Deceived by Julie Anne Lindsey Read Free Book Online Page A

me. Mad or not, I wouldn’t mind accepting his offer. Climbing on the back of his bike and wrapping my arms around him would be a great start to a brand new me. Braver. More fun. Less spazzy. “My roommate’s picking me up. It’s fine. I’m good, really.” Liar .
    “If you’re certain.” He stood and moved back to his table but not before giving me a look that sent electricity spiraling right through to my sandals. From the moment we met, he’d been speaking to me on some other, unseen level, and it killed me. Wanting something so far out of my reach was torturous. My toes curled under the table.
    Having a crush was highly underrated. The rush alone made the inevitable heartbreak worthwhile. When he turned, I couldn’t resist watching him walk away. In my opinion, his existence was a bona fide phenomenon. How someone like him even existed was beyond me. Regardless of how, I was thankful for the new direction my thoughts had taken.
    As much as I hated to leave the coffee shop for a second reason now, I was thrilled when Pixie pulled up.
    “Hey.” Davis leaned on the counter and looked me over as I passed.
    “Hey.”
    He nodded. I pressed a shoulder into the glass door and smiled.
    On my way to the car, Brian’s motorcycle was nowhere to be seen. I wondered how he had gotten there. I couldn’t imagine him walking around campus like the rest of us pleated-skirt doppelgangers. Hadn’t he offered me a ride? I looked to the tree with the fallen firefly once more. Just a tree. A dark street. Nothing more.
    The car door swung open with a loud squeak. I appreciated the ride and also the fact that Pixie didn’t ask why. Instead, she seemed glad for the call. She talked too loudly. She hated to turn the stereo down, so she just talked louder.
    “Don’t go home. I’m going to the river. Come with. Please?” She planned to see some friends and her on-again, off-again boyfriend.
    I didn’t necessarily want to be alone, but it didn’t interest me. “Nah. Catch me up on all the details when you get in.”
    “Come on, Elle. Are you kidding? The Pier is raging. I freaked when you called because I thought we were finally going to hang. We never hang.” Her flawless face seemed so disappointed. I almost went with her just to see her smile.
    The student body called the art studio near the river “The Pier” after the wooden pier wrapped around it. They partied there a lot. Local public-school kids met up there all the time, making it a good place to meet guys. Pixie loved the attention. So did everyone else. The Pier was crowded almost every night, and the girl-to-boy ratio had to be more than two-to-one. It was only my first day, but all the complaints about the lack of boys at Francine Frances made sense now. Of those available to date, only a few were in demand. A busy girl could quickly exhaust her resources.
    “I need to get my assignments started. I barely did any work today. For like six hours straight, I tried to figure out how Brian ended up at Francine Frances.” Certainly she could get behind me on that.
    “I know, right? You’d think he would’ve mentioned the academy.”
    “Yes.” I nodded fiercely. “Do you think he thought we were older? He never asked where we went to school.”
    “I guess we look too old for high school. What can we say?” She gave me one of her wild smiles. We pulled up to our place. “You know, you could meet a great guy at The Pier.”
    “Let me know if you see any worth meeting. Maybe I’ll tag along next time.”
    “Fine, but it’s more fun with you.”
    I highly doubted that, but I smiled at her ridiculous pouty face.
    She bounced on her seat. “We’re a team. We’re Pixie and Elle. Come on. I need an anchor.”
    I hated letting her down. For some reason, she liked doing things with me. I didn’t get it. She was fun for me, sure, but she was fun for anyone. At the few parties I had attended, I’d felt like the furniture. Anchor was a good word. I doubted