The Boy Next Story

by Tiffany Schmidt

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Schmidt, Tiffany, author.

  Title: The boy next story : a Bookish boyfriends novel / Tiffany Schmidt.

  Description: New York : Amulet Paperbacks, 2019. | Summary: “Rory likes Toby, but Toby likes Rory’s sister Merrilee, even though Merrilee is already dating Toby’s friend Fielding—and it’s all about to get even more complicated at Reginald R. Hero High”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2018038523 (print) | LCCN 2018043439 (ebook) | ISBN 9781683354895 (All Ebooks) | ISBN 9781419734366 (paperback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | Books and reading—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S3563 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.S3563 Boy 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Text copyright © 2019 Tiffany Schmidt

  Lettering copyright © 2019 Danielle Kroll

  Book design by Hana Anouk Nakamura

  Published in 2019 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

  Amulet Books® is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

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  FOR ALL THE OLDER SISTERS

  WHO LEAD THE WAY AND ALL

  THE YOUNGER SISTERS WHO

  BLAZE THEIR OWN TRAILS.

  ALSO, FOR RASCAL—MY SNUGGLY

  TODDLER SIDEKICK.

  “SHE PREFERRED IMAGINARY HEROES TO REAL ONES . . .”

  —Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

  1

  I wasn’t one of those artists who thought you had to be a tortured soul to create. I could concentrate on a painting while still remembering to eat, sleep, and shower. I liked both my ears where they were, so there was no risk of me going Van Gogh, and I was just as inspired when I was in a good mood as when I was in a funk.

  But if I did require torture, I was pretty sure driving to school with the boy I loved—and the girl he loved—qualified.

  Especially when the girl he loved was my sister.

  “Rory, come on,” Merrilee called from the front hall. “Toby’s beeped twice.”

  For the first two weeks of school, I’d been the one nudging her—and helpfully reminding her about things like coats, backpacks, and the annoying crossover-tie part of our uniform—but Merri had a whole new motivation for Hero High mornings: The faster she got out the door, the sooner she got to see her boyfriend, Fielding Williams.

  Have I mentioned she was oblivious to Toby’s feelings? And obliviously never shut up about how happy she was, dating his friend.

  “Come on! Come on!” she called from the open shotgun seat of Toby’s car. “Today’s the day Fielding’s wearing the socks I picked out for him.”

  That didn’t mean anything to me. Merri, my oldest older sister Lilly, and I had gone out for manicures two nights ago so Merri could fill us in on her newest boyfriend. But if she’d said something about socks, I’d missed it. Or it’d happened while I was in the bathroom. I was still surprised I’d been invited at all. Mom always said that three was the hardest number for including people—“It’s all points and corners”—and the default duo in our house was Merri plus Lilly.

  Fielding was an impressive upgrade from Merri’s first emo-jerk ex, Monroe expelled-from-school-already Stratford, but I had no idea why she was excited about his socks. Maybe my sister had a foot fetish? Ew, gross.

  I mentally deleted that thought as I opened the car door and slid into the back seat, passing Merri her forgotten cross-country bag. “Hey, Toby.”

  “Morning, Roar.” The flash of a smile he directed at me as he turned around to back out of our driveway was better than any cup of coffee. Toby’s grin was 99 percent perfect, but the 1 percent that would keep him from starring in ads for orthodontists was my favorite part: His second tooth was just the teeniest bit crooked. The type of crooked you’d notice only if you’d sketched it dozens of times. Like, if maybe you had a portfolio hidden in the back of your closet that contained nothing but drawings of a certain olive-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired Latino boy whose eyelashes made your heart race and whose long fingers gripped the steering wheel of the car driving you to your new school.

  “What do you mean, socks?” he asked Merri as he turned down the stereo’s volume and pulled onto our street. It was some movie’s musical score—always. I don’t think Toby owned songs with lyrics. Sometimes I recognized which film and sometimes Merri commandeered the radio. This time she clicked it off.

  “Didn’t I tell you this story?” And, just like yesterday, I got to watch from the back seat as Merri—the copilot of Toby’s dreams, the girl with a permanent claim on shotgun and his heart—twisted the knife in his back. “It’s so cute—who knew Fielding Williams could be cute? But I don’t know if it’ll be funny to anyone that’s not me. Or him. It’s an inside thing—but make sure to compliment his socks today, okay?”

  She giggled. I wanted to growl.

  Because here’s the thing about my “big” sister: She was a peanut. Maybe five whole feet if she had on shoes and used her best posture. Her height paired with her personality (think sugar rush, no sugar needed), her looks (a complete checklist for adorable: freckles, perky nose, huge blue-gray eyes, pointy chin), and her intelligence (hello, Mensa) meant that she was irresistible. Merri was the type of girl people instantly loved. And it was a good thing she wasn’t evil, because she would’ve made an alluring cult leader. People leaned in when she talked, squished closer to her in crowds, raced for the seat beside hers at tables. Everyone got sucked into her orbit, because it was a place you felt entertained, safe, cherished.

  Watching her giggle, wrinkle her nose, then reach in her backpack for breakfast bars I hadn’t known she’d packed for Toby and me—“Yours is vegan, Rory, I checked”—made me understand why everyone loved her. Why he loved her. Toby looked at the foil wrapper on his bar like he wanted to bronze it. Instead he ripped it open and took a big bite. There was a purity about Merri, a sweetness beyond all the sugar she consumed.

  I wasn’t bitter; I was exhausted. Because every time someone said, “Merri’s your sister? I love her,” they followed up by expecting me to be like her. I wasn’t. We had the same brown hair, but mine was six inches shorter, cut at my chin. And height-wise, I was six inches taller. I got the double take “You’re younger?” not just because of our heights but because I had none of the bounce and perk that radiated from Merri. She giggled; I laughed. She chatted; I fretted. She was impulsive; I was introspective. She was comfortable as the center of attention, and I was much happier standing in the corner. Preferably facing the corner with an easel in front of me.

  I loved her, but I didn’t want to, and couldn’t, be her. No matter how much our parents, teachers, and customers at the family dog boutique, Haute Dog, expected it.

  Toby didn’t though. He’d known us both since the day he arrived next doo
r. Back then, Merri and I were the same height and our mom dressed us alike. His adoptive parents had joined the long list of people who assumed we were twins, but tiny Toby could tell us apart. He built sandcastles with me—and stomped them with Merri. Sidewalk art with me—hose nozzle eraser with Merri. We swung on swings and sang songs—they jumped from the monkey bars and got ice packs.

  He wasn’t the first person to compliment my drawings, but his compliment was the first to make me feel special. I still had, hidden in the same back-of-my-closet portfolio, a crooked three-legged green cat painted in watercolors on warped paper. In the upper left corner, he’d stamped his approval with a prized Batman sticker.

  “Oh, we’re not getting Eliza today,” Merri said when Toby flicked on his blinker to turn down her street.

  “This day’s looking up already,” he said.

  “Be nice.” Merri poked him in the upper arm and he snapped his teeth playfully at her finger.

  “I’m always nice.” Toby couldn’t stand Eliza, Merri’s other best friend, but he still gave her a ride every day to make my sister happy. And Eliza, she hated Toby. Though I wasn’t sure she liked many people besides Merri and maybe her teachers. Eliza looked like the flippin’ snow queen from Frozen, which was fitting because her icy attitude was capable of giving anyone in a three-mile radius frostbite. And that was after her brains and beauty had given them inferiority complexes. I was firmly on Team Toby, but Eliza’s fierce protectiveness of Merri and refusal to allow any female around her to be trivialized was pretty endearing.

  I looked away and hid a yawn against my shoulder. We hadn’t even gotten to school and I was already tired.

  “Late night painting, Roar?” Toby was an artist himself—a musician—and he understood night owl creativity. But because he was practically perfect, I didn’t want him to know the truth. I’d been up late studying and staring at the bright yellow academic warning I’d gotten in math the week before. I was supposed to have returned it on Monday. But Monday at Hero High had been mayhem. The entire school had been dealing with the fallout from the Rogue Romeo party thrown last Friday by Merri’s ex-boyfriend. It was the type of party that was already part of Hero High lore—Remember that time Monroe Stratford broke into the school theater and stole the costumes from the school play, and got in a fight with that new girl onstage, and then the party got busted?

  Unlike most of the people who lied and said they’d been there, I did remember, because I’d had the starring role of idiot new girl who threw paint on him. I had two Saturday detentions to prove it.

  Eventually Mrs. Roberts was going to remember to ask for the academic warning. I could easily forge a signature—handwriting wasn’t that different from line drawing. But forgery was purposefully deceptive. Forgetfulness was passive. So I’d been crossing my fingers through every sixth period and hoping it was contagious.

  “Hey, sleeping beauty!” Merri turned around in her seat and held out her I like big books and I cannot lie travel mug. “You awake back there? I’m out of princes to kiss you. Want my coffee instead?”

  “No, I’m fine.” I tucked my hair behind my ears and gritted my teeth. Rory might be short for Aurora, but Merri knew I hated Sleeping Beauty jokes.

  “You sure? It’s good.” Merri shook her mug, which would’ve been a better idea if she’d had the lid closed. Instead it splashed all over my uniform, landing in fat milky plops on my white blouse and gray-red-and-navy-plaid skirt. She wrinkled her nose. “Whoops.”

  “Are you serious, Merrilee?” But while I seethed, Toby groan-chuckled.

  “There are paper towels under the seat, Roar. Rowboat, turn around before you do any permanent damage to your sister.”

  “I’m really sorry, Rory,” said Merri. She paused to take a sip, then frowned when she realized her mug was almost empty. “Good thing Eliza’s not here—she would not have been happy about that.”

  “Yeah, good thing,” I snapped. But it was too late for her to avoid doing permanent damage to me. Not because I was now modeling the latest in caffeine fashions, but because there could be no winner in the race of me chasing him while he was chasing her.

  2

  The best portion of Merri’s morning began as mine was ending. Waiting to open her car door was the headmaster’s son. A perfect specimen of dignity and decorum—at least until my sister launched herself out of her seat and into his arms.

  “Mer-ri-lee,” Fielding sputtered as she twined her arms around his neck and nuzzled into his cheek, messing up his perfect hair and hugging wrinkles into his blazer. But for all his (weak) protests and throat clearing, he grinned down at her like she was some sort of impish miracle. A week ago they weren’t dating, and a week ago Toby would’ve been smiling as he greeted one of his closest friends and talked lacrosse strategies and weekend plans.

  Toby sighed behind me, and a better person might have given him privacy to wear whatever emotion he needed to. I wasn’t a better person. I was a self-punishing one. I wanted to see his face as he watched them. I wondered if it mirrored my own watching him.

  With a grimace, he turned away from the world’s most infatuated couple. “Ride home?” he asked me, pointing to the knee brace he now wore over his khakis, courtesy of an idiot from St. Joe’s lacrosse team last week. “I’m out for the season, so I can leave whenever you’re ready.”

  “Yes, please.” This Friday was looking up. All I had to do was make it through seven periods and I’d get to ride home with just him.

  Toby scooped his faded red backpack out of the trunk and closed it with white knuckles. Not looking at Merri or Fielding in a way that felt purposeful, he called a hollow “Bye, guys” before gifting me a small smile. “Have a good day, Roar.”

  “You too.” I waved, then curled my fingers in tight, like I could hold on to that smile and use it to float me through my first two obstacles: Advanced Art and English.

  The first should have been my favorite class; I couldn’t remember a time when art hadn’t been the axis my life revolved around. While most of my elementary school classmates had been dressing up like superheroes and Disney characters for Halloween, I’d been Degas’s The Star dancer, Singer Sargent’s Madame X, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, and, on the last year Merri let me tag along with her and Toby, Picasso’s Dora Maar—I’ll admit, that one was a mistake. It required way too much explanation and cut down on our candy haul.

  From the days of crayons and Batman stickers until my first few days of high school, I’d never doubted my artistic ability. If you gave me an easel and almost any medium, I’d give you something worthy of appreciation. Creating was what I did; it was who I was.

  But this was Hero High, where even art betrayed me.

  Mrs. Mundhenk had told me that being the only freshman in Advanced Art was an honor and a privilege. She hadn’t informed me that every upperclassman in the studio would see it as an invasion.

  At first, I’d shrugged off the silent treatment. The muttering that always began a few steps after I passed. I figured I’d prove I belonged among them and win them over. But when Mrs. Mundhenk displayed my drawing from the first week of class as an exemplar, the mutterings grew louder.

  I could tune it out. I’d been practicing meditation for years and my bedroom was across the hallway from Merri, who liked to put on headphones and sing. I could tune out most anything—especially when I was drawing. But no amount of meditation was effective against these cold shoulders. Especially once they became actual shoulders and feet knocking into my easel.

  I’d thought—wanted to think—they were unintentional. That once, twice, three times a period someone would accidentally jar the back of my easel with their foot or elbow while I had a pencil or paintbrush to the paper. I’d responded to the syrupy “So sorrys” with a tight smile or “It happens” while I tried to figure out how to undo the damage to my pictures. But the sorrys stopped and the nudges increased. My charcoal drawing started to resemble a cracked windshield from all the jagged line
s snaking in wrong directions.

  It had gotten to the point where I flinched whenever anyone was near my easel. I was more aware of my classmates’ movements around the spacious art room than I was of the Cassatt painting I was supposed to be reproducing. It defeated the entire purpose of me being at this school. I could’ve stayed at the sixth-to-twelfth grade, all-girls magnet school Merri and I had attended up until this year, but Lilly’s future mother-in-law had sold my parents on Hero High’s renowned art program and then used her US senator status to secure our admission.

  I was supposed to be building a great portfolio to show off with college applications, but so far that portfolio was empty. Even my exemplar painting from the first week had been “accidentally” ripped from the wall the previous night, leaving jagged chunks behind.

  “I’m so sorry, Aurora.” Mrs. Mundhenk had brought the scraps over to show me as I was setting up. “It was like that when I got here. It must’ve gotten caught on someone’s bag or coat. They must not have noticed, because they would’ve stopped to pick it up or leave a note. I bet whoever it is would be heartbroken if they knew what they’d done.”

  “Yeah.” I gritted my teeth, because how could a teacher be so informed about her subject matter but so ignorant about her students? “Real heartbroken.”

  I glowered at the sketch in front of me. It wasn’t working. I unclipped the Cassatt print and headed to the front of the room where folders of example paintings were stored. The assignment was “Draw a famous painting with your own spin,” and I ignored the crowd bickering around the contemporary folder and picked through the others before selecting Seurat’s Le Chahut.

  Back at my easel, I decided my “own spin” would be replacing the pointillist dots and chromo-luminarism with crisp pencil lines, precise shading, and a monochromatic palette. The result would be less neo-impressionist and more photo-realist. At least that was my hope.