“Maybe.”
“Or she had an appointment.”
Finn runs his hand through his hair, something he does when he’s irritated. “It’s just weird that she didn’t text me.”
I agree. It is weird.
Until freshman year, we did everything together. Me, Ozzy, Finn, Ezra, and Rose. A constant fivesome at each other’s homes, the pool, or just fooling around the neighborhood. Then Juliette Chandler moved to town, brought by the fact her father was the new varsity football coach, and everything changed.
At first, it was fun having someone new to hang out with. Someone exciting. But by the first day of school, Juliette and Rose were no longer my friends. Schedules split up the rest of us, different lunches, different classes and by Halloween, Ozzy had isolated himself, Ezra had his first suspension, and at homecoming,
Finn asked Rose to the dance. They’ve been nauseatingly inseparable ever since.
My world flipped that year, shifting from being part of a group and having a best friend to having nothing much at all. It took time, but eventually I made friends with Alice, who’d been in school with us all along. It still hurt when I had to watch Rose pick Finn up in the morning, honking once on the shrill horn of her baby blue VW Bug. They’d had the same routine every school day for a year. Instead of watching them drive away every morning without me, I started going in early to the yearbook office and picking up Alice along the way.
I’m obsessing again. Alice is right. I do have a problem.
I turn around. Ozzy has his chin resting on his hands. His blue eyes watch me carefully.
“By the way, if you really want to add Yearbook to your list of clubs for college applications,” I say to Ozzy, “set up for the back-to-school bonfire starts at seven.”
He opens his mouth, ready to decline.
“It’s mandatory,” I add.
He sighs. “Fine.”
Mrs. Gimple, our teacher, rushes in the room, a pile of paper and books in her hands. She’s notoriously flighty but is definitely passionate about the classics. How she’s already disorganized on the first day of school is beyond me.
“Welcome to AP Literature,” she says, dropping the load onto the desk. “Put your phones away and your thinking caps on. It’s time to get the school year started.”
Ozzy groans behind me, sliding down in his chair so that his feet straddle my seat. He’s the smartest kid in the class, and I’d place odds on the fact he’s already read half the books on the curriculum. He tugs his cap down, covering his eyebrows, ready to take an early morning nap.
While everyone else readies themselves for the start of class, I take one last photo, of Ozzy. His eyes are closed, revealing long and thick eyelashes, that are shamefully wasted on a boy.
“I saw that,” he says, through shuttered eyes.
“Just commemorating the first day of our last year of school, it’s a major event. One day, you’ll thank me.”
I turn off the camera and put it in my bag, unaware that I’m right about one thing. Today is a major event.
We just don’t know it yet.
2
Kenley
At my narrow locker, I shove my math book in between the thick literature and biology textbooks while trying not to drop my laptop. I use an elbow for leverage, but the whole thing starts to slide.
“No, no, no, no…”
A hand catches the laptop.
My eyes catch the letterman’s jacket first, then the tan neck contrasting off a clean, white T-shirt, up to the handsome, familiar face framed by copper-colored hair. Finn Holloway is holding my laptop while staring at me with worried green eyes.
I force myself to speak. “Thanks, Mrs. Parker would kill me if I break the yearbook laptop before the school year even started.”
“Sure.” His eyes dart around, like he’s worried someone will catch him talking to me. God forbid. “Have you seen Rose?”