Avalon High by Meg Cabot Page A

that my heart did some more floppingaround inside my chest?
    I examined the boulder he was sitting on, saw how he’d climbed it, and joined him. I didn’t ask if it was okay first, either. I knew it was okay from his smile.
    The smile that was making my heart sort of hurt. But in a good way.
    “My run was okay,” I said, sitting down next to him. But not too close, you know, because I figured I smelled a bit gamy from my run. Not to mention the fact that I’d sprayed myself with about a pound and a half of DEET before I’d left the house, since East Coast mosquitoes seem to love me very much. And DEET isn’t exactly the eau d’amour , if you know what I mean.
    Will didn’t appear to notice, though.
    “Listen,” he said, holding up a single hand as a signal for me not to talk.
    I listened. For a minute I thought he wanted me to be quiet so he could say something. Like, you know, how much he loved me. Even though he’d only seen me a few times. And had dinner with me once.
    Hey, stranger things have happened. All Tommy Meadows and I had had in common was a deep appreciation for Spider-Man comic books.
    But it turned out Will didn’t want me to be quiet so he could declare his love for me. He actually wanted me to listen.
    So I did. All I could hear, besides the babbling of the water, was the chirping of birds and the hum of cicadas in the trees. No cars. No planes. You couldn’t even hearthe shrieks of encouragement I knew the parents of the lacrosse players and T-ballers had to be letting out. It was like we were in a different world, a sun-dappled oasis away from it all. Though, really, we were only two or three hundred yards away from the Dairy Queen off the highway.
    After a minute of this, feeling stupid, I said, “Uh, Will? I don’t hear anything.”
    He glanced my way with the tiniest of smiles.
    “I know,” he said. “Isn’t it great? This is one of the few places around here that people have left alone. You know? No power lines. No Gap. No Starbucks.”
    He had, I noticed, eyes that were the same color blue as my pool, when I got the chlorine and pH balance exactly right. Except that my pool is only eight feet at the deepest end, and Will’s eyes seemed fathomless…like if I dove into them, I’d never get to the bottom.
    “It’s pretty,” I said, about the ravine, looking away from him. Because it isn’t a good idea to think about how blue some guy’s eyes are, if he’s already taken, the way Will is.
    “You think so?” Will said, looking around the ravine. Clearly, he hadn’t ever thought of it that way before. As pretty, I mean. “I suppose. Mostly…it’s quiet.”
    Except…he hadn’t been sitting there enjoying the quiet.
    “So what were you listening to?” I asked, picking up the iPod he’d turned off and laid aside as I’d joined him on top of his boulder.
    “Uh,” he said, looking faintly worried as I clicked it back on. “Nothing, really.”
    “Come on,” I said teasingly. “I’ve got Eminem in mine. Yours can’t be that bad—”
    Except that it was. Because it turned out to be a collection of troubadour love ballads. From medieval times.
    “Oh my God,” I couldn’t help blurting out in horror, as I stared down at the words scrolling across the screen.
    Then immediately wished I could die.
    But, instead of being offended, Will just laughed. Really laughed. Like threw back his head and laughed.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, mortified. “I didn’t mean—It’s okay. I mean, lots of people like classical…stuff.”
    But when he finally caught his breath, instead of telling me where to get off for being so horrified by his musical taste, he said, shaking his head, “Oh, God. If you could have seen your face. I bet that’s exactly how you looked when you opened up that filter basket and found that snake….”
    Feeling a little irritated—mainly because his laughter reminded me of Nancy’s warning, about being too funny around guys—I said, “Sorry. You just