Love and Fame Games (Book 1)

12

Present Day.

When it came to malls, the one nearest UCR was the best our town had to offer.

Which actually meant that, while it wasn't a dump, it wasn't all that great, either. Those who were accustomed to finer things and didn't mind a little extra travel time usually went somewhere else.

For kids who were just looking to kill time, however, it was the first place that came to mind and also where my friends and I had agreed to meet Friday after school.

I walked through the automatic sliding doors. Glad to be out of the sun and harsh, dusty wind, I yanked the hood of my blue and grey sweater off my head and caught a glimpse of my reflection on a store window's polished surface.  My hair looked a mess, so I gathered it up in a quick bun that I secured with an elastic I wore on my wrist.

There were no new messages on my phone, which meant I was the first to arrive. It was normal for something to come up at the last minute on Fridays—extracurricular activities and all that. Even I had to make a quick stop at the school gym before I came here. I just didn't expect things to turn hectic for everyone else so soon, since it was only our first week back.

Frowning, I tapped out a quick group message informing everyone of my whereabouts and afterwards decided to have a snack while I waited.

Unfortunately, the cluster of various food carts and stands where I was headed appeared to be swamped by a crowd that grew more and more unruly by the second.

This was my biggest problem with the place: the lack of crowd control. Appalled at how excited some people got over free samples, I turned around and hoped that the food court on the upper level would have more breathing room.

Getting there, however, meant going through what, in my opinion, was the mall's second biggest problem: the section of small kiosks with its pushy salespeople. I avoided making eye contact and power-walked to the escalator.

Three familiar faces greeted me as soon as I set foot on the upper level, making me scowl.

"The Lord is testing me," I said, under my breath, and strode towards Off-Kilter: Life-Size Cardboard Edition.

Funny how I saw more of these guys now that they were hardly ever around. On the days they bothered to show up at school at all, they were out the door as soon as the final bell rang.

They had a handler,  Shane, who drove the guys from L.A on the first day of school and since then, had been picking them up in a black van and taking them to some secret rehearsal place everyday after class.

It was all a little shady to me, to be honest. On the other hand, Off-Kilter was everywhere—in the form of cardboard displays, key-chains and wristbands. Why question the methods when the results spoke for themselves?

It was the very reason I was avoiding the kiosk vendors downstairs, too. Most of the time, I didn't mind the cutesy little stores and even bought the occasional statement shirt or handmade accessory from them. It just so happened that I was trying to distance myself from the very band whose wagon everyone was presently jumping on.

Because I'd been down this road before. As embarrassing as it was to admit, there might have been a time when I had the tiniest crush on Seth and wished  we could be something more. But that was ages ago and I knew better now.

It took a lot of sour-graping and nit-picking of his flaws on my end to get where I was now: over it.

It was all for the best, anyway. Seth was a way better friend than a boyfriend, from what I had seen and moreover, left teeth marks on each and every pencil he had ever borrowed from me over the years.