Page 84 of Enemies to Prom Dates
She walked up to me, wearing a small smile. “You’re waiting for me?”
“I am.”
“No more games?”
“No point,” I admitted. Then I bent my head and gently pecked her on the lips. Strictly speaking, there was to be no PDA on school grounds. However, students found creative ways around this all day. But I didn’t need to make out with my girlfriend for the entertainment of others. I just wanted to make the point we were no longer hiding anything.
“So it’s like this now?” Reen said. “Fine. Come on Janie, we can eat alone.”
“You’ll all eat with us,” I said. “I’ve made sure to make room.”
“Or you could just sit with us at our table,” Beth said.
“Politics,” I reminded her. “We’re making a statement. Let’s make it a bold one. You and your crew follow me.”
For a second Beth bit her bottom lip. “Everyone will stare.”
“They’re staring anyway,” Janie said. “Might as well own it.”
That was true. Together, we entered the cafeteria and headed to my traditional table. I’d told Heath and Ed to make sure there was plenty of space and they’d obliged. I took a seat and Beth sat next to me. Then Reen sat across from Heath and Janie sat across from Ed.
“Janie,” Ed said, nodding his head toward her.
“Edward,” she replied softly.
“You call him Edward?” Heath asked.
“His grandmother calls him that. I guess it stuck with me,” she replied but kept her head down. Almost like she couldn’t look at Ed.
There was something going on there but, right now, I had too many mysteries on my plate to consider another one.
“Well, look at the three of us eating together again,” Heath stated. “It’s like the good old Thornfield Home days.”
Reen was watching Heath like he was a snake who might suddenly bite. “Would you call those days good, Heath?”
He shrugged. “The food was a little bland, but the company was decent.”
“Did you eat together? At meals?” Beth asked.
“Yes,” Janie answered. “It was expected. Six o’clock every night. If you weren’t at the table, then you didn’t eat.”
“That seems harsh,” I said. “Good thing they shut down that place once and for all.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Heath said softly. “None of you Snobs ever do.”
“You have your own room now, a place to call home. People who care about your future,” I pointed out. It was an old argument between me and Heath. “Yet you make it seem like you had it better at the Home. I’ll never understand it.”
“Agreed,” Heath replied. “Well, this reunion has been fun, but some of us have better places to be than in the fishbowl you’ve created for us, Fitz.”
Heath left and I watched as Reen followed his departure, again with a sense of suspicion in her gaze. Or was it fear? Heath could be a jerk, but he wasn’t someone to be fearful of. He didn’t care about anything enough to make anyone afraid of him.
“Reen, you prefer where you are now with the Sumners? Don’t you?” I asked her.
She turned her eyes to me. “Someday they are going to implode Thornfield Home. Clear the land for a new strip mall or something. When that day happens, I want to be the one to push the button and watch it go boom.”
“So I’m right. It was bad.”
I’d never really considered what they had suffered at that place. It wasn’t like any grand scandal had closed it. As far as I knew no one was being abused or mistreated. It was just a government study combined with a lack of funding that ultimately shut it down. However, it now occurred to me no one really talked about their time there. When Lock had brought it up last week, it had surprised me because it’d been so long since I’d even the heard the place mentioned.
