Mr. Popular: A Falling For My Brother's Best Friend Romance

by Nicole London

  Mariah

  Dear Mom,

  I really hate this summer camp and I don’t want to be here anymore. It’s completely unfair that I’m stuck here all summer while Zach gets to go to the sports camp on the other side of the lake.

  He doesn’t have to take any classes or do any reading, like I do. He just plays basketball all day.

  And remember when you said that I would make a bunch of new friends here? Well, that’s not true at all. It’s been two weeks and I haven’t made a single one.

  The girls here won’t include me in anything since I’m the youngest. They even call me “Baby Mariah.” (Even Liam does it. Some ‘peer counselor’ he is :- ( )

  Can you please come get me? I really want to come home.

  Love,

  Mariah

  PS — I promise I’ll help out at Dawson’s every day, if you let me come home.

  I stare at my letter and slowly reread every word, knowing my mom won’t make the three-hour drive to save me based on this, so I tear it up and decide to take the dramatic route.

  Dear Mom,

  I LOVE LOVE LOVE this summer camp and I don’t ever want to leave!

  Camp Briar is the best camp ever!

  It’s only been two weeks, but guess what? I’ve kissed ten boys so far — all of them on the lips, and last night a boy named Sam slipped his hand all the way up my skirt.

  Thank you so much for sending me to this camp! Can you send me some cupcakes from Dawson’s so I can share with all my new friends? :- )

  Love you,

  Mariah

  PS — You were right about Liam. He is a very good peer counselor. He’s so good, that he told me he wants to kiss me, too! (I don’t mind when he calls me Baby Mariah.)

  Smiling, I make sure every word is spelled correctly and grab a bottle of white-out as I read over the word “skirt.”

  “Dress” would sound way better ... He slipped his hand all the way up my “dress” ...

  As I’m putting the finishing touches on my letter, I hear one of the girls from my cabin, Madison, call out to me.

  “There you are, Baby Mariah.” She steps under the big oak tree I’ve claimed as my personal refuge, carrying a dodge ball. “Are you going to get up, or are you too good to play dodge ball with us?”

  “Huh?” I looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, everyone is about to play dodge-ball and you’re way over here all alone. I mean, I personally would love for you to play with us, but if you’d rather stay here and write in solitude ...”

  “No, I definitely want to play.” I stand up, dusting the dirt off my shorts and feeling completely surprised. The girls have never asked me to join in on any games.

  Maybe this summer won’t be so bad after all...

  I fold my letter and place it into my back pocket. Then I follow Madison across Camp Briar’s main lawn to where all the girls from my bunk are standing around.

  “Good, you found her. Now we finally have an even number,” Jocelyn (a girl I totally loathe) says, as we approach. “Since Madison picked first last time, it’s my turn.”

  I stand in the huddle and watch one by one as everyone’s name is called before mine. After a few minutes, it’s already down to the last two girls, me and a girl named Beth, who has a bad knee that causes her to walk really slowly. I’ve never seen her run and she hates dodge-ball with a passion.

  “This is such a hard choice,” Jocelyn looks back and forth between us. “But I actually want to win so ... Beth!”

  Beth looks over at me and smiles. Then she literally struggles to walk ten feet over to her new team.

  I stand still and alone, waiting for Madison to put me out of my misery and call my name, but she doesn’t. She turns her back and whispers to her teammates for several minutes, and then she turns around.

  “Mariah,” she says, smiling. “I’m sure you don’t really want to play with us, right?”

  “I do want to play.” I look down at my shoes before looking back up. “You said that ... You came and invited me.”

  “I did, but that was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I thought you’d have to be on the other team.” She shrugs. “We all lose sometimes though, I guess.”

  “So, I don’t get to play at all?”

  “Look ...” She walks over to me, looking smug. “The best thing you can do right now is go away. You can even keep score from afar, if you like, and pretend like you’re on my team. And you know what? I won’t even tell the bunk leaders that you ditched us earlier for writing. I’ll tell them you participated in dodge-ball and played well, so you won’t get in trouble.”

  She squeezes my shoulder, giving me one of her fake smiles before walking away to rejoin the other girls.

  I feel tears starting to form at the corners of my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. Instead, I walk away and head back to where I always go during these summers, to the oak tree where no one can bother me.

  I slump down to the grass and read my letter again, wishing my mom would believe me when I tell her how mean the girls here are. Just like last summer, I’ve mailed her a letter every week, but none seem to warrant her making a special coveted trip to come get me. All she does is call and assure me that I’ll be okay. That, and attempt to convince me that I need to be someplace where I can be challenged, and that Camp Briar “was literally founded for girls who are beyond smart. Girls like you. It should be heaven on earth for you.”

  A stray tear hits my letter and I lean back against the tree, looking out over the “heaven” that Camp Briar is supposed to be.

  The camp sits on over twenty acres of land and it’s separated by a massive, sparkling green lake. There are tons of different factions within the camp, but the side I’m stuck on is for gifted girls and the other side is for gifted boys. (Why Liam wants to be here instead of at the sports camp with Zach, I’ll never know ...)

  Even though all the kids share the massive mess hall and the lake, the only person I know here is Liam, but he’s too popular to talk to me. He’ll occasionally wave and say hello, but he never does much more than that.

  After an hour passes, I notice that a lot of campers are starting to head toward the mess hall, but I decide to stay put. I’m not looking forward to eating another dinner at a table by myself, and I’ll wait until the dodge-ball game ends, so I can rush over and pretend like I was with them the whole time.

  Another stray tear starts to fall, but I wipe it away before it can make it down my face.

  “Mariah?” A familiar voice says. “Is that you?”

  I don’t answer. I just look up, as Liam walks closer to me.

  “What are you doing over here?” He asks. “It’s pizza night in the mess hall.”

  “So?” I hesitate for a while. “I’ll head inside once the game is over.”

  He looks over at the girls who are now laughing and high-fiving each other. “Why aren’t you playing with them?”

  “Because I didn’t get picked, and also because they don’t like me ...”

  Looking at me, he slumps down against the tree and sits next to me. “I don’t think that’s true. I just think it’s because you’re the youngest girl at the camp.”

  “So, that makes it okay?” I glare at him.

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying you shouldn’t take it personal and that they’re assholes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He smiles. “What’s this?” He picks up the folded paper that’s between us.

  I glance at the paper in his hands and gasp. My letter must have fallen out of my pocket.

  “It’s nothing!” I try and grab it from him, but he stands up and unfolds it.

  “If it’s nothing, you won’t care if I read it.” He steps back as he begins to read.

  “Liam, give it back!” I demand. “Give it back right now!”

  He turns away from me and continues reading — holding the
letter up high after I lunge at him to grab it.

  “You’ve kissed ten boys?” He smiles. “Why are you lying about something like that?”

  “Liam, please ...”

  I make one last attempt to get the letter from him, but it’s no use. My small fists against his back are no match. He reads the entire thing, letting out a low laugh as he reaches the end and finally hands it back to me.

  “Thanks.” I snatch it from his hand and debate whether I should ever talk to him again.

  “I’ve never called you Baby Mariah,” he says as he rejoins me on the grass. “I’ve called you a brat, a pain in my ass, and Zach’s annoying tag-along, but never Baby Mariah.”

  “Those nicknames are so much better ...”

  “They are,” he says. “And when did I ever say that I wanted to kiss you? I would never.”

  “Trust me, I would never let you.” I cringe at the thought. “I only wrote all that stuff to convince my mom to let me come home because as you can see —” I point at the girls who are now heading to pizza night. “The chance of me gaining any friends over the next few weeks are slim to none.”

  “I see ...” He sits silent for a few minutes, looking at me. Then he clears his throat. “You and I can be friends, Mariah.”

  I turn and look at him with a skeptical look, trying to figure out if he’s being serious. With the exception of the past five minutes, he’s never paid me that much attention. I’ve always been the invisible third wheel in their friendship, and unless Zach or my mom has specifically asked him to “look after” me or help me with a bike or something, the two of us don’t really interact that much.

  “Liam, you hate me. How can we be friends?”

  “You’re the one who hates me.” He rolls his eyes. “You’ve been mean and rude to me since my family moved into your neighborhood. And you only talk to me if Zach is around.”

  I try to think of a rebuttal to that, but when I think about it, I realize I’m guilty of treating him like crap, too.

  “I’m serious, Mariah.” He holds out his hand. “I don’t have any close friends who are girls and I think you should be my first one. Friends?”

  I’m too excited about the idea of finally having a friend here, so I don’t hesitate. “Friends.”

  3

  Mariah

  “Time’s up!” The Knowledge Bowl coach, Mr. West, hits the buzzer at the end of Wednesday’s practice. “Put your pens down now and turn in your trivia cards.”

  I look over my answers one last time — sighing when I realize that I left two questions blank — the same two questions I left blank last time and earned me my lowest score to date. I turn it in anyway and glance at my watch. Today’s practice is shorter than normal, since our coach “selflessly” volunteered the team to help put together homecoming ballots. But since I never agreed to that and am allergic to ninety percent of all school activities, I’m leaving early.

  While Mr. West sits behind his desk and begins grading our cards, I start packing up my books and stand up to leave.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Miss Dawson?” He looks up at me before I can take a single step.

  “I um —” I can’t believe I didn’t think of a pre-made excuse for this. “I’m having a really bad stomach-ache, and I need to go home.”

  “I have some Tylenol you can take.”

  Shit ... “Um, it’s not that type of stomach-ache. It’s a feminine type of ache, you know?” I look around at my female team-mates for help, but they only smile and smirk — sensing that I’m completely full of it right now.

  “You mean menstrual cramps?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m having really bad menstrual cramps.”

  “Well, lucky for you, my wife makes me keep a bottle of Midol in my briefcase, just in case we’re ever out and she forgets.” He picks up his briefcase and plops it onto his desk. “I can let you have two, if you’d like.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I say. “But I think I need to go home and be in my own bed. Maybe drink some tea, or —”

  “Cut the shit, Mariah.” The team captain, Rachel, rolls her eyes at me. “We all know there’s nothing wrong with you. You just don’t want to help with the ballot art.”

  I stand still, completely frozen and shocked that they know. Mr. West simply smiles at me.

  “If you really don’t want to stay and help, you don’t have to,” he says. “But if you leave today, I’ll be forced to make you an alternate for our next two matches.”

  I drop my backpack and plop down into my seat again. I sit and wait until he finishes grading our trivia cards, until he starts to pass out the blank ballot cards we have to design.

  Of course, the category I’m assigned to design is for Mr. & Miss Popular, a complete waste of a category, since Liam and Ashley have won it every year since they were freshmen.

  Annoyed, I raise my hand.

  “Absolutely not, Mariah.” Mr. West smiles at me again. “You can’t switch with someone else for another category.”

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  Ugh. “It was ...” I groan and grab a stack of markers. I settle on the colors red and black, the perfect hue for the devilish couple, and surrender some of my best calligraphy to the card.

  When I’m finished, I print all eight of the senior contestants’ names in the center — making Liam and Ashley last. I contemplate spelling their last names wrong by a letter to throw off the voters, but I know Mr. West will only make me redo the entire thing.

  “Good work, Mariah.” Rachel leans over my desk and picks up my card. “That looks amazing!” She takes it up to Mr. West and I expect him to say the same so I can go, but he doesn’t.

  “Mariah, you left a name off the ballot,” he says. “You have to write every nominated person, no matter what. Otherwise, I can’t make copies for the official voting.”

  I look down at the contestant sheet again, looking over the names again to find my mistake. “Oh.” I shake my head. “My name shouldn’t be on there at all, and I’m not offended to be left off. Trust me. I think someone crazy just did this as a joke.”

  “Someone crazy?”

  “Yeah, it was probably Kelsey.” I head toward his desk. “She has an odd sense of humor.”

  “Well, regardless whether she’s the one who did this or not, it takes at least one hundred and fifty votes to get a name on the ballot, and you had more than double that.” He hands me the card. “Put your name on the ballot. Now.”

  More than three hundred votes?

  I don’t attempt to waste any more time arguing with him. I write my name beneath Liam’s, wait for his final approval, and finally leave the room.

  Heading straight for my locker, I wince as the brand new pumps I’m wearing cut into my heels. I’m not sure why I let Kelsey convince me to wear a dress every day this week, but it’s been three days and I think that’s more than enough.

  Although the extra stares and winks from guys I’ve never noticed before has been nice, dresses have never really been my thing. And if that’s what it takes for me to be noticed by “a hot guy” that I can date, I’m not sure that’s what I want.

  The second I make it to my locker, I take off my shoes and spin my lock’s combination. Before I can grab my tennis shoes, a bright yellow envelope falls to the ground.

  Confused, I pick it up and flip it over.

  For Mariah Dawson

  Please open me...

  I tear the flap open and read.

  Dear Mariah,

  I’ve been trying to get your attention all this week, but I think you’re a hard girl to get in contact with. (I’m not surprised by this, though. A girl as gorgeous as you are, gets attention from everyone, I’m sure.)

  I’m not that good with words, so I’ll just cut to the chase: Would you like to go out on a date with me this weekend? Circle yes or no and slip this card back into my locker. Number 243.

  Austin Prescott


  I can feel my eyes nearly bulging from my skull as I read over those last two words.

  Austin Prescott?

  “Oh, my god, Austin Prescott!” Kelsey suddenly snatches the note from behind. “He wants to go out with you! I told you wearing a dress every day would help you in the attention department.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Detention.” She shrugs. “I meant to text and tell you. You think Zach would mind dropping me off on y’all’s way home?”

  “He wouldn’t, if he was the one driving,” I say. “Liam is supposed to take me home today.”

  “Oh, well, I’ll just force him to do it. He never says no to me.”

  I laugh. If there’s anyone who can make Liam give her a ride, it’s Kelsey.

  “Anyway, you have to say yes to this.” She points to the envelope. “This is Austin Prescott we’re talking about here. He’s the hottest junior in this school, he’s clearly a gentleman by writing you a note, and he has a car. There’s no need for you to ask your mom or Zach to drive you to the date.”

  “Hell would have to freeze over before I asked Zach to drop me off on another date again.” I cringe at the thought of what happened last time. For whatever reason, his overprotectiveness skyrockets, and he becomes damn near unbearable at the very mention of me hanging out with a guy alone.

  Austin is definitely hot, and I used to have a short-lived crush on him, but that was before he became captain of the swim team and gave up his social life. I’ve heard rumors here and there about how cocky he can be when it comes to girls, and I can’t seem to recall him ever having a girlfriend.

  “What if this is just some type of set up?” I shut my locker and face Kelsey. “What if he’s only asking me out to get me out in the middle of nowhere? And what if when we get there, lots of people from our school will be ready and waiting to do something crazy to me.”

  “What? Was today’s Knowledge Bowl theme paranoia or something?”

  “It was, actually,” I say. “But that has nothing to do with this. He’s never noticed me before and all of a sudden he wants to go out?”

  “I hate to break this to you, sweet, naïve and simple, Mariah ...” She snatches the note from me and circles ‘yes’ with her own pen before handing it back to me. “But plenty of guys at this school notice you. If you weren’t so busy scowling all the time, maybe you’d notice.”