Quad Hardback - 2007

Details

• Title Quad
• Author C. G. Watson
• Binding Hardback
• Edition First Edition
• Pages 296
• Language EN
• Publisher Razorbill, New York
• Date 2007
• ISBN 9781595141385
• Library of Congress Catalog Number 2007001858

TECHIES

Theo had never made out with a girl before. He’d kissed his date good night after the winter formal last December, and for a couple of weeks in junior high he went steady with Paisley Reed. But this was different. This was lying-on-the-bed different. Theo thought he might be in love.

Maggie rolled onto her back and Theo flopped beside her. Taking a break was probably a good thing because at the moment, he was so turned on he could barely move.

“I really liked your movie,” she whispered.

He shrugged, a little wary about having shown his video footage to her. “It’s not finished yet,” he told her.

“What do you mean?”

He frowned. “I still have a few scores to settle.”

Maggie laughed. “Interesting choice of words. Is that how you settle your scores? On film?”

Theo turned his head, reaching over to stroke Maggie’s hair behind her ear. “You know a better way?” he teased. He decided to make his point by pulling his video camera out of his pocket and turning it on.

Maggie stared into the lens. “No,” she said, unsmiling.

He leaned up on one elbow, focused in tight on her face. “No, what?” he asked.

“You don’t want me to film you? Or no, you don’t know a better way?”

She kept watching him, her eyes burning into his viewfinder. “Maybe.”

“Maybe what?” he asked, a little surprised.

She held her gaze on the tiny screen. “Maybe I have some scores of my own to settle. Maybe I have my own way of settling them.”

Theo’s heart sped up. “With who?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. Jocks. Preps. People who are out to get people like us.”

Theo’s head whirled. He was almost positive by now that he loved this girl. It was like she could read his thoughts—like they’d lived inside each other’s heads their whole lives.

“Why are preps and jocks out to get you?” he asked, narrowing in on Maggie’s intense eyes.

She blinked into the lens a few times. “Because they can’t see beyond the package,” she whispered.

Theo paused. What had started out as an amusing diversion was taking on an entirely darker dimension. He could sense something bubbling under the surface of Maggie’s skin, a reckoning of some kind. He wasn’t afraid of it; he actually wanted to explore it.

“What can’t they see?” he asked, just above a whisper.

“Intellect,” she said. “Heart. Soul. Danger.”

“What kind of danger?”

Her hair fell forward, leaving only one blue eye visible behind a chestnut curtain.

“The kind of thing that happens when they push too far without realizing.”