She’ll be here, I reassured myself as long minutes ticked by. We’d agreed to meet right there, I was sure of it. I peered through the window at the chaos that is our school’s cafeteria. What if she already went in without me?
“Oh. My. God.” A familiar voice rang out, turning my insides to ice. “Did you see what she was wearing? Some people try way too hard.”
Courtney.
I panicked and hunted for an escape route. I didn’t want to miss Annie, but I couldn’t be caught standing there, all alone.
I let my hair hang down over my face and peeked out from behind my bangs. They didn’t see me yet. I slipped away from the cafeteria doors and headed down the arts hallway, fear coiling in my belly. I was going to miss meeting Annie, I just knew it. Frustrated tears prickled my eyes, and I put my head down to hide them.
I made a beeline for the safety of the stairwell and crashed headlong into someone racing toward the cafeteria.
“Sorry!” Annie yelped before recognizing me. “Jessie? What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing,” I forced out, blinking hard. “Just . . . the first day of school sucks.”
“You read my mind.” She laughed, looping her arm through mine and pulling me toward the cafeteria. “Sorry I was so late. I got caught up talking to my art teacher.” She held up her phone. “I’d have texted you, but I forgot to ask for your digits.”
I rattled off my cell number, my heart thumping. “I should get yours, too,” I said, fumbling with my bag.
“No need. Texting you right. . . . now.”
I felt my whole body relax. Who was this girl? I’d never felt so immediately comfortable around anyone in my life. “C’mon,” I said, “I’ll show you where to buy the worst food you’ve ever tasted.”
We waded into the lineup, and I watched in wonder as Annie shamelessly heaped fries, chocolate milk, and two enormous cookies onto her tray. By the time we strolled out to look for a table, I felt giddy, my earlier panic forgotten. For the first time ever, I walked through the cafeteria with my head held high, feeling like a new person with Annie by my side.
“Who do you usually sit with?” she asked innocently, peering around at the crowded tables.
My heart lurched, and I snuck a glance at my fellow outcasts at the back table. Charlie and Kevin were sitting with a girl I didn’t recognize. They were all hunched over their laptops, most likely playing an online game over the school’s WiFi.
I couldn’t take Annie over there. She thought I was cooler than that. “I don’t see the people I sat with last year,” I lied, angling my body away from them and dropping my tray onto the nearest empty table. “Let’s sit here.”
“Okay . . .” Annie said, looking puzzled. “But . . . isn’t that guy over there waving at you?”
I looked up to find Charlie flailing his arms like he was about to take flight. Oh, good Lord. I waved back and smiled shyly at Annie. “He’s just someone I know from class.”
“Should we go sit with them?”
“Maybe another time,” I said, not wanting to share her.
“I think he likes you,” Annie declared, sitting at the table and popping a fry in her mouth.
“You’re insane.”
“What? He looks totally bummed we didn’t go over.”
I looked back at Charlie. He definitely looked disappointed, and I could guess why.
“Trust me,” I told Annie. “I hung out with them for a while last year, and he never gave me a second glance. If he’s disappointed, it’s because he didn’t get a chance to meet the hot new redhead at school.”
Annie
Holy shit.
“Are you kidding me?” I whirl around and glare at Jessie. “You’re crazy, you know that? Certifiable.”
“You hate it,” Jess says, like a complete idiot.
“I love it! I cannot believe this is the room you were afraid to show me. I’m so stinking jealous that if I didn’t like you so much, I’d hate you.”
Jess’s face melts into a relieved smile. She’s such a freak. I swear to God, she worries about the most random shit. She obsessed all the way home from school, telling me over and over that she hasn’t redone her room since she was a kid, and that she’s never put much thought into it. I was expecting Dora the Explorer and Barbies, the way she was freaking out.
I drop my backpack by the door and rush into the room. “Would you look at all this space?” I say, twirling around with arms spread wide. “I could do cartwheels in here.”
Jessie inches into the room and I grab her by the hands, twirling with her until we both fall, dizzy and laughing, onto carpet so thick I feel like it’s hugging me.
“It’s like nerdvana in here,” I tell her, surveying the room.
Her face falls. “That’s me.” She sighs. “Nerd extraordinaire.”
“Nerds are sexy,” I say, pulling on her ponytail before getting up to check out her books. No joke, Jess has an entire wall of bookshelves, filled with the most kick-ass collection of books I’ve ever seen. I run my fingers along the spines, feeling like I’m looking into her brain. There’s something of everything in here, from Judy Blume to A. S. King, to Maya Angelou to Charles Bukowski. There must be thousands of dollars of books on these shelves. This isn’t a bedroom—it’s a library.
And there’s more.
She has a fucking reading area. And I’m not just talking about a beanbag chair in the corner. This girl has a full-on leather armchair, with a wooden table and a fancy reading lamp, like something out of a magazine.
And her bed. My God.
When I was a kid, I remember clearly the bed I wanted more than life itself. It was pink and girly and had a canopy. I shit you not, it was the exact bed Jessie has in her room.
If you paid a Hollywood stylist to design the
