When I Stopped Chasing Him, He Followed Me Home

I chased Vance for two straight years. Today I stopped, and everyone noticed. Vance included. He cut me off in the hallway after last bell, jaw set. "About Saturday.

I'm explaining this once. Believe it or don't." "Willow got cornered by a drunk. I went and got her out." "I should have texted you. That part's on me." Saturday was his birthday.

He spent it throwing punches for Willow while I sat at Pinecrest Amusement Park from open to close. So that was it. He thought I was sulking about a birthday.

I shook my head, barely. "It's fine." Then I walked around him and left. He was still watching. I didn't stay to find out what the look meant.

He didn't know that when he left me standing there again, the System had marked my mission failed. In one month I'd be deleted and sent back to the real world.

And this body would go back to the girl it belonged to. Chapter 1 The third time a park employee came by to tell me they were closing, the System sighed. "Ivy.

Go home." "He's not coming. He's with Willow right now.

He forgot he ever agreed to meet you here." I stamped some feeling back into my feet, picked up the cake box, and turned for the gate. "Okay." Everything I'd walked out of the house with that morning had been sanded down to nothing.

What was left was flat and quiet.

Even when the System read out my sentence, nothing in me moved. "In one month, you'll be in a car accident." "That's the penalty for failing." "When you're unconscious and critical, I'll send you back.

This body goes back to the real Ivy Sutton." Then it was gone. I pulled out my phone to call a ride. The battery icon was already red. A second later the screen went black.

Nothing comes out this far at night. No cabs, no last bus. So I gave up and started walking home along the road. Failing had never been a surprise.

Something heavy poured into me anyway and settled. Every step cost more than the one before it. The walk home from the park went past school. Saturday.

The place should have been dead. Instead, on the bench near the front gate, two people I knew better than anyone.

Willow was holding a gasstation snack cake with a single match stuck in the top. "I'm so sorry, Vance…" "I just found out it's your birthday.

There wasn't time to get you a real cake." "This is all I've got. Please don't laugh at it…" The boy across from her had fresh cuts down one side of his face.

Gauze wrapped his forehead, half hidden under the hair falling into his eyes, which somehow made him look lazy instead of hurt. He didn't laugh at it.

He pulled out a lighter and lit the match for her. "No." "I like it." Same flat voice he always used. Underneath it this time, something working to make her feel better.

And just like that I was back in the homeec kitchen the night before.

I'd remade that birthday cake until I finally had a version I liked, and I held it up for him. "Does it look good?" He leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed.

His eyes went to the blisters the oven had left across my hand. "Looking at your hand is enough to kill my appetite." My face went hot.

I tried to tuck my fingers back into my sleeve. His eyebrows dropped.

He came over, took my wrist, and pulled me toward the drugstore. "Hiding what?" "You burn yourself and it doesn't occur to you to put something on it.

Do you have a brain in there?" Back then I thought that was him caring, in his own broken way. Today he got in a fight for Willow and came out of it with gauze on his forehead.

And I held that cake in a park from open to close. The System was right. Some people, you can't save. Chapter 2 He looked annoyed the entire time.

His hands were careful anyway, slow and light, working the ointment in. I got my nerve back and asked again, because I never learned. "Vance.

Did you like the cake?" He stared at the blisters and his forehead creased. "It's ugly as hell." The System tried to patch it up for me afterward. "Don't listen to him.

He's just mad you burned yourself making it." "He says the exact opposite of what he means.

That's him being worried about you." Across the street, back in the present, I watched him lower his voice for a different girl and tell her the sad little cake was fine.

I was about a year late working that out. Even Vance, wired backwards as he was, went soft when he actually liked someone. He pulled in every spike.

He noticed her pride and couldn't stand to watch her face fall. I didn't know what I was to him. Whatever it was, it wasn't that. I turned to go. Willow spotted me first. "Ivy?

What are you doing here?" Vance turned. His eyes dropped to the box in my hands and stopped there. Like the plan we'd made had only just come back to him.

Willow saw the box too, and her face cleared. "Oh. You came to find Vance." "I heard you were doing his birthday at the amusement park today." "Sorry about that.

He stood you up because of me." She apologized the way you apologize for taking the last napkin. Like she was used to it.

Vance had dropped me for her more times than either of us bothered counting, and nothing ever came of it.

I'd sulk for a day or two, then go right back to trailing after him like none of it happened. I shook my head at the first thing she said. "I was walking by." Vance was watching me.

Whatever was on his face, it wasn't comfortable. Willow smiled at me. She thought I was saving face. Obviously.

I didn't bother with it. "Well, you brought the cake anyway," she said. "There's still time to celebrate." She reached for the box.

I moved it out of range and shook my head. "It's gone bad. Nobody should eat it." I pressed my lips together and said it quietly. "It's late. I'm going home." "Bye." Willow blinked.

I used to take any crack in a conversation to get closer to him. Now I was handing them the space myself.

I got a few steps down the sidewalk, cake box still in my arms, before I remembered. I turned back around, embarrassed. "Could you order me a ride on your phone? Mine died.

I can't get home." "I'll drive you." Vance had it out almost before I finished. Fast, and pulled tight. I acted like I hadn't heard him.

Willow stumbled over it. "…Sure." She took out her phone and booked the car. "Thanks. I'll pay you back Monday." I thanked her again and went to stand at the curb.

I never once looked at Vance. Not the whole time. Thirty days until the accident. Maybe some part of me already knew I was going home. That night I dreamed about my old life.

The real one. A long midmorning break, in a classroom that didn't exist anymore. I had a paperback open in my lap and I was crying over it.

My desk partner squinted at me. "I thought that was a fluffy romance." I got the words out between hiccups. "Not for the second male lead.

Not for Vance." "He goes his whole life without ever getting the one thing he wants." Chapter 3 "He's been in love with Willow, the heroine, since freshman year.

He's the only fullride scholarship kid at Ashgrove Prep, and it made him small and touchy about everything. By the end he's a selfmade mogul, and he still never tells her.

He just guards her from a distance his whole life." "And the worst part is, all through high school he gets tormented by the mean girl in this book. Ivy Sutton.

Richbitch villain." My desk partner pulled out a tissue and handed it over. "You're Ivy Turner, she's Ivy Sutton.

You two literally have the same name." I smacked the desk. "I find that humiliating." That night I woke up inside the book, in the body of the character I hated most.

The System's assignment: win Vance over. That year, I was the person he hated more than anyone alive. Difficulty: SSSrank.

The System watched me bounce on my toes. "Hell mode, and you're this happy about it?" "Because I get to change how his teenage years go." I jumped up.

My bangs flopped. "I'm going to give him every good thing there is. He is never going without again." The System had zero faith in me.

It said it would sit back, wait out the clock, and ship me home. I spent two years wearing him down.

By the end his affection score was high enough that even the System thought we had it. We didn't. And I don't get to be angry at him. He loved Willow first.

Giving her everything, putting her ahead of everybody else, that's just what people do for the one they love. I only worked that out recently. After I stopped loving him.

Twentynine days until the accident. The wind blew all day yesterday. I woke up the next morning with exactly the cold you'd expect. I took something for it.

Then one of Vance's boys called. "Ivy. Vance is redoing his birthday today." "Same amusement park you two picked. You coming?" Vance had never cared about birthdays.

So this was him paying me back for Saturday. I could do that math.

My voice came out thick and stopped up. "You guys go ahead." "I'm going to the library." His voice moved away from the phone. "Vance. She says she's not coming." A few seconds.

Then a short laugh on the other end with an edge on it. "Her call." None of that surprised me. He'd never had much patience for me.

Sending someone to invite me at all was already the furthest he knew how to bend. I coughed twice before I could stop it. The guy caught it. "Wait.

Are you sick?" "Then don't come, seriously." "Get some rest." Right before he hung up, I heard him ask the room. "Hey.

Where'd Vance go?" Somebody answered. "Drugstore, I think." "Buying what?

Didn't he just get his bandages changed?" "No idea." Chapter 4 August and I went to the Cedar Bluff public library together.

August had lived next door to Ivy Sutton since they were both in diapers. He was also the only person in this world who knew what I was. A Player.

Somebody the System dropped into this book with a job to do. He caught it not long after I woke up here. He looked me over and made a sound in his throat. "Stop trying to lie.

It doesn't work on me." "Nobody knows Ivy Sutton better than I do." After I told him about the mission, he was thrown for maybe a minute, and then he accepted it.

Probably because I still had her face. He'd been good to me for two years. One of the most important people I had here.

On the way to the library I told him the mission had failed. "So one month from now, you're gone?" "Yeah." "The real Ivy comes back soon." "You get your girl next door again." His canvas messenger bag swung with his stride and knocked against his back, on and off.

He smiled and let that one go by. There wasn't much in his eyes. We didn't head back until the library closed for the night. His family's estate sat right against ours.

I stopped at his door to say goodbye. August was looking straight past me, at my house. I followed it. Vance's eyes came back at me, black and flat.

Black shell jacket, which only made his face look colder. The cuts along his cheekbone and jaw gave him a mean edge. A drugstore bag hung from one hand.

I came back to myself and turned my head. "You're home. Go on in. Bye." He could tell I didn't want him in the middle of this. He didn't push.

One nod. "Call me if you need anything." His door clicked shut. Vance watched the whole walk.

Me, gripping my backpack strap, coming to stand in front of him. "Did you need something?" He answered with a question instead. "Aren't you sick?" "You looked plenty healthy laughing it up with him." My throat itched like it wanted to take his side.

I coughed twice. Some of the sneer went out of his face. I sniffed. "If that's all, I'm going in." He shifted to block me. The cold coming off him made my shoulder jump.

Clothes don't get that cold unless you've been standing out in them a long time. "You're sick and you're out running around with him?" Vance shoved the drugstore bag against my chest, face flat