Between Here and Forever by Elizabeth Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

fall.
    It’s such a tiny movement, but it’s the biggest one she makes. The one that keeps us all coming here. Keeps us all waiting.
    “I brought someone to see you,” I tell her, and then look at Eli.
    He sits down across from me, and I think she’s caught him, that he’s trapped by her beauty like everyone else is, but then he starts tapping the fingers of one hand against the chair and looks at me like he’s waiting for something.
    “He’s shy,” I tell Tess, and then look at him again, widening my eyes so he knows he’s supposed to be talking now. “But you heard him the other day, remember? The guy with the voice?”
    Eli clears his throat and says, “Hey.”
    I look at Tess’s face. Nothing.
    “Can you say something else?” I say.
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know. Whatever you tell girls when you meet them.” I don’t know what else to do. Tess talks to guys. I don’t. They don’t even notice me.
    I turn back to Tess and watch her face as he starts to talk.
    “Um. I’m Eli,” he says. “I go to Saint Andrew’s. I’m a junior, and I—”
    “A junior?” I say, and look at him again. His fingers are still tapping against the chair. “There’s no way you’re a junior.”
    “I am.”
    Oh, crap. I was sure he was a senior, eighteen and getting ready for college. “You don’t look like any of the guys in my school. How old are you?” Maybe he got held back a year or something. Anything.
    “Seventeen.”
    Double crap. “Okay, but you’ll be eighteen soon, right?”
    “Well, if nine months counts as soon.”
    I widen my eyes again and then glance at Tess. “Soon, right?”
    “Oh. Right,” he says.
    “You can tell him all about college,” I tell Tess. “How to survive his freshman year and all that. And you’re really only halfway through your sophomore year, and twenty isn’t that much older than eighteen. Plus he’s thinking about majoring in English, just like you. If you wake up, the two of you can try to convince me that Shakespeare is interesting, never mind that you can’t understand anything the people in his plays say.”
    “I’m not going to major in English. And I don’t get what’s so great about Shake—”
    I clear my throat then, to get him to stop, and look at him.
    He’s not even looking at Tess. He’s looking at me like I’m some sort of puzzle he can’t figure out. Maybe he’s overwhelmed by Tess or thinks I’m weird. Or both.
    “He’s kidding,” I tell Tess. “You know how guys are. Remember when you were Juliet during junior year and the understudy put laxatives in Bill Waford’s lunch so he’d be the one who’d get to kiss you? And then Bill begged to have the play’s run extended so—”
    “Did that really happen?” Eli says. He’s still tapping his fingers, but now against his arms. It’s like he’s playing the piano on his skin or something.
    I nod. “Just about every guy in school tried out for Romeo as soon as they found out Tess was auditioning for Juliet.”
    “What if she hadn’t gotten the part?”
    “See, now you have to wake up,” I tell Tess. “Show him how there’s no way anyone else could have gotten it. You were the only one who could ever play a girl people would die for.”
    “Were you in the play?”
    “Huh?” I say, startled.
    “The play. Were you in it?”
    “Who’d want to see me onstage?” I say. “Plus, because everyone knew Tess was going to try out, they didn’t even open the auditions to freshmen.”
    “So you’re a junior now, like me?”
    “Yeah,” I say, surprised he’s figured out what grade I’m in. “But you’re clearly way more ready for college and stuff than me.”
    Eli glances down at his hands, which are still moving, and then blushes.
    He even makes embarrassed look good. He doesn’t turn bright red or anything, but two spots of color appear right below his cheekbones, making them appear more prominent. Making him look vulnerable, and almost accessible to someone like