Аманда Хокинг - Switched

“I don’t know,” Finn admitted, looking down at his tray. Patrick had already started scarfing down in his food, making me simultaneously nauseous and jealous. The food was disgusting, but I was starving and wished I had something that I could wolf down.

“You know, Wendy hasn’t been here very long either,” Patrick gave a little nod at me, and I narrowed my eyes at him. What was this he was doing?

Was he trying to set us up?

“I had heard that, yes.” Finn stabbed a noodle and stared at it for a moment, then just set it down on his plate and leaned back. “This is the worst food in the world.”

“Wendy hates the food here too,” Patrick interjected, and this time I kicked him under the table. “Ow! What was that for?”

“Stop,” I whispered, which was silly since Finn was right there, looking at me. “I know what you’re trying to do. And stop.”

“Alright. I will stop making conversation, since it displeases you so,” Patrick raised an eyebrow and went back to eating. “If you want to not eat and not talk, then… well. You win. I guess.”

“I’m eating,” I pouted and ate another Jell-o cube. “They do have bad food here though.”

“Yet everyone seems to be eating it,” Finn scanned the rest of the cafeteria, sounding mildly surprised.

“So, are you from a private school too?” Patrick looked up at Finn. I had just been coming to the same conclusion myself. He was well-dressed, wellmannered, and he had a slight air of distaste about him.

“Something like that,” Finn answered vaguely and turned his attention back to me. “You went to a private school?”

“I’ve been to many private schools. So many, they stopped taking me,” I said with a hint of pride. Finn’s general stoic expression was broken with almost glaring disapproval, which made my stomach tighten.

“Why?” Finn asked directly.

“I have an anger management problem.” That’s the short answer, but he nodded like that made sense. His eyes never left mine, and this time I was determined not to look away. I decided that my best course of action was to throw him off his game somehow. “You have the darkest brown eyes I have ever seen.” As soon as it came out of my mouth, I wanted to take it back. It was vaguely swoony and not at all menacing, like it had somehow sounded in my head. Oh yeah, complimenting his eyes, that’s really gonna hurt his feelings.

“Your eyes are almost the same color,” Finn replied instantly, which rattled me, but I kept my eyes locked on his. I would win this. “Maybe a shade lighter.”

“They are not,” I retorted incredulously. My eyes were a fairly dark brown, but I couldn’t say for sure how dark they were compared to Finn’s.

Without a mirror handy, I didn’t know how he could say it with such certainty.

“No, they are,” Patrick agreed. I rolled my eyes at that, thus breaking my eye contact with Finn. I would’ve been disappointed if I hadn’t been so relieved. Looking at him like that was making my heart react stupidly, and I was eager to make it stop.

“Of course you side with him,” I grumbled and leaned back in my chair.

“To be fair, the truth sided with him,” Patrick said.

“You’re getting angry over your own eye color?” Finn asked, and if I didn’t know any better, I would think he sounded slightly bemused.

“No. I’m not getting angry over anything,” I lied and crossed my arms over my chest. I was getting angry but with myself for getting so flustered over everything Finn said and did.

“So, how come you moved here?” Patrick turned back to Finn, apparently tiring of my current attitude. Not that I blamed him. I was tired of my attitude.

“Work,” Finn replied. His goal seemed to be to reveal nothing about himself.

“Your parents?” Patrick asked.

“Family business,” Finn answered stiffly, then nodded to me. “What about you? Why here? Why this school?”

“I really don’t know,” I admitted. Maggie and Matt had explained their decision to me, but in the end, I didn’t really care why they picked here, so I had forgotten. “My brother thought it was a good school, I guess.”

“Your brother?” Finn raised an eyebrow, looking mildly confused.

“Yeah, I live with my older brother and my aunt,” I explained. “They’re my guardians.”

“Where are your parents?” Finn pried. It was beginning to feel more like an interrogation, and I bristled at it.

“I don’t really think that’s any of your business,” I said icily.

Finn’s confusion disappeared into a mask I couldn’t read. He just looked at me, the way he always did, and despite my anger, my stomach insisted doing that flipping thing. I wanted to look away from him, but it was like I couldn’t. It wasn’t just my normal urge to beat him at something. This was an actual compulsion that I had no control over.

“This pizza is really good, you guys,” Patrick tried to cut through the tension that had settled at the table. He broke whatever spell Finn had over me, and I lowered my eyes, staring at the Jell-o on my plate and trying to figure out what was going on.

“I do like curls,” Tegan was saying in a voice so loud it was obviously meant for me, “but I’m just so afraid that my hair would end up a Brillo pad like hers.” They were walking right behind me, and one of her minions cackled.

Touching my soft, messy curls, I turned to glare after her, but she didn’t even notice.

“I wanna kick her right in the labia,” I growled, still glaring at her departing figure.

“No, yeah, that seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction,” Finn said.

“She made a silly snide comment you know isn’t true, so you threaten physical harm. Perfect.” Patrick laughed at our exchange, although I didn’t find it amusing.

“I think I might hate you,” I lied, staring at Finn as harshly as I could.

Leaning forward on the table, Finn matched my gaze with a much softer one. “I don’t think you do.” With that, he stood up and started clearing his tray. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an exam to study for. I’ll see you in class.”

I watched him walk away, feeling my heart race with anger and something far more sinister. I couldn’t make sense of my mixed emotions about him. Most of the time, I really, really wanted to kick him in the shins. But other times, I felt perfectly content to just stare into his eyes, and I had never felt anything like that before. Nor had I ever wanted to. My life had been built around me being a self-contained island, and I had no intention of letting anyone else on it.

“So, he’s interesting,” Patrick allowed and took a drink of his milk.

“He is a creep!” I insisted.

Watching Patrick laugh with a big milk mustache, I realized that he’s exactly where I went wrong. I had let him onto my island, and he had stowed Finn along with him. It was all Matt’s fault for making me make friends, and then I realized that I already let Matt on my island. Apparently I wasn’t quite as self-contained as I thought I was.

“Let’s get out of here.” Patrick wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt and stood up. “I ate way too much.” His plate was completely empty and it had been overflowing when he sat down, so yeah, he had eaten a lot.

“Why did you want to sit with him?” I persisted, picking up my tray as I got up. “You know I don’t like him, right? You’re not secretly scheming anything?”

“I’m not much of a schemer,” Patrick admitted, and that seemed pretty honest. We walked over to the garbage cans to dump our trays, and he must’ve been able to tell that I wasn’t exactly satisfied with that answer because he continued. “I told you the truth before. He’s new and he seems alone a lot. And okay, yeah, I did think he might like you or something. So I thought it would be nice if you two could be friends. Or all of us could be friends, really. Just to be nice.”