جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 150

THE THING ABOUT BEING SEENBy the time Ethan got to school the next morning, he had pretty much made up his mind to keep his head down. Not because anything had happened. On the contrary, Ethan had a problem. Nothing had happened. At least, nothing he could explain without making himself look like a complete moron.Blake kept running through his mind during the whole of the previous night. It wasn't exactly a new thing, but now Ethan found himself unable to concentrate on studying–after reading the same paragraph of his history book four times, he gave up and went to bed, only to find sleep taking much longer than usual, because the more Ethan tried to close his eyes, the more his mind would remind him of Blake–how Blake talked when nobody else was around, how his facial expressions were changing the minute he stopped pretending to be the school's golden boy. And the more annoyingly, Ethan was starting to find Blake's presence easy. And that scared him more than the kiss and the rumor

GET THE TRUTH OUT By Monday morning, the rumor had taken yet another turn. Ethan could tell before he even got into the main building–he could feel it in the way people looked at him. It wasn't the glaring that he'd started to get accustomed to because at least he'd known why; now it was different. People stopped talking to him, then began talking again in hushed voices once he passed by. Two girls standing near the trophy case looked at him, then looked at each other before one of them whispered something to the other.Ethan walked further, his fingers squeezing his backpack strap.He had tried all through Sunday to keep the school away from his thoughts. He had finished his homework, helped at home, even read ahead in one of his textbooks. But nothing worked. Every time his mind emptied of everything except for the school, the same thing would come back. Blake. Gossip. Glaring. The possibility that they know more than they should. Despite everything, Blake became the one whom Ethan

SOMEONE IS WATCHINGEthan walked even after he was far past the gates. The road leading away from Brookwoods High School was crowded with students, but they soon broke off into smaller groups, and Ethan walked along the sidewalk, with a heavy backpack hanging from his shoulder, and his phone tucked deep into his pocket.He could still feel it there. That last message wasn't leaving his mind.DON'T TELL BLAKE.He had no idea who was sending them, how they had managed to get the video, how they knew about Blake, or how long they had been watching them. But one thing was starting to become obvious: this wasn't random. Someone had been paying attention.Ethan got to the end of the street and stopped at the pedestrian crossing. Cars were passing along the road in an endless stream, the sound of tires hissing over the pavement, and he turned back and looked at the school, barely visible between the buildings.Everything seemed perfectly normal. There were students leaving the school through

THE DAY AFTERThe morning after homecoming somehow seemed to be completely ordinary. This was the first thing Ethan realized that day. There were no decoration-bearing students running through the hallways, there were no people who ran from one place to another in an attempt to get to the class before the dance started and no one discussing anyone with anyone else. The doors of the gymnasium were closed and the emptiness inside the room covered with scattered decorations was hidden from sight.Everything seemed to return to its usual form. Or, at least, pretended to be.Ethan entered the school building with his backpack thrown over his shoulder and immediately noticed Blake standing by his locker, talking to his teammate. Ethan somehow slowed down.Blake noticed him almost immediately and their eyes met across the hallway. A faint smile appeared on his face and Ethan responded to it, even though it felt a bit different from what it was at the homecoming. There was music, lighting and

TOO CLOSEFor several days, Ethan kept convincing himself he wasn't jealous. He was just cautious, he called it, whenever he caught himself trying to locate Blake in between classes or whenever he started taking the same route to the cafeteria Blake and Maya usually took. He was just being cautious, he said to himself whenever he found himself moving closer to Blake and Maya during lunch breaks. He was being cautious when he started to ask Blake what he was going to be doing after school.He wasn't being jealous. He just wanted to know more, that's what he was telling himself.Monday seemed to be pretty easy to handle. Blake and Maya spent most of lunch break reminiscing about their childhood memories, and Ethan listened to them talking about their former teacher and the playground they both hated and their families. He even laughed a couple of times.Tuesday was a different story though. Blake and Maya spent most of their time together walking to their classes, eating lunch and study