Chapter 3
Mick and I grew up just a few cornfields apart, but we didn’t cross paths until our first day of high school, when seven different middle schools converged into one massive freshman class at Arrowhead.
Most of the day unspooled exactly as I’d pictured. Many of the faces were unfamiliar, but the dynamic felt the same. The hallways still smelled like floor wax and pencil shavings, and kids clustered in tight groups that looked the same as middle school, just shuffled into new combinations.
Then Mick O’Leary walked into advanced algebra.
I was sitting in the front row, surrounded by the usual overachievers, when I looked up and froze.
With his wavy blond hair, bright blue eyes, and chiseled jaw, he looked like he belonged on the cover of a teen romance novel, not in the top math track.
He wore broken-in Levi’s, a white henley, and Timberland boots with the laces casually loose. Pure popular kid central casting.
He scanned the room. I waited for him to stroll to the back of the class, where his type always sat. Instead, he dropped his backpack on the floor and slid into the desk next to me.
“Welp. Here goes nothing,” he said, staring right at me.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“This class,” he said. “I hear Ms. Sprinkman’s a hard-ass.”
“Yeah, but she’s a really good teacher,” I blurted out.
I felt my face warm; it sounded more earnest than I meant it to.
He gave me a smile that lit up his whole face. “I’m Mick, by the way.”
“I’m Billie,” I said, my heart fluttering.
He leaned in slightly, squinting. “Ellie?”
“No. Billie. With a B. Like the boy’s name.”
“Ah. Billie,” he said, smiling. “I like that.”
I smiled back at him, feeling heat in my cheeks, then changed the subject before he could ask what it was short for. “Where’d you go to middle school?”
“Swallow,” he said. “You?”
“Richmond,” I said, though technically it ran K–8.
“So you know Will Rader?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking that I knew everyone from Richmond. “How do you know Will?”
“We’re both on the football team.”
I nodded. That tracked.
He started to say something else, but the bell rang, and Ms. Sprinkman breezed in, launching straight into roll call. When she got to Mick, I learned that his full name was Michael O’Leary.
Toward the end of the alphabet, I braced myself.
Sure enough, Ms. Sprinkman paused, then slowly enunciated every syllable: Wilhelmina Wright.
A few predictable snickers echoed behind me.
“Here,” I mumbled. “But I go by Billie.”
As Ms. Sprinkman made the notation, I could feel Mick’s eyes on me. When I glanced over, he grinned, one brow lifting.
“Wilhelmina?” he whispered.
I shrugged, both mortified and thrilled, then looked down at my notebook.
It was time to get serious. At fourteen, I had already mapped out my path to med school and trained myself to treat boys like background noise. But all through class, I was hyperaware of Mick beside me—his restless energy, the way he scribbled notes, the tap of his pencil.
When the bell rang, I calmly gathered my things. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mick slinging his backpack over one shoulder.
“See you tomorrow, Wilhelmina!” he said.
I met his gaze.
He winked.
I melted.
—
A few minutes later, I boarded the school bus, looking for Erin.
Erin Callahan lived down the street from me and had been my best friend for as long as I could remember.
She was more than a friend—she and I were the sister neither of us had.
When my family went on vacation, Erin came, too, and Erin’s mother, Joan, was like my second mother—only more fun.
When Erin was three, her father had taken off, never to be heard from again.
So it was just Erin and Joan, living together in a messy, joyful, girly household.
I loved sleeping over at Erin’s house, where there were fewer rules, better snacks, and no boys.
I loved everything about Erin. She had the kind of laugh that warmed you from within and a way of walking into a room like it already belonged to her.
She made me feel stronger just by being her friend.
Some called her bossy; I saw an efficient leader.
She took charge among our neighborhood friends—twins Sam and Eliot, along with another best friend duo, Anna and Lucy.
The six of us had grown up together, and Erin was our glue, the one who organized kickball games and staged elaborate plays on her glassed-in sunporch, assigning us roles with the authority of a director and making each of us feel that our part mattered.
I knew Erin and I would always be best friends, but that summer, I’d worried that our group would splinter in high school. When I’d shared my fear with Erin, her eyes turned fierce.
“I’d never let that happen,” she said.
Now, as I walked down the aisle of the bus, Erin popped up from the back row, her dark curly hair loose around her face.
She waved at me with a big grin—her default expression—and I smiled back at her.
I couldn’t wait to tell her about the boy I’d just met and was secretly glad that the rest of our friends were in fall sports and wouldn’t be riding the bus home with us.
I loved having Erin to myself, and matters of the heart were for her ears only.
Before I could sit, she was off and running, words tumbling out as her hands flew, buzzing about auditions for Footloose, the school musical.
“We should try out!” she said.
“No, you should try out. I can’t sing or dance.”
“Hello?! What about the Electric Slide and the Macarena?”
“You mean the dances it took you weeks to teach me?” I laughed.
“What do you think rehearsals are for?” she said. “Besides, we need extracurriculars to get into college.”
She smiled, poking me in the ribs, knowing college was my hot button.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, knowing it was out of the question. The mere idea of getting onstage made my stomach clench.
“That’s the spirit!” she said, holding up her hand for a high five.
I attempted a slap, our palms barely connecting. She shook her head and smiled. I knew the drill—we had to keep going until our hands made a satisfying clapping sound. She grinned when we finally got it on the third try.
“I just want to make sure we get out of our comfort zone in high school,” she said. “Try new things. Live large. These could be the best days of our lives!”
That was Erin in a nutshell. She made everything lighter and brighter. With her, anything felt possible.
I twisted the straps of my backpack and gave her a hesitant smile. “So I have some news.”
“Do tell!” she said, rubbing her hands together.
“I met a boy,” I said. “In math class.”
Erin’s blue eyes grew wide with excitement. “Oh my God! You have a prospect? Already?”
I shushed her, then lowered my voice to a whisper. “I wouldn’t call him a prospect. He’s way out of my league. But he’s really nice—”
“Then why isn’t he a prospect?”
“Once you see him, you’ll know.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You have the cutest dimples and the best smile.”
I rolled my eyes, thinking “best smile” was what people said when there was nothing else to compliment—right up there with “good skin.”
“Don’t roll your eyes at me! You’re beautiful, Billie.”
It’s what she always told me—and I knew she meant it with all her heart.
But I also knew that my ash-brown bob and pale skin made my gray-green eyes look washed out, like lake water under clouds.
Nothing striking, nothing unforgettable—just quietly there.
It didn’t help matters that I had the body of a ten-year-old. No hips, flat chest, toothpick legs.
“No. I mean it, Erin. He looks like a movie star.”
“Comp?”
“I don’t know…Heath Ledger, maybe?”
“Wowzer! What’s his name?”
“Mick O’Leary.” My heart fluttered just saying it aloud.
Erin let out a startled laugh. “Billie. Don’t you know who that is?”
I gave her a blank stare.
“He’s a stud football player from Swallow. His family owns Picker’s Paradise.”
“The orchard?”
“Yes. Remember we went there in the fourth grade?”
I nodded, then said, “How do you know all this?”
“It’s common knowledge. Get your nose out of the books and pay attention!” She laughed and knocked on my temple.
“So spill the deets. Did he flirt with you?”
“No,” I said. “But he teased me about my name.”
“Nothing says icebreaker like Wilhelmina!”
I smiled. “True.”
“And he has to be smart if he’s in your math class. I know you love smart.”
I shrugged and smiled, guilty as charged.
“Well, this is an exciting development. He could be your first boyfriend!”
“I really don’t see that happening,” I said, but I could already feel a knot of hope beginning to form.
“Yes, it will. Just play the long game,” she said with the easy certainty of someone who never doubted her place in the world. “Friends first, lovahs next.”
“Ha!”
“And before you know it, you’ll be doing it in the apple orchard!”
I shook my head, laughing as the bus rumbled on.
—
I took Erin’s advice to heart. Over the next few weeks, Mick and I slowly became friends. We chatted before and after class and exchanged hellos in the hallways. Sometimes, he’d saunter over to our lunch table to ask about homework.
Then one night, out of the blue, he called me. I picked up the phone, expecting Erin.
Instead, I heard a low voice. “Hi, Billie. It’s Mick.”
His voice was even deeper on the phone, and my heart raced.
“Hello,” I said. “How’d you get my number?”
“From Will Rader. Hope that was okay?”
“Sure. What’s up?” I asked, trying to sound breezy.
He said he had a question about the math homework. He asked it, and I answered, expecting him to say thanks and goodbye.
Instead, he asked me what I was up to—which segued into a nearly hour-long conversation about football, random high school gossip, the Silverado he was saving for by working at the orchard, and my part-time job at Sugarbell, a candy store in Hartland.
At one point, a piping voice cut in.
“Hold on,” he said.
A muffled exchange followed.
“Sorry,” he said when he came back on. “That was my little sister.”