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up again as soon as I was out of earshot. I thought I was being paranoid, but then I passed a
group of senior girls I didn't know talking by their lockers. As soon as I was within hearing
distance they stopped talking and watched me. Then, as I walked by, they said, "Hey," even
though I'd never spoken a word to any of them.
"Hey," I said back, thinking, What's the deal?
Suddenly I started to get a bad feeling in my stomach. What if Connor had told Dave or Matt
about how we'd made out in the car, only he'd turned it into some kind of joke. Yeah, man, she
was so into me. She practically lost her friggin' mind when I kissed her. I remembered how I'd
been so disoriented I'd tried to get out of the car without taking off my seat belt. Could that be
what everyone was whispering about? Remembering all the movies I'd ever seen where the cute,
popular guy asks out the ugly, unpopular girl on a dare, I walked faster, not meeting the eyes of
anyone I passed.
The cafeteria was crowded, but instead of taking my sandwich and heading for the exit and the
studio, I found myself walking toward the table where Madison and Jessica and I had sat on
Friday. As I got closer, I could see Jessica sitting there alone, but just as I was about to wave, I
stopped myself. What if she and Madison had concocted this whole setup with Connor in order
to humiliate me? Why had I been so quick to dismiss Madison as too stupid to come up with a
complex practical joke? This was what happened
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when you underestimated people--they destroyed you.
I decided I'd slow down as I approached Jessica's table but wouldn't stop. That way if she didn't
ask me to sit with her, I could pretend I was just passing by on my way to join all of my other
friends. When I was two tables away, I cut my speed in half, and by the time I was one table
from Jessica's, a paralytic snail could have overtaken me. Just as I was about to start walking in
place, Jessica looked up, saw me, and squawked with delight.
"Oh my god," she said, running over and giving me a hug. "Can I just say," she walked me back to the table and pulled me down next to her, "that you two are adorable together?"
"You really think so?" I felt the urge to administer a polygraph test right there on the spot.
"Oh my god, are you kidding? I wish you could have seen yourselves. It's all we talked about all
weekend. We wanted to call you, but we don't know your cell. So we just kept going, 'Don't they
make the cutest couple?'"
I didn't know what to say. I'd never been part of a cute couple before.
"Hel- lo!" Madison called, walking toward us. She collapsed into the chair opposite Jessica's with her enormous backpack on her lap. "Please tell me one of you knows something about imagery
in The Great Gatsby."
"We read that first semester. It's all about the green
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light," said Jessica. "Just keep talking green light."
"For five typed pages}"" Madison shook her head and changed the subject. "But enough about me. How are you guys?"
My spokesperson responded with alacrity. "How do you think she is?" She put her arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug. "She's only, like, Connor Pearson's girlfriend."
"I know!" Madison practically shouted. She pushed her backpack to the floor and leaned toward
me. "He's totally into you. He told Matt he thought you were really smart." She paused and
smiled at me. "And really sexy. He said he's going to ask you to come to the game on Friday."
She took my hand in hers and then reached out for Jessica's, too. "How incredibly cool is this?"
"Okay, tell us everything," said Jessica. She was smiling and squeezing my hand tightly.
"When was the last time anyone had wanted me to tell her anything, much less everything? Their curiosity was the warmth of the sun after a swim in the frigid ocean.
"Is he a good kisser?" asked Madison.
"Yeah," I admitted. "He's a good kisser."
Jessica and Madison each gave my hand a squeeze. "We knew it!" Madison said.
"So, wait," said Jessica. "How good?"
I couldn't help smiling at the memory of kissing Connor.
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"Oooh, she's smiling," said Madison.
I took my hands back and dropped my face into them. "Stop," I said through my fingers. "You're embarrassing me."
"Okay, we'll stop," said Jessica. But when I looked up she and Madison were still staring and
smiling at me.
"You are, like, so cool," Jessica announced, and Madison nodded as if Jessica had just recited a holy truth.
Looking at their awestruck faces, I could literally see the power of Connor's touch. With his kiss,
the prince had turned this unlovable stepdaughter into a popular girl.
I didn't run into Connor until after sixth period, when we were coming toward each other from
opposite ends of the hallway. I saw him before he saw me, and watching him from a distance, I
remembered all the times I'd passed him in the hall before today, totally aware of who he was
while he didn't even know I existed. Then he spotted me, and suddenly he was smiling from ear
to ear, like seeing me was the greatest thing that had happened to him all day.
Was he really my boyfriend now? It didn't seem possible.
"Hey, Red," he called, slowing down. He was wearing a soft-looking green sweater with his
basketball jacket over it. The hall swarmed with people going to class, and
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out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some of them checking us out.
"Hey, Connor," I said. A girl I didn't know walked by and said, "Hi, Connor," and he waved in her direction without looking up.
"So you're coming to the game Friday, right?"
"Right," I said. Thinking about the game and then going out with him after made me feel all
tingly, and I shivered a little.
"Are you cold?" he asked.
"Oh, no, I'm just--"
But he was already slipping his jacket off and draping it over my shoulders. It was heavy and
smelled of whatever delicious soap or cologne or shampoo Connor used.
"Hey, you look pretty good in that," he said, admiring me. "Why don't you keep it for a while?"
He took my hand for a second.
"Yeah, sure," I said. "I'll keep it for a while." I felt faint. I actually felt faint. And I knew that if I fainted, Connor would pick me up in his arms and carry me to the nurse's office, and the image
of him doing that only made me feel fainter. Luckily, just then the warning bell sounded. "Gotta
go," he said. "Higby'll go nuts if I'm late." And he turned and was swallowed up by the crowd.
By the time I got to English, my last class of the day, I must have said hi to at least fifty people.
Maybe a
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hundred and fifty. It was like I was a celebrity or something. As I walked into the empty
classroom, I realized it was the first time I'd been alone since lunch. I sat down in my usual seat,
opened my notebook to a blank page, and started doodling, glad to have the quiet room to
myself. My solitude, however, was to be short lived. A minute later Rachel Smith came into the
room and rushed over to where I was sitting, pulling out the chair of the desk next to mine.
As she sat down, she blew a massive bubble in my direction. "I saw you at Piazzolla's Friday,"