For the rest of class, I was lost in manic thoughts and fears. If Tobias had shown my poetry to Stevie Macdonald and his group of idiots, my life was over. They’d never let me live it down. Worse—what if they’d taken photos of the pages? What if I walked into school tomorrow to find snapshots of my poems plastered all over the walls?
Or even worse, all over the internet without the shield of anonymity my words were currently protected by?
My stomach roiled.
My knee bounced under the desk in agitation as I imagined my life at Blair Lochrie if my friends and classmates ever got their hands on those poems. They’d decimate me. Some were so personal.
I flinched, remembering I’d written a poem about my first kiss the other week. No. No bloody way! I’d written it down to get it out of my head, like I did most of my worries or concerns. It was supposed to be funny, to cheer me up, but in the wrong hands it was embarrassing, and it would be cruel if Ethan ever got word of it. The fact that Tobias might know I’d compared my first kiss to a slug mistaking my tongue for a mate was beyond mortifying.
And that was the least of what I’d written.
I didn’t hear a word in class.
Not a word.
When the bell rang I just grabbed up my books and bag and darted out of the room before anyone could speak. As I hurried along the corridor, I tried to shove my books into my backpack but the action stupidly slowed me down.
“Comet, wait!”
I was going to throw up.
His hand clamped down on my shoulder, and suddenly Tobias was right in front of me in an increasingly crowded corridor. I stared up at him in reproach, waiting for him to bring the guillotine down on life as I knew it.
Instead he stared at me, searching my face for what felt like forever.
Then he did something that surprised the hell out of me. “I, uh...” He scrubbed a hand over his hair and glanced at his feet. “I really liked your poems.”
I was a mass of conflicted emotions in that moment, but overruling them all were confusion and distrust. “What?”
His gaze flew to my face again. “I know I shouldn’t have read them... I’m a nosy asshole... But they were really good.”
I couldn’t detect an ounce of remorse in his tone, despite his words. Was he making fun of me? Was this all a big joke to him?
The anger I’d been feeling burned into bitterness, melting the shyness I usually felt around boys into ash. “Did you show them to anyone?”
Tobias flinched—at my accusing tone or just at the question, I couldn’t be certain. “I wouldn’t do that.”
Really? And how the hell was I supposed to know what King would or wouldn’t do to get a laugh out of his friends? As far as I knew, he didn’t take anything in life seriously, and I was just supposed to believe that he’d found the poetry of a boy-shy, introverted bookworm “good” and that he had no intention of turning me into an afterschool special?
“Comet, are you okay?” Suddenly Vicki and Steph were at my side, Vicki looking from me to Tobias with suspicion. Whatever she saw in my face made her cross her arms and glare at the American.
I tensed, silently begging him not to say a word.
“I was just asking Comet a question about our presentation.” He shrugged, and my tension eased. As if he knew, he smirked at me. “See you later.”
I watched him walk away, hope and fear now fighting with one another equally. Was he telling the truth about liking my poems? Had he really kept my notebook to himself and not shown it to Stevie? Only time would tell, and until then I’d have to walk around with giant butterflies in my stomach, waiting for that guillotine to fall or not fall.
“What was that all about?” Vicki said. “You looked angry at him.”
“No.” I shook my head. “He was just asking when we were meeting up to finish the presentation. I said we’d already discussed it and he should probably start concentrating if we want to pass our talking outcome.”
“You did not!” Steph looked wide-eyed at the thought. “Comet, you’re going to blow your chance with him.”
I stared at her like she’d lost the plot. “Since when did I have a chance with him? Since when did we want me to have a chance with him?”
“Since you still have virgin lips.”
I flushed at the way she smirked as she said it, as though she enjoyed the fact that I had less experience with boys than she did. She probably did enjoy that fact. For Steph, life was one big competition. Even with her friends. “Actually I don’t,” I said, pleased when her eyes rounded in shock.
“What? Since when?”
“Since you were too drunk at Jordan’s party to see me kissing his friend Ethan.”
“No way!”
“Yes way.” Vicki nodded, surprising me. She shrugged as I gave her a questioning look. “Ethan told us that night. He said you two had been snogging and then you just disappeared. At the time I was...well... I was a bit drunk and into Jordan Ass Hall. Then you never mentioned it so...” Irritation shone in my best friend’s eyes.
I could only assume she was mad at me for not confiding in her.
Again.
Any other day I’d stew over it and try to think of ways to make it up to her. However, I had bigger problems today.
“It wasn’t a big deal.” I started to walk away, the corridor emptying as everyone else hurried to get home or to extracurricular activities.
“It was your first kiss, Comet. How is that not a big deal?” Steph frowned.
“Because it wasn’t.” And sadly, it really hadn’t been.
As we strode outside I glanced around, preparing myself for Tobias and his friends to jump out and start mocking me. Instead there were just pupils strolling with friends like I was.
No one paid attention to me.
The tightness in my chest, however, didn’t ease.
“Comet, you’re not even listening. Earth to Comet!”
I threw Steph an exasperated look, surprising both of them when I said, “I have to go, okay. Talk later.”
For once I didn’t care if my behavior would have them talking about me behind my back. All I cared about was getting home in one piece.
Yet, when I did cross the threshold of my home, my anxiety didn’t lessen.
Instead I thought of the personal social media pages I used infrequently. What if Tobias had posted something on there?
I threw my bag on the floor of my bedroom and dived for my laptop. Heart pounding in my chest, I started scouring every social media site I could think of. Finally, after discovering Tobias hadn’t even been on his own social media pages for months, despite being tagged on Instagram and Facebook by a lot of my classmates in photos from parties, I relaxed marginally.
But only marginally.
Because even if Tobias didn’t share my poetry with anyone else, he had still seen it. This boy I’d spent some time with but knew little of had seen deep into my soul. And he didn’t seem to care or understand how big of a deal that was.
Tears pricked my eyes at the injustice of it. I rummaged through my backpack for the offending notebook, then flopped down on my bed and cracked it open, preparing myself for the torment of rereading words I’d written, now knowing someone else had read them, too.
As I read poems that ranged from silly, inconsequential meanderings to ones of longing and loneliness, the tears began to spill over. These were my thoughts. Mine. No one else’s.
How dare he steal into my thoughts and take them from me!
And what an idiot I was for giving him the opportunity! I was so mad at myself for not realizing my notebook was missing, for leaving it for him to find. I was probably angrier at me than at him!
Frustration burned through my tears, and as the wet blur cleared from my vision I was stopped in my ragey inner protests at the sight of a Post-it note on one of the poems. Scrawled in messy, boyish writing were the words, “This is my favorite. TK.”
It deflated me entirely.
Confused me.
Bewildered me.
And worse...softened me.
I peeled the Post-it note off the poem and reread it.
For the longest, loneliest time,
I thought it was me, not you.
So I tried to see it in rhyme,
Work out what was real and true.