I swung my bag onto the table. “I’m not late, am I?” I asked, checking my phone. It was only five minutes to seven.
“Of course not,” Blaire said, giving me a smile.
“But you usually come with treats,” Elise said. “Where are our treats?”
I laughed. “So you appreciate them after all.” I was avoiding the Mini-mart and the lady who wanted me to mail her a check for … how much did she expect me to give her, anyway? Millions?
“Treats?” a deep voice said, and I jumped. I hadn’t seen him there at first at the corner of the table. Mason. Why was he here?
“Hi,” I said.
“Do you know Mason?” Elise asked.
“Yes, how do you know him?” My voice was laced with disbelief and I realized too late that it sounded offensive. “I mean, I just didn’t know you knew each other.”
“We met at your party,” Elise said.
“Oh. Right.”
“Are you getting us treats?” he asked.
“No, I sometimes do.”
“Oh.” He went back to reading his graphic novel. Blaire would’ve killed me had I ever invaded the study space with anything other than core subjects.
I slid into the open chair next to Elise.
“Did you do anything fun today?” Blaire asked me.
“No. Laundry.”
“You haven’t hired someone for that yet?”
I laughed even though I was kind of tired of those jokes. I was getting them constantly.
Blaire pointed to the colored chart in the center of the table. “I’ve divided the night by subjects. Right now we’re working on math. If anyone has any hang-ups they’d like to discuss as a group, those will take place in the last quarter of each hour.”
We knew the drill. It was a method of group studying we did about once a month. But Blaire still felt the need to explain it every time. The only problem with this method was that I’d already done my math for the day after school. I’d gotten ahead of myself.
I bit my lip and pulled out the only homework I had—Government. I would participate in the group discussions for math when everyone was finished with theirs.
“What’s that?” Blaire asked. She was like a hawk, narrowing in on my book right away and ready to swoop it away from me.
“I finished math.”
Elise looked up from her paper but didn’t say anything.
“We just got the assignment today,” Blaire said.
“I know. I did it after school. I didn’t know what method we were doing tonight. Sometimes we do flash cards, sometimes we do mock quizzes, sometimes it’s free-form. I wasn’t sure.”
“I told you on Monday.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Yes, we were sitting in the library discussing today and I said—”
“She wasn’t in the library with us,” Elise interrupted, and I wasn’t sure if it was to defend me or to accuse me.
“You were in the library Monday, too?” I asked. “You all said you were busy.”
“Oh.” Blaire’s indignation left just as quickly as it came. “I should’ve texted you about the method. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Didn’t that prove they didn’t purposely leave me out? If they had made some sort of secret plan, Blaire would’ve known not to bring it up now.
Mason put his book down. “Can we get treats now? I’m hungry.” He said it to me, like I was going to run to the store that second and bring him back something.
“Let’s get pizza,” Elise said.
That was a new suggestion and I looked at Blaire to gauge her reaction. She’d always been pretty no-nonsense about study time. She barely tolerated my candy. I wasn’t sure she’d tolerate a big greasy pizza in the middle of all our precious books.
“Yes, I second that,” Mason said.
“If Maddie is providing, I’ll eat pizza,” Blaire said.
“Me?” I asked.
“You just dubbed yourself the treat provider,” Mason said. “So now you must provide treats.”
“Okay, I can buy some pizza. We’ll have it delivered, right?” Or did they all expect me to go pick it up, too?
“For sure. I’ll order it,” Mason said, whipping out his phone.
Apparently there were fancy pizza joints in town where they must’ve charged by the pepperoni slice. It’s the only way I could explain how much the guy at the door wanted me to pay for the pizza. I’d never paid more than fifteen dollars for a large pizza in my life. But Mason must’ve had amazing ordering skills or maybe I’d heard the guy wrong.
“How much?” I asked.
“Sixty-three, forty-one.”
“Sixty-three dollars?”
“Yes,” he said.
“For one pizza?”
He pulled the receipt off the top of the pizza warmer he held and said, “You ordered two large specialty pizzas, breadsticks, and two bottles of soda.”
“There are five of us.”
The guy smiled. “Yeah, that’s a lot of food.”
“Do you take credit cards?”
He nodded and I handed mine over.
“You’re that girl, right?”
“What girl?” I asked, hoping he didn’t really know who I was.
“The lottery girl.”
Great. He did. “Um … ” Could I say no? “Yeah.”
He pulled the pizzas out of the bag. “Does this mean I get a big tip tonight?”
I gave a little chuckle. It was a joke, right? He ran my card through the square on his phone and then held it out for me. There was a place where I could add on a tip. Twenty percent would’ve been about twelve bucks. I put in twenty dollars and handed it back.
He didn’t try very hard to hide his disappointment. “Your drinks and breadsticks are in the car. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.” I took the pizza to the kitchen and set it on the counter. “Mason, there’s more. Be a stand-up guy and go get it.” I tried to keep the snarl out of my voice when I said it.
Mason jumped up and disappeared out of the room.
“Was he voted on, too, in the library this week?” I asked, and then bit my tongue, instantly regretting letting that out.
“You don’t want Mason here?” Elise asked. “It’s Mason Ramirez, Maddie. Mason wants to hang out with us.”
I sighed. “Yes, that’s cool. I’m sorry. The pizza guy made me mad.”
Blaire was at my side and said under her breath, “I didn’t vote for him.”
I smiled, glad I wasn’t completely going crazy, and grabbed a slice of pizza. This was why people bought expensive pizza, I realized after my first bite. It was amazing.
Mason came back with his armful of food and drinks, and Blaire got cups and plates down.
“Who is the best person ever?” Mason asked, filling his plate. “That girl right there.” He pointed to me, his mouth already full.
Blaire nodded her head. “It’s true.”
And just like that, the night turned around. Mason ended up bringing a lightness to the group that made study time more fun and less structured. And maybe the food helped, too. It was the best eighty dollars I’d spent in a while.
We had another study session Friday night (this time sans Mason) and I finally felt like I was back on track. Back on my schedule. Back on my life plan. The last few weeks had been exciting and distracting and out of the ordinary but, like I’d told Seth, it was time to focus. Keep my eye on the real goal—college. And that’s what I was doing now, sitting at my desk on a Saturday afternoon, doing what I did best, studying.
My phone buzzed and I smiled; Seth was my main texter lately. But it wasn’t Seth. It was an anonymous number. And the only text was a link to a website that I wasn’t dumb enough to click on. I wasn’t going to get a virus on my brand-new phone. It was probably some spammer. I deleted the text and set my phone down.
Not two minutes later, the text was back again. This time I clicked the link. It took me to a website I’d seen before. It mostly covered celebrity gossip or sensational news stories that seemed too far-fetched to be true. Again, I deleted the text. When it came up a third time, my curiosity got the best of me. I accessed the link on my computer rather than click on it through my phone again.