King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender

Author:Kacen Callender
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Jasmine has been sitting with Breanna and Camille at school more and more. At lunch, in class, and even in our free period, when we’re supposed to be sitting together, I see the three of them with bent heads, giggling and whispering. Sometimes, I feel like they might be giggling and whispering about me, which I don’t always feel so good about.

It’s when the last bell of the school day rings that Jasmine finally pays me any mind. I’m standing by my locker, putting my books away, and she stops right beside me. She looks all serious, like she’s on a mission, as she holds out the notebook she’d been writing in during our free period. The notebook with her script.

“I want you to have it,” she tells me. I can see she’s holding her breath. Her shoulders are so tense they’re way up by her ears.

“You want me to read it?” I ask, surprised.

Jasmine puts the notebook straight into my hands. I feel like she’s handing me a diary—something that I shouldn’t read, something that’s too private to even look at. “I don’t know if I should,” I tell her.

Her face falls a little. “Why not?”

“Isn’t it about the boy you like?” I ask her.

She clutches at her arm and looks down at my sneakers. I don’t mean to ask it—I really don’t—but before I can think better of it, the question flies out of my mouth. “Jasmine,” I say, “the boy you like … isn’t me, is it?”

She doesn’t speak for a long while. I hold my breath, waiting for what she’s going to say—hoping that she’ll just lie, and we can pretend none of this ever happened in the first place.

“Yes,” she finally says. “You’re the boy that I like.”

It feels like fire is licking at my skin, I’m so embarrassed. I don’t know what to say to that, and Jasmine has always been the patient kind. She stands there, all silent, waiting to hear what I’ve got to say about the fact that she likes me, instead of trying to fill the silence.

I hold the notebook in front of me like it’s seconds from falling apart. “Why me?” I ask her.

She shrugs her shoulders, and seeing that they’re still up by her ears, I think she’s somehow about to raise them past the top of her head. “You’re really nice,” she says, “and always thinking about other people. You’re smart and hardworking, and you always do your homework like you should. And with everything with your brother …” She stops herself.

I keep staring down at her notebook. It’s like hearing her words from underwater. A girl is telling me that she likes me. Me. What am I supposed to say to that? How am I supposed to feel? A whole mess of girls always had crushes on Khalid. They’d follow him up and down our small town, with their makeup and their long hair. Khalid never had a girlfriend. He was too focused on his soccer and his debate team and his grades.

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