Tossing her empty coffee cup into the trashcan in the hallway, Josie silently promised herself that she would start drinking less caffeine. Maybe she would stop drinking coffee tomorrow. At least, she would switch to less harsh forms. Josie made a mental note to ask Baba what type of tea was the most caffeinated.
It would be harder to stop drinking coffee when her friends were constantly bribing her with it. Josie supposed it was her own fault; she was a sucker for gifts. For example, when Allison promised to bring coffee when picking her up for school, Josie agreed easily.
The coffee had been sickeningly sweet and Josie could only sigh happily in the passenger seat of Allison's car. With the heat turned up and the radio playing softly, Josie couldn't have been more content.
The other girl shook her head affectionately as Josie burrowed into her seat, a mess of dark curls bouncing around her head. Allison put the car into reverse. "You look happy this morning."
"I am cautiously optimistic about today." Josie explained. "So far, it's been great. I didn't wake up late, my hair cooperated with me, and the clothes I wanted to wear were clean."
Allison waited until she had successfully backed out of Baba's bumpy driveway to respond. "You also look super cute."
Josie was pleasantly surprised at how easily her outfit came together that morning. Her hair was successfully tamed into smooth waves within minutes. The baggy shirt she wanted to wear was hanging at the front of her closet, her black skirt neatly folded on her dresser, and her sneakers were on top of the shoe pile near her door. Even when she put it on, Josie was pleased. The dark green of the shirt didn't blend into the black of the skirt, she was able to tuck in the edges of the shirt without it becoming lumpy, and her white sneakers didn't need to be cleaned.
"No need to butter me up." Josie took another sip of coffee. The warmth trickled down her throat and into her stomach. "I've been successfully bribed already. Though, I'm still not sure what I'm being bribed to do."
Allison flashed a brief, but brilliant, smile at Josie. "Think you can convince Lydia to sit with Scott and Stiles today?"
"Like, only her? No way." Josie shook her head. "She has no clue who Stiles is and only just learned who Scott is. Why?"
"I really want her to like him." Allison's voice betrayed her nerves. "She's being a little… intense about me going out with him, so I'm hoping this will soften her up a bit."
"Oh, okay." Josie could remember Allison's excited gushing about her kiss with Scott in the locker room after the game. The hurried plans to go on a date after school on Tuesday came shortly after. Josie did her best to fake interest in the conversation, but, by the clear awkwardness in Allison's voice, Josie knew her horrible acting skills had failed.
Josie placed her coffee in the cup holder before clearing her throat seriously. Hoping to make up for her previous lack of enthusiasm, she said, "I think we could get her to move the whole lunch table to sit with Scott and Stiles. It'd be less weird than just her. After Scott won the game last Friday, he's definitely increased enough in popularity to warrant it. And it upsets Jackson to even be around him. That should be enough to get Lydia to agree. Honestly, I don't think it'll be a hard sell. Or hard for her to explain to anyone else."
Allison made an impressed noise. "Look at you, you little mastermind."
"I just pay attention, that's all." Josie explained. She tried to ignore the pleased twist in her chest at Allison's praise. "Anyway, do you have any idea what the fuck is going on in English?"
The conversation had devolved from there.
As Josie predicted, it had been easy enough to convince Lydia to move lunch tables. Allison had batted her large, hopeful eyes and Lydia folded. Josie, who had been halfway through her explanation of why it made sense, came to an abrupt halt.
Lydia fixed her lip gloss in the small mirror hanging in her locker. "If Allison insists on hanging around losers, I might as well vet them. McCall may not be a total loss."
Trying to swallow her laugh as Lydia closed her locker and strutted away, Josie shot an amused look at Allison. The other girl's face was a mix of exasperation and amusement.
"And they say altruism is dead." Allison said dryly. However, the smile spreading over her face betrayed her true feelings and she followed Lydia down the hallway looking a hundred times lighter.
The rest of the morning passed in a daze of lessons and assignments that Josie didn't fully understand. Instead, she listened with morbid curiosity to the theories surrounding the bloody bus behind the school. Josie had nearly spit out her coffee when she heard someone mention a crime scene behind their school.
A girl in the hallway said it was the beginning of a serial killer. A boy in the back of her history class thought it was a Satanic sacrifice. Danny, the closest thing to a friend Josie had outside of Allison and Lydia, said it was all bullshit.
"Don't worry about it, Jo." Danny, like most people Josie knew, was a friend of Lydia's. More specifically, he was Jackson's best friend, but Josie preferred to not acknowledge that. Danny was much too good of a guy for Josie to associate with Jackson. "Some poor rabbit probably got stuck in there with a mountain lion."
Josie bit the inside of her cheek softly-more as a distraction than because she needed to ground herself. "I'm not worried."
Danny raised his eyebrows. Like most people in Beacon Hills, Danny was unfairly attractive with strong features, dark hair, and soft brown eyes. As the goalie for the lacrosse team, he was lean but muscled and towered over Josie.
Josie tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear in an attempt to hide the slight shake of her hands. At Danny's disbelieving look, she forced out a light laugh. "I'm not! A little freaked out, maybe…"
"That's fair." Danny held the door to the chemistry lab open and gestured for Josie to go ahead of him. She ducked under his arm and through the door easily. "Even if they won't admit it, I think everyone is freaked out."
Josie settled onto the stool in front of her designated lab table. Opening her notebook to a fresh page, she looked up at where Danny was lingering nearby. "Even Jackson?"
Danny seemed to sense where the questioning was heading. He preemptively rolled his eyes. "Yes, even Jackson."
"Will you tell me if he gets freaked out enough to cry?"
"No, Josie." Danny heaved an exasperated sigh. "I will not."
Josie pouted, but let Danny leave to take his seat at the other end of the lab without annoying him any further. People streamed into the class around her. Josie didn't bother to look up when her lab partner sat down, too busy searching for her pen in the mess of her bag, but she knew he didn't mind. Josie didn't think he even knew her name. She definitely didn't know his.
Out of the corner of her eye, Josie recognized Jackson's form coming through the door before pausing to talk to Danny. Soon after, the frantically whispering forms of Stiles and Scott hurried in the door. Satisfied that everyone she knew was in the room, Josie focused on the flower she was doodling on the corner of her notebook.
After five minutes of half-hearted drawing, Josie forced herself to pay enough attention to scribble down the diagram Mr. Harris was writing on the board. It took three tries before she was satisfied enough to label it.
Just as she was starting to write down the correlating equations, Mr. Harris cleared his throat loudly.
"Mr. Stilinski, if that's your idea of a hushed whisper, you might want to pull the headphones out every once in a while." As usual, Mr. Harris sounded thoroughly unamused.
Josie fought a laugh as Stiles scoffed loudly. Scott, at least, had the decency to look slightly ashamed of himself. True to Mr. Harris's words, the two weren't being very secretive about their whispered conversation; Scott was fully turned about in his seat to talk to Stiles at the table behind him.
"I think you and Mr. McCall would benefit from some distance, yes?" Mr. Harris asked in a tone that indicated he wasn't looking for an answer.
"Uh…no," Stiles responded. He looked wounded, his brown eyes wide and sad, as his lips fell into a pout.
At Stiles's pitiful answer, Josie covered her smile with her hand. The last thing she wanted to do was draw the attention of a more annoyed than usual Mr. Harris.
Mr. Harris just gestured for Scott and Stiles to move to opposite sides of the room. "Let me know if the separation anxiety gets to be too much."
Scott moved to the row in front of Jackson while Stiles made his way to her side of the room. Josie's smile dropped when she realized her lab partner was getting up. Her stomach began to twist into knots. If it wasn't for the fact that she hadn't said a single word to him, Josie would've begged her lab partner to stay.
As Stiles threw himself unhappily onto the stool next to her, Josie resumed her previous drawing in an attempt to avoid his eyes. As much as she didn't mind talking to Stiles when the opportunity arose, Josie wasn't sure how she felt about him becoming her lab partner-and a fixture in her daily routine.
Josie had forgotten how tiring it was to have friends. After months of in-patient care, where Josie was often too deep in her head to even speak to her therapist, and her failed semester at her old school, where everyone treated her like a fragile and freakish sideshow, Josie was exhausted trying to figure out how to be a good friend. It felt like her brain was constantly working on overdrive.
With her old friends, it had been as easy as breathing. They'd known each other since they were all in diapers at the neighborhood park. Josie couldn't remember a time when she wasn't with one of them: taking long drives with Keely, dying her hair in Emilia's bathroom, painting theater props with Ward, making s'mores with Eric.
Josie wasn't sure she knew how to be a good friend to anyone else. She had grown up with their quirks and issues and formed herself around them. Being friends with anyone else felt like forcing a square peg into a round hole. Allison didn't have bangs to fuss with like Emilia did, so the barrettes in Josie's bag went unused. Lydia, while appreciative of Josie's gentle teasing, didn't need it to distract her from her worries like Eric did.
In her last session with Bea, Josie admitted that while it was getting easier, it was still tiring. She was equal parts worried and hopeful that she wouldn't be able to connect easily with anyone again. Bea just assured her that things became easier with practice; every time she interacted with her new friends, she was sanding off the edges of that square peg. The main issue was that part of Josie wanted to keep that square peg. If anything, it was proof that, at one time, Josie had the type of easy love that she wasn't sure she'd find again.
With Stiles, it felt both familiar and foreign. It was as though Josie was watching a movie she knew by heart in the wrong language. She couldn't tell you what any of the characters were saying, but she could tell you what they meant. It sent her head spinning. Something in Josie softly insisted that she would be okay around him, but every other part of her screamed that she knew better.
It wasn't anything that Josie had the energy to deal with, so Stiles was destined to be dealt with in small increments.
Still refusing to look at him, Josie felt Stiles's eyes on the side of her head. She focused on the flower blooming across her notebook. Even as her neck started to itch, Josie ignored him and began shading the bell-shaped petals a deep purple.
Just as Josie thought the back of her neck was going to burst into flames, a shout came from the other side of the classroom.
Scott's new lab partner had jumped from her seat. "Hey, I think they found something!"
The chemistry lab's windows faced the back parking lot where the police were slowly conducting their search of the bus. Josie, who would prefer to not see the blood sprayed along the windows and broken emergency door of the bus, was extremely happy her lab table was across the room. Chemistry was hard enough for her without a crime scene outside the window.
The rest of the class didn't share her feelings. Everyone leaped to their feet to crowd around the windows. Unable to resist her curiosity, Josie tentatively joined them at the windows.
At first, it was impossible to see anything past her classmates' backs. Spotting a familiar hoodie, Josie tapped Stiles on the arm. When he glanced behind him, Josie raised her eyebrows and tilted her head to the window. Even though he rolled his eyes and sighed heavily, Stiles shifted to make room for Josie to slip in front of him and Scott.
Josie rested her hands on the windowsill in front of her. People were craning their necks to see a gurney being carefully wheeled towards a waiting ambulance. She rose onto her toes to get a better look at the still figure.
Behind her, Scott whispered to Stiles. "That's not a rabbit."
Wrinkling her nose at the mental image, Josie resisted the urge to try and shake away the shiver crawling down her spine. Scott seemed to agree with Danny's theory of some poor rabbit getting stuck in the bus with a wild animal.
As the EMTs began to load the gurney into the ambulance, the person on the stretcher violently lurched upwards with a scream.
She jumped away from the windows in tandem with the rest of the class. A few people let out small exclamations of surprise. Someone down the line had let out a quiet but panicked, "What in the absolute fuck?"
The victim was still wildly flailing his arms and fighting as the EMTs tried to force him to lay back on the gurney. Josie caught a glimpse of the dried blood covering his face and matted into his hair. She scratched absentmindedly at her left wrist. She felt bad for whoever had to clean him up later. Getting dried blood out of hair took forever.
Briefly, Josie felt the heat of someone's hands on her shoulder blades. Turning her head, she saw that when she'd stumbled away from the window, she'd backed into Stiles.
He quickly held his hands up, ripping them away from her. As he went to open his mouth, to probably start a rambling apology, Josie shook her head. "It's fine, I backed into you."
Scott, who had backed away to the middle of the classroom, made a distressed noise. Not expecting him to have such a visceral reaction, Josie looked to Stiles in worry. "Is he okay?"
Stiles nodded deeply as though Josie had made a great point in a debate. "That's a good question. Let me-I'm just-I'm going to go check on him."
He hurried the few steps away and the two proceeded to have one of their intense, hushed conversations. By the time Mr. Harris had corralled the rest of the class to their seats, Scott was looking marginally better. Just before he could get admonished again, Stiles slipped into his seat next to Josie and gave her a thumbs-up.
The rest of the period flew by. No one bothered to pay attention. Instead, everyone chose to exchange whispers about what they'd seen. More than one person had already texted the information to their friends. By the time the bell rang, Josie was sure everyone in the building knew about the injured person found by the buses.
"Uh-uh," Lydia chided as Josie turned to their usual table in the cafeteria. "You and Allison wanted to sit with her new little boyfriend today, remember?"
"I totally forgot." The slight change in her routine set her teeth on edge. If she'd remembered, she could've at least prepared herself better. Josie sighed and tilted her head towards the end of the lunchroom. "For the record, I couldn't care less where we sit, I was just part of convincing you."
Lydia nodded. She began walking away, leaving Josie in the dust. "Nice to know that my friends are conspiring against me."
Josie shook her head vehemently. She hurried after Lydia, but, because they were around the same height, Josie couldn't fully catch up. "No, it wasn't like th-"
"Calm down," Despite Lydia's dismissive tone, Josie could hear the undercurrent of hurt in her voice. The edge of her shoulders rounded in slightly. "I'm just kidding."
"Seriously, Lydia." Josie jogged a few steps to cut in front of her friend. Lydia was forced to stop abruptly. There were a few seconds before the rest of their usual table-mostly Lydia's other friends that Josie didn't particularly like-caught up to them. "We weren't plotting against you or anything. It just matters a lot to Allison that you like Scott."
When Lydia nodded her head for the second time, Josie trusted that the other girl believed her.
In the last few steps to Scott and Stiles's table, Lydia's dejected body language smoothed out. Her shoulders pushed back, her head raised, and she shook out her strawberry-blonde curls. She marched confidently to the lunch table, placed her tray down next to Scott, and broke seamlessly into the conversation. "Figure what out?"
Josie wished she had a camera to immortalize the shocked expression on Stiles's face. A wide smile spread over her face as his jaw nearly dropped to the floor. Lydia, of course, didn't spare him a single glance. To his credit, Stiles's elated expression didn't falter. He seemed content to just be in Lydia's presence.
Sliding into the seat next to him, Josie attempted to smother her smile. By the way Stiles was side-eying her, Josie assumed it didn't work. She gave him an innocent smile.
As Scott fumbled for a response to Lydia, Stiles looked to Josie. His voice dropped to an accusing whisper. "You could've given me a little warning!"
Josie shrugged and slid her chair closer to the table. Resting her head in her hands, elbows propped on the table, Josie continued to let her smile out in full force. "This seemed like more fun."
Rolling his eyes, Stiles leaned across the table to Scott. "Why is she sitting with us?" He looked over to Josie, whose smile only grew, and repeated his question. "Why are you sitting with us?"
Popping a soggy fry into her mouth, Josie shrugged again. She was enjoying Scott and Stiles's confusion too much to explain.
The rest of Lydia and Josie's usual lunch group joined them. While Scott visibly relaxed when Allison practically bounced into the seat next to him, Stiles only tensed more as the table filled up. Danny took the seat across from Lydia, on the other side of Stiles, while another lacrosse player-that Josie wouldn't be able to name with a gun to her head-sat at the end of the table. A couple of girls Josie had occasionally exchanged small talk with filled the rest of the seats.
Stiles made eye contact with the girl to Josie's left, laughed nervously, and briefly looked like he wanted to die. Stiles tried again, glancing over at Danny and giving him an amiable smile, while Danny only looked away with a pinched look on his face.
Leaning slightly in front of Stiles's slumped figure, Josie raised her eyebrows at Danny. He only looked pointedly at the side of Stiles's head before twisting his face in annoyance. Nodding emphatically, Josie pulled a face in return to show she understood. She had no idea what Danny's issue with Stiles was, but that didn't stop her from finding it hilarious.
Stiles threw his hands up, limiting the motion slightly to avoid hitting Josie in the face. He turned to face her. "I am literally right here."
"I didn't say anything." Josie defended.
"And you were still managing to talk about me." Stiles complained.
"You wanna know what we were saying?"
"Uh-huh."
"Danny doesn't like you." Josie leaned in front of Stiles to direct her question to Danny. "That about cover it?"
Taking a brief sip of water, Danny nodded. "Yep, sounds right to me."
Josie smiled innocently at Stiles. He just shook his head, slumped in his chair with his arms crossed in front of his chest, and muttered, "Unbelievable."
"Get up." As soon as he reached the table, Jackson wasted no time in ordering the random lacrosse player (John? Dylan?) away.
Despite Jackson looming over his shoulder, the lacrosse player protested. "How come you never ask Danny to get up?"
"Because I don't stare at his girlfriend's coin slot." Danny shot back, sending a smile across the table to Lydia. The girl returned his smile with an amused noise. It didn't take much to see the mutual fondness that the two had for each other; Josie guessed that the two bonded through dealing with Jackson's bullshit together.
The lacrosse player (who Josie was finally able to identify as a junior named Brian) flushed and let himself be pushed away by Jackson.
"So, I hear they're saying it's some type of animal attack. Probably a cougar." It was clear what Danny was talking about. No one else in the school was talking about anything other than whatever attacked the bus driver.
"I heard mountain lion." Jackson disagreed.
"A cougar is a mountain lion." Lydia's monotone voice matched her exasperated expression. At the brief silence overcoming the table, and Jackson's raised eyebrows, her voice pitched up. "Isn't it?"
Josie resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the theatrical look of confusion on Lydia's face. She poked at a fry on her plate. "Sounds right to me. They give off the same vibes."
"No one asked, Josie." Jackson gave her a condescending look before jerking his head to look at Lydia in annoyance. Josie guessed by the way he shifted uncomfortably that Lydia had kicked him in the shin. "But who cares? The guy's probably some homeless tweaker who's going to die anyway?"
Forcing herself to relax in her seat, Josie crossed her arms over her stomach. She shared a look of annoyance with Allison. "Your empathy is truly inspiring."
Before an argument could truly break out, Stiles held his phone out over the table. "Actually, I just found out who it is. Check it out."
As expected, Josie didn't recognize the name of the victim. The only piece of real information the news clip gave was that he had survived the attack but was in critical condition.
"I know this guy." Scott exclaimed, voice pitching up in surprise.
"You do?" Allison tilted her head with a vague look of concern.
"Yeah, when I used to take the bus, back when I lived with my dad." Scott frowned and shared a heavy look with Stiles. "He was the driver."
"Can we talk about something slightly more fun, please?" Lydia interrupted. She turned to Allison expectantly. "Like…oh, where are we going tomorrow night?"
Josie choked briefly on her water as she saw Allison's frightened look.
"You said you and Scott were hanging out tomorrow night, right?" Lydia continued, trying to guide Allison to the right conclusion.
"Um," Allison swallowed nervously as Scott looked behind her and Lydia, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. She was clearly not picking up what Lydia was implying. "We were thinking of what we were gonna do."
Settling back in her seat, Josie crossed her legs to get comfortable for the awkward conversation that was inevitably coming. She waited for the realization that Lydia was crashing their date to dawn on Allison. It didn't seem likely.
Hoping to antagonize the situation slightly, Josie hummed loudly in interest. She crossed her legs and gestured for Allison to continue.
Stiles gave her a startled look and nearly jumped out of his chair as Josie's foot brushed the end of his jeans. His eyes flicked down to Josie's crossed legs and stuttered to a brief stop at her thighs. More specifically, his eyes stuck on the way her skirt was riding up against her thighs.
In response to the slightly warmer weather, Josie had decided to forego the sheer tights she usually wore under her skirts and dresses. Watching Stiles swallow thickly, Josie couldn't help the sticky, satisfied feeling curling behind her ribs.
Josie fully knew she was pretty, but she had never been one of the girls that guys fawned over. It was true in Seattle and was proving to be true in Beacon Hills. While Josie was comfortable in her body, she didn't always like it. Her thick thighs rubbed together constantly, her stomach rolled noticeably when she sat, and she had never quite grown into her nose.
It didn't help that the few people Josie managed to connect with in Beacon Hills had bodies to die for. Allison's tall stature distracted from anything someone could deem an imperfection. Everything about Lydia was small and delicate. It had been the same growing up in Seattle surrounded by girls who didn't look anything like her. Being able to see the effect she was having on Stiles felt like a shot of adrenaline to Josie's system.
Noticing his eyes were still on the exposed skin of her thigh, Josie shifted in her seat. She hoped to knock Stiles out of his daze without giving away that she knew how he was staring. She didn't want to embarrass him-Josie liked how he was looking at her too much for that.
"Well, I am not sitting at home again watching lacrosse videos, so if the four of us are hanging out, we are doing something fun." Lydia stated, folding her hands neatly on the table. She looked between Allison and Jackson expectantly.
Josie watched the horror flicker over both Allison and Scott's face-Allison at how her date had suddenly expanded to include Lydia and Jackson, and Scott at hearing their date referred to as 'hanging out.'
"Hanging out?" Scott repeated, looking over to Allison. She swallowed her water hurriedly and pulled an apologetic face. "Like, the four of us?"
Stiles clapped a hand over his mouth and cringed. Josie tried to hide her laugh behind a cough, but couldn't stop her growing smile. She twisted her mouth to one side to try and cover it.
"Do you wanna hang out, like us and them?" Scott asked Allison. He clearly hoped she would take the chance to say no.
Allison paused, seeming to weigh the pros and cons, before nodding to herself. In the end, her people-pleasing nature won out. "Yeah, I guess. Sounds fun."
"You know what else sounds fun?" Jackson interrupted. "Stabbing myself in the face with this fork."
With a huff of annoyance, Lydia swatted the fork out of Jackson's hand.
Josie rolled her eyes in unison with Stiles, who, like her, was watching the conversation with interest. Unlike Josie, he seemed to have much more sympathy for Scott and Allison.
Leaning over slightly, she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "If I give him the fork back, do you think he'll try it?"
Stiles choked on his drink, water sloshing out of the corners of his mouth and onto his shirt. As he frantically tried to pat the collar of his shirt dry, he took a moment to mutter back to Josie, "We aren't lucky enough for that."
Lydia perked up. "How about bowling? You love to bowl."
"Yeah," Jackson scoffed. "With actual competition."
Allison leaned forward with bright eyes. "How do you know we're not actual competition?" She raised her eyebrows in challenge before glancing at Scott. "You can bowl, right?"
Scott looked woefully overwhelmed by the conversation. "Sort of."
"Is it 'sort of' or yes?" Jackson leaned forward on his arms to make direct eye contact with Scott. The challenge had Scott straightening in his chair.
Josie ate another fry as her eyes flicked between the two boys. If it came to a fight, she knew Scott would get demolished, but it would at least be entertaining.
"Yes." Scott leaned in even closer to Jackson. His voice brokered no argument as he stated. "In fact, I'm a great bowler."
Judging by the incredulous look on Stiles's face, Scott was not a great bowler.
As the conversation began to revolve around details for the double date, Josie resigned herself to the fact that there would be no fight. While Jackson and Scott seemed to be taking every chance to disagree with each other, Allison and Lydia kept it civil enough for them all to agree on a time and place.
Stiles was slouched in his seat, sending bewildered looks as Scott seemingly doubled down on his lie about being a fantastic bowler. Occasionally, he would try to make friendly eye contact with Danny, but the other boy refused to engage. Danny just stared back with a blank expression.
Partly to stave off her boredom and partly to save Danny before Stiles tried to start a conversation with him, Josie tapped Stiles's calf with her foot. "I'm terrible at chemistry, just so you know."
Stiles blinked at her owlishly. "Huh?"
"I'm awful at anything related to science, but I'm the worst at chemistry." Josie explained. She shifted in her chair to face Stiles more directly and did her best to ignore how the edge of her foot rested against his leg. "Like, I try and everything, but I still suck."
Stiles blinked again as though he didn't understand how the conversation applied to him. His eyes darted between her face and where her foot barely skimmed the outside of his knee.
Josie let out a small huff under her breath. "Stiles, I'm your new lab partner, remember? Mr. Harris separated you and Scott?"
"Oh!" A look of realization dawned on his face. He attempted to play it off but Josie could see the embarrassed flush creeping up his neck. "I totally knew that's what you were talking about. Definitely knew that."
"Yeah, okay." Josie did her best to not let Stiles's usual awkwardness throw her off. "Anyway, I thought I should give you a heads-up that I'm hopeless at chemistry."
"You can't be that bad." Stiles protested.
"Oh, I am. If I end the year with the grade I have now…" Josie mimicked wrapping a rope around her neck and pulling it towards the ceiling-she made sure to jerk her neck to the side to complete the effect. Her pantomime suicide gained a few weird looks from the lunch table.
Stiles's face went slightly slack at the morbid gesture. "Um, okay, maybe you're horrible at it."
Satisfied he believed in her lack of ability in chemistry, Josie nodded emphatically and took a long drink from her water bottle.
"You know, you could always come over to study sometime. I'm not, like, completely hopeless at chemistry." Stiles offered in a voice too casual to be real. A cautious smile rested on his face. When he saw the blank stare Josie was giving him, that smile dropped. "Or not."
As Stiles began a fumbling sentence, Josie started to mentally weigh the pros and cons of his offer. Pros: she could get help with chemistry and could potentially salvage her grade. Cons: it was Stiles offering the help and she would have to spend time confronting her confusing emotions.
"Yeah, I mean, I'm probably not even the best person to help you with chemistry-not that you need a lot of help! Like, you said you, uh, sucked at it, but I don't think you could be that bad at it." Stiles began gesturing wildly with his hands. "I'm sure you're great at science and just downplaying your abilities. Or, if you're not, then you could find someone else to ask. Like, I'm sure Mr. Harris would know someone a lot better, uh, suited for the job than me!"
As Stiles paused to take a breath, Josie took her chance to interrupt him. "Dude, calm down. I need all the help I can get."
Stiles stared at her in shock. "Is that a yes?"
"It's a yes." Josie confirmed. "Does after school tomorrow work? When everyone else is bowling or whatever?"
"Yep, yep, yep," Stiles began to nod frantically as though she was going to change her mind in the few seconds it took him to answer. "When everyone is bowling or whatever."
"Cool, I'll see you then." Thankfully, the bell rang before Josie could think too hard about what she had agreed to. She didn't want to sit through whatever rambling train of thought Stiles would have if she changed her mind.
Allison, who caught the end of the conversation, appeared at Josie's elbow. After both girls dumped their trays, she elbowed Josie lightly in the ribs. "Do I even want to know what that's about?"
"I'll tell you when I decide how much I care about passing chemistry." Josie retorted. She resisted the urge to stomp her foot like a toddler. "Maybe I'll just die instead."
"Okay, come on, drama queen." Allison grabbed Josie's shoulder and began to steer her out of the lunch room. "No dying today."
"Tomorrow?"
"Maybe." Allison flashed her a teasing smile.
"Cool." Josie nodded. "Dying tomorrow is a maybe."