Adaptation by Malinda Lo Read Free Book Online

Reese remembered the pool as if it had been decorated for aglittering party. She remembered lights hung in delicate strands around the perimeter, reflected in the water as hundreds of wavering stars. She remembered David leaning toward her, watching her with smiling eyes while she shuffled through notes and charts.
    When the pool closed and all the students were forced to head upstairs, David walked her back to her room on the sixth floor even though he was on the fifth. The hallway carpet had a pattern of tiny, brownish-gold diamonds on a background of dark red, probably designed to withstand heavy foot traffic and spills, and Reese found herself staring at it intently as they neared her room. At the door, she shifted her backpack to one shoulder so that she could dig out her keycard, and David reached out to grab the bag before it slipped to the floor.
    “Thanks,” she said. She had to open the front pocket of the backpack, and for some reason David didn’t let go of it. She looked up at him, and it was as if some kind of invisible switch inside her flipped. Her skin went hot, and her brain went blank. Her heartbeat accelerated. David’s straight black eyelashes were like the bristles of a fine paintbrush. His cheeks were tinged light pink.
    The elevator at the end of the hall dinged open, and a crowd of debaters surged into the corridor. One of them called out, “Just kiss her already!”
    The other students snickered, and Reese’s face burned with mortification. David jerked away from her, letting go of her backpack so suddenly, it banged sharply against her knee.
    Reese spun around and slammed the keycard into the lock. She burst into the room and shoved the door closed just as she heard David call her name. Laughter ricocheted down the hallway. One of the kids called out, “She’s playing hard to get!”
    Reese backed away from the door and sat down on the edge of the bed, dropping her backpack onto the floor. Her whole body shook. For months—ever since he broke up with his girlfriend back in November—her feelings for David had been building up. She had tried to ignore them, because they scared the living daylights out of her—she did
not want
to like someone. She did not want to be thinking about David when she was supposed to be doing something else. Maybe other girls liked that nervous, fluttery feeling in their stomachs, but she hated it. It made her feel out of control.
    She had promised herself a long time ago, after overhearing one too many fights between her parents, that she wasn’t going to get involved in anything romantic. It wasn’t worth it. Her parents had divorced when she was nine, but for years afterward they would reconcile and then split up again. Every time things went south—which they inevitably did—Reese saw the way it wrecked her mother. Reese didn’t want to be like that. And that meant she wasn’t going to date anyone, and she definitely wasn’t going to
like
anyone.
    She had never factored in the possibility that someone might like
her
. That the pull of that person might overrule her intellectual decision to deny her feelings.
    David was knocking on the door, calling out, “Reese? Reese, let me talk to you.”
    “Leave me alone,” she said, her voice hitching into a sob.
    “Reese?”
    “Leave me alone!” she yelled, and finally David went away. She should have been relieved—now he would definitely never be interested in her since she had overreacted like a freak—butinstead she felt as if a dragging weight had been chained to her feet. She stared at her hands as hot tears fell onto her palms, and told herself to get over it. It was better this way. Safer.
    The next day, she screwed up royally during semifinals. She could barely look at David, much less concentrate on the debate topic. No wonder they had lost.
    She was still stuck in that memory, sinking lower and lower, when a shape flew directly into the headlights.
    It was a bird, its wings flapping seemingly