Page 45 of Trust Again

“Dawn, of course. Who else?” Spencer chimed in, as if it were a done deal. I glanced up at him over my shoulder.

“Well, I can probably manage it.”

“You have to be stealthy. You can’t be dressed up or anything. You should wear sweatpants and suggest a girls’ night in or something,” Scott suggested.

“That would be conspicuously inconspicuous, especially on the night before her birthday,” Spencer replied.

Looking over my shoulder, I nodded. “Spence is right. We could just go out for dinner or plan a spa night with face masks, manicures, etc….”

“Yes!” Kaden said, pointing at me without looking away from the computer screen.

“Great, that’s settled then.” Another checkmark on my list. “Who’s going to invite everyone else and swear them to secrecy? Scott?”

“Natch.”

“And Monica? Can you handle the decorations?”

“Gladly.”

Kaden bobbed his head up and down. “I want the whole place to look like a unicorn exploded in there. Do you guys think they make party hats for cats?”

A laugh escaped me. “I kind of doubt Spidey will let you do that to him.”

He shrugged. “If I ask nicely, he might consider it.”

“A guy who takes Professor Thornton’s class with me works at a party supply store. They have stuff like helium balloons,” Spencer said.

“Oh, fantastic!” I said, clapping my hands. Allie loved things like that. “The best would be balloons with Spider-Man or other Marvel characters… I wonder if they have any with the number twenty. Oh! Or we could…”

Spencer burst out laughing.

“What?”

He grinned at me. “If I’d known how much you like balloons, I would’ve gotten you one a long time ago.”

“There’s nothing cooler than helium balloons, Spence.”

For a moment our eyes locked and everything faded away around me. My gaze drifted to his mouth: his smile was crooked but sincere.

How did he manage to make it look so easy? He had a lot on his plate but somehow he seemed like the happiest guy in the world. It was both inspiring and worrying, the way he presented himself in front of our friends. But it didn’t feel fake, it didn’t feel like he was putting on an act at all. Spencer wasn’t a liar; if he was happy, he wore it on his sleeve like he did now. I really wanted to know what was going on behind that smile.

When I looked up again, the sparkle in his eyes had been replaced by something else. My throat was dry and a knot had formed in my stomach.

Scott’s “ahem” interrupted my thoughts; I turned my attention back to the list, ready to cross off another task.

Chapter 16

It was my third class with Nolan, and today we were doing an exercise that he called Literary Telephone. We had to write a half-page descriptive text and hand it to our neighbor on the left. Then we had to take the text we’d just received and rewrite that into the most boring text ever. We had to keep doing this until everyone got their own paper back again. We then each read aloud the first and last paragraphs and analyzed what had been changed through the many drafts.

By now I’d warmed up and wasn’t so afraid to read aloud. It seemed easy, since we were sitting in a circle on blankets that Nolan had brought to class. Besides, there were only six of us. It was a manageable number, and I got along with everyone well. Especially Everly, the girl with the short black hair and gray eyes. We were already planning to go for coffee.

At the close of the hour, Nolan joined us on the floor and folded his hands in his lap. “What did you get out of this exercise today?”

It wasn’t long before Jamie spoke up. “Sentences have to be balanced. When you told us to write a descriptive paragraph about anything we wanted, we all worked so hard that the first drafts were totally overloaded with adjectives.”

Nolan nodded and smiled. “Good. Anyone else?”

“Adjectives aren’t always bad, but they should be used strategically. The last few paragraphs that were read aloud were kind of monotonous and didn’t really work as creative writing.” As I spoke, I felt my heart speed up.

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