“All right,” Jack says to the group at large. I can’t help but notice that he’s looking at me a little more than he’s looking at everyone else.
Or am I imagining that? I have an excellent and sometimes overzealous imagination. I could be wrong.
“You guys ready for the haunted house?” Jack gestures to the building I saw from the maze. It’s up on the hill, and as I squint my eyes to look more closely at it, I realize how haunted it really does look. It looks less like a haunted house and more like a haunted office building or something, though.
“Nope,” Cohen says immediately. Everyone looks at him, and he clears his throat, looking awkward. “We have to get home,” he says. “Mina has curfew.”
“What?” I say, looking at him with a frown. “I don’t have a curfew.” I don’t add that the reason I don’t have a curfew is that I never go anywhere. My parents never gave me one because it was never relevant.
Cohen just stares at me, his face an odd contortion of mixed emotions. His eyes are almost pleading with me, but he’s also somehow forcing his mouth into a very unnatural smile that I can tell is supposed to look easy and casual.
Oh.Oh. He doesn’t want to go to the haunted house. My mind flashes briefly back to his shudder when Lydia mentioned watching a scary movie. He must not like scary things.
“Oh. Right,” I saw awkwardly. “Thatcurfew.”
“When’s your curfew?” Jack says, looking disappointed—disappointed!—as he glances at his watch. I try to catch a glimpse of his watch too, because I have no idea how late it is. It feels pretty late, though. We didn’t even leave the house until nine something.
I take a stab in the dark and hope for the best. “Eleven?” I say. I realize too late that it sounds like a question.
Jack’s face clears. “Oh, you’ve got time,” he says, smiling at me with his perfect teeth displayed brightly in the relative darkness. “It’s only ten. This won’t take that long. You can still get home in plenty of time.” He turns and walks back to the others, and they all start up the path to the top of the hill. He looks over his shoulder at us, gesturing for us to follow.
I look at Cohen, who looks sick to his stomach. The thought of Cohen—strong, capable Cohen—being afraid of a haunted house is so funny to me that I actually laugh. I clamp my hand over my mouth to cut it off, but not before Cohen glares at me.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “And did you see that? Jack didn’t want us to leave!”
“Jack didn’t wantyouto leave,” Cohen says, looking grumpy. “He doesn’t care about me. I don’t need to be here.”
“Oh, no,” I say, putting as much threat and warning into my voice as I can. “You’re not leaving me here. Absolutely not.”
Cohen groans. “I don’t want to do the dumb haunted house, Mina.”
“You don’t like scary,” I say, feeling oddly triumphant at my deduction.
“What?” he says. His look of incredulity is unconvincing. “I’m not scared. I just don’t want to go.”
“Because it’s scary,” I say, nodding.
He stares at the ground and shuffles his feet. His eyes dart up to mine and then back down again. “Because it’s scary,” he says, his voice such a mumble that I almost don’t hear it.
“I knew it,” I say, grinning. “Do all your friends know you shudder when someone mentions scary movies?”
“No,” he says. “And you can’t tell them.”
“I wouldn’t tell them,” I say, rolling my eyes. “But it’s not a big deal.”
“You are incorrect,” he says. “It would be basis for mocking.”
I shrug. “Well, are you going to come or not? If you leave, I’m leaving with you. So if you want that on your conscience…”
“I’ll come,” he says. “But you owe me.”
“I owe you,” I say, nodding. “Because Jack was sort of flirting, right? He was sort of looking at me and stuff?”
“Yep,” Cohen says, his voice fake-casual again.
Interesting.
“Coming?” Jack yells over his shoulder to us, and we speed up. Cohen still looks a little pale.
