Fate Reloaded

Fate Reloaded--Chapter One

“No way. I know you love a good creepfest,” she said. Then acting as if she were feeling way more perky than she was, she added, “Besides, maybe The Judge will change his mind and let me go.”

Desi cocked her head and rolled her eyes at Jordana. “The day The Judge gives in on anything will be the day I cut my hair into a mullet. It’s never going to happen,” she said, hopping off the counter. Jordana couldn’t help but laugh. Desi hated mullets with a passion on account of them being, in her words, “unnatural.”

“Okay, okay,” Jordana said, following Desi back into the living room and watching her put on her backpack. “Let me figure something out and I’ll let you know what’s up tomorrow, okay?”

“Sounds good,” Desi said as she made her way to the door. She paused before opening the door though and shuddered.

“What’s wrong?” Jordana asked.

Desi looked back with a dead-serious look on her face. “I was just picturing myself with a mullet. So disturbing!”

Jordana laughed as she watched Desi disappear behind the closing door.

*  *  *  *

Jordana thought about what she should do about the movie thing, while she set the table for dinner that night. It’s not like she was jonesing to see Blood, Guts and Fears or anything. In fact, ordinarily, she would have just told the girls she had other plans, if it weren’t for one thing.

Billy Thorpe may be there.

Jordana had been crushing on Billy Thorpe ever since she’d seen him running around on the football field their freshman year. When she first saw his face and mussed up hair dripping with sweat (and didn’t gag at the grossness of his disgusting boy sweat), she knew it was love.

Billy and his entourage of buddies, which included Noe Valentine (pronounced like Joey, but with an N; Jordana still questioned whether his parents were on something when they named him) and Kurt Dennison, had sort of teamed up with their group of girls, to make one mega-group at school.

They weren’t exactly on the “A-list”—that status was reserved for the senior crowd—but they weren’t exactly unfortunate in the popularity department either. Their group was a mixture of student athletes, preps, well-to-do kids, and average everydayers.

And although Jordana had hung out with Billy nearly every day since their first day of high school, she had yet to let him know just how much she liked him. Lately, she’d just been waiting for the perfect time to tell him, and the more she thought of it, the more she realized that a quiet, dark movie theater might be the perfect setting to take the plunge.

Just as Jordana was daydreaming about Billy reaching for her hand in the movie theater, her mother walked into the room.

“How was school, sweetie,” her mom asked in an overly chipper voice. Her mom owned her own arts and crafts store where people came in to make pottery and paint and stuff. For her mom, it was the perfect environment for her to work on her own art as well as make some extra cash on the side. And whenever Mrs. Kane finished a project she was working on, she came home in a cheerier-than-Santa-on-Christmas-day mood. Tonight, this was a good sign for Jordana.

“School was fine,” she answered, returning her mother’s perkiness. “How was work?”

“Well, I just finished this ceramic bowl that I’ve been working on,” her mom started, obviously excited to talk about her newest piece.