The Little Woods by McCormick Templeman Read Free Book Online Page B

I? What was I doing with these people? I felt like a foreign exchange student struggling to understand inscrutable customs. I wondered if it would be rude to excuse myself and head up to bed. But just then, a knock sounded on the glass loggia door, and I jumped a little in my seat.
    “My God, Calista. You are such a chicken,” Pigeon said, laughing. “It’s only the boys. Don’t worry, I won’t tell them about how you are such a chicken.”
    Alex Reese strolled through the front door with Brody Motley. My heart simultaneously leapt and constricted. I’d forgotten about the boys. I wasn’t ready for this. I was one step away from crawling into my moose pajamas. I’d thought I was in girl territory. I’d thought my actions were allowed to be sleepy and safe. Now I was going to have to sit up straight and tuck in my tummy, worry about how my boobs looked and check for crap in my teeth. I didn’t have that kind of energy.
    I liked the idea of being around Alex Reese, but I didn’t want to be too obvious, so I set myself talking to Brody, a hockey-player type with shaggy brown hair and a sweet way about him.
    The parents went up to bed after the boys arrived, and soon several bottles were uncorked and the wine started flowingmore freely. At some point, Alex got up to go to the bathroom, and when he came back, he sat in the big easy chair next to my end of the sofa. He smiled and leaned over to me.
    “So how are you liking St. Bede’s?”
    “It’s nice, I guess.” I shrugged.
    “Nice?” He laughed. “St. Bede’s is a lot of things, but nice isn’t one of them.”
    “You don’t like it here?”
    “Like it? Of course I like it,” he said, then took a big easy sip of his wine. “This place is my ticket to the Ivy League. It’s just competitive, that’s all. But tell me about you.”
    For a moment I considered telling him the truth, but no one wanted to hear about dead family members and drunken moms. I knew there were certain kinds of girls—damsel-in-distress types—who could expose their family dysfunction and still be attractive to boys, but I wasn’t one of those girls. I was more of a Wednesday Addams type, and since my new mission statement was basically just
try not to freak anybody out
, I decided to play it cool.
    “There’s nothing to tell,” I said.
    “You have a boyfriend back home?”
    “No,” I said. “Boyfriends are boring. They always want to, like, hold hands or make out to Coldplay.”
    “I’m not boring, and I don’t listen to Coldplay,” he said.
    “Good to know.”
    He nodded, and when he held my eyes for a moment too long, I began to wonder if something was going on between us. But just then Chelsea Vetiver materialized, a thick swamp cloud of effluvium gusting into the room.
    “Reese, Brody, what’s up?” she asked, planting herself firmly on Alex’s lap.
    He lit up when he saw her, the dumb-puppy-dog look washing over him like so much syrup. She had won the battle, but maybe I could still participate in the war. Though, I had to admit, if she’d won the battle simply by walking into the room, things did not look especially good for me.
    “So are you guys
creeching
?” she asked, and rolled her eyes.
    “What’s creeching?” I asked, sipping the soda water Noel had given me.
    “It’s when you sneak out of your dorm at night,” Helen said. “It’s pretty much the worst thing you can do other than cheating.”
    “Wow,” I said. “Next you’ll be mainlining battery acid. Kids these days.”
    “Yeah, pretty wild, right?” Alex said.
    “So you walked here?”
    “There’s a trail through the woods behind school. Lets out basically right here.”
    “It was scary as hell with just two of us, though,” Brody said. “I’m used to meeting up with the whole crowd.”
    “I was there, man. I had your back.”
    “You’re big, but I bet you’d just lose it if you saw a ghoul or demon or whatever the hell’s out there.”
    “You guys are a couple of