The Amanda Project: Book One

The Amanda Project: Chapter Twenty-Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I'd thought we'd get to talk more about Amanda after lunch, but Nia's mom made it clear that Sunday afternoon was designated homework time. Hal and I were welcome to eat as much as we liked and then clear out. So by the time we said goodbye, we hadn't made any plans for what I was starting to think of as Project Amanda.

On Monday, as I was leaving the cafeteria, I saw Hal and Nia ahead of me down the humanities corridor, and I started walking faster so I could catch up with them. I'd passed by them earlier, sitting at a table alone and talking, and I'd wanted more than anything to join them. Lately it seemed like the only time I felt okay, like I wasn't pretending to be someone or something I wasn't, was when I was with Hal and Nia and we were talking about Amanda. But Lee was sitting next to Kelli, who was already waving me over to our usual table-there was no way I could pretend I hadn't seen them, so I passed Hal and Nia and joined the group.

It was some consolation that Lee's face lit up when I sat down, like he was really glad to see me. When he leaned toward me and said, "Saturday night was awesome, wasn't it?" I tried to be glad I'd made the choice to sit where I had, even if my, "Totally!" was basically a one hundred-percent lie.

When lunch ended my friends were headed in the opposite direction, so it was easy to take off after Hal and Nia. As I made my way toward them, I passed Bea Rossiter, and my stomach turned over as it always did.

I walked faster, leaving her far behind. When I tapped Hal on the shoulder, his enthusiastic greeting erased all thoughts of Bea. "Hey! I was just going to text you." He lowered his voice. "After school we were going to meet up and check out those addresses of Amanda's. It seems like the best way to try and find her. Do you want to come?"

"I'm sure she has way better things to do, Hal," said Nia, refusing to make eye contact. And the way she said it made me wonder if she'd seen me walk by their table earlier or if she'd decided to turn on me for some other totally random reason. When I left her house yesterday, I thought things were better between us; apparently that was optimistic.

"No, actually, I don't," I objected.

"Great." Hal was either choosing to ignore the sparks flying between me and Nia or was truly clueless about them. "Let's start at the condos downtown. You know the ones I mean, right? The Riviera."

I'd passed the billboard advertising Orion's new luxury condos about ten thousand times. "The Riviera: It's not just a place to live, it's a way of life," I quoted.

Hal laughed and, in spite of herself, Nia smirked, too. "Do you want to meet there at four?" said Hal.

I had a history test tomorrow that was going to require at least three hours of cramming plus a million pages of English reading to catch up on. "Perfect," I said brightly. "I'll see you at four."

The Riviera was nothing like the other buildings in downtown Orion. The town's main street (which is actually called Main Street) is mostly wood and brick buildings, and none are more than four or five stories tall. There was a huge zoning fight when the town council originally heard the proposal for The Riviera, which was supposed to be a glass and steel tower of, I think, ten stories. My mom was really involved. She called the building "The New York-ization of Orion," but if you asked me, the idea that one building could turn Orion into New York City was completely hilarious, considering the two have about as much in common as I have with a megababe.