Whistleblower ✓

19 | what a drag

"What'd Ellison want?" he asked through a mouthful of granola.

I thought of Whittaker and the twisted excitement in his eyes as he'd aimed his phone at my face. Hanna and Andre didn't need to know about him. They were already too worried about me after the whole coffee-dumping incident—I didn't want to stress them out.

So I shrugged and said, "She just wanted to check in."

Andre narrowed his eyes like he could tell I was lying but hadn't decided yet if he wanted to call me out or let it slide.

"Let's go to class," I blurted, dusting crumbs off my lap. "I don't want anybody stealing our seats."

I guess Andre decided it wasn't worth interrogating me about whatever Ellison and I had discussed. He trailed behind me, crunching away on my granola bar and minding his own business, as we took the stairs down to the basement of the biological sciences building. It was passing period. I could hear the din of chatter and laughter inside our classroom from out in the hallway.

When I hesitated at the doors of the lecture hall, Andre noticed and stepped around me, taking the lead without a word.

My human shield.

I huddled close behind his back, head down and eyes on the ground, as we shuffled down to our usual spot in the third row from the back. I didn't want to look up. I didn't even want to risk locking eyes with Bodie or Kyle Fogarty or any other football player in our class.

I just wanted to be invisible again.

Andre settled into his seat and angled his too-long legs towards me, so his knees weren't wedged against the back of the chair in front of him. I let my backpack slide off my shoulders and hit the floor by Andre's feet.

Before I could plop down beside him, someone called my name.

"Yo, Laurel!"

It was Ryan Lansangan, the man of a thousand inappropriate group project puns. He and Olivia were sitting in the end seats a few rows down.

Bodie stood looming over them in the aisle, both hands braced on the straps of his backpack and mouth set in a grim line. He wore a black shirt and black joggers—very moody—and had beige compression wrap looped around his left wrist.

Our eyes met.

His face seemed different now that I'd scrolled through pictures of him growing up. I could see traces of the kid in him beneath the square jaw dusted with stubble and the sharp features molded by hormones.

Somewhere in the sleepless haze of last night, I'd let myself entertain embarrassingly improbable theories about why Bodie hadn't ditched our group. Theories that I'd usually only come up with after a half a bottle of wine—that from the very first day in the elevator, when we'd both been wet from the rain and late to class, he'd been curious about me. That despite our opposing allegiances, he was still curious, and had decided that working on this group project together would give us both the chance to talk things through and reconcile our differences.

But those theories all withered under the weight of his obvious discomfort at seeing me again.

He didn't look like he wanted to talk things through with me.

He didn't look like he wanted to talk to me at all.

I turned to Andre, who'd taken it upon himself to stare down Bodie. I'm sure Andre intended to look threatening, but the way he was squinting, he sort of just looked like he'd forgotten to put in his contacts.

"I'll be right back," I murmured.

I marched down to where the rest of my group was gathered. Ryan and Olivia watched me approach, but Bodie fixed his eyes somewhere across the lecture hall—which I was sort of glad for, because something about the weight of Bodie's gaze on me made walking very difficult.