Contents
Title Page
Memo
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Preview: Kissing Snowflakes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
To: The Students of North Ridge High School
From: Principal Seymour Hicks
Date: Monday, December 19
Subject: Christmas!
This year the entire student body of North Ridge High will be participating in a Secret Santa Exchange. This includes all freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. There will be no exceptions. Everyone must participate.
No inappropriate gifts or contraband is allowed — these will be immediately confiscated. The purpose of the game is to spread the spirit of the season. Spending limits will be outlined in a separate memo distributed during homeroom.
Names will be selected during lunch period and Secret Santas will be revealed this Friday night at the Christmas dance.
Happy Holidays!
“So are you dreaming of a white Christmas?”
Sixteen-year-old Noelle Kramer looked up from the Secret Santa memo she was reading. There had been a stack of them on every table in the cafeteria. She excitedly waved the memo in the air with one hand as her best friend, Lily Norris, slid into the seat next to her with her lunch tray.
Noelle and Lily had been best friends since kindergarten. They had bonded over nail polish, trying to figure out what color their kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Nelson, was wearing on her nails. Noelle had thought it was cherry while Lily had thought it was purple. When they finally worked up the courage to ask Mrs. Nelson the color of her nail polish, she told them it was raspberry, which instantly became Noelle and Lily’s favorite color (at least for that year).
After that they were joined at the hip, playing together every day after school, calling each other on the phone, having sleepovers, sharing their toys, and then as they got older, sharing their clothes and innermost secrets. Especially secrets having to do with guys!
“No, I’m not dreaming of a white Christmas,” Noelle answered.
“Are visions of sugar plums dancing in your head?”
“No.”
“Then explain the dreamy expression I saw on your face.” Lily held up a hand. “And please don’t tell me it has to do with Charlie.”
Noelle bit her lower lip. She had been thinking of Charlie. When wasn’t she?
She knew the very last thing Lily was going to want to talk about was romance, so she’d have to ease into this.
“Principal Hicks’s memo!” she exclaimed.
“I know, I know,” Lily groaned. “I saw it. Like I don’t have enough people to shop for. Now I have to add another person to my Christmas shopping list. But that still doesn’t answer my question.”
“Don’t you see? This is the chance I’ve been waiting for.”
Lily abandoned the carton of chocolate milk she was getting ready to sip. She gave Noelle a suspicious look — a look Noelle knew very well. Noelle didn’t even have to say her next words. She knew Lily knew what they were going to be. Often they could read each other’s minds.
But Noelle said them anyway.
“I finally have a chance to get Charlie.”
Lily groaned and dropped her head on the table, pounding it with a fist. “Charlie? Charlie?! Why, why, why, Noelle? Why do you keep doing this to yourself? When are you going to realize that Charlie doesn’t even know you exist?”
Ouch! That was a little harsh.
“He does too!” she snapped back.
“Okay, okay, he knows you exist,” Lily said in an apologetic tone. “He knows you’re a living, breathing creature. How could he not? You’ve been living next door to him since the third grade. But he doesn’t see you as anything but the girl next door. Or a little sister. He doesn’t see you as girlfriend material!”
“When did you become so grinchy?”
“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, but you’ve been crushing on Charlie forever.”
It was true. And how could she not? Noelle could still remember the day she first met Charlie. She and Lily had been at the local playground, playing on the monkey bars, when a ten-year-old boy had come over to them and said girls couldn’t climb the monkey bars. Noelle said they could and continued to climb until he tried to push her off. Luckily, she hadn’t fallen. He tried to push her a second time when all of a sudden a blond-haired boy she had never seen before came to her rescue. He pulled the bully away from her, shoved him to the ground, and told him boys weren’t supposed to hit girls and if he ever did it again, he would hit him! The bully had quickly run from the playground and never bothered Noelle again.
Before Noelle could thank her hero, his mother had called his name and he ran off, giving her a smile and a wave. Noelle would never forget his name: Charlie!
That night her mother told her that a new family had moved into the house next door and they had two sons. The older son was named Charlie and the younger one was Ryan.
Noelle had gasped. Could her Charlie be living next door to her?
She found out the next morning when she and her mother brought a freshly baked blueberry pie over to their new neighbors.
It was the same Charlie!
Noelle had wanted to thank Charlie for coming to her rescue the day before. She had wanted to gush. Instead, she had blushed and been tongue-tied the entire time.
And that was still the way she acted around him, eight years later.
Charlie Grant was the most popular senior at North Ridge High School. He was cute, cute, cute, with blond hair, green eyes, and two of the most adorable dimples. He excelled at both sports and academics. He had tons of friends, and he always had a different girlfriend. Noelle’s theory for his constantly changing girlfriends was that he hadn’t found the right girl yet.
Her!
“I have a plan!” Noelle announced. “A foolproof plan that’s going to get me exactly what I want for Christmas this year!”
∗ ∗ ∗
Across the cafeteria, Celia Armstrong watched Noelle Kramer and Lily Norris talk. She knew they were best friends. They ate lunch together every day, and sometimes she saw them shopping at the mall or at the movies. She smothered a sigh and looked away. She wished she had a best friend. Technically, she did, but Crishell was three thousand miles away, living in California, which was where Celia had lived all her life until this past July when her father had gotten a new job and they moved to New York.
It wasn’t that Celia didn’t have new friends. She did.
But she didn’t feel like she knew them.
Or that they knew her.
The real her.
She couldn’t be herself with them. Her guard was always up, and she felt like if she didn’t do or say the right thing, it would be a disaster. And she didn’t think they liked her even though they acted like they did.
Sometimes the other kids called her Beach Girl. It wasn’t said nastily. It was a nickname given to her because she came from California and well, she looked like a beach girl. She was tall and willowy, with
shoulder-length sun-streaked hair and sky-blue eyes. Coming from California, she had lived on the beach most of her life. She loved surfboarding, parasailing, swimming, scuba diving, and volleyball.
But you couldn’t do any of that stuff when you lived on the East Coast. Once the summer was over, that was it. Back home, you could do those things all year round.
This time last year she was a freshman at Malibu High with friends she had had since kindergarten. Now she was a sophomore at North Ridge High and feeling like an outsider.
She knew she shouldn’t be complaining.
She was one of the most popular girls at North Ridge High. There was just one problem.
She didn’t want to be popular!
It wasn’t like she had planned to become popular. It just happened!
Celia and her parents had moved to North Ridge, a small suburb of New York City, that July. Their new house was in North Ridge Heights, a gated community where most of her parents’ new coworkers lived. Upon their arrival, a welcome-to-the-neighborhood party had been thrown.
It was at this party that Celia met the only two girls there who were her age: Amber Davenport and Shawna Westin.
If there was one word to describe Amber, it was gorgeous. She had a mane of wavy jet-black hair, smoky-brown eyes, and always dressed like she had stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Shawna, also a brunette but with a short bob and bangs, was dressed just as impeccably as Amber. Both were wearing cropped tops, short skirts, and shoes that looked like the ones Heidi wore on The Hills. Could they really afford shoes that expensive? (The answer, Celia soon found out, was yes, thanks to one magic phrase: parents’ credit card.)
Celia, in her cutoff shorts, flip-flops, and T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, felt like a bit of a slob.
But for whatever reason, Amber and Shawna talked with her, and when the party was over, Amber had invited Celia to come over to her house the following afternoon. With nothing else to do, Celia had accepted the invitation.
And that’s when it all started.
Her road to popularity.
After spending the afternoon at Amber’s — looking back — Celia now realized it had been some sort of test. Amber and Shawna had kept asking her questions — What’s your favorite TV show? Who’s your favorite band? What designers do you like to wear? What do you do for fun? — and she had kept answering. Apparently she had passed the test because within days she was being invited by Amber and Shawna to go to the beach, the country club, the movies, shopping in Manhattan. With no friends, Celia kept accepting their invitations and before she knew it became part of their group. They gave one another their own ring tones on their cell phones, IM-ed when they were online, text-messaged, and went shopping for new wardrobes before classes started.
It was during this shopping trip that Celia started to wonder if maybe she had made a mistake …
When Celia dressed, she dressed for comfort. She liked wearing loose tops, T-shirts, jeans. She absolutely hated high heels of any sort — because she was so tall — and didn’t wear them unless she had to. She didn’t need the extra height.
Every time she pulled something she liked off a shelf or rack, Amber would shake her head sadly and give a disapproving sigh. Then Amber would take Celia’s choice, put it back, and select something else, urging Celia to try it on.
Which Celia did.
Then when she would come out wearing it, Amber and Shawna would both ooh and aah, telling her how great she looked.
And so she would buy it.
Again and again and again, until she had a brand-new wardrobe that she never would have bought on her own.
When she got home that night and looked at all her purchases, she could barely remember trying all the different outfits on, let alone buying them.
It was like she was powerless!
Hypnotized into doing Amber’s bidding!
She could return everything and buy the things she originally wanted, but then what would happen when Amber and Shawna asked why she wasn’t wearing her new clothes?
She didn’t want to get on Amber’s bad side. She already knew she had a temper. Not only from the way she spoke to the clerks in the stores they had shopped in, but the way she sometimes spoke to Shawna. Like she was an idiot. And Shawna took it. She never talked back. Celia had discussed it all with Crishell the last time they were on the phone.
“Sounds like Amber’s a queen bee, and you don’t want to mess with one of those,” Crishell said. “They sting! Obviously Shawna does whatever Amber wants. She probably doesn’t have a choice, she’s been so beaten down, but you do. Once classes start you’ll make some other friends and you can say bye-bye to Amber.”
But Celia hadn’t been able to say good-bye.
It wasn’t until she started her sophomore year in September that she learned Amber and Shawna were two of the most popular girls at North Ridge High. When they walked down the hallways, the crowds instantly parted. Everyone knew their names. Girls were constantly coming up to them, trying to become their friend, inviting them to parties, complimenting them on their hair, their makeup, their clothes. Guys did the same things, often asking them if they needed a ride or if they wanted to go out sometime.
And because she was always with Amber and Shawna, she was considered to be just as important as they were.
Amber and Shawna had chosen her to be their friend.
And because of that, their friends were now her friends.
She was accepted without question. She didn’t have to “prove” herself to anyone.
As a result, she was constantly being invited to parties, too. She could never say no because Amber would immediately start making a plan for them: what they would wear, how they would do their hair, how long they would stay, where they would go afterward.
And so Celia’s life became nothing but nonstop parties on the weekends and hanging out with pretty girls and good-looking guys during the week.
It meant sitting at the same table at lunch every day with Amber and Shawna.
It meant hanging out with them after school.
And it meant she couldn’t be friends with the people she wanted to be friends with because they weren’t part of the cliques that Amber and Shawna hung out with. Celia didn’t even have to ask. She just knew. If she told Amber she wanted to eat lunch with Hannah Langston, who was in her English Lit class and loved Jane Austen as much as she did, Amber would look at her like she had three heads. Because in Amber’s mind, Hannah wasn’t considered pretty and popular, so why would she want to spend time with her? Hannah always had her nose buried in a book. Boring! The same with Freddy Keenan, her lab partner. He was considered a nerd because he got good grades and didn’t play sports.
How had her life become so complicated?
It wasn’t that she didn’t like Amber and Shawna. They were nice. Sometimes. But she didn’t feel like she had a lot in common with them. Her life didn’t revolve around the latest fashion magazines. It didn’t revolve around parties or trying to get the attention of guys. And she didn’t like making fun of people the way Amber did. Amber didn’t do it in an obvious way, but she was always criticizing. Always making jokes. Always trying to put someone down.
And somehow, that person always knew.
Amber even did it to Shawna.
That wasn’t who Celia was.
But she didn’t know what to do.
If she broke away from Amber and Shawna, Amber could turn her wrath on her. And then where would she be?
She’d have no friends.
And forget about having a boyfriend.
Not that she was looking for one.
And not that she wanted one, although Amber and Shawna thought she should have one and were constantly trying to fix her up.
Amber and Shawna both had boyfriends — track star Simon Larson was Amber’s boyfriend, while Shawna was dating Connor Hughes, who was on the basketball team.
It was nice of Amber and Shawna to keep s
etting her up on dates, but the guys they kept setting her up with weren’t her type. She didn’t have a thing for jocks or for preppy, good-looking guys who were constantly checking themselves out in mirrors, making sure their hair was all in place and their shirts weren’t wrinkled. She wanted to go out with a guy who had something to say. A guy who had thoughts and ideas and liked talking and debating and arguing. A guy who had lots of different interests and who wasn’t afraid of being himself.
There was a guy at North Ridge High who was all that.
And Celia had a crush on him. A small one. Not a big one. She’d only started thinking of him romantically in the last month, after suffering through all the blind dates she’d been on.
But it would be social suicide if she decided to date him. Amber and Shawna would flip out.
But would that be so bad?
Especially if it meant going out with a guy she was interested in.
Celia needed to think this over. Although a part of her was tempted to just be herself and break free of Amber and Shawna, another part of her wasn’t ready to do it. Not yet.
But soon.
Very soon.
“Who do you think is hotter?” David Benson asked. “Batgirl or Wonder Woman?”
Froggy Keenan thought about the question carefully before answering. He took a spoonful of his chocolate pudding and carefully slipped it into his mouth, savoring the flavor. “Are you talking about Batgirl from the comics or Alicia Silverstone in Batman & Robin?”
“Alicia Silverstone was a babe in Clueless, but she was totally miscast as Batgirl in Batman & Robin. She didn’t have the bod for it.”
“What about the Batgirl from the TV series from the sixties?”
“Hot, but not as hot as Julie Newmar’s Catwoman. Meow!”
Secret Santa Page 1
