And Then I Found Out the Truth by Jennifer Sturman

jaw was clenched even from where Natalie and I were sitting. He, too, kept his gaze focused straight ahead, but he paused at the entrance to hold the door for Fiona, and as he did he stole a quick glance around.
    For a split second, I thought he saw me, but the expression in his gray-green eyes didn’t seem to change.
    Then he squared his shoulders and followed Fiona inside.
    The bell rang soon after that, and Natalie flitted off to her first class like Snow White singing to the birds while I trudged off like Grumpy on his way to the mines. I was glad Fiona wasn’t angry with me personally — her acid tone the night before must have had more to do with Quinn than me — but it still looked like Quinn might be in serious trouble, not that I knew how to reconcile this with what Carolina had said. And I was trying to keep my eye on the ball — I really was — but it wasn’t easy when the ball kept getting buried under avalanches of distraction.
    “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Natalie said later, as we waited in the lunch line. “Mr. Seton’s called in the parents of half the senior class so far.”
    In addition to mellowing her out, infatuation also seemed to be affecting her memory. Twenty-four hours ago she’d been certain of Quinn’s pivotal involvement in the gambling ring. And while I knew she was only trying to help, somehow her attempt to reassure me was even more disconcerting.
    I didn’t have much interest in food, which was just as well since the chef had moved on from nation-based cuisine to color-based cuisine. The menu today was all about purple: There was coq au vin, and duck with plum sauce, and eggplant, and fig bars. It was a nice change from lamb and yogurt, but Natalie and I both went for grilled cheese anyway.
    We’d barely sat down, and Natalie hadn’t even had the opportunity to cut her sandwich into halves, much less quarters, when without warning a third tray clattered down next to mine. And I didn’t need to look up to know who’d decided to join us. There was only one person at Prescott who considered
    Fritos, pickles, and TaB to be three of the six major food groups.
    “Hey,” said Gwyneth, sliding into the seat adjacent to me and popping open her soda. And then, in case my existence hadn’t already taken enough of a turn for the surreal, she actually joined in the conversation.
    Not for the first five minutes or so, because that part was less a conversation and more a soliloquy from Natalie on whichever of Edward’s virtues she’d neglected to mention as yet. This was fine with me — just because I was cranky didn’t mean I should drag her down, too. I was also sort of hoping it would make Gwyneth think twice about joining us again.
    But then, as Natalie wrapped up an extended description of how Edward had constructed his first telescope from plastic cups, rubber bands, and spare Power Ranger parts when he was four, Gwyneth said, “Are you talking about Edward Vargas?”
    “Do you know him?” asked Natalie, startled that her path and Gwyneth’s could cross in any way except by sheer accident.
    Gwyneth took a long sip of TaB. “We went to camp together.”
    That instantly had me trying to imagine Gwyneth at camp — I mean, what kind of camp could it have been? — but nothing could tear Natalie’s attention away from Edward. She’d always thought Gwyneth to be entirely a black hole, rather than just in a limited way like I was with science, but now she looked at her with fresh interest.
    “What can you tell me about him?” she said. “I’m eager for additional data points.”
    Gwyneth crunched a Frito. “He’s sort of a player, isn’t he?”
    Across the table, Natalie flinched. “A player? What do you mean, a player?”
    Gwyneth shrugged. “You know. Like, a player.”
    “Are you saying he goes out with a lot of different people?” I asked.
    “Uh-huh,” said Gwyneth, washing down the Frito with more soda. “He’s supposed to be a major