one
Now Playing:
“Do You In”—Buffalo Tom
“You’ll befine,” Meghan says, throwing an arm around my neck and squeezing me so tight that the side of my head mashes against hers. “It’s just another high school, Sky. Faulkner is no different than anywhere else. It’s probably pretty much the same as your old school.”
I snort and swish my feet in the water at the end of the dock, soaking up the last rays of sun—and of summer. “I seriously doubt it.”
“Aww, look at you. You’ve discovered cynicism. My little cousin’s all grown up.”
“I know, right?” I say, a smile finding its way onto my face despite myself. “I can’t believe I’ll be a sophomore.”
A sophomore at a brand-new school.
The smile slips from my face, replaced by the usual sickening sensation of butterflies in my belly. I fight the urge to pitch headlong into the pond. Not just a new school, but one in a new state—one whose culture I still don’t understand, despite Meghan forcing me to watch all five seasons ofFriday Night Lightsand telling me it pretty much explains small town life in the south.
“Dude, I know you’re nervous,” Meghan says. “But it’ll be okay. I promise. I’ll be home on weekends, and you can come over any time you want. You can even crash in my dorm sometimes if your mom is cool with it. I survived Faulkner High, and so will you.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But you’re you. And I’m…not.”
Meghan is my best friend by default—I don’t know anyone else here unless you count the silent, sullen guy who works at my stall in the food court. I don’t.
I was basically invisible at my old school, and my social anxiety hasn’t decreased since my mom moved us to an obscure town in the middle of Arkansas, a place that might as well be a different world from the middle-class suburbia of my youth. I don’t like to think about that. It brings up memories of Dad, and that’s not something I’m ready to think about.
“You’ll make friends,” Meghan assures me. “You’ll see.”
I want to believe her. I want that more than anything. But after years as the awkward girl who stopped getting invited to parties back in middle school, when the whole class no longer got an invitation to everyone’s birthday, I’m not holding out hope that I’ll be able to turn things around at a new school where everyone already has friends.
“Easy for you to say. You’d get along in any school,” I grumble, twisting my mane of unruly curls into a bun. “You’re an artist, and you, like, actually enjoy the company of other human beings.”
“It’s true that I am nothing less than awesome,” Meghan says, swatting a mosquito on her thigh. “But you’re awesome, too, Sky. And you’ll be even more awesome when you realize it. That’s when everyone else will realize it, and pretty soon you’ll have so many friends you won’t even remember your art-dork cousin off at art school.”
“Like I could forget you,” I say, tweaking one of her dirty-blonde braids. “Your bad influence this summer will last me years to come.”
“You must mean worldly wisdom, not bad influence,” she says, picking up her pack of cigarettes from the dock and offering me one. I shake my head, and she taps out a smoke and lights up. Everyone in the south seems to smoke.
“Is there a difference?” I ask.
“Going to a party is a rite of passage,” she says around her filter. “Not a crime.”
“I’ve been to a party,” I say, an edge of defensiveness creeping into my voice. My status as resident nobody at my last school is a sore spot for me.
“Okay, ordering pizza and camping on the living room floor with me on your birthday does not count as a party,” she says.
“I’ve been to a sleepover.”
She gives me a look and blows smoke out the corner of her mouth. “In middle school?”
“Fine, it was my first real party,” I admit, my face warming in the lingering evening. I have school tomorrow, but I don’t want to let go of summer just yet.
“And your first time getting drunk, your first time making out with a hot stranger at said party, and everything else we did this summer. Girl, you needed it.”
That’s as close as we come to talking about Dad. I change the subject. “Seriously, though. I’m going to need a key to your dorm room. You know I’m allergic to talking to new people. I’ll… Break out in a rash.”
“Relax,” she says. “This is public school, not rocket science. It’s not like you’re going to Willow Heights.”
“The private school?”