Clocked by Elle Strauss Read Free Book Online Page B

was kind of surprised to see her there. She sat with her friend from the dance at a table by the door with other kids my crowd would consider nerds and dorks.
    I focused hard on Tyson’s animated retelling of a basketball blunder that had happened on national TV over the weekend. Jessica and her gals joined our table and she pressed in beside me, rolling her eyes at Tyson, not at all interested in the game that had riled him.
    Despite my best efforts I couldn’t keep my eyes from darting in Casey’s direction. She never once looked my way, so maybe she really was over me.
    If she was ever into me at all in the first place.
    “ She’s just so weird.” Jessica was blowing steam with one of her groupie cheer friends. They loved gossip and usually I could tune them out.
    But not today.
    “ I mean, the way she dresses with that height...and her hair! She so needs a make-over, you know?” Jessica was looking toward Casey’s table and I knew in that instant who she was talking about. It made my blood boil.
    “ What do you have against her, anyway?” I said.
    “ What?” Her eyes darkened as she glanced up at me. “And why do you care?”
    “ Just leave her alone.”
    Jessica’s face turned crimson and the whole table grew awkwardly quiet.
    “ Why?” Jessica challenged. “What’s she to you?”
    “ Nothing. Just drop it.”
    It was like Casey knew we were discussing her. She stared at us, at me. I turned away from her penetrating gaze. When I dared to look back, she was gone.
    Jessica gave me the cold shoulder for the rest of the day, but Tyson handed me a high five in the change room at practice. “Way to put your woman in her place.”
    “ She’s in her place,” I said.
    “ Yeah, right.”
    I knew Tyson didn’t like Jessica, and quite honestly, I didn’t much like her either half the time. But, as vain as this sounded, she served her purpose. I couldn’t face being “on the market” right now. And Jessica wasn’t all bad. She could be cute and funny. Despite her popularity, or maybe because of it, she was really quite insecure. And I knew I wasn’t helping. Girls could tell when their guy was drifting.
    I was definitely drifting.
     
    During English Lit the next day, the teacher, Mr. Turner, scratched the words, The Temptest on the chalkboard, followed by the word, Tragicomic .
    He scanned the room putting his index finger to his chin in that annoying way he always did.
    He called on Casey. A perfect excuse to turn around and look at her. I shouldn’t have but I did and briefly caught her eye. She looked terrified. Of me, or Mr. Turner, I wasn’t sure.
    “ Casey?” he said again.
    “ Um, well,” she started. “I think it means that while the play ends happily the road to the end is often tragic.”
    Insightful.
    “ Mr. Mackenzie?”
    Of course, he’d call on me right after Casey. This situation was almost Shakespearean.
    Mr. Turner pressed. “Can you elaborate?”
    “ Sometimes the tragic situations lead us to believe it will be something other than a happy ending.”
    I really was trying not to read into this. The moral of The Tempest didn’t have anything to do with me, with us.
    Did it?
    Mr. Turner ended his lecture by sending us to the library to work on an essay on the many themes of the Shakespearean tragic comedy.
    Casey was out of her chair and out the room before I had the chance to walk to her desk. She clearly didn’t want to talk to me and I didn’t blame her. I decided in that moment that I had to at least explain myself. I hated how she was hating me.
    I pulled up the empty chair beside her. “I’ve been looking for you.” It was the truth. Even when I was desperately avoiding her, a part of me was always looking.
    She shot me a withering look. “Funny, because it seems like I’m in your space all the time and yet you don’t seem to see me.”
    “ I know. I’ve been a jerk.”
    She let her gaze drop to the table “Okay, you found me. What do you want?”
    “ I