The Boy Next Story Read online

  I pointed to my chest. “Grounded. And I don’t do sports.” It wasn’t the first game of the season, but it was the first Toby was missing. There was probably some symbolism or irony or something literary in this, but I was barely passing English, so I wasn’t going to attempt it. “But good luck.”

  “Thanks.” He held up a hand for a fist bump, one he finished with fireworks and explosion sounds when my knuckles made reluctant contact with his—thereby destroying any fears I had of him thinking nonplatonically. “See you bright and early, detention buddy.”

  I started to walk away, then turned back. “If you do go to the club fair, don’t sign me up for anything.”

  His dimples popped out in a devilish grin. “It’s like you know me already.”

  It only took the walk across campus to undo the smile Huck had gifted to me. Around me people were calling names across paths, meeting in hugs, texting on phones. Tables lined the walkways and the students behind them manned clipboards and chatted as they recruited classmates. Everyone was part of this place and making more connections by the moment. They all gave each other pieces of their days, of their time, of themselves. I didn’t have any pieces to spare.

  Like the parties at Gatsby’s house, everything at Hero High whirled faster and faster. A glittering swirl of Look over here, disaster on your right, humiliation on your left, social isolation dead ahead. Spinning out of control until I was a dizzy top starting to wobble, about to fall. What would happen if I stopped for a moment? Would I ever be able to catch up again?

  Anyone who said “Just ask for help” didn’t understand there was nothing just about that sentence. Thinking about it in class made my hands damp and my head spin until I was missing even more information. The one time I had tried, pausing at the end of math class to ask Mrs. Roberts to reexplain the last problem, she’d opened her mouth and talked and written numbers on the board, but all I’d been aware of was the blood pounding in my ears, the rigidness of every one of my muscles as I stood there pretending I understood. My throat grew tighter and tighter, so I could only nod frantically when she wrote X = 12 and asked, “Does that make more sense?”

  Toby wasn’t waiting at his car. I sank down on the asphalt of the parking lot, leaning against his tire and unzipping my backpack, like doing something would make me feel less conspicuous. Not that anyone could see me sitting between Toby’s Audi and the Bimmer one spot over—but there were people and voices all around. My backpack was crammed with every book and notebook from my locker, and each was equally untempting. Did I start with the classes I was still passing or with the one I was failing? If I spent too much time pretending I could figure out math, my other grades would suffer. If I didn’t figure out how to “connect” to Gatsby soon, I’d be moving from West Egg to Academic Probation.

  I closed my eyes and picked a notebook. Geometry. How was it possible that I could draw all those shapes, but the math of figuring out their areas and angles baffled me?

  Toby had promised me a ride home, right? Maybe he’d decided to board the team bus and ride along to the lacrosse game as a spectator. Or maybe he was at the club fair signing up for replacement activities. Or waiting outside Merri’s detention. Since she hadn’t actually attended her ex’s party, just been there to pick me up when it got busted, she had after-school detentions instead of all day Saturday.

  Or Toby could’ve forgotten me. The notebook in my lap blurred as tears rolled off my cheeks to add watermarks to my geometric proofs.

  “Hey, sorry I’m late.” I hadn’t noticed Toby approaching, but now his feet were right in front of me. The white soles of his sneakers—shoes that he hated pairing with khakis but that his doctor insisted he wear while in the knee brace—were an inch from my knee. “Merri asked me to swing by the club fair and sign her up for lit magazine and creative writing club. Only, she asked Eliza too, so the two of us got into it above a clipboard. You know how it is.”

  I nodded, but with my chin down, sniffing back tears and hoping my face hadn’t gone all splotchy.

  “Rory?” He crouched down as much as his knee brace would allow and flipped through the splattered and doodled pages of my notebook. I bit the inside of my lip to stop it from quivering. But he saw it anyway. He saw everything . . . except for the thing that mattered most. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m . . . lost.”

  He stood and held out a hand to help me up. “We’re not talking about just math, are we?”

  I shook my head. A dangerous motion with eyes that were pooling wet again. “It’s everything about this school. It’s the classes, the students, the studio—everything.”

  He tugged me into a hug and I tried not to turn into a blubbering mess that left tear and snot marks all over his shirt. He already saw me like I was five—no need to give him visuals to back that up. He rubbed my back and asked, “Do you know how to navigate at sea?”

  I laughed against his shirt, inhaling the mint and licorice smell of him and letting the adorable randomness of his thoughts make me smile. “No.”

  “Sailors need three fixed points. Then no matter where they’re going, they know where they are.” He pulled back and gripped both of my shoulders, studying me in that way that no one else did. Like he saw me, not as a tagalong or an inconvenience but as a person. “Well, Aurora Leigh Campbell, let’s find you some points. You have a family that loves you. You’re a super-talented artist. You get motion-sick on the teacups.”

  I made a face. Not at the last one—that was sorta charming, because I couldn’t believe he remembered—but at the first two.

  And he caught it. “Not feeling the family/artist thing right now?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Okay. You’re Aurora Leigh Campbell. Teacups, a weakness for anything key lime flavored, and you pick the third. Something that’s not going to change.”

  That was easy: I’m Aurora Leigh Campbell. I get sick on the teacups, key lime is my favorite flavor . . . and I’m hopelessly in love with Tobias May.

  6

  My first detention landed on the last weekend of September. Did that mean fresh starts and blank slates applied Monday morning? If so, I only had to make it another forty-eight hours.

  I was standing in front of the kettle waiting for it to whistle when Mom picked up my empty mug. “I’m holding this hostage until you look at me, Aurora.”

  I turned and met her eyes. They were stern inside slightly crooked eyeliner. Her lipstick was pressed into a thin line of disapproval. Mom never went anywhere without makeup. I don’t know that I’d recognize her smile without the peach hue she’d been wearing for years. Her smile was like Merri’s—the type that was charming and welcoming—but she hadn’t smiled at me much lately. I looked around for Dad. All three of us were daddy’s girls; Mom was the disciplinarian. “Good morning.”

  “Is it?” She arched an eyebrow. It was the same look I’d seen Lilly practice in the mirror when she was trying to look stern or lawyerly. “Saturday detention. This goes on your record. Are you taking this seriously? Do you know how lucky it is that you weren’t expelled?”

  Okay, I made a bad decision letting Monroe talk me into attending his Rogue Romeo party. But at least I didn’t date him. If we were ranking lapses in judgment, Merri’s was worse . . . even if no one else in my family saw it that way.

  I nodded solemnly to acknowledge Mom’s lecture, but I guess that wasn’t contrite enough because she shook her head. “Have you thought about the consequences of your actions? Including that your sister ended up with a week of detention because she came to rescue you?”

  “I didn’t ask her to!” I snapped. And Merri had gotten a new boyfriend out of the deal. She and Fielding started dating somewhere between our midnight ride home with his father and whatever the two of them did to end up in separate detention halls. Plus, I never would have gone to the party if it weren’t for Merri needling me about how all the boys liked her, with a pointed jab at Toby. Like I needed that reminder.

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nbsp; Merri flounced in and plucked a box of store-brand Pop-Tarts from the cabinet. “If you ask me, Rory didn’t need rescuing.”

  Of course I did. I needed a literal lifeguard to save me from myself right now. But saying that in the kitchen with Mom in lecture mode, Merri humming while getting a sugar high, and Lilly slumped against the counter didn’t feel right. I didn’t have time for the fallout. Didn’t want to expose my screwups before I’d done damage control.

  Everyone was still looking at me. Right. Because I needed to answer. I needed to say something clever that combined gratitude with Don’t look too closely. And I needed to have thought of it about thirty seconds sooner. A combination that was guaranteed to make my mind go blank. Merri stopped bouncing and removed the Pop-Tart wannabe she’d been holding between her lips while she poured orange juice. She tilted her head in concern. “Rory?”

  Say something. Anything! I exhaled in a rush. “Well, who asked you? Not me.”

  Merri’s face went blank and she shrugged like she’d expected that. Like Why wouldn’t Rory lash out and act mean? But that’s not what I meant. Not at all. Seeing her face from the stage at the party had been the one minute I’d felt safe all night. I needed a conversational mulligan.

  “Well, I don’t care if anyone asked me,” said Lilly. She was pouring coffee into two travel thermoses. She put one in her purse and started drinking the other immediately. “It’s super inconvenient that Rory decided to go wild-child party animal right now. It throws off everyone’s work schedules. I’ve had this appointment with the florist for two months. Do you know how hard it is to find someone who can match whites?”

  I didn’t know about matching lilies to dress fabric, but mixing up paint colors and trying to get a perfect match? I was very familiar with that. Not that hers was an actual question. “Whoa, bridezilla. Next time I get a detention, I’ll consult your schedule first.”

  “Next time?” The arc of Mom’s headshake went from one shoulder to the other. “There better not be a next time, Aurora Leigh Campbell.”

  “Next time doesn’t help me now,” Lilly muttered into her travel mug as she snatched up her planner full of fabric samples and business cards and bridal magazine clippings. “I can’t believe I have to go to the store before this appointment. No one better get dog hair on me! Because you know Lucinda will make it A. Thing.”

  I didn’t apologize again. It wouldn’t matter. I was serious about the bridezilla thing and sick of Lucinda Caulkins this and Lucinda Caulkins that. The wedding planner her fiancé’s mother had hired fed Lilly’s expectations that everyone should bend over backward because she wanted to wear a puffy dress and change her last name. Or maybe not change her last name. I didn’t know, but now wasn’t the right time to ask. Not when she was still grumbling into the bottom third of a very large and rapidly emptying thermos of coffee and making angry notes that looked like a hit list in her planner. She wrote Ask Lucinda!!! on top in ransom note letters and underlined it three times.

  “You okay?” I asked her, because she wasn’t the Campbell most likely to go nuclear. That was . . . I glanced at Merri, who’d finished her toaster pastry and was sitting on the floor eating a bite of dry cereal, then tossing the next scoop to her dog, Gatsby. Yeah, that was me.

  “I’m fine. I mean, why wouldn’t I be? Just because there’s more things on my to-do list than hours in the day and Lucinda keeps emailing me Just checking if you’ve made a decision about this or that, when this or that hadn’t even occurred to me as a thing that needs deciding! Comparing three nearly identical napkins to the curtains in the dining room? Who does that? Well, besides me, since that’s how I’ll be spending my night. And don’t get me started on her comments about ‘foundation garments’ and ‘controlling the jiggle.’” Lilly took another gulp of coffee and smoothed her hands over her hips.

  Should I remind her that she looked like a plus-size Jackie O and that Trent loved her jiggle? Or would that be obnoxious coming from the sister who had fewer curves than a ruler? Normally Lilly was super body positive. Maybe it was a joke? Ugh, Merri would know how to respond, but she was busy getting Gatsby to balance a Cheerio on his nose and had missed the whole exchange.

  “When will you be home from detention?” asked Lilly.

  “Um, three?”

  “I should be back from my cross-country meet by one. I’ll come right to the store,” offered Merri.

  “If you take a picture of the curtains, I can help with complementary napkin colors,” I offered. “The bridesmaids’ dresses are burgundy, right?”

  “Mine’s MoH gold,” added Merri.

  Every time she flaunted her maid-of-honor status—or, as she called it, “MoH,” pronounced “moe”—I wanted to scream. We get it, you two are closer. You’re her first pick, her best friend. You’re the one who gets to give a speech and get a special dress, and you can save her at the store while I make her late for appointments. Message received.

  “Sorry, it’s all gone, Gatsby.” Merri stood and stretched her arms above her head. She had on the red shorts of her cross-country uniform, but they disappeared beneath the hem of an oversized Hero High sweatshirt when she dropped her arms back down.

  “Is that—” I bit my lip. “Whose sweatshirt is that?” Because Merri had a habit of collecting Toby’s too-smalls and repurposing them as her own, but this would still fit him. And seeing her collarbone peek through the neck hole as the sweatshirt slid off one of her shoulders made me want to tear it from her body.

  “Fielding’s.” She beamed and bounced. “I stole it. Figured it might bring me luck today.”

  “He’s coming to cheer for you, right, Mer-bear?” asked Dad. He kissed us each on the top of our heads as he entered the kitchen, then beelined to the coffeepot. “I’m sorry I can’t be there.”

  “It’s no big deal. I’m actually not a fan of people cheering for me. It’s too much like being yelled at—all that ‘Go faster, Merrilee!’ ‘Catch her!’—it sounds so . . . disapproving and aggressive. Besides, Eliza will be there and Fielding is coming. I’ve given him a list of things he can cheer.”

  “Next race, promise,” said Dad while Mom took their Pomeranian, Byron, out for one last pee break. Dad refilled Lilly’s mug, and I wanted to warn him she was already over-caffeinated and a stress mess. “I wish I could come to the florist too, silly-Lilly. It kills me when you girls all go in different directions. Rory, you, however, are on your own. I didn’t get any detentions in high school, and I’m not about to start now. Principals scare me.”

  It was said with a chuckle and a fake shudder, but good humor didn’t mask the meaning underneath: You got in trouble, but I never did.

  Mom breezed back in, tossing sets of car keys to Lilly and Dad. “We need to motor. Agility training class starts in an hour and the cones and hoops aren’t set up.”

  “Have fun with that,” I snarked at the same time Merri gushed, “Oh fun! I love when the puppies wriggle through the tunnels!”

  I left the kitchen before all the I know, rights could begin. It was time to be done with the One of these things is not like the other Campbells portion of my morning.

  “Hey! Rory.” Lilly chased me into the foyer. “Sorry for being such a troll. I know, I know, I’m a grown woman who’s scared of her own wedding planner.” She sighed and plucked a petal off the vase of stargazers Trent had delivered last week. If she was waiting for me to contradict her, I hadn’t been planning on it.

  But I did say, “You don’t need foundation whatevers.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know, right? But I’d love your input on colors. You have such an eye for that. Thank you.”

  “Plus, she’s rejected all my suggestions,” said Merri, nudging Lilly out of the way so she could sit down on the foyer’s bench to put on her sneakers.

  “I’m sure paisley with rhinestones would be lovely,” Lilly started—behind Merri’s back she made her eyes wide and shook her head. “But that’s not quite the aesthetic I’m looking for.”


  “Not with, or. This is an either paisley or rhinestones suggestion,” said Merri. “I read about them being trendy.”

  “Maybe that will work for Fall Ball with Fielding,” I suggested.

  Ah, and there was Merri’s Fielding Face. That smile exploded from one cheekbone to the other whenever he was mentioned.

  “I wonder if he’d wear a paisley bow tie?” Merri wandered off muttering and daydreaming. Lilly mouthed Thank you to me and headed out the door.

  School was a twenty-minute walk. I spent it thinking about our styles. Lilly’s was classic—pearls, pumps, plus-size tailored lines and muted colors. She was always fully pulled together and completely gorgeous. Merri’s was paisley and polka dots and rhinestones and ruffles. All sorts of things that shouldn’t go together, but she called it “toddler chic” and combined them in adorable and unexpected ways that worked for her.

  I preferred clothing I didn’t have to think about or stress over if I wiped paint or charcoal or clay on myself. I wanted to be able to move and bend and stand for long periods without anything pinching or binding. I liked colors—bright colors—but rarely had to worry about anything matching or clashing, because I paired everything with black. Not for clichéd Look I’m an artist! reasons, but because it hid stains.

  Detention was the first time I’d gotten to wear non-uniform clothing on campus, but because we were doing manual labor, I hadn’t needed to come up with anything impressive. At least I hoped not? I glanced down at my lime-green yoga pants and worn sneakers. I had a long black T-shirt and a black sweatshirt over these and I’d pulled the front of my chin-length hair back with a few haphazard bobby pins. Was everyone else going to be in designer jeans and flannel shirts? Would they be labor chic while I looked sloppy? My hands began to sweat as I second-guessed everything. Was I not supposed to pack a lunch? Did the cool kids go off campus? What should I have done? Gotten Huck’s number so I could call him and say, “I know we just met, but what are you wearing? No take-backs on the friendship!”