Chapter 1 #2
The haircut made Julia look like an indie folk singer. It was like someone had hung a scalloped frame around her face. Her cheeks looked rounder. Her neck looked longer. Even her thick glasses had been improved by the change—they suddenly looked more quirky than medically necessary.
“Wow,” her mom said when she saw Julia’s hair. And then, “I’m not spending forty-five dollars on ‘styling milk,’ but you can use the money Grandma sent you.”
“Amazing,” Chloe said when she saw her. And, “I knew it.”
Two weeks after that, when Julia had her eyes checked, the optometrist noticed that her glasses were leaving deep impressions on the bridge of her nose and suggested special contacts. Julia had always thought her prescription was too complicated for contacts.
Her mom felt permanently guilty about Julia’s bad eyes; she thought she might have taken a dangerous prescription when she was pregnant. She said yes to the contacts right away.
“Your eyes are much smaller than I expected,” Chloe said when she saw Julia without glasses, “but we can correct that with mascara and white liner.”
The haircut had made Julia feel for the first time like her appearance was something that could be tweaked and improved, that the way she looked wasn’t fixed.
But the contacts were a deeper transformation. It was like Julia had removed a piece of her actual face. She didn’t like it. Chloe was right—her eyes were small. And her face was big.
Julia’s face looked like a blank screen without her glasses. Like an empty sky.
“Who’s that girl?” her dad said when she came down for dinner for the first time wearing contacts.
Julia still wasn’t sure.
She tucked the lip tint back into her pocket and headed out of the drive-in bathroom, avoiding the rest of the mirrors.
There was a long line inside the snack bar, even though the movie was already running. A big group of kids from Julia’s school was crowded around the register. Popular kids.
Actually, maybe “popular” wasn’t the right word . . .
These were the kids that everybody knew from student council and spirit club and show choir. Kids who played sports like golf and track and tennis, not football or baseball or soccer. The kind of people who wore their letterman jackets to school every day but still managed to look cool about it.
Julia knew all their names.
They were being loud and silly. Shoving each other. Picking up packages of candy and setting them back down. Not worried at all about bothering anyone. One of the boys was saying something to make the other boys laugh. He laughed, too. His cheeks wrinkled, and his head tipped up.
Wyatt Hardy.
Julia had practice watching Wyatt Hardy. They’d had a few classes together.
Wyatt was the sort of boy that everyone liked.
Teachers and students. He had wavy brown hair—cut shorter and cleaner than most boys wore it—and a big, easy smile.
Everything about Wyatt Hardy seemed easy.
His grades. His forensics speeches. His shoulders.
A person could have easy shoulders, Julia thought; she herself did not.
Julia walked around with her shoulders hunched up to her ears, and then her mother had to take her to the chiropractor, even though it wasn’t covered by insurance.
Wyatt Hardy’s shoulders were positively nonchalant. He was on the swim team. He was a class officer. He told jokes that even the macho tough-guy teachers laughed at.
He wasn’t excessively attractive . . . Like, he didn’t look like a boy in a Disney teen show.
His cheekbones weren’t discernible. He wasn’t all teeth and angles, like Aiden.
But Julia had always thought that Wyatt Hardy’s face was wonderful.
Handsome like a photo of someone’s dad when he was young.
Or like a U.S. president before he served in World War II.
(Google Gerald Ford.) (Or even George H. W. Bush.)
His smile was the best. Wyatt laughed at his own jokes, and it wasn’t irritating—it was contagious. It made Julia smile just thinking about it.
Wyatt and his friends paid for their pop and popcorn and Nerds Rope. They moved along the counter in a big restless clump, bumping into each other and leaning on each other. A girl leaned on Wyatt, and he bumped her away with his hip. It was all friendly. It was all light.
They got their food and headed for the door in a loose pack. Wyatt was still smiling. His head turned toward the line at the register, and his eyes caught Julia’s. Before she could look away, he smiled wider. He nodded at her. He nodded—and winked.
Julia certainly didn’t wink back.
She didn’t even smile.
Wyatt and his friends were out the door, and she was still standing there, fully in shock.
Wyatt Hardy had just looked at her.
And seen her.
He’d definitely seen her—you might smile at nothing, but you wouldn’t wink at it.
Never in Julia’s three years of watching Wyatt Hardy had he ever given any sign of noticing her. Julia had always been so invisible that she could watch anyone she wanted with impunity.
“Hey.” The guy behind her sounded frustrated. “It’s your turn. Hey—girl.”
“Sorry,” Julia said. She stumbled forward. She took too long looking for the Sour Patch Kids and Twizzlers, and the person working there had to help. She bought a small popcorn for herself, and a large Coke. She spent all the money her dad had given her.
She was still stumbling when she walked back out into the field of cars—stumbling emotionally.
Wyatt Hardy had caught her staring at him.
Wyatt Hardy had winked.
Since when were they on winking terms? Had Wyatt ever even said hello? They knew each other. They’d been in classes—they’d been in a small group once. But they never acknowledged each other in the halls. Wyatt didn’t smile at her, and she would never smile at him.
Julia had forgotten where Aiden’s Jeep was parked. She walked down the aisles of cars, looking for it. She hoped that Aiden and Chloe had stopped arguing . . .
They had.
When Julia finally found the Jeep and went up to the passenger door, she could see them inside kissing. Like, really kissing. With Aiden’s hand up the back of Chloe’s shirt.
Julia’s mom liked to say that social media was ruining teens’ social skills, that they didn’t want to hang out anymore—they didn’t even want to have sex. Julia should reassure her that TikTok hadn’t ruined Chloe completely.
Julia debated knocking on the window. But then she’d just be inside the car with the kissing. Chloe wouldn’t stop on her account. And Aiden still wouldn’t notice her.
She paused just long enough to look like someone standing there creeping on them, then decided to head back to the snack bar.
There were picnic tables there where she could sit, and a speaker blasting the movie.
Honestly, Julia would probably get more out of the movie if she watched from there.
And she hadn’t seen a single mosquito yet. Her mom was wrong about that, too.
When Julia got back to the snack bar, half a dozen tweens were spread out over both picnic tables. The little kids had abandoned the swing set, so she sat down on one of the two swings and set her food on the ground. She’d eaten most of the popcorn while she was wandering around.
She took out her phone to text Chloe, to tell her where she was, but she ended up opening the camera and looking at her strange face in the screen.
What if Wyatt Hardy had winked at her, not because he recognized Julia and wanted to say hello—which, again, he had never done before—but because he didn’t recognize her?
After all, she didn’t look like herself anymore.
Maybe Wyatt had winked at a stranger.
“Come on!” someone shouted.
Julia looked up.
There was a group of people at the edge of the snack bar lawn, standing in her view of the screen. People her age. Half of them were laughing. The other half were shushing.
Someone dropped a drink and someone else squealed.
More laughing and shushing.
“Let it go, Wyatt.”
“Shhh!”
Giggles.
“I am letting it go. I’m—” That was Wyatt Hardy. Julia recognized his profile. She couldn’t hear what he was saying. He turned and started walking away from the group.
“Wyatt!” a girl called.
“Shhhh,” another girl shushed.
“Shut the hell up!” some guy yelled from a car.
Wyatt waved his arm at his friends, like he wanted to be left alone.
The rest of them started walking toward the cars. One of the girls hung back, but then someone else pulled her along.
Wyatt kept walking. A little too fast. Toward the snack bar. He was rubbing the back of his neck. Julia watched. He was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt over a T-shirt with their school mascot on it. A thunderbird.
He got to the snack bar area and stopped just a few feet away from her, like he didn’t know where he should go next.
He just stood there for a minute—fuming, it looked like.
She’d never seen him angry before. Or upset.
Or even at a loss. Wyatt Hardy always seemed like he knew exactly where he was in the world.
He was the sort of person who never flinched when a teacher called on him, even when he didn’t have the answer.
He rubbed the back of his neck again and looked around. He looked at Julia.
Then his face changed. He looked a little surprised. Like something nice had just happened.
He smiled at her. Then raised his hand to wave.
Julia sat up taller in the swing. Feeling caught out. She waved back.
Wyatt kept smiling. He had the biggest smile. He took a few steps toward her. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Julia managed.
“It’s you again,” he said.
She swallowed. “I guess so.”
He motioned at the empty spot next to her. “Is this swing taken?”
Julia stared at him for a second, then blinked and shook her head. She felt the curls bounce against her cheeks.
Then Wyatt Hardy came and sat next to Julia. Intentionally. The swing set creaked under his weight.
“Wow,” he said. “I can see why you’re sitting back here. This is a great view.”
“And close to the amenities,” she said. (Somehow her brain was still working.)
Wyatt smiled. “How are the neighborhood schools?”