Chapter Twenty-Three Julia
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“There’s something about being invited to a party in the city that makes you feel like you’ve landed.”
—Remington
Julia
If there was a bright side to my unpopularity at Gardenwood, it was Donovan and Jasmine.
Somehow, in spite of my poor reception by everyone else, they actually seemed to like me.
The group chat they’d started with me on my first day, to use just in case I had any questions, had become our constant conversation.
We liked a lot of the same books and watched a lot of the same reality TV (hello, Below Deck), so what’d started as a resource had become an actual—dare I say it—friendship.
It was a lot like me and my friends back home.
Thank God for Don and Jaz.
“Julia!”
I turned, surprised to hear my name when I was walking down the hall with the only two people who ever talked to me at school (aside from my brother when I happened to see him and Damion’s “Lowell” whenever he passed my desk in transition).
Everyone else usually just whispered and murmured about me; they didn’t shout my name.
“Julia, have you been holding out on us? Are you friends with Beckett Schwab?” Jasmine asked, tugging on my sleeve as Beckett stood in front of his locker, grinning and gesturing for us to come over.
His tie was completely untied, just hanging around his collar like a border separating his dark blazer from his white button-down.
“I exchanged like two sentences with him at the preseason soiree,” I said out of the corner of my mouth, “before he ran off to do keg stands with the Toms. That’s it.”
“I still can’t believe you were at the kids’ table,” Donovan said, sounding in awe. “I’ve never been invited and I’ve been here my whole life.”
“I wasn’t invited,” I said, irritated that this place had a cute nickname for whatever that upstairs party had been. “Liam was. And it sucked, trust me.”
“Come on,” Jasmine said, pulling me with her toward Beckett’s locker. “Let’s see what he wants.”
“What do you want with our Julia?” Donovan said, skipping right over to him.
“Well, Donnie, if you must know,” he said, his amused gaze moving back and forth between her and me, “I feel like I blew an opportunity to get to know the new girl the other night. One second she was there; the next she was gone. So I thought I’d see if you guys want to come to my birthday party tomorrow night so I can rectify that situation. ”
“Absolutely not,” Jasmine said. “The last time I attended one of your birthday parties I got puked on.”
“Come on, that was in the third grade,” he said with a laugh. “Give me another chance, Jaz; I promise I can hold my soda now.”
Donovan looked at me with her eyebrows raised and said, “His parties are legendary.”
I pictured the Toms and had zero interest. “I don’t know, I think maybe—”
“And they’re always super chill. The Skins never go to them because they don’t like Beckett,” she said, sounding like she was trying to convince me.
“You’re not supposed to call them that,” he chided with a smile. “And I suspect they secretly like me.”
“Coco hates you,” Jasmine insisted.
“Beckett is one of those wildly honest people,” Donovan explained to me, “who you either love or despise.”
“Choose love, Julia Nebraska,” Beckett said to me. “And Liam’s coming. You guys should totally come with your brother.”
“No offense, but our fellow classmates haven’t exactly been welcoming to her,” Jasmine said, looking over at me sympathetically.
“You mean New Money here?” he said, acknowledging the insult with a warm smile, somehow making me feel… not attacked.
“Yeah, there’s that,” I said, rolling my eyes but giving in to a smile.
“What if I told you that none of the assholes will be at my house, and I will personally ensure that you have a great time? It’s casual, jeans and sneakers, it’s on the roof of my building, so we can use our outdoor voices, and we’re talking twenty people max. Very low-key vibes.”
“I’d say thanks—seriously,” I said, meaning it. He really seemed like he was trying to be nice, which felt shockingly great, like stepping into warm sunshine after being stuck in the bone-chilling cold. “But I think I’ll—”
“Julia,” he said, and suddenly Beckett was lowering his head, his eyes looking straight into mine. “I promise you’ll have fun.”
And as he smiled at me, as the three of them smiled at me, I wondered if maybe they did want to hang out with me.
I was fun and I could be brave, right?
I looked at Donovan and Jasmine and decided, for the first time since being in New York, to take a chance. “You said jeans and sneakers…?”
“Attagirl,” Beckett said. “Get ready for a good time.”
I was in a surprisingly good mood the rest of the day because I finally had something to look forward to. Something to do with friends. And apparently I wasn’t great at hiding my happiness.
“Are you humming?” Damion asked while he tutored me after school.
“Hmm?” I looked up from my worksheet and Damion was scowling at me. “What?”
“You’re humming while you work,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “In a good mood, are we?”
Since the soiree, things had snapped right back into the “before” with us—before Times Square. He didn’t talk to me at school, and if our eyes happened to accidentally meet, he either threw me one of those ridiculously overdone flirtatious gazes or stared at me like he hated me.
Fortunately, when he came over to work with me on math, he slid right into his Tutor Damion identity.
Helpful, patient, absurdly smart.
“I kind of am,” I admitted, reaching for my Dr Pepper.
“Is there a reason?” he asked as he ran a hand over Clank’s back.
It was confirmed—my cat was officially obsessed with him and jumped on his lap every time he sat down in our kitchen.
Traitor.
For a second I thought about telling Damion the unbelievable fact that I had extracurricular plans coming up that didn’t involve math, but then I thought better of it. He’d probably just mock me somehow, and I didn’t want him to say anything to ruin my hopes.
“Nah,” I said, shrugging. “Today just sucked a little less than other days.”
“Don’t forget the final step,” he said, pointing down at the paper.
I hate your slutty little glasses, I thought, because I didn’t hate them at all.
“I’m not,” I said, giving him an overexaggerated eye roll. “I was about to do it.”
His eyes told me he didn’t believe me. “Sure you were.”
I was about to argue, but I could see Bernard was headed our way, walking in that way that meant he had important business to discuss. Very serious business, by the intense look on his face.
Which made me wonder why his stern gaze slipped right past me and landed squarely on Damion.