Deceived Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t. Why would it be?
    He was too handsome to talk to me and definitely too handsome to be some random senior at this school. He belonged on billboards in L.A. His eyes were piercing. He’d probably say they were green, but they were a color without a name. The sun shone on him, reminding me how tan and muscular his arms were beneath the white dress shirt and tie. A large Indian ink tattoo played under his sleeve.
    “How old are you?” Oops. We looked at one another.
    Then there were whispers. Some girls noticed us talking and gathered to watch.
    “Later.” He wore a stern expression. He seemed to be trying to tell me something completely over my head. Probably “don’t tell anyone about knowing me or I’ll go straight to the socially nonexistent category with you.”
    He looked at the little crowd whispering nearby and scowled. My cheeks flamed hot. Was it so bad to be seen with me? What would the girls think of his reaction? He looked back into my eyes, held my gaze a moment too long, scoffed, and walked away.
    What an ass. I couldn’t believe he was so rude. So mean. What the hell?
    “Elle!” Pixie flew down the long exterior corridor toward me.
    “You knew,” I hissed.
    “Yes!” She nodded fervently like a bobble-headed china doll. Of course that news would’ve motivated her to try to find me earlier, to try to tell me what I was about to walk into.
    Ah, she tried .
    “Come on. We’ll be late.” I pulled her along, her head still bobbing with a grin stretched ear to ear.
    We had third-period study hall together in the common area before lunch. Pixie sat on the scarlet carpeting and began to scribble notes. I dropped my bag between us and folded myself next to her with the grace of a rag doll.
    I read the note she slid my way. “Did you die?”
    She raised a thin, carefully sculpted eyebrow at me.
    I thought a thousand things before deciding what to write. Notes got confiscated. “Yes. What on Earth?” I pushed the paper back her way.
    “I knew you had a little juju in you.”
    “Shut up!” I stifled a giggle. The word juju didn’t belong on the same page as me, let alone in the same sentence. “I had nothing to do with this. This is happening to me, not because of me.” Then it hit me. “Where did he come from? Why is this happening to me? He was such a jerk out there. Did you see his face?”
    “Did you see his face? I don’t know. What did you do?” She underlined the final word six times and gave me an innocent look with her pointer finger resting against her bottom lip.
    “Nothing.” I scribbled. “This is weird, right? We met at a flea market and now he’s one of the only guys at our little school?”
    “Yes. Or maybe it’s fate. You’re cosmically linked or something. Like soulmates.”
    “He acted like he wanted to kick me.”
    The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Mindlessly, I rubbed them. Did soulmates exist? Could I believe in soulmates and not in coincidence? If someone like Brian was destined to be my soulmate, I also needed to believe in fairy tales. In a fairy tale, Brian would be the villain, wooing fair maidens and then casting them aside.
    “Ladies.” A firm voice cautioned us to keep to ourselves. I destroyed the paper we wrote on. I hated Francine Frances for its old-fashioned policies against cell phones during school hours.
    Stupid!
    Mid-pout, Pixie caught my attention from the corner of one eye. She moved her hand in a strange pattern. Her eyes were wide with excitement. Her wrist made a half circle that ended with a stabbing index finger. I followed the finger.
    Brian approached the teacher with a slip of paper and then sat alone on the far side of the commons, facing us. A large, brown leather bag rested against him. He dug out a pile of notebooks and stacked them on his legs. The barrier blocked his hands from the view of the teacher, who was engrossed in Golf Digest . Brian pulled out a phone—injustice. His thumbs danced over the keypad,