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“What’d you get?” Sawyer asked.
Jason held the list flat against his chest. “I’m not telling. You might try to sabotage my items just so you can beat me.”
“Oh, it’s going to be like that, huh?” The possibility of a wager gleamed in Sawyer’s eyes. “We were going to be the group to win it all and now it’s me against you?”
Jason’s bright eyes flicked to me. “Hey, Sloane, wanna be my partner and help me prove to Sawyer that even with the new girl, who knows nothing about this school or where to find anything on this list, I can still beat him?”
My stomach tightened. Me and Jason. Alone.
Disappointment flashed on Sawyer’s and Livie’s faces, but Sawyer rallied first. “Oh, you’re on. What do you say, Liv? Should we make these two pay for plotting against us?”
“Hey! I didn’t have anything to do with this bet,” I reminded him. “New girl, remember?”
“You’re right,” Sawyer agreed. He bumped Livie with his hip. “Should we make J pay for his poor choice of partner?”
“Hey!” I repeated, a wave of competitiveness flowing through me. “Now you’re going down.”
Livie chuckled. She entwined her arm with Sawyer’s. “Partner, I believe we should.”
The whine of microphone feedback interrupted the partner showdown before the stakes of the bet could be set. “Quiet down, people.” Mrs. Thompson’s voice echoed across the courtyard from where she was precariously balancing on top of a bench in heels taller than I’d ever seen. “Okay. The rules are simple: find each item on your list, take a picture as proof that you found the correct item, and return here where I’ll be waiting to check your pictures against your list. The first pair to accurately complete their list wins and gets to pick a song to be played at graduation. Remember, every list has different items so following other teams around won’t help you. And if you don’t have a phone, I have several digital cameras up here the Photography Club is generously letting us borrow. So see me if you need one. Any questions?” Excited whispers rose from the crowd as people began shuffling toward the edges of the courtyard. “Then let this year’s senior scavenger hunt begin!”
Jason motioned to the left as Sawyer and Livie took off running to the right. The mass of seniors thinned fast, and soon we were the only two rounding the school toward the back athletic fields. “What do we need to find first?” I asked. My stomach was a jumble of butterflies and nausea, giddy excitement for the hunt and the bet...and fear of being alone with Jason and being discovered.
“‘Evidence of the school’s first couple,’” Jason replied.
I stopped walking. I’d been expecting “picture of the school mascot” or “someone wearing school colors,” not proof that some historical couple once existed. “How are we going to find that?”
Jason pointed to a large tree, standing alone at the edge of a soccer field in the distance. “See that tree? That’s where we need to go.”
“We’re going to find evidence of a couple at a tree?”
Jason sighed and stopped a few yards ahead of me. “Yes, Ms. Doubtful. Now come on!” He veered off the sidewalk and headed down a grassy hill in the direction of the soccer field.
I watched him for a few seconds, this boy I wasn’t supposed to be with but somehow kept ending up with anyway. Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way.
If the scavenger hunt had really been it—the last time I was going to be around Jason—I would’ve quietly followed him, stopped asking questions and let him lead the way just to get it over with. But I had a signed senior trip permission slip burning a hole in my back pocket. I was going to have some level of contact with Livie—with all of them—for the next few weeks. And while it didn’t seem like Jason remembered who I was, being in his house and seeing those pictures had brought back a flood of memories. Even though I wasn’t in any of the photos I’d seen, what if he had something else in his house? Something that would spark a memory that made him wonder about me?
I rubbed my thumb across my bottom lip. Maybe staying away from Jason once all the First Day Buddy stuff was over wasn’t the best move. Maybe I needed to keep him close. To know what he was thinking and prove I was a completely different person from the girl he’d grown up with so he’d never believe it was me even if his brain tried to make the connection. And I knew just the way to start.
Anticipation thrilled through me. I bounced on my toes for a beat, a tiny smile creeping its way onto my mouth. This is going to be fun.
“Come on, slowpoke,” I called over my shoulder as I zoomed past him, running down the hill as fast as I could, “or I’m going to beat you there!”
The girl Jason knew had been a terrible runner, slow and easily winded. But thanks to lesson number eleven, I’d left that girl in the dust.
He made an indignant noise and took off after me. He may have been a few inches taller, but I was fast and had a head start. I was in the lead until about forty feet from the tree, when Jason grabbed a fistful of my shirt, yanked me backward and sprinted in front of me.
I gasped and rushed forward, trying to hip check him out of the way.
Jason wrapped one arm around the front of my body as I got close, angling me behind him and attempting to hold down my arm. “You can’t beat me if you can’t touch the tree!”
I giggled and spun out of his reach, but before I could get all the way free, he smacked the tree in triumph. “You are such a cheater!” I tried sounding angry, but the fact I was still laughing ruined any chance of that.
Jason’s grin in response was deviously unapologetic.
I decided he needed a good hip checking anyway. But instead of knocking the sexy grin off his face, I tripped on an exposed tree root and stumbled into him.
“Whoa,” Jason said as he gently placed his hands on my waist to steady me.
My laughter died away and it was suddenly hard to breathe. I watched Jason’s chest rising and falling under his superhero shirt. He smelled like my childhood, like cookies and the beach, but there was a spicy boy scent I’d never noticed before. I looked up into his blue eyes.
He chuckled. “I think your attempt at thwarting my totally fair victory messed up your hair.” He reached out with one hand and tucked a few strands of hair that had escaped my ponytail behind my ear.
The spot on my waist where his hand had just been tingled.
He held my gaze for a second, then stepped back and cleared his throat. “So this is the Kissing Tree.”
I gulped. “Kissing Tree?”
“Take a look.”
I turned and my mouth dropped open. “Wow.”
Every inch of the tree’s bark, from where it disappeared into the ground to taller than even Sawyer could reach, was covered in initials.
“It’s another school tradition,” Jason explained. “Couples come here to kiss and then carve their initials into the tree.”
I circled the tree, letting my fingers trail over the letters. “There are so many. How do you know which one is the first?”
“It’s this one here.” Jason pointed to a spot in front of him at eye level. It was a simple E loves L inside a heart with a date below it. “That date is from the first week the school was open. It’s the oldest one on here.”
I traced the heart with one finger, slowing when the set of initials to the heart’s left caught my eye: J + S.
“You’re killing that tree.”
Jason looked up from the base of the oak tree in front of his house. “I am not,” he said over the soft sounds of his dad’s favorite Billy Joel song wafting from the open windows.
“Then what are you doing?” I bent down and noticed the initials carved into the tree’s trunk about two feet off the ground. I smiled.
He brushed off the tiny J + S. “I’m letting everyone know that we’re going to be best friends forever.” He pushed the tip of his dad’s pocket knife into the S, making it deeper.
“You don’t have to hurt the poor tree to prove that, Jase. The whole fourth grade knows that already. Everybody knows that already.”
Jason glanced up, grinning, and the knife slipped, slicing into his left hand. He jerked his hand away. The knife dropped to the ground, covered in blood.
My heart skipped a beat. “Hold on!” I pressed the edge of my T-shirt against the bloody spot above his left thumb. Blood soaked through the shirt almost instantly.
“Mrs. Stacy!” I yelled, knowing Jason’s mom would hear me through the open windows. All the color had drained from Jason’s face. “Bet I can annoy more nurses at the hospital than you,” I whispered.
He gave me the tiniest hint of a smile.
“It’ll be okay,” I promised as his mom came rushing down the steps toward us. “We’re best friends, remember? I won’t leave you.”
“Have you ever done that? Carved your initials into a tree?” Jason asked, pulling me out of the memory. He pointed to the Kissing Tree carvings.
I hadn’t thought of that day in years. My eyes darted to his left hand, which hung at his side. Does he still have the scar by his thumb? “No,” I replied. Which was the truth. He had, not me. “Have you?”
He kicked the ground with one of his sneakers. “Yeah.”
“Let me guess. There’s a J loves L on here somewhere.” I pretended to search the tree.
“No. Livie and I aren’t... It’s not...”
I peeked around the tree at him. “I was only teasing. You don’t have to explain.”
A wrinkle appeared in between his eyebrows. “It’s...complicated.” His eyes locked on mine. “But I’m not sure it’s an immortalize-it-in-wood-forever kind of thing.”
“Oh.” Oh. “I just thought... I mean, Livie was kind of throwing off an it’s-serious vibe when she was talking about the senior trip.”
Jason’s cheeks turned pink. “Yeah. She’s got lots of ideas about the senior trip that she’ll apparently share with anyone.”
“I can be your wingman on the trip if you want,” I blurted. “If things are still complicated, just give me the secret signal and I’ll mummify her in rolls of duct tape so she can’t leave our room.”
He laughed. “You’d do that for me?”
I shrugged. “Sure. What are friends for?” Friends. Saying that word to Jason made my pulse race. I rubbed the back of my neck with one hand as I gestured to the tree with the other. “Well, hopefully friends are for taking pictures of tree carvings when their partners choose to exit the world of cell phone ownership.”
Jason pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Friends are definitely for that. Why don’t you move closer? I’ll get you too.”
I took a large step away from the tree. “Nope. I don’t do pictures.” Pictures end up in yearbooks and on the internet and other places immortalized forever where people can find them, with names I don’t want them to know. “I’m not very photogenic. I always blink or make a face. It’s a mess.”
“I highly doubt that,” Jason muttered as he captured proof of the school’s first couple.
We got pictures of the next eight items on our list in no time, including Jason’s favorite: “Ms. Benton’s agreeable band,” which turned out to be his science teacher’s collection of Beatles bobblehead dolls. “What’s the last item?” I asked as we left the chemistry room.
“‘The Z’sbees,’” Jason read aloud. He stopped walking.
“Oh,” I replied, turning toward the hall that would take us to the front office.
Jason stayed still, his eyebrows scrunched together. “Huh.” He scratched his head.
“Wait.” A slow grin spread across my face. “You don’t know what that means?”
“No.” He glanced up from the list. “Do you?”
My smile grew wider.
“Tell me.”
“Hold on.” I held my hands out to my sides. “I want to spend a moment basking in the glory of knowing something about this school you don’t. Me, the new girl. Who knows nothing about finding anything on our list.”
Jason shot me a look. “What does it mean?”
I leaned toward him. “Not yet. Still basking.”
He reached up and gently yanked twice on my earlobe. It was a familiar gesture, one he’d picked up from his dad, and one that had always annoyed me as a kid.
I smacked his hand away with a laugh. “God, Jase. Cut it out.”
He was already reaching for my ear again when he stopped midreach and lowered his hands to his sides.
“What?” I asked.
“You called me Jase.”
Crap! Lesson number eight, Sloane, I reminded myself. Don’t get complacent.
It had always been like that with Jason, easy when everyone else required a little more work. Being around him was effortless. Now, that was dangerous.
You have to stay on your toes if you’re going to pull this off. And you need to pull this off. So stop making mistakes!
Before I could come up with an excuse for using my childhood nickname for him, Oliver Clarke appeared trailing behind his scavenger hunt partner. I didn’t know where he’d come from, but the deserted hallway was long enough that it was possible he’d seen my whole exchange with Jason, ear yanking and nickname calling included.
Oliver eyed us as he approached, pressing his lips together to hold back a laugh. He remained silent until he was right next to us, then said in a low voice meant only for me, “Hey, Sweet Potato.”
The snort escaped me before I could stop it.
Oliver’s eyes lit up.
I knew I was supposed to be avoiding him because of the whole gossip and mean ex-girlfriend thing, but no one else was around other than Jason and Oliver’s teammate, a guy I recognized from the a cappella group. And I couldn’t just ignore him after a reaction like that. I tipped my head in his direction. “Choir Boy.”
Oliver’s mouth dropped open. “Insults are not a good start to our friendship. I think you mean Singer of Very Manly Songs.”
I pointed at the corner his partner had just disappeared around. “Or maybe I mean Misplacer of Teammates.”
“Oh, shoot,” Oliver grumbled as he hurried around the corner.
I shook my head and peeked at Jason, who was biting his lip, watching the spot where Oliver disappeared. “Sorry about the Jase thing,” I said. “I have a cousin named Jason and that’s what I call him. It just slipped out.”
“It’s okay. It’s what my mom calls me.”
I know. She stole it from me. “That’s because it’s a good nickname.”
Jason smiled. “Yeah, it is.”
“So.” I clapped my hands together. “We need to find some bees, right?”
He raised one eyebrow. “Are you done basking?”
