Chapter 11: Rendezvous, Part 1 

KALISTA

The morning was packed with gray clouds. No light seeped through them. Through the windows of the car, the green of trees was opaque, its usual shimmer dulled to a dusty glow. Everything looked vapid, almost dormant, void of the sparkly liveliness that greeted us every morning.

Besides the crappy weather, I had plenty of reasons to stay in bed and not go to school: Algebra II, gym, Chloe's threatening looks, Valerie's questions-which I knew she was going to ask if she'd heard the latest gossip after my little chat with Tristan yesterday-the crappy cafeteria food, and seeing him.

The last one had the weight of ten thousand reasons.

The parking lot was already jam-packed with cars, but the most important ones weren't there yet. I told my dad good bye and slipped out. Valerie and Owen waited for me a few feet away from the entrance. She looked at me expectantly, as if she was about to burst out into questions.

"What's up?" she asked when I reached them, her eyes wide open.

I tilted my head, eyeing her. "Shoot, Valerie."

"What happened with Dean yesterday?" she uttered hastily.

"Dean?" I'd totally been expecting another question. "Oh, Dean..." I remembered suddenly. "Fine. We're fine now."

"Cool." She smiled.

I was really surprised she didn't ask about Tristan. She always knew anything about everyone. Maybe no one had noticed us.

"What about Tristan?" she prompted, arching her eyebrows.

It'd been too good to be true. "Ah...that..."

"Yes, that."

"We just talked."

"About?"

What was I going to say? She would find out I didn't tell her about the little incident last week. Ugh, whatever. She was going to find out anyway. I explained to her everything, even the dreadful destruction of my favorite jacket.

"And you didn't tell me about this?"

"Sorry, I forgot."

"You forgot?"

I nodded.

"Okay," she accepted, giving me a look that said she wasn't stupid. "Just tell me something. And this is very important, as in world changing important...yesterday, did he come to you first?"

"Yeah.

"And he saved you?"

"You could see it that way." Anyone could have done it. He was not a hero. He'd just been in the right spot at the right time. Pure luck.

"Wow." She said in awe. "It's so Spiderman-like...okay, maybe not that heroic, but the fantasy is so eye-candy...those tights would look so good on him."

"Who saved who?" Owen prompted, stuffing his cell phone into his white and green Warrior jacket.

I rolled my eyes. "Could we please go inside? It's really chilly."

We took off and rushed inside the school. The chattering inside was massive, so we moved to an empty area, next to the stairs that led to the second floor. A Go Warriors flyer was glued on the front white wall, and in that moment, all I really needed was a Go Kalista.

"Tristan helped Kalista with a crazy dog on Friday," Valerie continued, pulling Owen by the jacket.

"He did?" He was also amazed. I could see the wheels turning in his mind. "He should be playing for our team-and have you seen his friends? We could be state champions if we had them." He furrowed his brows, putting a lot of weight on his words. "I can see already all the marketing buzz. 'Two real warriors playing for the Warriors'" He held his hand in the air as if showing a headline. "It's a shame."

"Why?" I asked.

"Elan and Mingan are not allowed to play because of their Apache culture or something like that. They don't even go to gym class," he explained. "And Tristan doesn't go either, but that's another issue."

"What issue?"

"You see," Valerie continued, "he has some type of heart condition. He has to skip sports. The only physical stuff he does is swimming. He goes from time to time to RAC down in Wingfield Street, and since the news about that got out, well, almost half of the senior year enrolled into the club."

I felt terrible. Not because all those girls went to stare at him in a strip of nothing, with drops of water dotting his toned body, but because he was young, and how could a young person suffer from a heart disease? Especially a person like him.

All the bitterness in me suddenly crumbled.

"Look," Valerie told me, looking pointedly behind me.

I followed her stare. Tristan was coming our way with Elan and Mingan behind him. My breath got stuck in my throat. I wasn't sure if it was out of excitement or irritation. Maybe both. I was getting used to this emotional turmoil he roused inside of me.

He glided next to me, impervious, his beautiful eyes fixed somewhere else-in the cracks of the wall, perhaps? Neither Elan nor Mingan looked at me. They just tagged after Tristan, up into the stairs and disappeared.

Honestly, I'd hoped something in Tristan would spark an apology, but obviously, that hope had been clearly in vain. With or without a heart disease, there was no excuse for his stupid behavior.

Perhaps this was the real him, which shouldn't have been a surprise-the 'hot guy code' remember?

"I thought he was going to say hi to you or something." Valerie said.

Owen wrinkled his nose and added, "That dude is bipolar."

"No." I glared at them. "It's just that people like him don't lower themselves to our world."

Valerie narrowed her eyes in confusion.

"I totally agree." Owen frowned. "I've always thought he has this I-am-at-the-top-of-the-world attitude going on."

I wanted to agree with him but bit my tongue. I would have ended telling them about the hot guy code, and I didn't want to make a joke out of myself. Valerie didn't seem to agree, though. She was about to snap something back to Owen when I decided to stop her. "I think he's mad at me."

She paused and looked at me. "Mad at you?"

"I have no idea." I shrugged. "And I don't really care."

"But-"

"Valerie, I really don't want to talk about him anymore."

"Okay," she yielded, letting down her eyes. "But let me tell you something first."

It would keep her away from asking questions. "Shoot."

"I've never seen Tristan make the first move to talk to someone, other than being nice when girls approach him-or being nice when he dismisses them. So if he did it with you, if he took the first step, then there must be a reason, don't you think?"

Yes, an impulsive mistake. "I don't know. And I don't want to miss class." I was surprisingly eager to get to Algebra II.

"Sure, I'm dying to go to the algebraic inferno," Owen said sarcastically.