Page 47 of The Obsession

Delilah

I set my alarm to go off inhumanly early on Saturday. As soon as I’d washed and dressed, I grabbed my wallet and coat and ran all the way to the bus stop, where I paced restlessly until the bus arrived. The rest of the week had been a continuous march of Logan shoving his way into my life. He’d wait outside of my classrooms whenever his classes happened to be nearby and walk me to the library for my shifts whenever he could. Lunches were always spent with him and his friends, whom I couldn’t help but like, while Aisha shot me death glares from our usual seat. And even though Lisa squeaked, “How sweet!” whenever she saw Logan, I could tell his presence made her nervous, which in turn made me even angrier. On top of everything else, I couldn’t afford to lose my job. On the bright side, at least Detective Mendez had stopped her surprise visits. One could only hope she’d moved on to bigger, more exciting cases.

I came up with half a dozen plans to deal with Logan, each one flimsier than the last. I spent all of my free time trying to look up information on Logan that I could use against him, but I always came up empty.

It surprised me how much I missed Aisha. Seeing her at school and not talking to her was killing me. I needed her now, more than ever.

By the time I got off at Draycott, all of my fingernails had been bitten into ragged stubs. I wrapped my arms around myself as I walked across campus. The atmosphere on a weekend was completely different. This early, the school was off-puttingly silent. When I got to the girls’ dorm, I hung around outside, pretending to text someone. I couldn’t ask Aisha to let me in since she’d been ignoring my messages. Luckily, a couple of girls wearing running gear came out, laughing over something, and I was able to slip inside before the doors closed.

The first time I visited Aisha’s dorm, I’d paused in the foyer, my mouth falling open at how grand the place was. An elaborate chandelier hung in the center of the wood-paneled room, giving the place a soft, rich glow. My footsteps were immediately muffled by a thick, green carpet. Paintings of important women throughout history smiled down at me. I’d never felt so much like an impostor as I did then.

Aisha had taken me to the common room, which was bright and sunny with high ceilings, picture windows, and overstuffed couches and beanbags. We’d hung out there for hours, stuffing ourselves with cookies and hot chocolate and talking about everything and nothing. The memory of that afternoon brought tears rushing into my eyes. I shook my head and hurried up to the second floor. Each room had a whiteboard next to the front door. Aisha’s board had a doodle of her licking an ice cream cone. I knocked on the door.

There was some muffled sound and then silence. I knocked again.

“Aisha, I know you’re there. Open up.”

A bump, then footsteps. The door was wrenched open, revealing a half-awake Aisha, grumpy with sleep, wearing her blanket like a cloak. She peered at me and scowled. “What’re you doing here?”

Tears rushed into my eyes. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her. “I need to talk to you. Please?”

I could see she wanted to snap at me, but she must have sensed my desperation, because she hesitated, started to say something again, hesitated again. Then she sighed, swung the door wide open, and cocked her head at me. “What’re you gawking at? Get in.”

And I burst into tears.

Later, forever later, or maybe minutes later, we both sat on the floor, leaning against Aisha’s bed. I had a mug of hot chocolate cradled in my hands and Aisha’s arm around my shoulders, and I had never felt so comforted.

“You know what you need right now?” Aisha said. “Breakfast.”

I lifted my mug of hot chocolate. “I already have this.”

Aisha sniffed. “Please, those instant cocoa mixes are basically corn starch and sugar. Gimme that.” She plucked the mug out of my hands. “Come on. We’re going to Liberica. My treat.”

I was about to protest when it hit me that breakfast actually sounded good. Now that I’d cried myself empty, I was too exhausted to even begin to tell Aisha what had happened. Liberica’s breakfasts—which featured stacks of pancakes so big, the edges flopped over the sides of the plates and breakfast burritos the size of my calves—were just the thing I needed to jump-start the conversation. The whole way there, Aisha linked arms with me, like old times, and filled me in on the latest gossip, as though she knew I wasn’t quite ready to share what had happened.

Half an hour later, we were seated at a table loaded with a ridiculous amount of food. How do you reveal to your BFF that you crushed your mother’s boyfriend with his car and you were now being coerced into dating some creepy stalker who’d caught the whole thing on camera? Being made to date Logan sounded so absurd when I went over it in my head. Yeah, I’m being forced into dating one of the hottest guys in school. Part of me was convinced if anyone knew, they’d roll their eyes and go, “Oh, poor you. You have to go out with Hot Logan, a guy you were lusting over, who has promised not to touch you unless you want him to. Let me play you a sad song on the world’s smallest violin.”

“Oh, man, I needed this,” Aisha said, stuffing a heaping forkful of pumpkin and candied pecan pancake into her mouth before chasing it down with a gulp of red velvet Oreo milkshake. “The food at school is bullshit. Know what we were served for dinner last night?” She didn’t wait for me to guess. “Organic microgreens with a side of free-range chicken breast. Sans hormones, sans chemicals, sans flavor. I don’t even know what their deal is with microgreens. Does being micro somehow make it better for you or something?”

“The food at lunch isn’t that bad,” I said, laughing.

“That’s ’cause the boarders pay a lot more than day students do, so the school thinks it should save up all the pretentious food for dinner. You got lucky, my friend.” She attacked the burrito and crammed what looked like a fistful of it into her mouth.

As the carbs and sugar hit us, the conversation flowed faster, easier. We complained about our classes, bitched and laughed about our classmates, and chatted about the latest celebrity scandals. I felt almost like my old self again, pre-Logan, pre-Brandon, even pre-Pa.

Aisha dropped her fork on the plate and leaned back, groaning. “Ugh. I ate too much again. Why didn’t you stop me?” She pushed the plate toward me. “Argh, get this away from me. I can’t even look at food right now.”

“Want me to get them to clear the table?”

“No! I might want some more.”

I laughed.

“You love me.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes, but I was still grinning.

“So.” Aisha leaned forward, her face suddenly turning serious. “Tell me, what happened with Hot Logan?”

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