It occurred to me that it might have been a good idea to have mentioned Alex before that moment.

“What new guy?” Jase looked towards Alex and his face went blank. I was reminded of the time he came home to find that our little sister had decided to make his Star Wars figures “pretty” by coloring on them with a red Sharpie. He had looked at them with this exact same expressionless stare before launching into the biggest temper tantrum ever. Angel had cried for hours.

“His name is Alex Cole, and he just moved here from Montana.” Talley said. “He is smart, attractive, funny, and madly in love with your sister.”

“What?” Two voices came out in unison -- mine incredulous and Jase’s furious.

Talley flinched slightly, but refused to be dissuaded. “C’mon, Scout. You said he was staring at you in Calc, and he was definitely flirting with you in Shakespeare. You could almost see the electricity in the air between you two.”

What the Hades was she talking about? I love Talley. Really, I do. But there are times when Talley’s world and the real world are two completely different places.

Jase’s lips were pressed so tightly together you could barely see them. “Stay away from him. I don’t even want you talking to him. Do you understand?”

“Did you seriously just try to tell me what to do?”

Jase narrowed his eyes. “You do realize who he is, right? You remember what the other one said?”

“I remember.” Like that was the sort of thing that just slipped your mind. “But Alex doesn’t seem so...intense. I think he’s fairly innocuous.”

“I don’t care what he is. I promised I’d keep you safe. I can’t do that if you’re hanging out with one of them.”

I could have argued the issue, pointing out that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself, but I didn’t. It wasn’t like I actually wanted to hang out with the new guy. “No problem. Really, I can’t stand the guy. I would be perfectly happy if I never spoke to him again.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way.” Jase got up, shooting another glance in Alex’s direction. “I’ll see you at the car after school,” he said, grabbing half of my turkey sandwich.

“What was that all about?” Talley asked, watching Jase as he made his way out of the cafeteria.

“I’m not a hundred percent sure,” I admitted. “It has something to do with Alex’s psycho brother. I think Jase is involved in something bad. I tried to ask him about it, but he just shrugged me off.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll just wait it out. Jase will eventually tell me what’s up.”

“I was talking about staying away from Alex.”

“I honestly don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

Talley looked over at the table where Alex was now chatting away with Ashley. They were most likely going over baby names. I cringed at the mental image of little Ashleys.

“That may be a bit harder than you think.”

“Don’t be crazy; it’ll be a piece of cake.”

And it was a piece of cake. I managed to avoid any and all contact with Alex Cole for two whole hours.

***

“There you are, Scout,” Mrs. Sole greeted me at the door of my print media class. “Editorial staff is at the table in the corner.”

I walked back to the table where Joi Fitzgerald and Meg Jamison waited for me. I took a deep, steadying breath as I sat in the only available seat, next to Alex.

Crap.

“We just keep running into each other,” he said as I began to consider becoming a sports writer.

“Yes, it seems karma is intent on us spending some time together. Obviously, I did something horrid in my previous life.”

“Or maybe you’re my reward for being so good.” You would think that grey eyes would be dull and lifeless, but his seemed to glow.

I decided my best response would be silence. Unfortunately, he did not take this as a hint to end the conversation.

“So, I was going to sit by you at lunch, but your boyfriend beat me to it.”

“Who? My what?” The boyfriend statement threw me. “Do you mean Jase?”

Joi, who had been listening intently to our conversation, looked even more shocked than Talley had earlier. “You and Jase have lunch together? But I thought that there had been a royal decree that the Donovan Twins weren’t allowed within 500 feet of each other on school grounds since the Ms. Tubbs incident.”

Good grief. So you make one teacher have a mental breakdown in elementary school. Was it really that big of a deal?

“Twins?”

“Jase is my brother.”

“No, he’s not,” Alex said with absolute conviction.

I was about to tell Alex exactly what I thought about him and his presumptuous arrogance when Joi decided to be helpful.

“Oh, we just call them twins. Jase’s mom married Scout’s dad when they were babies. They don’t look anything alike, and Jase is technically a couple of months older, but they act like twins.”

“Five weeks to the day,” I corrected automatically.

“That’s quite the distinction, Scout, ” Meg said. After watching an episode of Law and Order in the fifth grade, Meg Jamison decided she wanted nothing more in life than to be a lawyer. She had been speaking like one ever since. I tried imagining her using “hottie” or “yummy newbie” to describe Alex, but my imagination wasn’t that good.

“Do you have any siblings, Alex?” she asked, steering the conversation away from Jase, who she loathed with a passion since a brief stint as his flavor-of-the-month last year.

I eventually came to know that Alex’s brother was named Liam, and he served as Alex’s legal guardian. (“He’s two years, ten months, and four days older,” Alex told me with a wink.) They moved from Libby, Montana, a town about 75 miles from the Canadian border, to Kentucky the first week in July.

There was no mention of Liam’s habit of terrifying random strangers for fun.

It quickly became apparent that Alex was one of those naturally outgoing people that could coax even the most aloof individuals into a group discussion. Thanks to him, the entire class was debating the best zombie survival tactics when school was dismissed for the day. I was so intent on making sure he understood the advantages of owning a blimp I never considered how Jase would react to seeing the two of us strolling through the parking lot together. It was, without question, one of my more remarkable errors.