My heart revved a little. Did Anthony Beck just text me? I mean, sure he had his tongue down my throat, but to text me the next day? That was definitely not avoiding me. In fact, that was dangerously close to relationship territory. I looked at the clock. Shit. If I hurried, I could meet him.

CU soon. S.

:-) :-) :-) A.

I snapped my phone shut with a smile and busted ass to get ready. I was happy, officially happy, and then I saw Mom in the kitchen peddling her breakfast-wares like a cheating man with roses. Toast? Eggs? Bacon? Cereal? Bagel? (Which she dropped when she got a close look at me.)

“Serena!” she screeched. “Your eyes!”

Crap. I looked like shit. Not exactly the look one went for when meeting up with a hottie junior. I fished out an ice cube from the freezer and rubbed it against my eyelids one at a time.

“Have you been … ?” Her hand tried to soothe the words out of her chest with odd little circles.

God only knew what she thought—probably not that her little girl was playing tonsil hockey on the eighteenth green, but the last thing I needed was an unscheduled parental lecture when Anthony Beck was waiting for me.

I held the ice cube away from my eye so I could glare, and pain tore up my optic nerve, spearing my brain. “What?”

I slammed my eyelids shut and dabbed them again with the cold ice. Sucking in a deep breath, I braced for the drugs question to rear up sans sticky note warning, but nothing came. “Have I been what, Mom?”

I dared her to say it. I don’t know why I prodded her. Knowing I was clean certainly didn’t hurt. Last night I didn’t even inhale, not really. Not that I gave a damn what she had to say, but I really didn’t have the patience to wait for her to spit it out either.

“Serena?” She tried to make eye contact. “Have you been crying? All night?”

Crying? Why would I have been crying?

“You know, I remember getting sent to the principal’s office when I was in eighth grade. I cried so hard my father couldn’t even bring himself to punish me.”

God, how lame. Especially for a girl who got knocked up at seventeen.

“If I’d known you were this upset about it …” She got this faraway look on her face, no doubt remembering that she hadn’t even been at home last night.

Briefly I debated taking the excuse she was handing me. I could’ve shamed her, asked if she’d heard me, told her I was so upset that I’d come to find her and couldn’t. But truth was, after learning that she’d been gone all night without so much as a word to me, I really didn’t even want her guilt anymore.