After Obsession Read Online Free PDF Page A

Eventually it’s lunch. Blake goes and rescues Courtney’s cousin Alan from the girls who always try to hook up with everyone.
    “I hate school,” Blake is telling Alan when they come back over. “I mean, I act like I like school because I’d never get into NHS without that. There’s this stupid character component, which basically means you have to suck up to teachers. That’s rule number one.”
    Courtney nods and looks at me. She knows that I really can’t stand any negativity about anything. She calls me her little peacemaker. She means it nicely, really. Anyway, just so Blake won’t get more cranky about the rules of National Honor Society, I try to make him laugh by pretending to be my father, all serious and acting like a “model father” from ancient 1950s TV shows even though he wasn’t even alive then. “You know, Blake, hate is a serious word with serious connotations.”
    He makes like he’s going to chuck his bagel at my cleavage. I mock shriek, which makes the monitor, Mrs. Los Santos, point at me with a daggerlike black-nailed finger. I smile and she softens. I turn back to Blake.
    “Are you threatening me with that?” I say in a Mafia-man tone. “Because let me tell you, I do not take kindly to threatening. Particularly threatening with bagels. I mean, do you know who you’re dealing with here?”
    Alan cracks up, and I can’t help but notice that he’s so cute when he smiles. He mimics the voice back. “I think we do. I think we are dealing with a definite hard-ass here.”
    And in that second I know, absolutely know , that something in my life has changed irrevocably. This is the guy from my dreams. Right here. And we are going to have to do something, save something, together. I just don’t know what.
    “Aimee is beautifully weird today,” Blake says, biting into his bagel. He talks like I’m not here. “And she has paint on her hands.”
    I do. “It’s hard to get paint off.”
    “You paint?” Alan asks.
    It is the first thing at lunch that he says to me directly. I look up into his eyes. This is such a mistake. “Yeah.”
    I can’t look away. He doesn’t look away either. He was in my dream. He was the one pulling me out. It was him. And even though I don’t tell anyone about my dreams, I want to tell him. I want to tell him everything, which is a very wrong way to feel about some random guy I’ve just met when I have a boyfriend!
    Courtney uses her dolphin-decal fingernail and scrapes at the paint on my skin. She does it so hard it hurts. “I don’t know why we put up with her.”
    “Attention, people talking about me: I. Am. Right. Here,” I say, pulling my hand away. I decide to go somewhere safe and conflict-free. “Look, Alan, I’m not going to ask about Oklahoma and moving because—no offense—I’m sure it sucks and you’re sick of it, so I’m just going to bring you slam-bang into my life, unless you want me to ask the required questions, because I will, because I care, but I don’t want to be … I don’t know. I don’t want to bore you with the same old–same old.”
    His lips quiver. He leans back and starts laughing again.
    “Aimee!” Blake scolds.
    “No.” Alan flattens one of his super-big hands out across the table. “No. I’d love it. I am so tired of people asking about me.”
    I nod. It’s like we’re the only people here. There’s all this activity around us but none of it matters. I start, “So, anyway, my gramps—”
    “Gramps,” Blake interrupts knowingly. He possessively puts his arm around my shoulder. He keeps doing that today, which is not really normal Blake behavior. Lately, it’s been like every bad quirk in everyone is taking them over. Blake’s possessiveness. My own insecure-ness. Courtney’s bitchiness. Blake continues mocking me in that cloying-boyfriend way. “So sweet.”
    “He is mean to me,” I tell Alan, and continue. “Anyway, he and my brother, Benji, found a Cheeto they claim looks just like