Competing With the Star (Star #2)

by Krysten Lindsay Hager

  Competing

  With The Star

  By Krysten Lindsay Hager

  Competing With The Star

  Copyright © 2016 by Krysten Lindsay Hager.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: March 2016

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-548-3

  ISBN-10: 1-68058-548-7

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  Dedicated to my mother, who has been reading my stories since the first one about Taffy the Teddy Bear.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter One

  Why did the day always drag on for eternity when you had plans after school? It was as if the minute hand on the clock refused to move. As I stared at it, I wondered if that whole thing about a watched clock never moves was actually true. I couldn’t wait for the school day to end because today, Nick Jenkins, my new boyfriend, and I were meeting after school to get ice cream together. It was going to be our first official date. Well, sorta. I didn’t think my parents would be all that amped about my going on a formal official date, but an afterschool ice cream place trip on a weekday? That sounded doable. So I asked them for that and they were okay with it. And now I just had to wait for stupid time to cooperate and Nick and I would be sitting together at Scoops in that back booth, talking about whether or not the Tigers would make it to the playoffs.

  “Class, I want you to finish reading the first three chapters of Sense and Sensibility for class tomorrow,” Mrs. Simpson said. “Make sure to take notes.”

  Then the most beautiful sound in the world came along—the final bell. I grabbed my bag and rushed out the door to my locker, where I ran into Reagan O’Hara, Nick’s gorgeous ex-girlfriend.

  “Watch where you’re going, spaz,” she said, glaring at me. “Exactly where are you in such a hurry to get to anyway? I can’t imagine that you’d have plans.”

  I could have said, “Off to meet my boyfriend, you know, the guy you used to badmouth me to,” but no, I took the high road and said, “Excuse me,” and kept going.

  “Whatever, loser,” she said.

  My shoulders tensed. As I tried to ignore her and tell myself it was just jealousy, I couldn’t pretend that her words didn’t hurt. I had been considered kind of a loser at my old school in Goodacre. I had had one super close best friend who I did everything with, Lexi Irvin, and when she moved to Dallas, it was as if I had been abandoned. So yeah, I had felt like a complete loser in Goodacre, but now I was here in Grand Haven, with new friends and a new positive outlook on life. I had a new best friend, Charlotte Lidstrom, and had become friends with former teen TV star Simone Hendrickson and her best friend, Asia Milanowski.

  It could be intimidating hanging out with Simone since she was popular, pretty, and famous. Sometimes I felt invisible next to her, and unfortunately, hanging with Simone sometimes meant spending time with people like Reagan or Simone’s other friends, Pilar Ito and Morgan Kemp. Morgan was the ultimate mean girl. I swear, even if she told me she loved my outfit and was hooked up to a lie detector test saying she was telling the truth, I still wouldn’t want to risk it and I’d go home and change. But today I was not going to worry about Morgan, Reagan, or any of that. I was just going to focus on my first date with Nick…until I rounded the corner and ran into Simone, who was waiting for me at my locker with Morgan and Pilar.

  “Hey, Hadley,” Simone said. “Wanted to return your lucky bracelet. Let’s hope it helped me pass my math test.”

  She handed me my heart and natural stone charm bracelet and I slid it on my wrist. Morgan looked down at my hands and made a face.

  “Why are you wearing such dark nail polish?” she asked me.

  My face got warm. “I thought the color was pretty when I saw it in the store. I’ve never seen this shade of purple with so much blue in it.”

  “Guys aren’t into weird nail polish colors,” Morgan said as she fluffed her long curly blonde hair with her red polished fingers.

  Great, so even my nail polish was wrong. Could I do anything right?

  “Here comes Nick,” Pilar said, and the girls all got quiet.

  “Hey, guys,” he said, coming up and nodding at them.

  I started to curl my fingers under so he wouldn’t notice my dark polish—the color that up until a few minutes ago I thought was unique and beautiful was now making me feel like a little oddball.

  “Cool color,” Nick said.

  “Huh?”

  “I like the blue. It’s very you,” he said, and then he reached over and intertwined his fingers with mine. Take that, you dark nail polish haters.

  “So are we all heading over to Scoops together?” he asked.

  Simone played with a strand of her long blonde hair, but didn’t say a thing.

  “Yup, we thought we’d go over with you guys,” Morgan said, smiling up at him with her gleaming white teeth.

  Wait, what? No, not cool. This was our first date and I knew I’d feel awkward talking to him around a group—a group judging me on what I said, did, and apparently even the colors I wore.

  We started off toward the ice cream parlor and I stayed silent. Nick squeezed my hand.

  “You okay?” he asked, leaning over.

  I shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Are you not into the fact that we have a crowd with us?” he asked.

  I bit my lip. I knew he was outgoing and I didn’t want to seem like this pathetic, shy little thing hiding from groups.

  “’Cause I’ll be honest. I was hoping it’d just be us,” he said.

  I nodded. “Me too.”

  He stopped walking and pulled out his phone. “Oh man, I left my ringer off and my mom’s called six times. You guys go on ahead and I’ll call her back.”

  “We don’t mind waiting,” Morgan said.

  “Nah, she’s loud when she’s yelling at me,” he said. “Don’t want an audience for that. We’ll meet up with you later.”

  Morgan turned around and narrowed her eyes at me as the girls continued on and Nick pretended to be dialing his mother.

  “I didn’t know you hung out with Morgan,” he said.

  Did it seem as if we hung out regularly what with the glares and all? Instead I said, “I don’t know her very well.”

  He nodded. “Well, I see her a lot
because she hangs out with Simone. We all went to get smoothies one day. Morgan was so rude to the girl behind the counter. She got a peach flavored one and I guess she ordered raspberry, but she acted as if the girl spit in it or something. I was embarrassed,” he said.

  I nodded, but wanted to ask when they went out together and was it a date. No, it would make me look jealous or possessive. Instead, I tried to put it out of my mind as we walked, but pretty soon I was imagining them holding hands and drinking from one smoothie with two straws.

  “Do you guys hang out a lot?” I asked, wanting to ask if this was before or after we started going out.

  “Nah, she’s just with the group I hang out with.”

  That didn’t clear anything up. I was sorta with that group, so where was I while he was out getting smoothies with this…no, no, stop it, brain. I was not going to overthink this. He was not seeing anyone else. He just had a smoothie…with another girl, without me there.

  “I have been looking forward to hanging out with you all day,” he said, smiling at me. “Why does the universe hate us and made sure our classes are nowhere near each other during the day?”

  “Do you think it’s conspiring against us?”

  “Well, if it’s us against the world, I’m betting on us,” he said with a smile.

  My face flushed and he squeezed my hand. I wanted to come out with something flirty and cute—like Simone always did. She always knew the perfect thing to say and said it in this super adorable way where all the guys would be hanging on her every word. She never acted too obnoxious or sexy—just that casual, flirty, fun personality she had on the TV show she used to be on, Duncan’s Corner.

  I racked my brain for something flirty to say, nervous about the long, silent pause. Why couldn’t I think of anything to fill the silence?

  “Gee, I hope they still have orange creamsicle milkshakes. I heard they change the flavors in fall,” I said. What? I did not just take a romantic moment and ruin it with my gluttony. Couldn’t I just be cool for two freaking seconds? Ugh.

  “Well, they’ll probably still have orange sherbet, so even if they don’t have the shake, they can probably whip something up with that,” he said.

  I nodded, but I knew I had ruined our adorable moment. We had almost had pure soap opera dialogue there and now we were about to walk into a public place where it’d be a lot harder to recreate that sweet moment.

  We walked inside Scoops and Morgan was waving us over to their table. Lovely.

  “Hey, I already ordered you a raspberry smoothie,” she said to Nick. “I know it’s your favorite.”

  “Oh, um…” he started to say as she handed the plastic cup to him.

  “My treat,” she said.

  If she was acting like this when I was standing right there, what did she do when I wasn’t around? Sit on his lap?

  Nick turned to me. “You wanted an orange creamsicle milkshake, right?” he asked.

  I nodded and he ordered an extra-large. He waved my hand away when I tried to pay. The girls were all sitting at a big table with two empty seats for us, but he walked over to one of the smaller tables with just two seats.

  “You guys,” Morgan said. “We saved you seats.”

  Nick raised his eyebrows at me. “I guess we gotta go over there or we’ll look rude,” he said.

  We walked over and sat down. Simone was avoiding making eye contact with me.

  “Oh, Hadley, I’m so sorry. Do you have social anxiety issues? Do groups make you feel nervous or something?” Morgan asked, pretending to be concerned. Then she looked at Nick. “I would never want to make someone who suffered from an anxiety disorder feel bad.”

  I couldn’t even speak.

  “No, we just wanted to sit by ourselves,” Nick said.

  Did he see she was being a jerk with her fake concern while making me out to look as if I was scared of my own shadow? Or was he taken in by her like every other guy on the planet?

  “Are you sure you’re okay here, Hadley?” she asked.

  “I’m sure she can handle sitting with us in an ice cream shop,” Pilar said, flipping her jet black ponytail over her shoulder.

  “I’m fine,” I said, shocked Pilar would stick up for me, and even more surprised that Simone, my supposed good friend, would sit there silently while Morgan made me look stupid. I unwrapped my straw and practically stabbed it into my milkshake.

  “Hey,” Nick said, pulling the cup away from me. “Can we share?”

  I looked at him, surprised, and he held up his own straw and then put it into the cup.

  “I promise I don’t have cooties,” he said, winking.

  The fact that the raspberry smoothie Morgan bought him was just sitting there, unloved and unwanted, made me feel better.

  “Where’s Asia?” I asked.

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “Math tutoring. How lame can she be?”

  “Well, it’s important to keep your grades up,” Nick said.

  “Of course, you’re so right, Nick,” Morgan said.

  Pilar shook her head. “But, Morgan, you said the only thing lamer than her getting math help was the fact that she was the one—”

  “Pilar, I would never say anything like that. Did you bump your head or something?”

  Pilar got quiet and went back to her butterscotch sundae.

  “Asia’s not getting tutored, she’s doing the tutoring,” Simone said. “She’s doing this afterschool program thing. I’m just lucky I scored high enough on the last math quiz that I didn’t have to show up for a mandatory tutoring session. Reagan wasn’t so lucky.”

  Nick looked down at the mention of his ex’s name, but then he reached over and took another sip of the milkshake.

  “You were right,” he said, smiling at me. “This is good.”

  Morgan cleared her throat. “Wow, Hadley, you are the first young person I’ve ever seen get one of those. I thought they only kept them on the menu for the senior citizens.”

  “I don’t think there’s an age range for ice cream flavors,” Nick said.

  “My grandma likes vanilla and that’s the most popular flavor at the nursing home she’s in,” Pilar said as Morgan glared at her. “What?”

  “Pilar, if you’re done educating us on geriatric ice cream preferences, maybe you could make yourself useful and get me a water,” Morgan said.

  Nick looked over at me with wide eyes. Morgan saw it and quickly gave him a fake smile.

  “Just kidding. I totally didn’t mean that. It’s just a little joke-y thing that we do,” she said.

  Pilar looked confused. “Wait, am I getting you the water or not?”

  “Oh, Pilar, you are so funny,” Morgan said. “I just love this girl, don’t you?”

  “You know what? I need to hit the drugstore to pick up something for my mom. Hadley, are you ready to go?” Nick asked me.

  The date was over already? Way to make it memorable for me, Morgan.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Oh, we’ll walk out with you,” Simone said, getting up.

  “You guys still have your sundaes. No worries, we’ll catch up with you tomorrow or something,” he said, picking up my milkshake.

  He started heading to the door and I could barely keep up with him. Great, could he run off any faster?

  “Nick?” Morgan called. “You forgot your raspberry smoothie.”

  “Oh, uh…you drink it,” he said. “See ya.”

  As soon as he opened the door, he began to walk even faster. Seriously, could he not get away from me fast enough? What happened to our perfect date? And why didn’t Simone stick up for me?

  Chapter Two

  “Nick,” I said, panting. “Can you slow down a little?”

  He darted around the corner and then stopped. “Sorry, I didn’t want them catching up to us.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, that was super awkward,” he said.

  “You know she totally wasn’t kidding when she ordered Pilar around. She treats her like
crap.”

  “I don’t care. Wait, not that I don’t care about Pilar, it’s just today was supposed to be about me and you, so let’s get back to that.”

  I felt the smile spreading across my face. “Works for me.”

  “Let’s go down to the boardwalk and sit. It’s still pretty warm out. We can get some popcorn too, if you’re done with the shake.”

  “Maybe just another sip or two,” I said. “I like the guy who made it. He always uses extra whipped cream. The other guy is so cheap with the whipped cream and he doesn’t shake up the can very well, so it comes out watery. This guy gets it right—perfect consistency.”

  Did I sound like a little kid? Nick laughed. “I was thinking he got the whipped cream right too.”

  We found a picnic table right across from where the boats were docked. The best thing about living in Grand Haven was being near the lake. I loved just sitting and watching the water. It was so peaceful.

  “Pretty soon it’s going to get too cold to sit out here,” he said.

  “You know, I’ve never been here in the winter. My dad always said this side of the state was too unpredictable in the winter to plan trips once November hit, so my grandparents always came to the Detroit area for Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  I nodded. “Sometimes we’d even go to the parade downtown. It’s a lot of fun. And then we’d come home and eat while watching the Lions game. My grandma says I only pretend to be into football to avoid helping in the kitchen.”

  He laughed. “You’re into football though.”

  “Yeah, I am, but whatever. What do you do for Thanksgiving?”

  He cleared his throat. “Um, well, you know that nursing home Pilar mentioned? My grandpa’s in the same one. Last year we went and had an early dinner with him. We’ll do the same this year. If he’s having a good day, we stay and visit, but if he’s tired then we come home. Last year we weren’t really sure he knew it was Thanksgiving,” he said, staring out at the water. “I think he knew it was Christmas though when they put the tree up. Maybe. I dunno.”