It can’t hurt to talk to him about a movie, right? Besides, it’s not like I’m ignoring everyone here because he’s the only one who will talk Sweeney Todd with me.

“So,” I say, taking a deep breath. “What’s for dessert?”

CHAPTER 10

I’ve never rushed out of dinner this fast before, but as soon as Claudia and Lydia are out the door, I’m running upstairs. Then again, I’ve never had a cute guy blowing up my phone.

“Dude, you gotta stop live-texting me.” I hold my phone with one hand and slam myself into my room with the other. “Start a blog, join Twitter like everyone else, I don’t know. But you can’t just spam me like that. My parents are gonna think something is up.”

“Is something up?”

“I mean,” I say. “We kissed and everything.”

“We did. Is that…” He pauses. “Bad? You kissed back, so I thought—”

“No, it was fine. It was great. It’s just…” My voice trails off. What am I going to tell him? That it’s complicated? It’s the truth, but it sounds like a lie. I’m certainly not about to tell him my life story. “Look, there’s just a lot that goes into it. Okay?”

“Do you have a boyfriend or something?”

I almost laugh at the idea.

“It’s not like that,” I say, sitting on my bed. “There’s just a lot going on, all right?”

He’s quiet for a moment, and I hear shuffling on his end. I force myself not to think about where he might be right now—maybe at his own dining room table, or in his bedroom. It’s so creepy to imagine someone else in their bedroom.

“We’ll just talk about the movie, then,” he says. “That cool?”

I want to kiss him again—in a platonic way. Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Ugh.

“It’s not as good as the actual musical,” I say, lying against my pillows. “Burton cut a ton of songs. It’s more like a regular movie than a musical, but that’s no fun. There’s nothing to sing along to.”

“Oh no,” he says. I picture him smiling. He makes that easy. “I can’t believe I’m missing the Simone remix. Why should I keep watching now?”

I snort. “The movie is fine—there’s lots of blood and dead people, like Game of Thrones. Anyways, I suck at singing, dude. Be glad you’ve never heard me.”

“I don’t believe you. Maybe you haven’t found the right song yet.”

“I don’t think that’s how singing works,” I say, propping myself up. “Well, actually, I can kind of pull off Chicago.”

“We’ll have to watch it sometime,” he says. “I’ve never seen it.”

“I’ve seen it on Broadway and then watched the movie a million times.”