Midnight Sun Read online

  “She’s in the witness protection program,” he says with an easygoing charm. “If she told you that, she’d have to kill you.”

  Zoe gives him a little fake laugh, but she’s still eyeing me. “On second thought, you actually do look familiar,” she says. “Have we met somewhere before?”

  I shake my head. “Don’t think so.”

  She steps aside, her lips pressed together. “It’ll come to me, don’t you worry,” she says.

  Zoe glares at us as Charlie holds his hand out to me. I take it. I hope he can’t feel how shaky the encounter with Zoe has left me.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  I follow behind him, leaving Zoe standing all alone and angry. I glance back at her over my shoulder as we head up the grand staircase, and she’s still glowering at me like she wishes I’d self-combust. I’m sure she’d probably be thrilled to know it’s an actual possibility in my case.

  10

  “And this,” Charlie says, flipping the lights on in yet another room. This one is stacked floor to ceiling with antique-looking hardbound books. “Is the library.”

  “Oooooooooh.” I stare around with undisguised envy. “I would literally live in here if this was my house.”

  Charlie laughs. “I bet Zoe’s never set foot in here, especially not to read.”

  His seemingly vast knowledge of her likes and dislikes, not to mention the floor plan of her house, unsettles me. My stomach churns with worry and fear. I wonder what kind of relationship Charlie and Zoe had or have and how he could ever like a girl like her when he also seems to like me. Zoe and I could not be more different in every possible way.

  I swallow hard and turn to Charlie. “You seem to know Zoe pretty well,” I say, trying to sound casual but feeling far from it. “And from what I could tell back in the living room, she seems to feel like she has some kind of a claim on you. So what’s the deal with you two?”

  Charlie puts his hands up like he’s trying to deflect the question right back at me. “Whoa, where did that come from?”

  I shrug. “I’m just saying, you’re giving me a tour of her house like you live here. She looks at me like she wants to rip my head off because I’m with you. I just want to make sure I’m not getting in the middle of anything.”

  Charlie takes my hands in his and looks me straight in the eyes. “There’s nothing to get in the middle of, I promise.”

  I stare back up at him, hungry for more explanation. There’s more than nothing here. It’s a definite something, or at least it was at some point. I raise an eyebrow like an unspoken question.

  “Fine, we used to hook up once in a while,” he finally admits. “Back when I was still Mr. Big Shot Swimmer. But it’s not something I’m proud of or want to repeat or anything.”

  I nod. I appreciate his honesty even though I didn’t really want to know that his lips have touched hers. I’m going to have a hard time getting that mental picture out of my head. The thought of those two together makes me shiver.

  “You cold?” he says, noticing. “You can wear my sweatshirt if you want.”

  “No, I’m good,” I tell him.

  “And how about us? Are we good now?” he asks.

  I think about it for a second. “Yeah. We’re all good.”

  Charlie turns off the light and leads me back out into the long hallway. “You up for a game of beer pong?”

  “I’ve never played,” I admit. “But sure. Even though I hate beer.”

  And just like that, the tension over Zoe dissipates. “I’ll show you how,” he says. “In fact, I’ll even drink the beer you’re supposed to if you want.”

  “Sounds great,” I tell him.

  We head back into the den and watch the game already in progress. From what I can tell, beer pong consists of people taking turns chucking a little white ball into red cups set up in a triangle at either end of a table and then chugging the beer in them until it’s all gone.

  I’m not at all hopeful I’ll be any good at it, but if Charlie’s willing to down the drinks, I’m more than happy to give it a go. The players toss the ball and chug. Chug and toss. Eventually, that game ends and Charlie and I take on the winners.

  He grabs the ball and mimics the throwing motion for me. “Just be gentle and get a good arc on it,” he says. “It’s a finesse game, not a brute force one. Go ahead. You got this.”

  He hands me the ball. I shoot. A flash of white curves through the air, then lands in the cup with a decisive little plop. I look up at Charlie in surprise. He high-fives me. The guy on the other side of the table chugs, then takes a shot. It misses.

  “Go again,” Charlie urges me.

  Ball two of mine hits. Then three, four, five, and so on. I can’t miss. The other team barely sinks any in our cups. Clearly, they are going to get very buzzed and Charlie will stay basically sober.

  “She’s a hustler! She’s a beast! Where did she come from?!” Charlie whoops as I clinch the final toss.

  I can’t stop grinning. After years of being a failure at every sport I tried—I was serious about my dad being a terrible gym teacher—I’ve finally found one I’m good at. Beer pong. Too bad I can’t tell Dad a thing about my newfound athletic prowess. I think he’d love the fact that I finally got to play a team sport after all these years, and earned all-star status at it, no less.

  Morgan, who’s been watching my quick ascent into the hall of fame from the sidelines, challenges us to the next game.

  “Just you wait,” Morgan trash talks from the other side of the table. “I’ve got a secret weapon on my team, too. He might not know how to tap a keg, but he definitely knows how to sink a Ping-Pong ball.”

  She slaps Garver on the back, trying to pump him up. Garver lobs it and sinks it on his first try. He turns and throws his arms around Morgan, jumping up and down and hugging her. She doesn’t exactly return his enthusiasm. She peels his limbs from around her neck, puts some space between them, and gives him a fist bump instead.

  “In your face!” Garver yells across the table at me. “Drink, Katie!”

  “I got it,” Charlie says as he reaches around and grabs the cup. “I’m a man of my word.”

  I take aim again and land the ball like the seasoned pro I am now. I’m on a total roll. I couldn’t miss if I tried. Garver chugs.

  His luck runs out on his next throw. The ball bounces off the rim of a cup, skitters to the ground, and rolls under the couch. Garver kneels down and goes to retrieve it.

  “Dude!” Morgan complains to his butt crack, which is basically hanging out of his pants as he feels around under the couch. “You promised me you were good at this game!”

  “I am good,” he replies, reappearing and handing the ball to me. He pulls his pants back up. His butt crack disappears. “Just not as good as Katie.”

  It’s my turn again. I hit their cups over and over. They miss more balls than they sink. I’d feel sorry for our opponents except that I’m having too much fun. I think I like parties. No, wait, I’m sure of it.

  Before long, victory is ours. Again. Garver shakes Charlie’s hand, flashes me a peace sign, takes a final gulp, and wipes the remaining foam from his lips. The beer has apparently given him extra courage, because he turns to Morgan and grins at her. “Do you wanna dance?”

  Morgan scowls and gives him a death glare. “Garver, what on earth makes you think I’d ever want to dance with you?”

  I give her a look. She rolls her eyes at me. Be nice, I mouth at her.

  “Fine,” she says with a sigh. “Let’s get it over with already.”

  Garver’s face lights back up and he grabs Morgan by the hand. They weave through the crowd and join the mosh pit of kids bopping around the living room. I wonder if Morgan’s thinking what I’m thinking right now: We both missed out on a lot of fun not going to parties all these years.

  While I’m busy watching Morgan barely move and Garver jump around like a total spaz, I suddenly get the feeling people are watching me. I spy Zoe over in the corne
r whispering to a few other girls I sort of recognize from grade school. I have a hard time shaking the feeling that they are onto me. But then again, maybe they’re just wondering who I am and where I came from; maybe some of them, like Zoe, feel as if Charlie is their property and don’t like that he’s with someone from outside their circle; or maybe I’m just imagining things. It’s hard to tell.

  “Is it me or is everyone looking at us?” I finally ask him, nodding over at Zoe and her crew as discreetly as I can.

  “They’re not looking at us,” he says. “They’re looking at you.”

  He’s looking at me, too, now.

  There goes that intense heat up my cheeks again. “This is how I imagined all the middle school dances I never got to go to,” I say, and it’s probably pretty close: Zoe plotting revenge while I chat with the cutest guy in class, and her doing something heinous when I go to dance with him, like that scene in Carrie when she got pig blood spilled all over her at the prom.

  “Well, it’s not quite the same,” Charlie replies with an easy laugh. He doesn’t seem worried in the least bit about those girls, so I try not to be either. “At a middle school dance, all the girls would be on one side of the room and all the guys would be on the other and no one would touch.”

  I take a slow sip of my pink drink and stare up at Charlie over the top of the cup. “Oh, I’m pretty sure you danced with a lot of girls at middle school dances. Like Zoe and all her friends over there.”

  “Well, maybe. Though I wouldn’t exactly call it dancing,” he tells me. “It was more like the middle school grind.”

  “Eww,” I say. I don’t even want to think about any of those mindless zombies grinding on Charlie. They don’t deserve a great guy like him. “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know what that looked like.”

  “Actually, I think it’s something you can’t possibly miss out on,” he says, taking the drink from my hand and putting it down on the nearest table. “Let’s fill in some of those gaps in your homeschool education.”

  Charlie leads me out to the dance floor and spins me around. Then he brings me in so close there’s almost no space left between us. I forget all about any potential pig-blood-spilling Zoe might be plotting.

  I put my hands on Charlie’s shoulders. He puts a hand on my lower back and starts swaying his hips side to side like a pendulum. I follow his moves. We burst out laughing.

  “This is what you were missing!” Charlie crows.

  “This is horrifying,” I tell him, even though it isn’t, not really. The actual dance might not be that great. But being this close to Charlie Reed definitely is.

  “This move really worked for me!” he protests. “You don’t like it?”

  “I was hoping for a lot more twirling,” I tell him. Hey, I’m actually flirting. It’s actually working! Miracles do exist.

  Charlie slowly spins me around. I make it a full 360 degrees without falling. It’s possible I even look graceful. He pulls me back in and holds me close.

  My heart is skittering around in my chest. I feel his beat back at mine in response. We’re slow dancing in a sea of pogo people and I don’t even care if we look silly for being so old-fashioned. I’ve never felt so perfectly connected to anyone or anything in my life except maybe my music. Zoe and her friends cease to exist in my mind.

  Charlie looks at me, then down at my lips. OhmyGod, he’s about to kiss me. He leans in. I inhale. Close my eyes. Wait.

  And… Garver throws his arms around our necks. The moment is lost. I open my eyes back up.

  “THIS IS THE BEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE!” Garver whoops, pointing at Morgan. He’s sweaty and has beer breath and looks positively blissful. “SHE JUST KISSED ME!”

  I stare over at my BFF. She shakes her head an emphatic no. But she’s doing that thing she always does when she lies, twisting a chunk of hair around her finger. So maybe yes?

  “If you ever say that again, I’ll kill you!” she bellows. Garver grins and runs back over to her.

  Morgan’s still glaring at him, and I worry for a second that she’s really going to punch him. But then he starts spaz dancing around her again and she starts cracking up. She watches his antics for a chorus or two, but after a while, it’s like she can’t help herself anymore. She starts dancing along with him. Garver looks like he’s in heaven.

  I turn back to Charlie. He leans in toward me again. Here comes that kiss. The one I’ve been waiting for my entire life. Finally. I want to remember every last detail of this moment forever and ever.

  Except at the last second, I hear Zoe’s voice in my ear instead of feeling Charlie’s lips on mine. “I think I finally figured out where I know you from,” she says, giving me a knowing smirk. “You weren’t by any chance in Miss Eslinger’s class in first grade, were you?”

  The truth is, yes. We were both in that class. She must know it’s me, Vampire Girl. I refuse to let her make me admit it, though. I’ll tell Charlie about my XP when I’m ready, not because Zoe Freaking Carmichael is bullying me into it.

  I shake my head and don’t say anything. I can’t. I’m worried my voice will betray how much I’m freaking out on the inside.

  “Huh,” she says, giving me an even closer look. “That’s funny. Because you look just like this poor little girl in that class we used to call Vampire Girl. She got sick and never came back to school. I forget her name.”

  Before I can think of a way out of this, Charlie rolls his eyes at Zoe, then turns back to me and laughs. “So that’s why you kept eyeing my neck out on the dance floor. And here I thought it was because you were so into me.”

  “What can I say? You’re pretty irresistible, especially to us vampires.” Even in my state of semipanic, I can’t help but notice that his neck does look pretty awesome. Smells good, too, I think.

  Zoe opens her mouth to say something else. But then her eyes register Charlie’s arm draped over my shoulder and my hand stuck in his back pocket. She stomps away without another word. I can practically see steam coming from her ears.

  “What the heck was that all about?” Charlie says.

  I shrug. “Your ex-girlfriend is weird.”

  “She was never my girlfriend!” he protests before he notices my wide grin. “Oh. You’re teasing me, huh?”

  I giggle. “Maybe a little.”

  He starts leaning in toward me again. I hold my breath again. Close my eyes again. Wait again. Still no kiss.

  This time his lips land next to my ear. “Do you wanna go somewhere?” he whispers.

  I open my eyes, grin up at him, and nod. As if there’s any answer but yes. I would go to the moon with Charlie Reed right now if he asked me to. We head out of the party to go make our own private one.

  11

  The nice thing about a small town is that you can get anywhere you want to go fairly quickly even if you are on foot: the train station, the ice cream shop where Morgan and Garver work, school (if you attend one outside your bedroom, that is), and, in this case, the marina. I have to hand it to Charlie—it’s definitely the most romantic spot in all of Purdue.

  The moon glints off the water as we stroll along the dock hand in hand. Boats sway in the wind. Sails clang against masts. Stars sparkle overhead.

  Charlie points at one of the boats. It’s flying a blue flag with the iconic CAL written across it in gold script. “Fun fact: I was supposed to go to Berkeley on a swimming scholarship,” he tells me.

  Here’s just the opening I’ve been waiting for. Now I can say, Fun fact: I actually am that poor little girl Zoe was talking about before…

  But then I look into his eyes and see that he already seems to be bummed out enough without me adding to it. So instead, I say, “Supposed to? As in you’re not going anymore?”

  “Nope,” he says. “I had to have surgery and they didn’t know if I’d even be able to swim again. And no scholarship means no Berkeley.”

  I stare at my reflection rippling in the water and remember the Dear Gabby line about everyone having
their own poop sandwich. Turns out she’s right. Even Charlie Reed, the most perfect-seeming individual in the world, apparently has one. “Couldn’t you get a loan or something?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Technically, I guess, but my dad’s business has been kinda shaky lately and I didn’t want to put him under that pressure. Besides, swimming was, like, my whole life. I’m still trying to figure out who I am without it. So to waste my parents’ money when I don’t even know what I want to major in seemed pretty selfish.”

  “Wow, I’m really sorry to hear that.” It’s sad that Charlie lost his scholarship, but even sadder that he seems to think he’s not worthy of a college education without swimming. “How did it happen? I mean, how did you get hurt?”

  We keep walking and he doesn’t respond for a good minute. I start to think he didn’t hear me, but then he finally says, “A freak accident. I fell down some stairs and…”

  He stops walking as he trails off. Then he turns to me, takes a deep breath, and starts over. “Actually, that’s not at all true. That’s just what I tell everyone. I was drunk at Owen’s house and he bet me I couldn’t jump off the roof into the pool and I clipped the edge and I’m an idiot.”

  “Wow” is all I can say at first. The version of Charlie that would do something so reckless doesn’t fit with the one I’d imagined all those years, or the one I’m getting to know now.

  “So, you’re a huge idiot” is what comes out my mouth next, because apparently I don’t want to be kissed by the guy I’ve dreamed about for years. I say it nicely, though, even as I shake my head in disapproval of both of us—him for being an idiot and me for also being an idiot. He’s laughing, so I guess I haven’t completely ruined my chances. “Thank you for telling me the truth,” I say.

  “Thank you for calling me an idiot.” He smiles at me. “You know what the worst part is? I didn’t even want to drink that night. It was so stupid—I don’t want to be that guy, you know?”

  “Then don’t be,” I tell him.

  I know by the way he’s acting that he doesn’t normally let people see this side of him—the vulnerable part where he’s not the king of the party, the king of the school, the king of the pool. It’s probably easier with me, someone who’s not a part of that whole scene. Still, I’m flattered he trusts me with his “stuff.”