“What?”
She slipped in and shut the door with a soft click behind her. Her hands remained behind her back, still on the door handle. “Kitty and Nina are camped out at the end of the hallway. They’ve asked me four times when I think you might be heading for class. After last night, they’re in love with Logan Kade, and it’s sad to say, but that made them your personal stalkers.” She rolled her eyes. “I told them you don’t have class until lunch, but they don’t believe me. I think they’re going to wait you out and do the thing where you have to walk with them to your class—you know, where they’re super friendly, so friendly that you’d be completely rude to even try to ditch them.” She shuddered, one corner of her lip curving up. “Such beginners. If only I could school them better, they’d be proper stalkers.”
She laughed. “Just kidding. For real, but, uh…” She cleared her throat. “We need to come up with a plan so those two are distracted while you slip down the back hallway door. They really should have one positioned in the lobby and the other by the back door. It only locks from the outside, and the alarm’s not turned on during the day.”
“What?”
She clapped her hands together. “Exactly. Operation Distract and Dash needs to commence…” She looked at my pajamas. “Whenever you’re dressed, that is.”
Summer went past the two girls, who really were camped out by the doorway. Nina was holding her backpack in her lap while Kitty had a strand of hair pulled over her face. She was furiously picking at it. Summer strolled past them and pretended to trip over Nina’s feet. Kitty didn’t seem impressed, so Summer spied the water bottle next to her and somehow lunged for it, knocking that to the ground, too.
I waited as both girls got up. Nina helped Summer while Kitty grabbed her water bottle before it fell down the rest of the stairs.
It was my time.
Both were distracted, and I slipped down the back stairs. I went all the way down and through the back door. Summer was right. A girl soared through the door two seconds before I hit the last set of stairs. No alarm sounded, so I went outside.
I was waiting by the bike rack as Summer came out, laughing. She was barely holding on to her coffee cup, which she’d told me she was going to refill in Ruby’s room right before activating Operation Distract and Dash.
She had a second cup for me and shook her head, tsking under her breath. “Logan was not enough of a dick to put those two off. I think he only cemented that they both want to marry him. What will Nate think? Kitty loved him first.”
“I think Nate will sleep just fine at night.”
“You never know. She could’ve been the love of his life.” Summer sped forward as we began walking toward the classroom buildings and turned around so she was walking backward. She wiggled her eyebrows. “What if Kitty actually is the girl he’s meant to be with? I mean, who knows? He could end up going down the completely wrong lane in life. Do you believe in stuff like that?”
I slowed, frowning. “What are you talking about?”
She sped up, still walking backward and motioned for me to keep up with her. “I mean, the decisions you make today could alter your future. Things like that. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be your roommate. Maybe I was supposed to be someone else’s, but something happened. Say, for instance, she did something horrible. She made one decision that changed her future, so it changed ours, too. You and I weren’t even going to meet, much less become the best buds that we will be. Thank god she made that horrible decision, right? Or maybe not. Maybe whoever that girl was might have actually been the love of Nate’s life, or maybe even Logan’s. Let’s get ambitious here. Do you think about stuff like that?”
“No.” I scratched my head. It was spinning a little bit. “Why the hell would you?”
Summer laughed, twirling around so that she was walking side by side with me again. She lifted a shoulder, her head falling down. “I don’t know. I think it’s the aftereffects of hating my stepmother. She did a real fucking doozy on my dad. I always think, what if they hadn’t met at that bar? What if my mom and dad hadn’t fought that night? What if I hadn’t come home late, so they wouldn’t have ended up fighting because of me? Things might’ve been different.” She sounded so serious now. “Things might’ve been happier.”
I stopped walking. People streamed around us. A few shot us dirty looks, but most just zipped around us, hurrying to their classes.
I’d known her a day.
That one moment told me so much more about her than all the other hours we’d spent together.
She was unhappy.
She hated her stepmother.
She wished for her old life.
And she blamed herself.
As if she realized she’d given me a full window to her inner workings, Summer grinned at me, looking at me sideways. “What are you looking at?”
A broken daughter.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
Me. I was looking at myself.
I pushed forward. “Let’s go to class. Where’s your first one?”
Summer pointed to a brick building across the courtyard. “In there. I checked the map yesterday when we got our books. The store is right over there.” She moved to the smaller building right next to where her classroom was.
Students were everywhere. A line was outside of the bookstore, weaving down the sidewalk. People were milling back and forth, some dashing around the line and moving into the brick building. The larger building extended higher, maybe four floors, and students were lingering outside those doors, too. Some were smoking. Others were talking with friends. Still more stood next to the bike rack. We were coming down a sidewalk that met five other sidewalks in a large stone circle in the middle of the courtyard, and people were coming back and forth.