Chapter 1 #2
“OK, let’s rock this,” Shay said, opening the front door and walking into a house filled with people I wished I didn’t have to see.
Seeing my fellow classmates outside of school felt like a cruel form of punishment.
I’d seen them enough during the school year, and the last thing I wanted was to be packed in like sardines with them.
My idea of a party was more like watching reruns of Whose Line Is It Anyway?
in pajamas with my parents while eating a stupid amount of popcorn and greasy cheeseburgers.
Mom would have a vegan burger, obviously.
She’d watched a documentary on the treatment of animals years back, and it had changed her for life.
Dad had watched it too, but he still ate his steak medium-rare.
“I’ll find you a Coke,” Shay said.
“Are you drinking?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t drink.”
“That’s really smart.”
“You think everything I do is smart, even when it’s not. That’s why you’re my favorite cousin.”
“I’m your only cousin. See if you can find some ice for the Coke, will you? I’ll be in—”
“A corner.” She smirked. “I bet you five bucks I’ll find you in a corner with a book in your hands.”
“It’s like you’ve known me my whole life or something.”
She laughed and hurried away, though not with ease. Every time Shay walked into a room, everyone clamored for her attention—and she was nice enough to give it to all of them.
I would’ve just kept walking.
It would be a while before I got my drink, but I was lucky enough to score myself a nice nook right under the staircase—a very Wesley Peters–ish spot to read.
I tossed on my headphones, not because I was listening to anything, but because people tended to leave you alone if you had headphones on. It was a great introvert hack: Look busy to avoid human interaction. Doubling up on two activities was even better.
A book alone isn’t always enough to get people to ignore you, but a book and headphones? Well, you might as well be a ghost.
It was so hard being an introvert in an extrovert world, one where the social norms involved house parties, school clubs, spirit week, and getting together with people you didn’t care to see just to say you were “living life to the fullest.”
Society was the worst for introverts, but I was sure a changing of the tides was on the way. I couldn’t wait until the day the media pushed the idea that staying home was the new cool thing to do and socializing with people you hated was a thing of the past. All of us introverts would rejoice!
Quietly . . . alone . . . with a good cup of coffee, a solid read, and our faithful cats.
I made myself comfortable on the floor with my legs crossed like a pretzel and rested my back against the wall. The more tucked away I was in my tight corner, the less people would notice me. Carry on, clods. I’m not even here. I am just a part of the wall.
In the Wesley Peters series, clods were those without magical abilities.
Reaching into my bag I pulled out my novel and fell back into the world of magic.
It took me a few minutes to tune out the noise surrounding me, but the author Jamie Stone made it easy for me to become fully invested in every single word she wrote.
Surprisingly, the party wasn’t that wild. Some people were drinking, but more seemed to be into the music choices and poor dancing. Two people a few feet away from me talked about basketball stats and workouts.
I thought more people would be tongue-locked. Though I guess I’d gotten most of my preconceptions of school parties from television shows and over-the-top rom-coms.
It actually didn’t seem so out of the ordinary for a girl to be reading. Oddly enough, I kind of fit in.
It wasn’t until I heard two guys trying to whisper as they talked about Shay that I looked up from my book. Because they weren’t just talking about Shay—they were talking about me too.
Me.
That wasn’t the norm. All throughout my years in school, I had been able to keep my head down and be left alone for the most part. I was almost certain no one even knew who I was, other than me being the random, oddly dressed girl Shay ate lunch with every day.
“Dude, Brace Face is here,” one of the voices whisper-shouted over the bad music.
“You don’t gotta call her that,” the other groaned.
“Yeah, OK. But she’s Shay’s cousin, right?”
“Yeah, that’s her. Eleanor,” the other replied.
Hmm . . .
He’d used my actual name. Most people called me Brace Face or Shay’s cousin.
Weird.
“Go butter her up and get on her good side, then learn how I can win this bet.”
I glanced over at the two guys, trying to act nonchalant, before looking back to my book.
Of course it was Landon Harrison trying to find his way into annoying my cousin somehow.
Shay told me how they made a silly bet to see who could make the other fall in love first. My whole life, I was convinced they were enemies, but now I was starting to think they were already secretly in love with each other.
At least that was how it worked in the novels I read.
But Landon was definitely no Mr. Darcy.
“Shouldn’t you be talking to her to make a connection?” the other guy asked.
I discreetly glanced up at him. Greyson East was one of the top-tier students in our class. He, like Shay, was loved by all.
Greyson was annoyingly handsome, well dressed, and the star basketball player who could have any girl in the world.
When I thought of high school popularity, Greyson was the one who always came to mind.
I mean, it was his face on the home page of the school’s website, after all. He was a big deal at our high school.
“Dude, I can’t talk to her. She creeps me out. All she ever does is read and wear those weird sweaters.”
I would’ve been offended by his words, but I simply didn’t care. It was just a clod being a clod. They didn’t know any better. Sometimes they acted out in idiotic ways.
“Oh no, not a sweater,” Grey mocked his friend, sounding bored.
I almost smiled at the level of sass in his voice, but my hatred pushed away my grin.
“Just do me a solid,” Landon requested.
“I’m not doing that,” Greyson argued. “Just leave her alone.”
“Come on,” Landon persisted. “You owe me for Stacey White.”
Greyson sighed. He sighed again. Then one more long, dragged-out exhalation. “Fine.”
Oh no.
No, no, no, no . . .
I tried to absorb the words of my book, but my peripheral vision stared at his shoes as he approached.
Of course, he was wearing Nike shoes, because everything about Greyson was a cliché.
He might as well have been modeling them for an ad.
When those crisp, not-even-creased-yet shoes paused in front of me, I reluctantly looked up.
Now his eyes were staring at me.
Those gray eyes . . .
They were the kind of gray you thought only existed in overwrought romance novels where the hero looked a little too perfect.
No one truly had gray eyes. I’d been alive for sixteen years, and I had never come across a boy with a gray stare other than Greyson.
Light blue? Sure. Green? Yeah, sometimes, but Greyson’s eyes were so far from anything else I’d ever seen. I understood the appeal.
On the receiving end of his gray stare and that smile, I understood why most girls melted into a puddle of helplessness around him.
Oh, God, make it stop.
He gave me a slight wave when we made eye contact, along with a tiny, crooked smirk, and it annoyed me. Those smirks might’ve worked on the Stacey Whites of the world, but they didn’t work on me. I looked down at my book, trying to ignore him.
But those shoes stayed in place. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him lowering, and lowering, and lowering his body before he was kneeling right in front of me. He waved again, with the same forced smile.
“Hey, Eleanor, what’s up?” he said, almost as if we’d always talked and he was just checking in to catch up.
I muttered under my breath.
He arched an eyebrow. “Did you say something?”
For the love of all things right in the world, did he not see my headphones and my book? Did he not know it was June 22, 2003? Why did no one seem to understand the importance of binge-reading a novel the second it hit your fingertips?
I hated this world sometimes.
“I said don’t.” I took off my headphones. “Just don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.” I gestured between us. “I know Landon told you to come talk to me to get information about Shay, but it’s a lost cause. I’m not interested in being involved in their weird bet.”
“How did you hear what we were saying with headphones on?”
“Easy—I wasn’t playing anything.”
“Then why wear the headphones?”
OHMYGOSHCANYOUJUSTGOAWAY?
There was nothing worse than when an extrovert tried to understand the deep corners of an introvert’s mind.
I released a heavy sigh. “Look, I get it—you’re trying to be a good friend and all, but I’m honestly just trying to read my book in peace and be left alone.”
Greyson ran his hands through his hair like a freaking shampoo model. I swore he did it in slow motion as the nonexistent wind blew through it. “OK, but can I, like, just hang here next to you for a few minutes? Just so Landon thinks I’m doing him a favor?”
“I don’t care what you do. Just do it quietly.”
He smiled, and holy crap, it was an easy smile to like.
I went back to reading my book as Greyson sat beside me. Every now and then, he’d say, “Just talking your way so Landon thinks we’re buddies.”
I’d respond with, “Just replying so you don’t look as ridiculous as you’re actually being right now.”
He’d smile again, I’d notice that smile, and I’d go back to my book.
Finally, Shay walked up with my Coke and held out a plastic cup with a frozen Popsicle in it.
“I couldn’t find ice, but I figured a Popsicle could keep your drink cold for a bit.
Plus it’s a cherry Popsicle, so, voilà! It’s a Cherry Coke.
” She shifted her stare to Greyson and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, Grey . . . hey, what’s up?”