“Yeah, well, you know me. All about the bravado.” I keep a firm grip on Macy’s arm as I start to maneuver around Jaxon and his friends.
“Is that what you call it?” Jaxon murmurs in my ear as I slide past him. Once more, his warm breath is against the side of my neck, and a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold works its way down my spine.
Our eyes meet, and for a second, just a second, the whole world seems to drop away. Macy, Flint, the other students who are laughing and chattering as they move past us on their way to the door all disappear until it’s just Jaxon and me and the electricity that arcs between us.
My breath catches in my throat, my whole body grows warm, and it takes real, physical effort to stop myself from reaching out and touching him.
I think he must be having the same problem, because his hand comes up, hovers in the air between us for one long, infinite moment.
“Grace.” It’s barely a whisper, but still I feel it all the way inside myself. I wait, breath held, for him to say something—anything—else, but before he can, the front door flies open, letting in a huge gust of freezing air.
It breaks the spell, and suddenly we’re just two people standing in a crowded hallway again. Disappointment wells inside me, especially when Jaxon takes a step back, his face set once again in inscrutable lines.
I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he just watches as Flint herds Macy and me toward the open door. As we cross the threshold, I raise my hand in a small goodbye wave.
I don’t expect him to return it, and he doesn’t. But just as I turn away to take my first step outside, he says, “Don’t forget to build an arsenal.”
They’re pretty much the last words I expect to hear from him…or anyone, for that matter. “An arsenal?”
“It’s the most important part of winning a snowball fight. Find a base you can protect and concentrate on building up your arsenal. Only attack when you’re sure you have enough ammunition to win.”
Snowballs. Here I was, convinced we had just shared a moment, and he’s thinking about snowballs. Fan-freaking-tastic.
“Ummm…thanks for the advice?” I give him a WTF look.
Jaxon responds with his regular, annoying blank face, but I swear his eyes are sparkling just a little. “It’s good advice. You should take it.”
“Why don’t you take it? Join me and the two of us can build a bigger arsenal.”
He lifts a brow. “And here I thought that’s exactly what I have been doing.”
“What does that mean?” I demand.
But he’s already turning away, already walking away, and I’m left staring after him.
As usual.
Damn it.
Something tells me this boy—and his world-famous disappearing act—is going to be the death of me.
19
We Came,
We Fought,
I Froze
“Jaxon Vega, huh?” Flint asks as the cold slaps me in the face for the second time today.
“Don’t start,” I say, giving him the side eye.
“I’m not,” he answers, holding both hands up in mock surrender. “I swear.” He’s silent for a minute or so as the three of us concentrate on trudging through the snow toward everyone else. And can I just say that I’m pretty sure Macy undersold the crowd when she said fifty people. Even in the weird civil twilight that surrounds us on all sides, it looks more like a hundred, maybe even the whole damn school—minus Jaxon and his friends, of course.
On the plus side, at least they’re all wearing hats and scarves and coats…which I’m taking to mean that not everyone in this place is an actual alien. Thankfully.
“I just didn’t know ‘screwed-up and obnoxious’ was your type, that’s all.”
I shoot him a glare. “I thought you weren’t starting.”
“I’m not. I’m just looking out for you. Jaxon is—”
“Not screwed up.”
He laughs. “I notice you didn’t even try to say he wasn’t obnoxious, though, did you? And no offense, Grace, but you’re new here. You have no idea just how fucked-up he is.”
“And you do?”
“Yeah. And so does Macy. Right, Mace?”
Macy doesn’t answer, just keeps walking and pretends like she doesn’t hear him. I’m beginning to wish I could do the same.
“All right, all right, I get it.” Flint shakes his head. “I won’t say anything else against the Chosen One. Except tell you to be careful.”
“We’re friends, Flint.”
“Yeah, well, take it from someone who knows. Jaxon doesn’t have friends.”
I want to ask him what he means by that, considering Jaxon’s got the Order, and they seem pretty damn close to me, but we’ve reached the first row of trees, where the others are gathered. Plus, I’m the one who just said I didn’t want to talk about Jaxon. If I start asking questions, that gives Flint carte blanche to say whatever he wants, and that doesn’t seem fair, since Jaxon isn’t around to defend himself.
Flint walks into the middle of the group like he owns the place. Then again, judging from the way the others respond to him, maybe he does. It’s not that they all come to attention, necessarily. It’s just obvious that they all really want him to notice them…and they all really want to hear what he has to say.
I can’t help wondering what that kind of popularity is like. I don’t want it—would probably melt under the pressure of it in less than twenty-four hours. But I do wonder what it feels like. And how Flint feels about it.
I don’t have long to dwell on my thoughts, though, because Flint gets started giving a quick rundown of the rules—starting with one that sounds an awful lot like there are no rules, except it’s followed by the one that says if you get hit by five snowballs, you’re out—and then disperses the crowd. As the five-minute countdown starts, he grabs Macy’s and my hands and starts running with us toward a large thicket of evergreen and aspen trees several hundred yards away.
“We’ve got two minutes to find a good spot,” he says. “Another two and a half to get things together. Then it’s open season.”
“But if everyone finds a spot, who will we have to throw sno—”
“They won’t,” Flint and Macy interrupt me at the exact same time.
“Don’t worry,” Flint tells me as we finally reach the trees. “There will be plenty of people to wage war on.”
Wage war? I can barely breathe. It’s a combination of the high altitude and cold air, I know, but I can’t help feeling self-conscious about the way I’m huffing and puffing. Especially since he and Macy both sound like they just finished a leisurely garden stroll.
“So what do we do now?” I ask, even though it’s fairly obvious, considering Flint is already scooping up snow and making it into balls.
“Build up our arsenal.” He gives me a wicked grin. “Just because I think Jaxon is a jackass doesn’t mean the guy doesn’t know strategy.”
We spend the next couple of minutes making as many snowballs as we possibly can. I half expect Macy and Flint to outpace me here, too, but it turns out all those years of making pastries and patting dough into balls with my mother paid off, because I am an excellent snowball maker. Totally kick-ass. And I’m twice as fast as they are.
“Coming up on five minutes,” Macy says, her phone ringing with a fifteen-second warning.
“Move, move, move,” Flint calls out, even as he shoos me behind the closest tree.
Just in time, too, because as soon as Macy’s phone screeches out the five-minute mark, all hell breaks loose.
People drop from the trees all around us, snowballs flying fast and furious in every direction. Others run by at breakneck speeds, lobbing them kamikaze-style at anyone within range.
One snowball whizzes right past my ear, and I breathe a sigh of relief until another one slams into my side—even with the tree, and Flint, for cover.
“That’s one,” I hiss, jerking to the right to avoid another snowball flying straight at me. It hits Flint in the shoulder instead, and he mutters a low curse.
“Are we going to hide back here all day?” Macy demands from where she’s crouched at the base of a nearby tree. “Or are we going to get in this thing?”
“By all means,” Flint says, gesturing for her to go first.
She rolls her eyes at him, but it takes her only a few seconds to scoop snow into a couple of giant snowballs. Then she’s letting her snowballs fly with a giant war whoop that practically shakes the snow off the nearby branches, before running toward our arsenal to reload.
I follow her into the fray, a snowball clutched in my gloved hands as I wait for a perfect opportunity to use it.
The opportunity presents itself when one of the large guys from Flint’s group comes barreling toward me, snowballs hidden in the bottom of the jacket he’s turned into a carrying pouch. He sends them flying at me, one after another, but I manage to dodge them all. Then I throw my snowball as hard as I can, straight at him. It hits him in his very surprised face.
We’ve built up about a hundred snowballs in our arsenal, and we use them all as more and more people pour through the forest, looking for a place to hide as they catch their breath and try to make a few extra snowballs of their own.
I’m a little surprised at how close-knit the groups are—and how alliances transcend snowball teams and seem to revert back to the factions I noticed at the party yesterday. Even though members of Flint’s clique are divided into duos and trios, they all seem to come together and watch one another’s backs when someone from one of the other factions—whether it’s the slender group dressed in bright jewel tones or the more muscular group that Marc and Quinn are currently fighting with—threatens one of them.
I also notice that one group is missing—Jaxon’s. Not just the Order, which is definitely not here, but the whole black-clothed designer faction that presided over the party with such obvious disdain. Guess Jaxon was right when he said Flint didn’t want him here. Part of me wants to try to figure out what is up with that, but right now I’m too busy dodging snowball volleys to do more than give it a passing thought.