“What don’t I know?” I screech.
She ticks her head back and forth a bit, like my lack of knowledge on this particular subject, whatever it may be, is astounding. She reaches into her front pocket and slides out her phone. Her fingers graze quickly over the touch screen. Then she shoves it into my hands.
“Look.”
The screen is so small that I can barely see the headline, but I can tell she’s navigated to her favorite gossip blog.
“What about it?”
“Look at the first article!”
I touch the screen. The page zooms in. The headline of the first entry appears – Zombie Boy in Love?
“I’m still not getting it.”
“Pictures! Look at the pictures.”
I drag my finger so the article scrolls down. The first photo shows two people embracing, barely any aspects of them visible.
“That picture came out yesterday,” Caroline says. “But you can’t really tell from it.”
“Tell what?”
“Keep going.”
The next photo is the same couple, but the girl is less obscured. Her hair is soft brown and she’s wearing a shimmery green dress. The fabric looks familiar.
Another photo down, the couple is starting to pull away from each other and you can get a good look at the guy’s profile. There’s something very familiar about him. Eerily familiar. But what’s his picture doing on a celebrity site?
Holy crap. The next photo – you don’t just see him, but the girl is visible too. The waves of brown hair brushing her shoulders, the pale white of her skin, the heated flush of her apple round cheeks. And the sparkle of her confused, but delighted, kelly-green eyes.
“That’s me,” I whisper. This is impossible, I mean. I didn’t kiss anyone famous. They have me confused with someone else. A strangled giggle escapes my throat. I quickly clamp my lips shut and press my fists against them.
“Um yeah it is,” Caroline looks damn right astounded by my confusion now.
I stare closer at the picture filling the tiny screen. What the hell am I doing on this blog? And if that’s me, then that means Grant is...I scroll down to the text of the article, my fingers clutching the phone so tightly the tips are starting to turn white.
Hollywood’s favorite Zombie Hunter, Grant West, finds new love with unnamed beauty. He was spotted Saturday night outside LIMA restaurant, leaving with his new squeeze (pictured above). Coincidentally Summer Stone arrived just as he was taking off, her new beau in hand as well. Needless to say, chaos ensued, but not before the papz could snag a few photos of the new couple engaged in one very hot goodbye kiss.
Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. My heart throbs to the point of impending explosion and my breath wheezes in and out. I lose balance and sag against the locker. This isn’t happening, this can’t be happening. I look at Caroline, she’s watching me closely, too closely.
No. No. No. No. No. I can’t think of anything else to say. Oh wait. “SHIT!”
Everyone around us who wasn’t already staring looks over as my voice echoes down the hall. Caroline’s mouth forms a large ‘O’ and from behind me I hear a low voice rumble. “Pardon me?” I turn around slowly and find myself face to face with Mr. Turnbull, the vice principal. I swallow. I should say something, apologize, excuse myself, give him some sort of explanation, but there are no words. All I can think is: Shit. Grant West. Shit. I kissed him. Shit. My picture is on the internet. So I just stare at him, my mouth opening a closing, doing a pretty good imitation of a goldfish.
Caroline slides forward. “Mr. Turnbull, Sydney is so sorry, she just found out something rather,” she looks at me, words failing for a moment, “upsetting I guess, and well...”
He purses his lips and folds his arms across the breadth of his barrel-like chest. “Choose your words more wisely in the future Miss...Sydney was it?”
Kudos to him for remembering my name, but I don’t really care. I nod, barely. He seems satisfied and continues on his path down the hall.
Caroline spins to face me. “What the hell is going on?”
I press my hands against my cheeks, squishing my lips together in a fleshy bud. “I have no idea.”
***
Caroline hates to miss first period on Mondays. We both have P.E. and so does Liam. He’s been known, on a daily basis, to remove his shirt halfway through class. But despite the call of Liam’s sweat glistened chest, Caroline decides we’re ditching class and drags me to the senior lounge. I’m more than happy to be dragged, seeing as I can barely think for myself right now. At this point I probably wouldn’t be able to find the gym without Caroline’s help anyway. Everything around me is a blur. I just keep seeing Grant’s face in my head, his lips coming at me.
This can’t be happening. It just can’t. I’m not that kind of girl, the kind who kisses boys she barely knows on sidewalks. And certainly not the kind that gets photographed and has her picture splashed across tabloids.
“Tell me everything!” Caroline shoves me into the senior lounge, a cramped, closet-like space filled with old furniture and a decrepit microwave.
“We’re not supposed to be in here, we’re juniors…” I say quietly, unsure why I’m pointing this out. I have bigger problems right now.
“Screw that! I want details.”
She leads me over to the sofa and pushes me. Thanks to my otherwise occupied mind and an already precarious sense of balance, I tip like a drunk girl in stilettos and drop down onto the springy surface of the couch. I wince as my shoulder hits the cushion-less backrest. Instead of looking at Caroline, I run my hands over the upholstery and grimace. It’s old, pilled, and smells. There are stains all over it too. An ink blotch by my left knee and something vaguely orange and tomato scented by my right thigh.
Grant West touched that thigh, in the middle of our kiss, letting his hand slowly creep down my side, brushing his finger tips so lightly...
The sound of the door slamming forces me back to reality. Caroline is securing the lock and yanking down the blind that covers the window.
“How could you not tell me you met, no kissed, Grant West? You know how much I love him! I’m not jealous, I swear, but how could you not call me?”
I try to stand up, but the couch is too low and my legs are too weak. I merely flail a little before giving up. “I didn’t know!”
“You didn’t know? What the hell does that mean?” She looks down at me. Despite the fact that she’s technically half a foot shorter than me, and a good twenty pounds lighter, I feel utterly miniscule beneath her furious, questioning gaze.
“It means I didn’t know who he was.” I fling up my arms and glare at her. I know I shouldn’t be getting mad at her, it’s not her fault. But I can barely deal with my own confusion, let alone hers.
“But...but he’s Grant West. How could you not know? And all the cameras? You had to have wondered what they were there for?
“I didn’t recognize him...and the cameras were all taking pictures of Summer...” I rub my right eye with the heel of my fist.
“You didn’t recognize him? God Sydney, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Everyone recognizes Grant. My four year old sister knows who he is.”
I shrug.
“You make no sense. Tell me everything. Start from the beginning.”
I sag back into the couch and glare at the ceiling. It’s easier not to look at Caroline directly, what with the gymnastics routine her face keeps doing every time I say something she doesn’t get. “We met at this restaurant. I was supposed to be meeting Alyssa but she flaked again. So I was sitting there and I dropped my phone, and when I went to pick it up, I kind of hit him with my chair.”
“You hit him with your chair!”
I nod. “And my forehead.”
“What?”
> I look at her. “Well after that we both bent down to get the phone at the same time, and I knocked his forehead with mine...”
“So you hit him twice? How the hell does that lead to him kissing you in front of a million people?”
“It wasn’t a million people...it was like twelve photographers and some passersby, Summer Stone, the cab driver...”
Caroline rolls her eyes and I shut up, getting what she means. The picture is out there for every eye on the planet to see. I go on with my story.
“Then he sat down beside me and started talking to me.”
“And you didn’t recognize him at all?”
“No.” I squeeze my eyes shut and picture his face. Now that I know who he is, I can see it, totally. But at the time, I had no idea. At all. He was just some hot guy who was talking to me. Although looking back now, there were signs. The weird look on his face when I asked him what he did for a living, that panic in his eyes when that woman screamed out after spilling on her dress...he must have thought he’d been recognized.
“How is that possible? I mean between me and Angelina you’ve seen Dead of Night a million times.
Dead of Night, right. Wait. Oh my God. “I’m so stupid!”
“What?”
“I told him I hated Dead of Night. I went on and on about how gross it is.”
“You’re kidding me?”
I shake my head, recalling the brief moment in our conversation when I told him his movie sucked. Unknowingly, of course. But what does it matter now?
“So let me get this straight. You hit him with your chair, smacked him with your forehead, and told him the movie he’s most famous for is crap?”
“It sounds really bad when you lay it all out like that.”
“And he still kissed you?” Disbelief fills her face.
“Yes.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Join the club.”
***
Under Caroline’s forceful orders, we spend the rest of first period locked in the senior lounge, dissecting my meeting with Grant. She’s so busy marveling in the events of Saturday night that she barely notices how freaked out I am. Things like this don’t happen to me. My picture isn’t supposed to be featured on every website on the internet, my face isn’t supposed to be anywhere near recognizable. Maybe I was shoved into my corner of obscurity by my sisters and their flashy reputations, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t gotten comfortable there. Unpopularity is my thing. I revel in it.
The closer the clock ticks toward the end of the hour, the more anxious I get. Caroline wants to know what Grant’s lips tasted like, I want to know if I can start home schooling tomorrow.
“Snap out of it,” Caroline exhales loudly.
“Everyone knows what happened; everyone’s seen the pictures. It’s a disaster.”
Caroline scoffs. “A disaster? Sydney this is a miracle. You’re famous.”
“I’m not famous, I’m a freak show. Someone people can point at and talk about.”
“In the bathroom earlier I overhead Shawna Sands saying how you and her are practically best friends.”
“Who?”
“She’s on the squad with your sister. Bright red hair?”
“Her? We’re not friends. Last week she was over visiting Angelina and I’m pretty sure she thought I was the maid or something. She kept asking me to get her things.”
“Did you?”
“Of course not.”
“Whatever. Just keep an open mind Sydney.” Her eyes get all sparkly and it’s almost like I can see the cogs working in her brain. The smile that spreads across her face practically reaches from earlobe to earlobe. “This is the start of something big, and that’s a promise.
Chapter Six
Somebody, well my father, once told me that life is a series of tests and it doesn’t matter whether you pass or fail, only that you tried. My dad is full of crap like that. Sage wisdom he feels must be passed down to his daughters. I think he absorbed all his parenting skills from old episodes of The Brady Bunch, because if there’s ever been another dad so full of mushy crap, it’s Mr. Brady.
Still, I can’t help remember his words as I traverse down the first floor hallway between first and second periods. Everyone is looking at me. I can feel their eyes boring into every surface of my body. Looks of interest, curiosity, confusion, and in a few cases, open disdain follow my every move. If this isn’t a test I’m meant to fail, I don’t know what is.
I have history second period, and I’d skip it if my essay weren’t due and if Mr. Hughes wasn’t a complete jackass when it comes to handing in late assignments. I take my seat near the front of the room and attempt, in vain, to ignore the looks that people keep throwing my way as they file in through the classroom door.
I wish Caroline was in this class. But no, she had to take Biology second period and leave me here all alone. Well okay, I’m not completely alone, Paul sits like two seats behind me, and Shanae is in the back corner (we sit in alphabetical order, otherwise we’d all be sitting together). But what use are your friends when one: they aren’t immediately within reach, and two: you can barely look them in the eye because, like everyone else, they’re staring at you. I want to whip around and tell Paul to cut it out, but I don’t.
When the final bell buzzes, Mr. Hughes starts swooping about the room, snagging essays from students. He approaches me and slides my paper off my desk. When I look up, he winks.
“Nice work on that test before the break Sydney.”
He’s winking at me? Teachers never wink at me. Nobody ever winks at me. This is really awkward. What do I do?
He leans down. Why is he leaning down? Mr. Hughes, when not teaching history, serves as assistant Basketball coach. Unless you can shoot a three pointer, or you wear a little skirt cheering on those who shoot three pointers, he doesn’t usually give a crap who you are.
“My daughter, Stacey, absolutely loves your boyfriend.”
Okay what? I don’t have a boyfriend. Who is my boyfri--?
Oh.
Crap. They think he’s my boyfriend now? Yeah right. He didn’t even ask for my number, granted I never gave him a chance as I kind of ran away. But before that? Nope. What if they all think I can introduce them to him?
Mr. Hughes moves to my left and takes Wendy Hillbrook’s paper off her desk. When he’s gone she leans over and smiles. “That essay was killer, huh?”
I’ve been in the same class as Wendy since kindergarten. She’s never willingly spoken to me. Until now. Now she’s staring at me with bright, happy eyes. The kind of eyes that say, “hey, let’s be friends.”
I look away, thankful Mr. Hughes is starting his lecture.
***
According to Caroline, who’s spent the morning consulting her phone beneath her desk while teachers weren’t looking, the story – my story – has been picked up by everyone from People Magazine to CNN. No seriously, my face is there, right beside President Obama’s, on the front page of CNN’s website. Apparently my arrival in Grant’s life is bigger news than the economy.
Each article is a little different, but mostly the same. All are based on speculation, because let’s face it, only two people – well three including Caroline – really know what happened on that sidewalk. And even I’m a little fuzzy on the details.
All are in agreement, though, that I’m big news. Apparently Grant is known for being fiercely strict about letting his private life seep into the press. Therefore everyone is sure that he and I must be pretty serious for him to allow us to be seen together in public, let alone seen kissing.
Also, apparently, some famous blogger thinks I’m absolutely adorable and has dubbed me America’s New Girl Next Door. TMZ thinks I look a bit like Anne Hathaway in her teen years and Enterta
inment Weekly is dying to know who designed my green dress. Imagine when they figure out it’s off the rack at JC Penny for $79.99.
“Everyone thinks he’s my boyfriend,” I hiss at Caroline across our usual table in the cafeteria. We’re alone, but not for long. Paul is second in line to pay for his lunch and Zane is making his way toward us from the other side of the room.
“I know!” Caroline giggles. “It’s awesome.”
“No it’s not! It’s a lie.”
“So what?”
“So I can’t just walk around here pretending to be Grant West’s girlfriend. It’s pathetic.”
“No it’s not. You’re simply seizing an opportunity here. This whole thing is going to blow over eventually, take advantage while you can.”
“For all we know he’s going to release a statement to the press tonight that he doesn’t even know my last name. Then everyone would know I’m a liar.”
“Well I guess...”
“This is a nightmare.” I fold my arms on the table and bury my head in them.
“Can I sit here?” I hear a male voice ask. Paul probably, but the voice is a little too deep. Did he finally hit puberty? I’m kidding, I’m kidding.
“Um...”Caroline stutters. “Yeah, definitely...”
Something hits my leg. I jolt and glare at Caroline. “Why are you kicking me?”
“I think that was me actually.” I look over and stare aghast at Liam who has planted himself down right beside Caroline.
She looks from me to him, then back to me. She’s not talking, but I can read the little twitches on her face that are screaming, “omigodomigodomigod.”
What the hell is Liam doing at our table? And wait, isn’t that Jeff Trafford – quarterback – beside him. And...
“Hey, mind if sit here,” Michelle Trabeck is standing beside me, indicating the open spot on my right. I blink at her. Michelle is a senior and captain on the cheerleading squad. Angelina considers her one of her closest friends, but never once has Michelle spoken to me.
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