Read Online The Ylem by Tatiana Vila - Free Book Online Page A

Dean asked, looking at me
through narrow eyes.
    “I...yeah...yeah, I'm fine,” I stuttered, my
heart racing. All this time waiting to see Tristan and he
catches me off guard . Did he do this all the time?
    “She spaces out a lot,” Owen said.
    I glared at him.
    “Spacing out isn’t bad.” Dean said, shooting
a disapproving look at Owen.
    I looked at Dean with a grateful smile and
felt my face reddening. I hated this stupid blushing. It put me in
the spotlight. I felt like a two year old instead of a seventeen
year old.
    But even with this embarrassing shade in my
face, even if I looked like a bright red tomato, I wanted to look
back at Tristan.
    Don’t ask me why .
    “Hey, how are football practices going?” I
asked. Not that I cared, but it was the perfect bait to sidetrack
them.
    “Great—even if Smith has some problems on
passes,” Owen said.
    They bit the bait. Their conversation took
off and became far too exciting for them to notice me. I turned my
head carefully and looked back at Tristan.
    He was eating with two guys. One of them was
the same guy I’d seen him with on Friday, with shortish hair and a
very cool Mohawk. The other one was sporting a sleek pony tail at
the nape of his neck. Both of them had striking features—dark
glossy hair, narrow eyes the color of dry leaves in autumn, olive
skin. They looked like brothers, and they were both really good
looking. Worthy of a fashion magazine—and worthy of Tristan’s
company. They certainly looked good together.
    But I wondered…a guy like Tristan could be
surrounded by more people—more girls to be exact . And
he wasn’t. It was so odd to see a person so good looking being so
aloof. It went against the entire “hot guy code”—you know, getting
laid with as many girls as possible, making them fall in love, then
trashing them, walking around like the king of the world, stuff
like that. Or maybe it was part of his magnetism, of his game. He
was an enigma, and everybody loved a good riddle.
    The sudden shape of a girl sitting across
Tristan’s table blocked my view. I moved my head trying to regain
it, but her head snapped in again, as if she wanted to stop me from
looking at him. That was when I recognized the copper blond hair
veiling Tristan. Chloe. She was scowling at me, burning me
with her arctic blue eyes. I looked away, feeling awkward, and
veered my head back to my table. Unpleasant things always found the
wrong moments to come along. Perfect timing, I would say. She
absolutely loathed me.
    Crap . I was sick of this
female-hating thing, sick. I always kept to myself and never stood
in the way of others. Wasn’t that enough? And what could I do? I
couldn’t tell Dean not to sit here. It would be too rude. Besides,
he was just a friend. If she thought I was a threat to her, then
she was wrong. Completely wrong. I wasn’t a freaking threat to
anybody.
    “Hey, is there something wrong?” Dean asked
me suddenly.
    “Yes , ” I retorted.
    Everybody stared at me, surprised and
confused at my sharp attitude, wondering what was wrong with
me.
    At least I was asking myself the same
question.
    Seeming to not want to enter shaky grounds,
everybody let it pass and headed to their classrooms in silence at
the end of the break. My embarrassment and guilt never faded away,
though. It pounded through me so powerfully I couldn’t even speak
to Valerie and Owen. I knew I didn’t have a reason to talk to Dean
like that, but I hadn’t done it on purpose. It’d just come out
without even asking for permission. And now, for not keeping my
emotions under control, I had to talk to Dean and ask him to
forgive me. And there was nothing more uncomfortable and awkward
than doing that.
    “Valerie? Owen?” I said once we stepped
outside the classroom at the end of the day. They stopped walking
and looked at me. “I'm…I don’t know what happened. I'm usually not
like that. It’s just that Chloe was glaring at me like she was
about to jump up and break