Am I Pretty Yet?

Chapter Fifteen

"What's wrong with you?" Parker asked as we walked through the school parking lot.

Or rather, he walked and I sluggishly tagged along, my feet dragging along the ground. A few other seniors were beginning to pull into the nearby vacant spots, their music blasting and rattling their windows. I wasn't at all prepared to enter the campus. My eyes kept nervously flitting back and forth.

The kiss was still burning brightly in my brain, not to mention on my lips.

I'd only managed to get three hours of sleep because I kept touching my mouth, unable to grasp whether what had happened in the Jump was real. I began to wonder how many other girls were walking around in the universe, having just been kissed with not a single iota of what to do next.

"Hey." Parker snapped his fingers in front of my face. "You look like a zombie. What happened?"

The back of my neck heated up. "Nothing."

The chatter and banging of locker doors as we entered the building strangely soothed me and brought my heartbeat back to a steady pace.

The kiss with Harrison was an accident.

We were in the dark.

Harrison became delusional.

Anything but the fact that the whole event was real and based off of true feelings.

Parker's eyes narrowed suspiciously at me, and it took every nerve inside of me to stay still and unshaken, to keep eye contact and not flinch. When he finally shrugged his shoulders, I let out a small sigh. The spontaneous thrill of last night was enough to keep me reeling throughout the day. I didn't need any more surprises.

We turned the corner, reaching the hallway where my locker was located. Parker bumped his arm against mine.

"I have something I want to talk to you about."

"What is it?"

I craned my neck around, desperately searching for Richel. She hadn't tagged along on the car ride to school this morning. When I had opened the front door, it had only been Parker sitting in the front seat, his fingers drumming against the steering wheel to an unknown beat inside his head. I assumed she was either a) running late or b) taking care of last minute pageant itinerary. I couldn't help but think that perhaps she would know what to do about this whole fiasco. She surely had been kissed by a handful of boys and would know how to handle a situation like mine.

"The spring formal is coming up," Parker said.

I nodded. "This week, the same day as the pageant."

My eyes continued to search through the packs of students nearby the water fountain and bathroom doors, trying to find Richel's familiar blonde head. Maybe she was already at school, waiting for me beside my locker. I needed to talk to someone. It couldn't be Faith, despite the fact that I had known her longer. Richel already knew the whole story. With Faith, there would be too much catching up to do.

There were a large number of people milling around my locker, which wasn't exactly making the searching any easier. It was bad enough that my brain was cluttered.

"It's actually right after the pageant."

As soon as we reached the herd of students, I attempted tapping on their shoulders to politely ask them to move, however there was no response from them whatsoever.

"Nina."

I snapped my neck up at Parker, who was now standing in front of me and staring at me with a look I wasn't quite sure I had received from him before. His eyes were carefully steadied on me and me alone. As soon as he spoke my name, the students spread apart, as if Parker was Moses asking the waters to rise and split apart. Parker walked in the middle of them until he reached a figure hidden behind a swarm of pink roses. As soon as the hidden figure handed the bouquet to Parker, she fluffed her hair and grinned at me.