“That's very healthy of you,” he said.
“I think so.”
With that, I yawned hugely, feeling as if about a liter of my adrenaline had been drained right out of my body. My eyes drooped and I leaned over to rest my head on Josh's shoulder.
“Tired?” he asked.
“Yeah. Kind of.”
Here.
He lifted his arm and let me cuddle into him. My pulse raced at the intimacy of this gesture, but it also felt perfectly normal. Natural. If nothing else, Josh had been a good friend to me over the past few weeks, and now I found I was totally comfortable with him. More comfortable than I'd ever been with Whit. Certainly more comfortable than I'd ever been with Thomas, who constantly kept a girl guessing, both in good ways and bad.
I lasted about two seconds before my neck developed a strain. I moved my head around, trying to find a comfortable spot, and Josh lifted his arm again and nudged me, di
recting me down until my head was resting on his thigh.
Ah, yeah. That was comfort.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
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“Not at all,” he replied.
As I started to drift off, listening to the hushed sounds of my friends' whispers, the lulling rhythm of the train, I could have sworn I felt Josh's fingertips slowly, gently, brushing my hair back behind my ear.
And I smiled.
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SO DEAD
By the time we got everyone off the train and trudged our way back through the streets of Easton proper, the last traces of dawn were fading away, leaving a nice, thick mist in their wake. High heels sank through the dewy grass into the soft earth, making it difficult to walk. Finally I just pulled them off, causing my feet to sigh in relief. I hooked the shoes over my fingers and wiggled my toes as I walked. The relief lasted about ten seconds. After that my feet were frigid blocks of ice.
“Are you okay?” Josh asked, bumping me lightly with his arm.
“Fine. Just can't wait to get home.”
Home. Easton was home. Billings was home. It was the first time I'd realized that.
Eventually we arrived at the fence that surrounded Easton's grounds. We felt our way along the iron bars until we reached the craggy opening, hidden by evergreen bushes. Each of us ducked through, one by one, holding skirts to keep them from getting snagged, whispering directions so that no one bumped their
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heads. Now that we'd had the night of our lives, no one had bothered to change back into jeans and sweaters. If we got caught now, it would make no difference what we were wearing, and everyone had been too tired to change.
Once on the other side of the fence, I stuck close to Josh's side, not wanting to lose him in the fog. As we ascended the hill, I could hear the voices of the others but couldn't quite make them out.
“Eerie, huh?” Josh said.
I shivered and hugged my bare arms. “Yeah. But at least it might keep us from getting spotted.”
If this party happened every year, if thirty kids traipsed back to school drunk and in party clothes every year at dawn, how they never got caught was a mystery. The closer we got to the classroom and dorm buildings, the more my teeth chattered and my bones shook. If we got caught, I was dead. If we got caught it would all have been all for nothing.
We cut across the soccer field and ducked along the tree line that would bring us up behind Billings and the other upperclassmen dorms. We paused en masse to catch our breath. There was no sound except the sound of our breathing. The fog muted everything.
“Everyone ready?” Dash whispered.