Investigating Julius Drake Read online

  My muscles tensed, and I wanted to say something. Maybe that we should go just the two of us, without the girls. Seattle was super accepting. Julius and I could totally say we were at the dance together and no one would stop us from going inside.

  I drew a plan in my head, where Julius and I would get dressed up. We’d be dropped off by Natasha in her awesome car. By the time we were at the door to study hall, I hadn’t said anything. The sad thing was, I wasn’t going to.

  “Friday, then?” Julius asked. With the study hall’s quiet atmosphere, I couldn’t answer. There was an extra seat at the table where Julius chose to sit.

  I went to the other side of the room.

  “Wow.” My mouth must have been hanging open when Bethany came out of the bathroom.

  “You like it?” She patted the front of her skirt, then tugged at the back. “I’m not sure if dresses are my thing.”

  “You look great,” I said honestly.

  She’d only been in the bathroom for a half hour, but she’d twisted her hair into an intricately braided bun and put on lipstick. I couldn’t be sure what else she had done with makeup, but there was definitely something nice going on with her face. Then there was the fact that the pink flowered dress suited her. The pattern would have seemed too flashy on its own, but it was cut in a way that made her seem . . . the right size. Like her parts were all in proportion.

  “Thanks, my mom got it for me this summer.”

  I wore clothes my mom had gotten me too, though in my case it was a blue button-up shirt with black jeans.

  “You look great.” Bethany said, though I assumed she was just returning the compliment. “Have you thought about putting any product in your hair?”

  Self-conscious, I ran a hand across my bangs. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it would stay like that better if you . . .” Pursing her lips, Bethany advanced on me. She pulled a tub of gel out of her book bag. “Do you use any hair stuff at all?”

  “No.” I’d seen commercials, and I remembered a curly-haired kid from my old school talking about relaxing spray. Since my hair only had a light wave, I’d never thought I was supposed to do anything differently.

  “Well, this might be a little heavy for your texture, but . . .” She grabbed my head and yanked me forward to work her fingers across my scalp. “Have you thought about going shorter on the sides?”

  “Not really.” I’d had the same haircut since I was nine—a modified bowl cut with bangs I could sweep across my forehead. It wasn’t the coolest thing on the planet, but it was a happy medium between the buzz cut my parents wanted and the shaggy rock hair of my dreams.

  “You could do something edgy if you left this part of the bangs.” She grabbed a hunk and swept it into a pompadour. “And you cropped it on the sides and in back.”

  I worried my hair wouldn’t stay in whatever style she was doing, but when she stopped and I peeked at the mirror, my ego soared. “Wow. I look good.”

  Bethany gave me an odd expression. “You always look good, dummy.”

  Embarrassed, I cleared my throat. “We should wait outside.” Mom was at work, but I still didn’t want Julius knocking on my door.

  “Why?” Bethany pushed her extra clothes into her backpack. Her stuff seemed to have gotten all over the apartment since she’d come home with me.

  “I dunno. He might not want to get out of the car.”

  “Henry, it’s raining. I think we can trouble Julius to knock on the door.” She took some lip gloss out of her backpack’s pocket and applied it. “What’s the problem? Did you guys have a fight or something?”

  “No.” Not exactly, but things had been frosty between me and Julius all week.

  “You know, Julius isn’t some delicate flower. He can handle doing normal things like ringing doorbells.”

  “I know.” We had an umbrella, and I pulled it out to protect Bethany’s hair between the apartment and Mrs. Hundstead’s car. “I just . . . I’m not cool with Julius seeing my place.”

  Bethany jerked her head back in surprise, then she looked around the apartment. “Why?”

  For a smart girl, she could be really dumb sometimes. “Because he’s Julius. You’ve seen his house and his car. You’ve seen how his sister dresses. How can I compete with that?”

  “Why would you have to?”

  I hadn’t realized I’d been pacing until I stopped. That question was like a wall, dropping directly into my tracks. “I don’t know. I guess . . .” What could I say? That I thought Julius would only want to be friends with someone as rich as he was? As far as I could tell, he wasn’t friends with anyone besides me.

  “If Julius only hung out with people who had the kind of house and car he does, he’d have the choice of, like, two people.” Bethany went back into the bathroom. “I doubt he’s given much thought to how you live one way or another. You’ve met Julius, right? He’s pretty self-involved.”

  I smiled because, yeah, he was. “I guess.”

  There were only a few more minutes until Julius and Mrs. Hundstead would be picking us up. Bethany gathered her stuff. I made sure my bed was made and the couch cushions were fluffed.

  I tensed every time a car passed, wondering if it would stop. Finally, one did. I held my breath.

  Julius’s knock was softer than I would have expected. Maybe he realized the apartment was small enough that he wouldn’t have trouble being heard.

  I rolled my shoulders before opening the door, all the while trying to figure out how to smile the right amount. But none of that mattered when I saw Julius framed by gray sky. My heart dropped into my belly, and the air seemed too thin to breathe.

  He’d worn charcoal instead of his usual black, and the color brought out hints of pink on his cheeks and at the notch in his throat. And his shoulders . . . The cut of the shirt made them seem really wide. My fingers twitched to reach for him.

  “Hello.” Julius swallowed. His Adam’s apple traveled up his throat.

  Desperately, I tried to force my eyes away. Yet it wasn’t until Bethany pushed past me that I gathered my brains back into my head.

  “Hey, Julius. Thanks for picking us up,” said Bethany, who, unlike me, hadn’t lost the ability to speak. Her backpack was on her shoulders and she rounded past Julius to get out the door.

  “Oh. Yeah. Thanks.” I cleared my throat. Idiot, you talk to him every day without swallowing your tongue. “I just, uh . . . I need to lock the door.”

  Fumbling like an idiot, I searched every surface for my keys before I found them.

  “I like what Bethany did to your hair,” Julius said.

  “I like your shirt.” My ears could have burned right off, that’s how hot they were.

  “Thank you. So do I.”

  I grabbed my jacket and headed to the door. “You ready?”

  “Yes.” Julius didn’t get out of the way, though. He seemed to have zoned in on me. “We should go.”

  I wanted to hug him. Or maybe shake his hand. With a girl, I might have had an inkling what to do. They showed it in movies and on TV shows. Boy-girl dating followed a script that started with spin the bottle and ended with a house, dog, and two-point-five kids.

  However, I had no idea what someone like me would do around someone like Julius. As much as I wanted to do something, all I could do was stare.

  “You don’t seem to be leaving,” Julius said.

  “Yeah.” I shoved him in the arm. “Neither are you.”

  “Well, maybe you should leave first, since it’s your house.” He smiled, and it was like the sky had cleared.

  I poked him in the side. “You go first.”

  “No. You.” He pushed me, right in the center of my chest. Thin as he was, I fell back a step.

  “Don’t make me wrestle you.”

  “I—I won’t.” Then the impossible happened. The inscrutable, unflappable, too-cool-for-school Julius Drake faltered, and the smile fell from his face to reveal nothing but pale eyes and hope.

&nbs
p; The moment stretched like a rubber band, and I knew I was supposed to say something but had no idea what. In the end, I broke our gaze. “So, uh, we should probably get going to the dance.”

  The Nathan Hale homecoming dance wasn’t that different from the junior high dances I’d been to back in Killeen. Streamers and balloons framed the doors to the darkened gym. A table sat in front, with teachers checking to make sure people weren’t drunk and that everyone paid the five-dollar entry fee. They didn’t seem overly concerned as to whether we attended Nathan Hale.

  “This is awesome.” Thea hovered close to my side, brushing against me. “We should go inside.”

  “Um . . .” I looked to Julius for some excuse. Not that I feared dancing, but supposedly we were there to investigate Zoe Ward.

  He gave Bethany a meaningful glance, and she nodded. “Thea, would you come with me to the bathrooms?”

  “Sure,” Thea said. She gave me a friendly quirk of the lips. “We’ll be right back.” The girls took off down a hallway.

  Julius knocked my arm. “Let’s go.”

  I followed him into the school gym. The decorations were a little weak compared to the ones I’d seen at the high school in my old town, but the sound system’s bass thudded the floors and bounced off the walls. In the dark, people danced. A few couples were on the outskirts, but the middle section of the floor was all girls with the occasional guy friend.

  “There. She’s over there.” Julius pointed to the center where a group of exceptionally pretty girls waved their arms.

  Watching Zoe Ward, it was hard to imagine her taking the time to have internet relationships with half the Clinton Academy swim team. I wouldn’t say she seemed nice, precisely, but she did appear happy—like she had too much going on to drag at boys’ heartstrings.

  “How are we going to talk to her?” If we only had fifteen minutes until Bethany and Thea returned, that didn’t give us much time.

  “We’ll figure it out.” Julius danced his way into the crowd.

  I followed, though I felt weird dancing with a guy. Granted, there was space between us, so I wasn’t dancing with Julius so much as near him. Still, it was disturbingly arousing to see him move in time with the music. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, given his ballet experience, but he was a good dancer.

  I, on the other hand, tried not to bump into anyone.

  “Okay,” Julius said close to my ear. “Let’s get in with those girls on the edge. They can’t be older than sophomores.”

  I saw the ones he was talking about, on the edge of Zoe Ward’s clique.

  They let us into their circle easily, smiling and copying Julius’s moves. The track was an older hip-hop song. When one of the girls grabbed my arm and draped it around her, I mimicked what I’d seen in eighties’ music videos my mom forced me to watch sometimes.

  As the music changed, Julius murmured, “Zoe’s down to two friends. You dance with the others, and I’ll handle her.”

  With Julius’s usual confidence, he managed to sidle up to Zoe Ward. At first, I wondered whether she would remember him, but then she shouted, “Let me guess—you guys are here with your sister?”

  “Yes,” Julius said smoothly. “She’s dating someone from Nathan Hale now.” Julius took Zoe’s hands, spinning her in a disco move. Despite being not much taller than she was, Julius made them look like something out of a movie.

  “That freak Hal isn’t here, right? Ugh. I don’t want to see him.” She got on tiptoe to scan the crowd.

  “No. Hal didn’t come. Neither did Roy or Todd.” Julius watched her closely.

  “Are those guys who go to your school?” Zoe was breathing hard from dancing.

  “Yes.” Julius shrugged. “I’d thought you’d met. Maybe on Facebook or Instagram? Snapchat?”

  She blinked. “I dunno. Maybe.”

  The music changed again, and Zoe’s friends urged me between them. The one in front of me was a buxom Latina with lips painted bright red. Behind me, a brown-haired girl draped her arms over my shoulders. “I’m Stacey,” she shouted into my ear. “This is Yessica.”

  “Cool,” I called. “Henry.”

  Yessica pressed closer to me, and I started to sweat. Suddenly, I wanted off the dance floor. Immediately. Besides, I could no longer hear what Julius was saying.

  “Hey, uh . . . I’m going to see if there are any sodas at the concession stand.”

  “I’ll come.” Julius glanced at me, then he set Zoe at arm’s length. “Such a pleasure dancing with you ladies.” He gave Zoe and her friends a little bow that would have seemed corny from anyone else, but it worked for him.

  We left the dance floor. I headed toward the concession stand, but Julius nudged my arm. His expression was stern. “Come on. I need to talk to you.”

  My pulse kicked up with excitement. “Yeah. Okay.” As we crossed the threshold, I spotted Bethany and Thea. Unfortunately, they saw me too. Steeling myself to blow off my date again, I trudged in their direction.

  “How’s the party?” Thea gave me a big smile. She bounced on her feet like she wanted to dance.

  “Great.” I guessed that now was the part of the date where I was supposed to dance with my own girlfriend. Funny, it had been easier when we were trying to trick Zoe.

  “Actually, Henry and I have to go to the restrooms now.” Julius tugged my sleeve.

  “Yeah. Uh . . . be back in a sec.”

  Julius set off down the hall, so I followed. He led me past the bathrooms, to the right and into a stairwell.

  When he dropped to sit on the third step, he grinned to his ears. “Tell me I’m awesome.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, fine. You’re awesome. Why am I telling you this?”

  He lifted a buttock and reached into the back pocket of his jeans to pull out a cell phone. I didn’t know where he’d gotten it, but it wasn’t his. Fuck, had he stolen it?

  He flicked it on and showed me the home screen, in which a few of Zoe’s friends were smiling. “What do you think Zoe’s password is?”

  My mouth dropped open, and I wondered how Julius had managed to get the device out of Zoe’s too-tight jeans. Regardless, Zoe was bound to realize any moment that her phone was gone, so I spat out the first things that came to my mind. “‘Smile’? ‘Cheer’? ‘Girl’? ‘Flowers’?”

  “Hmmm . . .” Julius fiddled with the keys. “It’s four digits, but it isn’t her birthday or her birth year.”

  I gave him a questioning glance.

  “Her birthday is on her Facebook page.”

  “I thought you weren’t on Facebook.”

  Julius sighed. “I’m not, but I’ve checked your account a few times.”

  There was probably no point in telling him not to do that, since I had a feeling he wouldn’t listen. “How about ‘love’?”

  Julius thumbed it in, and immediately grinned again. “Nice.”

  I scooted next to him. His thumbs were nimble, first opening her text messages, then her apps one by one. On Facebook, she wasn’t friends with anyone from our school. When Julius tried to log on to a different account, nothing auto-populated. Then there was Instagram, where she was logged on as “Glambunny789,” and Snapchat, where she was “EmeraldCity_Diva.” Nowhere was she “The Other Woman.”

  “Maybe she uses her The Other Woman account from a home computer?” I offered, though it didn’t seem likely.

  “Oh, please. A girl like Zoe Ward? How often do you think she’s at home?”

  Julius had a point. From what I’d seen, Zoe had a full-time social life.

  Her phone buzzed, and I jumped like I’d been bitten.

  “Calm down,” Julius muttered. “It’s just a text message.” He turned the phone around to show me a text from Zoe’s mother.

  When are you coming home?

  Julius nibbled his lip. His forehead knitted.

  “What?” I hadn’t seen anything weird there. My mother was always texting me the same thing.

  “Nothing.” Julius pre
ssed a button to turn off the phone and then wiped it on his clothes. “We should get back to the dance.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  We stood and headed around the corner. When we passed the girls’ restroom, Julius put Zoe’s phone on the ground and casually kicked it inside.

  I’d thought the most difficult part of the evening had passed, but when Julius and I got back to the dance, Bethany and Thea were waiting for us near the door.

  “I thought you guys had snuck off.” Bethany gave us pointed looks, as if to say Where the hell have you been?

  “Sorry, ladies.” Julius wound his arm around Bethany’s waist.

  Her eyes bugged out, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “We should dance.” Thea bounced in place. Maybe it was that movement that rubbed the back of her hand across mine, but I was pretty sure she was doing it on purpose. With the way Julius steered Bethany, I had no choice but to take Thea’s hand. It was still weird to be touching her, though. Not bad, just . . . not the way it should feel.

  “Ooh. I love this song,” she squealed.

  The gym was just as crowded as before, but more boys had joined the mix. All around, people danced in groups and couples.

  I didn’t mind the song myself, though I was a lot less comfortable dancing with Thea than I would have been alone in my apartment. The rhythms that moved my hips without effort when I was in boxers jerked me in weird directions now. I struggled to keep a smile on my face.

  A short distance away, Julius and Bethany were dancing apparently without any of the difficulty I was having. Julius’s body was like a rubber band with rhythm. Somehow he managed to seem classy and hip at the same time.

  The music changed to a slower song. Immediately, half the dance floor cleared. People who weren’t in couples faded away, retreating to the snack area or the comfort of their phones’ screens.

  I stared at Thea, who stared back at me. So I checked what Julius was doing. Confidently, he pulled Bethany into a dance pose.

  My muscles tightened, and I struggled to keep my feet shuffling when all I wanted was to go over there and break them up. Julius wasn’t supposed to have his hands on Bethany’s hips, and she certainly wasn’t supposed to have her arms draped across his shoulders. Those shoulders were mine.