Spring Fling

by Sabrina James

  Chapter Two

  Cooper St. John was trying not to be seen as he stared out the window at his next-door neighbors. He’d push the drapes to one side, take a quick peek, and then let the drapes fall back into place, before doing it again.

  A voice from the couch asked, “Who are you spying on?”

  “I’m not spying on anyone,” Cooper said as he walked over to the couch and plopped down next to his best friend, Ethan Moore.

  “Uh-huh,” Ethan answered, not lifting his eyes from the issue of Sports Illustrated in his hands.

  Damian Marsala, who was sprawled across a brown leather armchair, playing a handheld video game, murmured, “Were you checking out girls? Maybe some hot girls?”

  “Maybe I was,” Cooper said.

  Damian instantly pulled his eyes away from his video game. “How many were there?”

  “Five.”

  Damian pumped a fist in the air. “Score! One for each of us! What did they look like? Details. I want details!”

  “Have you decided which one you want?” Ethan asked, eyes still glued to his magazine.

  “It doesn’t matter which girl Coop wants, because they’re all going to want him,” Damian said. “They always do. That’s one of the perks of growing up in the lap of luxury.”

  “Are you saying girls only like me for my family’s money?”

  Cooper’s family’s wealth was a sore point with him. It wasn’t that he didn’t like being rich. He did. It gave him lots of nice things. Vacations. Great seats at concerts and sporting events. An iPhone and an iPod. His own car and motorcycle. But sometimes…and he would never admit this to his friends…sometimes he did wonder if one of the reasons girls liked going out with him was because his family was so rich.

  “Of course not!” Damian exclaimed, cutting into his thoughts. “You look like an Abercrombie & Fitch model and you dress like one, too. Based on that alone, you’re a catch. But girls also like guys who can treat them like a princess, and you always treat your girlfriends like princesses.”

  “When he has a girlfriend!” Ethan cracked.

  It was no secret that Cooper was a serial dater. His classmates at South Ridge High had nicknamed him Smooth Operator because he was always going from girl to girl to girl. He knew his friends thought he grew tired of the girls he dated, but that wasn’t it. Whenever he dated a new girl, there was always a feeling of excitement. Maybe this girl was going to be the one. At first, things would be great. They’d go out, have a fun time, get to know each other.

  But then…

  Then something would happen that would make him wonder if the girl he was dating was really into him.

  He wanted to be liked for who he was and not his family’s money.

  This winter, he’d been dating Sherry Mulligan. For Valentine’s Day, he’d gotten her a small box of chocolates and a bouquet of daisies. When he showed up on her doorstep, there was no mistaking the disappointment on her face. She’d quickly covered it up, but instinctively he had known. She’d been expecting a bigger box of candy. A bigger bouquet of flowers. And when he plugged himself into the South Ridge High gossip grapevine, he learned that Sherry had been expecting a dozen red roses and a five-pound box of Godiva chocolates.

  He ended things with Sherry the weekend after Valentine’s Day.

  Then there was Lisa Lonigan. Last spring, he’d invited her to the sophomore prom. As the night of the dance approached, she asked him if he was going to rent a limo to take them. When he told her he wasn’t, she pouted, saying that everyone else was going in a limo and it wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it!

  Cooper stood Lisa up the night of the sophomore prom and went with another girl.

  Another time, he was dating Hillary Benson. He’d taken her to a movie, and afterward he suggested they grab a quick bite. Everyone at South Ridge High usually went to the Burger Hut, a local diner, but that wasn’t good enough for Hillary. She wanted to go to the North Ridge Country Club. When he explained that he wasn’t a member, she seemed shocked.

  “But your family is so rich!” she had exclaimed.

  That had been his last date with Hillary.

  He didn’t know why, but he always seemed to go out with girls who wanted to date a rich guy. They might not be obvious about it at first, but eventually it came out. Just once, he’d like to go out with a girl who was into him. A girl who didn’t know that his father was an international banker and his mother was a stock investor. A girl who didn’t know they lived in the biggest house in their town—okay, it was a McMansion—and that they had four cars, a vacation house on Martha’s Vineyard, and a ski house in Denver.

  Sometimes he wished he could be someone else.

  “How about we pay a visit to our next-door neighbors?” Damian suggested. “The sooner we get to know them, the better!”

  “They’re not home,” Cooper said, picking up a basketball and spinning it on his finger. “They went out. I saw them getting into their car.”

  “Were they wearing bikinis?” Damian eagerly asked. “Maybe they were headed to the beach. We could track them down.”

  Cooper shook his head. “They weren’t dressed for the beach. I guess we’ll just have to wait for them to get back.”

  “Bummer,” Damian said. “So which one are you going after?”

  Cooper shrugged and stopped spinning the basketball. “I don’t know. They were all pretty, but two of them seemed a little older. I think they’re in college like Steve and Howie.”

  Cooper and his friends were sharing the beach house with Damian’s older brother, Steve, a college sophomore, as well as Damian and Steve’s cousin, Howie, a freshman. They were still waiting for them to arrive from the airport. Once they showed up, they planned on heading to the local supermarket so they could stock up on groceries for the week.

  “Well, Ethan and I will stand aside while you work your magic. We’ll take the ones you don’t want.”

  “You know, he really doesn’t have an advantage,” Ethan said, still glued to his magazine. “These girls don’t know anything about Cooper. For all they know, he’s just like us.”

  As soon as the words were out of Ethan’s mouth, Cooper realized something. Ethan was right.

  The girls next door didn’t know who he was.

  They knew nothing about him!

  Only seconds ago, he had wished he could be someone else.

  Now he had that chance!

  “Let’s prove it,” Cooper said.

  “Prove what?” Damian asked, picking up his video game and starting to play again.

  “That I can get one of those girls to fall for me. And she’d be falling just for me.”

  “How?”

  “By switching places.”

  “With who?”

  “Ethan!”

  “What?” Ethan exclaimed, finally pulling his eyes away from his magazine.

  Cooper nodded. “For the next week, you’ll be the rich guy and I’ll be the poor guy.”

  “I’m not poor!” Ethan exclaimed.

  “No,” Damian agreed. “But you’re not loaded the way he is.”

  “We’ll switch places,” Cooper exclaimed, getting excited by his idea. “I’ll give you all my credit cards.” He reached into the pocket of his jeans and dangled the keys of the Mercedes convertible he had driven them down in. “My car, too. While you’re living it up, I’ll just be the average guy next door.”

  “Let’s really make this interesting,” Damian said, tossing the video game back on the coffee table and rubbing his hands together. “Let’s make it into a bet.”

  “A bet?” Cooper asked. “What kind of bet?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to like the sound of this,” Ethan groaned. “Especially since it involves me!”

  “You switch places and you each romance one of our next-door neighbors. Whoever gets kissed first wins.”

  “What does the winner get?” Cooper asked.

  “Yeah,” Ethan said sarcastically. “Mr. Mo
neybags is the guy who has everything, in case you’ve forgotten. I don’t have much to offer.”

  “Let’s see,” Damian murmured as he thought about it. Then he snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! If Ethan wins, he gets to drive Cooper’s Mercedes for the rest of the school year. And if Cooper wins, then Ethan washes the Mercedes every week for the rest of the school year.”

  “Sounds fair to me,” Cooper said.

  “I don’t know about this,” Ethan said, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “What if they find out?”

  “They’re not going to find out,” Damian said. “How would they? Unless you blab it to them! Besides, after this week, we’re never going to see them again! We’re on spring break! Romances start and end here. They don’t come back home with you.”

  Cooper dangled his car keys again, waving them in front of Ethan’s eyes like a hypnotist. “What do you say, Ethan? Are you up for it?”

  Ethan was tempted.

  Very tempted.

  He wanted to say yes.

  The words were on the tip of his tongue.

  He was dying to get behind the wheel of Cooper’s Mercedes. He’d been jealous ever since Coop had gotten the car for his sixteenth birthday last year. It wasn’t an evil/bad jealousy but more a wistful I wish my parents could afford to buy me a Mercedes for my birthday envy. Ethan’s own car was a 1996 Toyota that he’d inherited from his uncle. It needed a new paint job as well as an updated stereo system. It was definitely not a car that girls noticed. Unlike Cooper’s. But Cooper didn’t even need his car. Girls flocked to him.

  It was as Damian said. Coop looked like he had stepped out of the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad. He had straight dirty blond hair that was always falling across his forehead, ice blue eyes, and sculpted arms, legs, and abs. Not to mention his killer smile bracketed by two dimples.

  Damian wasn’t hard on the eyes either and always had plenty of girls to choose from, too. He was over six feet tall, muscular, with green eyes, jet-black hair, and a swarthy complexion that made it look like he was tan all year round.

  And then there was Ethan.

  The average guy.

  His hair was always out of control. It was a springy mass of brown curls that never did what he wanted it to do. His eyes were a plain brown, and no matter how many hours he spent in the gym, he couldn’t add any muscle. Whenever he was standing next to Cooper and Damian, he felt like a ninety-eight-pound weakling.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t have dates. He did. But Cooper and Damian were always surrounded by girls. They were pursued.

  Ethan had never been pursued, and sometimes he wondered what that would be like.

  Maybe he could find out this week.

  Washing Coop’s car would be a small price to pay, even if he had the car only for spring break. He’d ask out one of the girls next door, just to make Cooper and Damian think he was taking the bet seriously, but he wouldn’t make her think he was interested in anything long-term. First of all, he didn’t like the idea of leading someone on. Second, he wanted to do his own thing this week. He didn’t want to hang out with some girl he was never going to see again.

  Besides, he was going to have all the perks of being Cooper St. John. That meant driving around Miami in a Mercedes, seeing how the other half lived.

  And dated!

  This was one bet he didn’t mind losing.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  “You’re on!” Ethan exclaimed, snatching the car keys out of Cooper’s hands.

  Chapter Three

  “Stop staring at the clock! It’s one minute later than the last time you checked the time.”

  At the sound of her family’s live-in housekeeper’s voice, Mindy Yee turned away from the clock.

  “Where are they, Carmela? They should have been here thirty minutes ago.”

  Carmela shrugged as she walked into the living room with a tray of snacks. “Maybe their plane was delayed or they hit traffic on the way from the airport,” she said as she began taking bowls off the tray and placing them on the coffee table. “Don’t forget, it’s the first day of spring break. The roads are going to be crazy.”

  There was no way Mindy could forget that today was the first day of spring break. It was because of spring break that she finally had a chance to become friends with the North Ridge High Princess Posse. Of course, no one called them that to their faces, but it was their nickname and everyone knew it.

  The North Ridge High Princess Posse consisted of Wanda Wong, Lacey Ramirez, and Vivienne Oleson. They were pretty and popular and had ruled the North Ridge High social scene since freshman year.

  And ever since freshman year, Mindy had wanted to be friends with them.

  No, she wanted to be more than just friends.

  She wanted to be a part of their group.

  Because everyone at North Ridge High belonged to a group. Except her. There were the slackers, the rockers, the sci-fi nerds. Amber Davenport and Shawna Westin had ruled the school for a while, until Amber went off to boarding school and Shawna started spending all her time with her boyfriend, Connor. Claudia Monroe was another queen of the North Ridge High social scene, although she was no longer friends with Eden Atkins and Natalie Bauer, who used to hang out with her. Eden and Natalie now spent most of their time with Jennifer Harris and Violet Wagner. The four of them had bonded after the Valentine’s Day contest for Most Romantic Couple. And then there were Noelle Kramer, Lily Norris, and Celia Armstrong. They had been joined at the hip ever since the Secret Santa exchange in December.

  It wasn’t that people didn’t know Mindy. They did because she was always throwing parties, and her guest list was always long. Mindy’s motto was, the more, the merrier! But at the end of the night, when the party was over, she was usually all alone to clean up the mess. No one ever offered to stay and help.

  There was also another reason everyone at North Ridge High knew her…

  And not a good one.

  She was North Ridge High’s queen of gossip.

  Its very own Gossip Girl.

  Only without the cloak of invisibility.

  Was it her fault that she was always in the wrong place at the wrong time? Could she help it if she saw or overheard things that were supposed to be secret?

  She knew the right thing to do was not to repeat the info she stumbled upon, but Mindy wanted people to like her. She needed a way to work her way into conversations. To get their attention.

  So, whenever she saw or heard something she wasn’t supposed to, she repeated it. She couldn’t help herself. She liked being the one who knew something before everyone else, casually dropping clues and hints until her classmates were begging her to share what she knew. When she dropped her bombshells, she liked seeing the shocked expressions on the faces of her listeners. She liked hearing their gasps of surprise. For just a few minutes, she was the center of attention. She was the person everyone wanted to be with. It gave her hope that maybe—just maybe—this time she’d be able to form a friendship with someone. And once forming a friendship, she could stop gossiping. She wouldn’t need to do it anymore because she’d be too busy being a friend.

  Of course, that never happened. Once she shared what she knew, her listeners ran off to tell their friends.

  Leaving her alone again.

  Being a gossip backfired on her.

  After all, friendship was about trust, and how could you trust someone who was a blabbermouth?

  But there was a difference between gossiping and keeping secrets.

  If she had a close friend and that friend told her something in confidence, she would never, ever repeat it.

  Of course, no one had ever given her the chance to prove it.

  Mindy knew gossiping was wrong and she didn’t want to do it.

  But after three years of being North Ridge High’s queen of gossip, how could she stop?

  It was her identity.

  It was how people knew her.

  It was all she had
.

  If she stopped gossiping, she’d be no one.

  And that scared her.

  She was the girl who had everything except what she wanted the most.

  All she wanted was a friend.

  Just one friend.

  There were times when Mindy felt sorry for herself, and she knew she shouldn’t. Her parents were rich and successful and gave her whatever she wanted. Within reason, of course! They owned a popular restaurant, House of Yee, in her hometown, and it looked like the restaurant might be going national. The whole reason behind the trip to Miami was to meet with potential investors. Because they were going to be busy during the day, her parents told her she could invite three friends to come along and they would pay for their plane tickets. Immediately, Mindy had invited Wanda, Lacey, and Vivienne.

  She’d been nervous extending the invitation—what if they said no?—but they had instantly accepted when she called them, and Mindy had been thrilled. She finally had the chance she’d been waiting for and she wasn’t going to blow it. Ever since freshman year, she’d tried to be friends with Wanda—she knew Wanda was the one she had to win over—but for some reason, Wanda resisted. Maybe it was because Wanda knew that Mindy wanted to be friends with her and she didn’t want to give her what she wanted. There was no denying that Wanda could be mean. If you crossed her, watch out! Your social life at North Ridge High was over! But so far, Mindy hadn’t done anything to get herself on Wanda’s bad side. Then again, she wasn’t exactly on Wanda’s good side. That was why she was going to make sure this week was perfect so that when they returned to North Ridge High, she would be the newest member of the Princess Posse.

  Mindy tore her eyes away from the clock and peered over Carmela’s shoulder. “Did you get everything I asked for?”

  Carmela pointed at the bowls. “Peeled baby carrots for Wanda, yellow M&M’s for Lacey, and Pepperidge Farm cheddar Goldfish for Vivienne. And just so you know, I had to buy three bags of M&M’s to pick out all the yellow ones to fill that one bowl. Why won’t she eat the other colors? They all taste the same! I should know; I was busy popping them into my mouth!”