrupt class time for, eh?”
Across the room, Bea made a gasping sound. Then, I felt magic tickling the air, like the cloying scent of lilies.
Mr. Martinez unfolded the note. I half expected it to burst into flames in his hands, but instead he adjusted the round glasses on his nose and frowned. “Code? You people are getting very clever. Ms. Parker,” he said to me. “You can retrieve your highly classified secret missive after class, understood?”
“Muh,” I said, because embarrassment had choked out any articulate response.
Bea let out a breath of relief that released the tingle of magic in the air. My nose stopped itching. We shared a glance and a conspiratorial smile flicked across her lips, like we were still friends. I sharpened my expression to remind her we weren’t.
The bonus was that when the bell finally
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