Page 52 of Falling Like Leaves
“I’ll call and tell her,” he says. “I’ll give Justin your email address so you two can arrange a time and place to meet.”
“All right. Thanks, Dad. Maybe you and I can get pizza afterward, and you can tell me everything that’s been happening at Street Media. I heard you’ve been meeting a lot with Mr. Gableman.”
“Sure,” he says noncommittally. “I have to go now.”
“Oh, okay.”
Not a single question about how life is here. How school is going. If I have friends. Whether I’m on the nonexistent school paper. Nothing.
But heisstill looking out for me, and we can talk about all that stuff tomorrow night.
“I’ll see you this weekend. Love you, Ellie Belly.”
“Love you, too.”
The line goes silent, and I set my phone back on the dresser and flop onto my bed.
My homecoming dress stares back at me from where it’s hanging on the curtain rod, reminding me that now I have to cancel my homecoming plans with Jake.
Chapter Sixteen
Afew hours later I’m wearing pigtails wrapped in giant blue bows while Sloane paints my face with black and blue paint. I’m in a pair of her leggings, with knee-high blue socks and aBRAMBLE FALLS HIGH FOOTBALLT-shirt.
“There, all done,” she says, stepping back in her matching outfit. She has two buns on either side of her head, and her entire face is painted blue.
I drew the line at painting my whole face.
My reflection stares at me in Sloane’s bedroom mirror, walking a fine line between cute and ridiculous. Jake’s jersey number is painted on one cheek, andGo BF!is painted on the other.
“Are you sure it’s normal that we’re this decked out for a high school football game?” I ask.
“Girl, we really aren’t decked out,” Sloane says. “The other superfans are going to put us to shame, believe me.”
A horn blares outside, and Sloane grabs her bag and grins at me. “It’s time!”
I follow a giddy Sloane down the steps, and at the bottom, Mom throws her hand over her mouth. “I never thought I’d see the day. Ellis going to a football game. Someone pinch me.”
“She has to go supportJakey,” Sloane says, waggling her eyebrows.
I roll my eyes. “Shut up.”
Jake begged and pleaded all week for me to come watch the homecoming game. Once Sloane said she was going, I figured why not. I’m not going for Jake, but it did sort of make me happy to seehimso happy when I told him I’d be there.
Still, people seem to want a spark between us that just isn’t there for me.
The horn honks again.
“We gotta go!” Sloane says, pulling my arm. We slide on our shoes and jog out to Cooper’s truck. It’s too cold for only a T-shirt, but Sloane swears it won’t matter once we’re there.
“Hop in!” Chloe says from the back of the truck. Her blond hair is in two French braids with black bows, and she’s wearing a blue sports bra, short blue spandex shorts, and blue knee socks with white stripes.Bramble Fallsis painted across her stomach and Slug’s number is painted on one cheek and another jersey number I don’t recognize is on the other. Somehow she doesn’t look ridiculous at all. She looks stunningly sporty.
Once we’re in the truck with the other four superfans they’ve already picked up, Cooper shouts to us to hold on, and he takes off toward the school.
The energy at the game is electric, and within a few minutes of it starting, I’m screaming and cheering even though I have noidea what’s going on because it’sinfectious. I take my cues from Sloane, Hannah, and Preeti to my right and try to avoid looking at Cooper to my left.
Because if I do, I might do something stupid. Like touch him.
He had the audacity to show up hereshirtless, with a football painted on his chest andBramble Fallsacross his abs, and, to make things more dire, he has on a backward Bramble Falls hat over his floppy hair, black strips of paint across each cheek, and blue basketball shorts.
