Ten of Me ✓

Six

{Morgan pictured above.}

NICOLE

Mom came into the kitchen a few seconds later, dragging Nicholas by the hand so that his sock-clad feet slid against the slick marble. His blue eyes widened when he saw me and Dad in the kitchen, and the second Mom let go of his hand he scampered off to sit in the living room.

"Hi Nicole, honey," said Mom, turning on the sink to wash her hands--she and Dad didn't agree on much, but she did oblige his request to wash her hands whenever she entered the house. "How was Carmen?"

I could feel Dad frowning behind me even though I couldn't even see him, and I fidgeted with the hem of my purple athletic shorts as I said, "Good. I went and saw a movie."

Mom turned off the sink and towel-dried her hands while Dad continued to cut up vegetables. The tension in the room was palpable.

"I'm going to go get some homework done," I said, and just like that, I'd escaped and scampered up the staircase to reach the second floor.

When I got to my bedroom, I shut the door behind me with my foot and then collapsed onto my bed, pulling out my phone and flicking absentmindedly through old texts. Despite the fact that Noah acted pretty obsessed with me during school hours, he'd still failed to text me outside of the 8:00-3:00 time frame, and I wondered it that proved even more that this was all just a game to him.

Before I knew it, I'd flopped down so that I was facing the ceiling, and in another few minutes I'd closed my eyes and fallen fast asleep, my thoughts still chasing each other around and around in circles even in my subconscious.

Blaring pop music woke me up the next morning. The deep bass of the drum rattled my bed frame as I sat up and tried to figure out where the sound was coming from. Eventually, I figured that it was coming from the laundry room beneath me for whatever reason, but at least it had worked as a decent alarm--it was just the time to get ready for school.

My hair had air-dried the previous night and now hung in unflattering waves against my face, frizzing in the most unnecessary places, but at least I'd washed off all my makeup in the shower after getting home from the movie. I rolled out of bed and my hip connected with something hard--I realized that my cell phone had gotten tangled up in my sheets overnight.

Out of habit, I pressed the home button, even though I didn't expect to see any texts, but to my surprise Noah Murdock <3, 10:32 PM showed up on the glowing lock screen.

Even though it shouldn't have affected me, my heart started pounding and my stomach felt weirdly fluttery as I struggled to remember my password and unlock my phone.

Hey Nicole, don't know if ur asleep, just wanted to tell u that u looked beautiful today & looking forward to seeing you tomorrow :) :)

For a split second, my stomach dropped to my feet and I thought he was talking about Carmen and the movie theatre, that he'd somehow actually seen though my disguise--then I reassured myself that he must have been talking about school. I was usually never asleep by 10:30 at night, but waking up to the text message was somehow better than receiving it as I was staring at my ceiling and trying to fall asleep.

Then I remembered the details of what had really happened at the movie theatre, and my stomach really did fall to my feet. Noah didn't care about me. I didn't know what his motives were, but they weren't what I'd initially thought.

I deleted the text without responding, then went to his name in my contacts and deleted the heart next to his name. "Noah Murdock" looked sort of lonely by itself without anything next to it, so I added the face that seemed to best mimic my present emotions: an open-mouthed O with two dots with eyes that seemed to remind me that I had more eyes around him than he thought I did.