by Beth Reekles
I know they say “be yourself” around guys, and “never change for a man,” or whatever. But the thing is, I don’t really know how to be myself. I’ve hidden myself away for so long. I want people to like me. I want guys to ask for my number at parties. I want a busy social life. I want to have friends. I just don’t know how to do it.
I’m scared.
I sit there, feeling like a dork, and give Bryce a smile, because a) I have no idea what to say now, and b) why not? I can barely believe it when he actually smiles back at me.
He even has dimples.
Of course he does. Go figure.
“Hey, Bryce! Get over here, man! You’ve gotta check this out, it’s totally gross!”
I follow the voice and so does Bryce. There’s some tall guy with spiky hair waving him over: a group are clustered around something. They shuffle a little, and I catch sight of it for a moment. I think it’s a jellyfish.
I stand up first, though, again wondering where Dwight is. He shouldn’t have been gone this long, should he? What is he doing, anyway?
“Nice meeting you,” I say to Bryce awkwardly, and start walking off, hoping I’ll spot Dwight around somewhere.
“Wait,” I hear him call after me. “I don’t even get a name, Lonely Girl?”
“I think Lonely Girl is good enough for now,” I tell him. Not that I mean it to—but I bet if anybody else said it, they could make it seem like they were flirting. Bryce appears to think I am flirting, though, from the way he raises one blond eyebrow at me and smirks.
I just wave and say, “Bye, Bryce.”
He’s laughing when he calls out, “I’ll see you around, Lonely Girl.”
As I walk away, I’m smiling inside and out. A rush of adrenaline and relief courses through me. I just talked to a hot, undoubtedly popular guy—and I didn’t even make too much of an idiot out of myself. In fact, I think he may have even been flirting a little at the end there …
Probably not. But I’d like to think he was.
First Dwight being friendly, and now this guy, who was maybe flirting too. Things are really looking up.
“Oh, hey, there you are!” I exclaim all of a sudden. I’ve been scanning the party, and now I run up to Dwight and push a hand into his shoulder—only playfully, though. He stops talking midsentence for a moment.
I take a quick look at the guy he’s talking to—messy brown hair that sticks straight up in the air, defying gravity. It’s not even gelled, I don’t think. He’s got glasses too, and he raises his eyebrows behind them, looking from Dwight to me and back again.
“Hi,” I say, because there’s a bit of an awkward pause. I smile at the guy with the gravity-defying hair. He looks a bit … I don’t know, really. Shocked isn’t quite the right word. Stunned, maybe. Yeah. He looks kind of stunned, before smiling back at me.
“Hi, Madison.” Dwight gives a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
His friend clears his throat pointedly.
Dwight sighs and says, “Madison, this is Andy. Andy, this is Madison. She just moved here from Maine.”
“Hello.” Andy smiles.
“Hi.”
“So how do you know this guy?” Andy jerks his head at Dwight, who takes a sip of whatever he’s got. It reminds me that I’m holding a drink too, and I haven’t drunk any of it.
“I met him at the café.”
“Ooh, the café,” Andy says teasingly. When I give him a wondering look, he explains, “We all call it the coffee shop. Café sounds fancy. No offense. It just seemed kind of funny when you said it, is all.”
“Andy talks a lot when he’s had a drink,” Dwight says matter-of-factly.
“Oh,” I laugh to Andy, and shake it off, but I know my cheeks are threatening to burn up a little. “Um, so you, uh, you go to Midsommer High, right?”
Andy nods. “Yep. I guess that’s where you’re going.”
I nod. “I’ll be a junior.”
“Same as us, then!” Andy claps Dwight on the back. “Cool. Hey, has Dwight introduced you to Carter yet?”
I shake my head.
“What? Oh, you’ve got to meet Carter. Come on—I think he was over there, last time I saw him.” Andy starts walking off, like he assumes we’re following him.
I glance at Dwight. “What’s up?” I ask. I can’t help but feel that somehow I’ve done something wrong.
“Huh?” He shakes his head slightly, a barely perceptible movement, and says, “Come on, or we’ll lose Andy.”
We catch up just before Andy has the chance to completely disappear into the crowd. There’s a heck of a lot more people here now than there were earlier; it makes me wonder just how long I spent talking to Bryce.
“There you are.” Andy glances over his shoulder, then starts striding off through the crowd. Dwight and I hurry to chase after him.
When he suddenly stops, I actually run into him—like, bump right into his back and bounce off. Dwight catches me and gently pushes me back, but by then it’s too late. My drink has already slopped all over me.
“Oh, shoot,” I mutter irritably, pulling at my soaked camisole. “I hope whatever is in that cup doesn’t stain …”
“Madison,” Andy says, oblivious to my mishap and gesturing to the skinny boy standing in front of him. “This is William Maverick Carter.”
“It’s just Carter,” William Maverick Carter tells me. He sounds a little embarrassed, and he can’t quite make eye contact with me, but he smiles anyway.
He’s not much taller than me, and his short hair is a bit scraggly and uneven. I don’t think I’m making the best impression, considering I’m covered in beer or something. I pluck at my top. Then I notice something: he only has one and a half eyebrows.
Like, he’s actually missing half of his left eyebrow. I know I’m staring, but I can’t help it. It’s not every day you see someone who’s missing half an eyebrow.
I blurt out, “What happened to your eyebrow?”
“I was saving an old lady’s cat from a burning building,” Carter tells me, and now he looks me dead in the eye, very serious.
“Oh my gosh!” My free hand claps over my mouth automatically. “Really?”
All of a sudden Dwight snorts with laughter. “Carter! Seriously, you think anyone is going to buy that?”
“Well, she just did,” Carter defends himself with a laugh. Then he looks back at me. “Had you going for a minute there, didn’t I?”
I’m not sure whether to frown or laugh, so I do some strange mixture of both.
“What happened to your top?” Andy asks me, only just noticing the wet stain.
“I spilled my drink.”
“Someone’s clumsy,” he says, laughing. But he doesn’t say it in a mean way, so I laugh too.
“Just a bit,” I admit sheepishly.
“So, Carter, this is Madison. She’s Dwight’s friend. She’s from Maine. A soon-to-be junior like the rest of us.” Andy turns to me. “Anything to add?”
I have a lot to add to that, I think. But I just grin and shake my head no, like I’m a totally normal, carefree teenager and this isn’t my first party ever …
“Well, I’m Carter. I’m also Dwight’s friend. And I’m from around here. Orlando, actually, but we moved here when I was about three years old.”
“Oh, cool,” I say. And I shift from foot to foot, then smile.
“I’m going to get another drink,” Dwight says, excusing himself.
Impulsively I hold up a finger to indicate “one minute” to Andy and Carter, and say to Dwight, “Hold on a sec—I’ll come with you,” despite the fact that I have no intention whatsoever of getting a drink.
He doesn’t stop, but I manage to catch up to him. “Is everything okay?” I ask nervously.
He turns to me. “What was Bryce talking to you about?”
I shrug. “Just stuff, I guess.”
“Stuff.” I look at Dwight, and he’s raising an eyebrow at me, one side of his mouth quirked up higher than the
other so it’s half a smile and half a smirk. “Care to elaborate?”
I shrug again. “Well, we just … talked.”
“About …?”
“Why does it matter, anyway?”
I guess I come off as a bit snappy, because Dwight holds up his hand, palm out, as if in surrender. “I’m just curious, is all. Bryce Higgins doesn’t exactly have the, ah … the best reputation when it comes to girls.”
“Huh?”
Dwight shrugs. “I don’t know if any of it’s true—it’s only what I’ve heard. Rumors. You know, the usual high-school gossip that gets around. It’s just that he’s not really the nicest guy out there, from what I’ve heard. Could be wrong, but you can never be too careful.”
“What difference does it make? I was only talking to him.”
Dwight makes a noise that I think is a grunt, but it could be a sigh; it’s some strange in-between thing. What with that and the look he’s giving me—the raised eyebrows and sympathetic expression—I get the impression he doesn’t think Bryce is the kind of guy to “only talk.”
And maybe he isn’t. What do I know about guys? And for that matter, what do I know about Bryce? Spending a few minutes talking to him makes me an expert on what kind of person he really is?
“Watch it,” Dwight says all of a sudden, throwing an arm out to stop me. I stumble back, dropping the cup I’m still holding so that the contents slop over my feet and flip-flops.
“Darn it,” I mutter under my breath. Great. Now I will definitely stink of booze when I get home. I just hope my top and shoes aren’t ruined.
Wow. I never thought I’d find myself thinking something like that.
I shake that off, though, and turn to Dwight. “What did you stop me for?”
He nods at the ground. “Jellyfish.”
I look down and, sure enough, there’s a dead jellyfish lying on the sand. I think it’s what all those guys with Bryce were looking at, before. I wonder for a moment if it was alive when they found it and they didn’t do anything to help it out.
People are like that sometimes. They don’t want to think about consequences. And why should they? They’re having fun. Sometimes they don’t even realize somebody’s in trouble until it’s too late.
I stare at the dead, sand-covered jellyfish a heartbeat longer before going around it. Dwight falls back into step beside me, and tells me a little about his friends, making me laugh and smile. And when I’m laughing and smiling and chatting, it’s almost like my life was never lonely or messed up.
Chapter 6
Don’t judge a book by its cover.
We all do it, I guess. People know they shouldn’t. But people also say it’s important to make a good first impression.
Which is why I spent almost my entire weekend trying to decide what to wear on my first day of school.
The suburbs around here are all the higher end of middle-class: big houses, pristine front laws and shiny cars in the driveway. I get the feeling that a lot of the kids around here are rich. But Midsommer High is a public school.
I wish it was one of those schools that made you wear a uniform. At least I wouldn’t have to worry endlessly about what the heck I should wear.
I never used to worry. I mean, there was that one year when I did try, after I lost all the weight. I made an effort to look good, to show everyone that I wasn’t Fatty Maddie anymore. Needless to say, nobody noticed, and if they did, they didn’t care.
Monday morning, I get up an hour and a half before school so I can do my hair and put on a little makeup, leaving loads of time to decide what to wear.
It’s hot out, and humid. What if I’m too dressed up? What if I’m not dressed up enough?
Mom knocks on my door and pokes her head in. “You’re up early,” she says, but comes in and puts a mug of herbal tea on my nightstand.
“I have nothing to wear!” I cry in frustration, tugging at the ends of my hair.
Mom takes in the clothes I’ve thrown back into my closet and the “maybe” pile scattered over my bed … and she laughs.
Then she tells me, “I never thought I’d hear you say that, Madison.” But she sounds almost … well, she sounds practically proud when she says it.
I just huff loudly and turn back to my closet. Surely there’s something in here that’s perfect. There has to be. Something casual, but something that looks good.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Mom says, backing out of the disaster that is my bedroom. “I have to leave for work in a minute. But make sure you clean this up before you go.”
“Yes, Mom,” I say testily.
Before she leaves, though, she gives me a kiss on the cheek and squeezes my shoulder. “You’ll be fine, Dice—don’t worry about it. You’re a tough girl.”
I smile, but it’s a sad kind of smile. “Thanks, Mom.”
Dice has been my nickname since I was tiny. I couldn’t say my own name, apart from the middle bit, which came out as “Dice.” Kinda embarrassingly, it stuck.
I’m thirty-six minutes early.
Dad drops me off, because I don’t really know the way—I might get hopelessly lost and turn up late on my first day.
But I’m genuinely shocked when I check the time on my cell phone and find out I’m so early. The gate across the main entrance is open, but as I walk up to the front door, there’s nobody around.
There’s a field on one side, with a whole bunch of painted black wooden picnic benches. On the other side is a parking lot. There are a few cars there, but I guess most of them are the teachers’.
The gravel on the main path is uneven, and I teeter in my one-inch black stilettos. They’re not excessively fancy or high, but I don’t walk in heels. Even little ones. It’s harder than I anticipated.
In the end, I opted for a pair of denim cut-offs and a white tank top. I’m wearing a pink scarf too, just to add something to my outfit. I figured if it seemed too fancy, I could always take it off.
I’m overthinking it—but I’m scared.
I have an earphone in my left ear with my iPod in my pocket. I may be a lot happier and more confident here than I ever was in Pineford, but I’m still too insecure to go without my “security blanket.”
Back in Pineford, I took to wearing an earphone all the time, even in class. I wouldn’t necessarily be playing music, but it just made me feel a little better. When I had music on, I could tune out the rest of the world, ignore the sneering, joking comments thrown my way, the people pushing into me.
I am determined not to have the earphone in all the time here. But I need it right now. I let the guitar and bass and drums and vocals fill my ear. The music covers up how hard and loud my heart is pulsing.
I don’t even know the car’s there until the horn blares.
Jumping, I yank out my earphone and spin around. I barely even noticed I was walking in the middle of the road—I was just trying to stay on my feet in these heels.
“Didn’t your mom ever tell you to look both ways before you cross the street?”
Just my luck. It’s Bryce.
“What’s your point?” I automatically wince inside at my sarcastic response? I wish I could just act cool for once in my life.
Bryce laughs, though, still leaning out of his window. I take a look at his car. It’s silver, and really shiny. It’s a convertible Lexus, and it looks like it cost a lot of money; but the rust on the front bumper and the scratches I notice on the door make me think it’s secondhand.
“You’re early,” he says eventually, after a long pause.
I stand there awkwardly, one hand clamping my bag to my shoulder, the other holding my earphone.
I feel a blush start up, and I try to fight it back—though my heart is hammering erratically at actually being checked out. I retort, “Guess so. Looks like I’m not the only one, though.”
Bryce twists in his car seat, looking behind him, and it strikes me that maybe he’s not the sharpest tool in the box.
Or maybe he’s just trying
to be funny.
Either way, I blurt, “I meant you, you know.”
“Yeah, I am a little early …” He laughs sheepishly, looking back to me. He’s kind of adorable, I think distractedly. “But, hey, at least I can show you around the school a little!”
“Uh …”
Come on, say yes! He’s interested! Guys like him don’t talk to girls like you unless they’re interested! Say yes!
I smile. “Yeah, sure, that’d be great!” I say it so fast he looks confused for a moment, trying to decipher what I’ve said. I bite the insides of my cheeks in annoyance.
“Awesome. I’ll meet you by the steps at the front of the school.”
“Okay.” I get off the road so he can drive past, and once he’s gone I carry on up to the doors.
Midsommer High is a big brick building, four stories. I read on its website that it was built around the eighteen hundreds. Gray stone steps lead up to the huge wooden doors with big ornate black iron handles on. The windows gleam in the early-morning sunlight. It’s pretty impressive—and totally intimidating.
I don’t walk quickly, since I don’t feel safe walking on the loose gravel in these shoes. I only make it to the bottom of the steps when Bryce is suddenly standing next to me.
“What’re you listening to?” he asks as we head up. Before I can tell him, he’s grabbed hold of my spare earphone. I try to yank it back, but I’m too late. He’s already recognized the song.
“Jessie J?”
“It was My Chemical Romance,” I mumble. Louder, I say, truthfully, “My sister bought the album and she—”
Before I can finish telling him that she snuck it onto my iPod and I actually found I liked one of her songs, Bryce cuts me off.
“Nothing wrong with a bit of mainstream, Lonely Girl.” He gives a hundred-watt smile that probably gets girls swooning over him. It sure makes my heartbeat pick up.
“Sure,” I reply sarcastically. “Say that to the transfer from Maine.”
Bryce laughs again, realizing just how funny “mainstream” is. “Mainstream. I think I like that better than Lonely Girl. You still haven’t told me your name, you know.”
“I know.”
