Love and Fame Games (Book 1)

10

Three years ago.

"So."

Great. Just great, I thought, gritting my teeth. I'd been stuck on the same paragraph for the last five minutes or so and just when I was almost finished, I got distracted, yet again. Now I had to start over.

This had better be good.

I closed my history textbook, leaving a pencil between the pages to hold my place. I waited. And waited. Moments passed, and still, nothing. I turned my head sideways to glare at the boy who had broken my concentration.

He just sat there, some feet away, on the opposite end of the tartan couch where I also sat. He was leaning back, face blank, one arm draped over the back pillow between us. He looked completely at rest, except for the bouncy right knee and the hand with the TV remote that was changing channels every split-second or so.

I frowned. What he was doing was bound to give him a seizure once of these days, not to mention got on my nerves, but he should be able to do whatever he wanted in his own living room. I rolled my eyes and flipped my book open once more.

"So," he said again at the exact moment I had started to read.

An unearthly noise escaped from within me. I lunged at the boy, snatched the remote out of his hands, and turned off the TV so I would have his full attention.

"Spit it out, Seth." I sat back down, this time sideways, with my lower back against the couch arm and my bare feet tucked underneath me.

He turned to me, one eyebrow lifted. "You know anything about a party on Saturday?"

I tilted my head and gave him a look that said, duh. Did he even have to ask? "Well, it's Alex's party."

"Oh, right. You two are friends." The words were drawled in a calculated fashion and the fake sheepish smile that followed didn't fool me one bit, either.

This was an understatement and he knew it. I'd only known Alex a couple of years but we had hit it off the moment we met and she quickly became one of only two people I called my best friends.

Seth was the other. At least, he was the closest I had to one before he moved away a few years ago, right in the middle of a school year without so much as a word.

It was just a little before Alex arrived in town. His family went through some stuff—divorce, mainly—and he was gone for a while until very recently, when everything was sorted out and all the necessary proceedings were finalized. Now he was back. For good. Just in time for eighth grade.

His reappearance had been so out-of-the-blue that it didn't even occur to me it could be him when I first saw him again. I was walking to the bus stop on the first day of school when I spotted him from afar. He had headphones on and was occasionally drumming on his pants legs. He was also sitting on the sidewalk in front of a vacant lot on my street, where I used to see Seth all the time.

Yeah, and I still thought he was just some random kid. What an idiot.

Maybe the fact that he didn't look like the way he did now when he left was what threw me off. He was taller than I remembered, not really skinnier but the extra height helped balance out the extra pounds in a rather stunning way.

My actual first thought when I saw him came out a hushed, drawn out damn son.

But the real stunner was that he was waiting for me so we could take the bus to school together. Like this was something we had talked about—when I hadn't seen him in years. It felt surreal, but he was there again the next day. And the next one. And the next.