Something New

by Amanda Abram

  I rolled my eyes and made a face at her as I slouched back in my chair. I didn’t need to take any more pictures of Dylan; we had taken so many selfies together during winter break the week before that I was surprised my phone had any free space left on it.

  Since Dylan and Elijah had made up the night of Winter Formal, Nick and the rest of the guys had welcomed Dylan back into their circle with open arms. They were extremely apologetic for icing him out, and to make up for it, they re-invited him on the ski trip. He forgave all of them, but he declined the invitation, stating he wanted to spend time with me instead.

  And he did, although we were rarely ever alone. On Monday, he came over to my house just to binge the rest of Baker’s Dozen with Caitlyn. Grant won the entire competition, just as Caitlyn had predicted, and she gleefully took Dylan’s five bucks and then rubbed it in his face. On Friday, he came over for another family game night, where the only game we played was Monopoly (Dad won). My parents ordered more Chinese food (with an extra container of Kung Pao chicken for Dylan to take home with him), and this time Dylan and I got different fortunes, and neither one of them had anything to do with love.

  On Saturday, Lauren finally got to have the double date with me that she’d been wanting for so long. The four of us went bowling, spent some time at the arcade, went to see a movie, and then went out for dinner all in the span of one night. I suggested maybe we pace ourselves and save some of those activities for another double date night, but she said she was so excited she just had to get it all out of her system at once.

  Despite spending so much of our break with other people, Dylan and I did manage to find some time to be alone. Like on Thursday, when we got together at his house to complete our Life Economics project. We spent the entire afternoon finishing it up, and then we spent the rest of the evening cuddling on his couch and watching the second Die Hard movie.

  Although, I couldn’t exactly tell you what it was about, and not because I fell asleep during it…

  I smiled dreamily to myself as memories of that night came flooding back to me. I didn’t even know I was staring off into space until Lauren snapped her fingers in front of my face, breaking me out of my reverie.

  “What has gotten into you, Cassie?” she asked, but the small smirk on her face indicated she didn’t need an answer. She knew; she herself had been having these kinds of moments ever since she and Jake got together.

  “Nothing has gotten into me,” I said, sitting up straight in my chair. “I’m just excited to see what I got for a grade on our project.”

  “Mmhmm.” Lauren chuckled and reached down to the floor to pick up her backpack. “By the way, I know that your official one-week anniversary with Dylan was a few days ago, but I got you a present to help you celebrate.”

  I perked up. “Oh yeah? What is it?”

  She reached into her bag and pulled out what looked to be a magazine.

  “Here,” she said, handing it to me with the proudest grin on her face.

  Confused, I took it from her. But it took me less than a second to realize what this was, and why she was giving it to me.

  “It’s my issue of Cosmo that you liked so much,” she informed me, and I could tell she was trying very hard to hold in her laughter. “That article is still bookmarked.” She pointed to the piece of scrap paper I had stuck there myself.

  I opened to where the bookmark was, and sure enough, the big, bold words, The Perfect Plan to Please Your Man were practically jumping off the page at me. Quickly closing it, I shot Lauren a playful glare.

  “Har, har, Laur.”

  “What? I thought it might come in handy. Although, judging from the way you were just smiling while staring at Dylan a minute ago, maybe you don’t need it after all.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

  I rolled up the magazine, leaned over and hit her arm with it. All she did was laugh.

  “Whatever you do, don’t tell Dylan you gave this to me,” I said. “He will never let me live it down.”

  Lauren giggled. “Oh, um, I kind of already told him about it earlier.”

  I got ready to hit her again. “Lauren, you didn’t.”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  She motioned over to Dylan, who now had his full attention on me. When he saw the magazine in my hands, he puckered his lips into an air kiss and winked at me before grinning and turning back to his notebook.

  My face burned as I turned back to Lauren. “I’m going to kill you.”

  “More like you’re going to thank me after you follow the steps in that article.”

  I opened my mouth to retort but was interrupted by the ringing of the bell.

  “This isn’t over,” I whispered, pointing a warning finger at her.

  She didn’t seem fazed at all.

  “Good afternoon, everybody,” Mrs. Andrews said, standing up and walking around to the front of her desk. “I have some great news. I have finished grading all your projects, as you can see from the stack here on my desk, and I will be handing them back to you momentarily. But first, I would just like to say what an amazing job all of you did. As you can probably tell from the hard work you did on these projects, being an adult is not always easy. It can be a real struggle. But you all somehow managed to find your way around each obstacle that was thrown at you and come out ahead in the end. I was very impressed.”

  She paused for a moment as she picked up a piece of paper from her desk. “However, there was one project in particular that went so above and beyond what was required that I felt the need to award that project with a special certificate.”

  I arched a brow and turned my head to look over at Dylan. He turned to look at me at the same time and we exchanged hopeful glances that clearly said, could it be our project?

  “Can somebody give me a drum roll, please?” Mrs. Andrews asked, and half the boys in the class started drumming their fingers against the top of their desks. “And the winner of the first-ever award for Best Life Economics Project is…” She stared at the certificate in her hand, saying nothing for at least ten seconds to build excitement before finally finishing with, “Lauren!”

  The entire class erupted in applause and turned to Lauren as she stared at Mrs. Andrews in shock.

  “Me?” she asked, pointing to herself.

  “Yes, you. You’re the only Lauren in this class. Come on up here and get your certificate!” Mrs. Andrews motioned for her to join her at the front of the classroom.

  Lauren slowly got out of her seat and made her way up to Mrs. Andrews, who gave her the piece of paper and then shook her hand.

  “As a single parent, Lauren had it a lot harder than anyone else in this room,” Mrs. Andrews explained to the class. “But she not only found a way to survive, she found a way to thrive. Lauren, would you like to say a few words?”

  “Um, sure.” Lauren stared down at the certificate. “I guess I’d first like to thank Mrs. Andrews for giving me this award. It’s always nice to be recognized for doing hard work. So, thank you, Mrs. Andrews. This certificate means a lot to me. And, um, and I would also like to thank…” Her voice trailed off and she was silent for a moment before lowering the certificate and glancing around at everyone in the room. “Actually, I don’t want to thank anybody else. Because nobody helped me with this. I succeeded all on my own! I didn’t need a husband or a wife to survive. I am an independent woman of the twenty-first century; hear me roar!”

  Everyone applauded again as she took a bow and headed back to her seat.

  “Thank you for that very inspirational speech, Lauren,” Mrs. Andrews said with a small chuckle. She grabbed the stack of folders off her desk and began handing back each project to its rightful owner.

  I beamed at Lauren as soon as she sat down. “I guess you were right when you said you nailed it. Congrats.”

  “Thank you.” She grinned down at the certificate before placing it into her backpack. “I just had a feeling.”

  My gaze flickered over to Mrs. Andre
ws and watched as she handed Dylan our folder. When she moved on to Elijah behind him, he opened it and stared down at its contents with an indifferent look on his face before finally closing it.

  I began to worry. Why didn’t he look happy? Did we get a bad grade on it? Sure, we were a bit distracted the afternoon we finished working on it, but overall, we went just as above and beyond as Lauren did, and she got a certificate for it.

  As if he could sense me staring intently at him, Dylan turned his head to look at me.

  Well? I asked him telepathically.

  He just frowned and shrugged in response and turned back to his notebook.

  “Uh oh,” Lauren said, sucking air through her teeth. She pointed over at Dylan. “That doesn’t look promising.”

  I furrowed my brow. “No, it doesn’t.”

  I spent the entire period stressing over the possibility that Dylan and I had failed our project—which was irrational, considering Mrs. Andrews claimed everyone had done such a great job. Still, as soon as class was over, I quickly shot out of my seat to go grab the folder from Dylan to see for myself. The suspense was nearly killing me.

  Dylan made his way over to me and Lauren before I even had the chance to leave my desk.

  “Hey, Laurie, congratulations on winning at life,” he said to Lauren with a lopsided grin.

  “Thanks,” she replied, throwing her backpack over her shoulder. “How did you and Cassie do?”

  Dylan inhaled sharply and froze at her question and my heart sank.

  Did we really not get a good grade on it?

  I snatched the folder from his hands before he could stop me. Hopefully, we hadn’t gotten an F. I could deal with a C. Heck, even a D. As long as we passed, that’s all I cared about.

  Although, I would seriously have to question Mrs. Andrews’ grading skills if our grade was that low. Dylan and I successfully raised our pretend daughter from infancy to retirement age (which was only thirty, since she was a supermodel, but still). We went actual car shopping and actual grocery shopping. We solved every catastrophic event without breaking the bank. We made sound financial decisions. We, like Lauren, had nailed the entire project.

  Holding my breath, I opened the folder. On the top of the first page, in big, bold red lettering, was an A-plus.

  I shut the folder and hit Dylan over the shoulder with it. “We got an A-plus.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Dylan said with a laugh.

  “Then why did you look so somber after you saw it earlier?”

  “Because I wanted to make you worry.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “And why would you want to do that?”

  He reached out with both hands and gently pinched my cheeks. “Because you’re so adorable when you worry.”

  I swatted his hands away and looked to Lauren for support, but she just shrugged and said, “He’s right. Your worried face is kinda cute.”

  I rolled my eyes and chuckled as the three of us headed out of the classroom. Once we were in the hallway, Lauren gave us a small wave.

  “Well, I’ll catch you guys later.”

  She and I used to walk to our next class together, but since we got back from break, Dylan had become the one to accompany me. Lauren knew she was free to join us on the walk, but I think she liked giving us as much time to ourselves as she could. I would have been no different with her and Jake if he went to our school.

  I returned her wave as she took off down the hallway.

  “So,” I started to say to Dylan, but stopped when something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention: Elijah and Hannah exiting the classroom huddled close together, talking and laughing. When Elijah noticed me looking at him, he gave me a small smile before the two of them turned and headed in the opposite direction.

  “So, what?” Dylan asked next to me.

  I motioned to Elijah and Hannah’s retreating forms. “How are those two doing?”

  He followed my line of vision. “They’re doing okay. Taking things slow. They’re going on their first official sort-of date this weekend.”

  My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. But it’s a group thing with a couple of the guys and their girlfriends. A casual thing, mostly, but they agreed to go together.”

  I smiled as we began walking toward my next class. “That’s nice. I hope everything works out for them.”

  “Yeah, so do I. And so does Elijah.”

  “And how about you and Elijah?” I asked. “Are things still going okay between you two?”

  Dylan nodded. “Yeah. Things are mostly back to normal. He even wanted to hang out with me tonight, but I told him I couldn’t because, well, you know.”

  I did know. Now that Baker’s Dozen was over for the season, Caitlyn had somehow managed to convince Dylan to join her in watching yet another competition show, and he was coming over after school to watch the first episode with her. After that, he was planning on staying for dinner. Mom couldn’t stand the fact he ate dinner alone most nights—now that his dad was in Seattle and his mom was still working long hours—so she had started inviting him over every couple of nights for nice home-cooked meals.

  It was only a matter of time before she started suggesting he arrive half an hour early every morning to pick me up so he could join us for breakfast too.

  “Are you weirded out by how much my family seems to adore you?” I asked him. “You can be honest.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “Honestly? No, not at all. In fact, if I wasn’t hopelessly in love with their daughter, I would have already begged your parents to adopt me.”

  I giggled. “Yeah, please don’t do that, because they probably would. And Caitlyn would encourage it because she has always wanted a brother.”

  Dylan took my hand in his as we approached the door to my next class. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning on it.”

  “Good,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze.

  We stopped a few feet away from the classroom and Dylan turned to face me. “So, um, about our project.”

  I glanced up at him. “What about it?”

  He looked down at the folder in his hands and with a wistful smile, said, “So, I guess now that it’s all over, we’re officially pretend divorced, huh?”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but now that I had, it made me feel kind of sad. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I’m going to miss being pretend married to you,” he said softly.

  “And I’m going to miss being pretend married to you,” I said. “Although, now that the project is completely over, I can inform you with full confidence that you’re going to make a great real husband someday.”

  Dylan’s eyes widened as he grinned. “Really? Thanks.” He then looked shy as he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “Would you mind, um, maybe mentioning that to Claire Wheeler?”

  I gasped and punched his arm, causing him to double over in laughter.

  “Geez, Briggs, it was a joke!”

  “Jokes are supposed to be funny,” I said with a huff.

  “Aw, c’mon.” He slipped his hands around my waist and then maneuvered me so that my back was up against a random locker. “It was kind of funny.”

  Admittedly, it kind of was. It wasn’t like I was worried at all that Dylan was still interested in Claire. I wasn’t sure if he ever really was to begin with.

  “Okay, fine,” I caved. “It was marginally funny.”

  “I thought so.” He flashed me a charming smile and then glanced down at his watch. “Well, I should get heading to my next class before I’m late.” He leaned down and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. It was too brief, but it was the best we could do during school hours.

  “Here,” he said, holding out our project folder to me. “You can have this if you want.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking it from him.

  “I’ll see you after school.” Dylan gave me another quick kiss—this time, on the forehead—and then took
off down the hallway.

  I waited until he turned the corner up ahead and disappeared from my sight before I turned and walked into the classroom. There was still another minute or so left until the bell rang, so I quickly took my seat and opened the folder.

  There were too many pages to go through all of them before class began, but I thumbed through most of them to see if Mrs. Andrews had written comments to anything. There were a few here and there, but I figured I would wait until later to read them over with Dylan.

  I closed the folder and leaned down to put it away when I noticed one of the pages was sticking out of the bottom. The rest of our project had been bound together with clips, so I was curious why one of the pages was loose. Pulling it out, I saw right away that it wasn’t part of our original project; instead, it was a handwritten note from Mrs. Andrews.

  Cassie and Dylan,

  Near the beginning of this project, you both considered ending your partnership and continuing to work separately. I am so glad in the end you decided not to do that. You seemed to learn very quickly that life isn’t always easy when you’re sharing it with someone else. Opinions differ. Personalities clash. And sometimes, the stress from the moments and events we encounter in our lives can make it difficult to communicate. They can make it seem like the only option is to go our separate ways. But you two stuck it out. You worked on whatever differences you may have had, and you came out stronger for it. Be proud of that.

  You two make a great team.

  The note was short and sweet, but it still managed to bring a tear to my eye.

  I remembered the afternoon she kept me after class to inform me Dylan wanted to finish the project on his own. I was so worried that I had done something wrong. Something to offend him. I knew now that wasn’t the case. He was just trying to keep his distance. Trying not to complicate things. Like Mrs. Andrews said, he felt the only option was for us to go our separate ways.

  That just wasn’t an option for us anymore.

  I smiled as I tucked the note back into the folder before putting it in my backpack. I couldn’t wait to show it to Dylan later.