The Avery Shaw Experiment - By Kelly Oram Page 0,18

you guys, but I don’t need revenge. I don’t want to hurt Aiden’s feelings.”

I suppressed an eye roll. Obviously she hadn’t hit anger yet.

Aves tipped her head up to look at me and grimaced. “We aren’t dating. I just got my heart broken. I’m not really ready to date anyone, and, I’m sorry, I’m definitely not in the mood to be your flavor of the weekend.”

I chuckled and so did most everyone else. It wasn’t every day that I got shot down. It was kind of amusing. “I believe the term is flavor of the week,” I teased. “Not weekend.”

Avery looked at me skeptically. “Have you ever lasted an entire week with one girl?”

For a single beat there was silence, and then the entire table exploded into laughter. Everyone razzed me like crazy over the burn. The beauty of it was that Avery had been completely serious. Her innocence was genius.

Avery blushed of course, but I sat up a little straighter. I felt a strange fluttering of pride in my stomach. Avery had won them over! This was going to work. The first step to helping Avery Shaw was a complete success.

Avery

Despite my claims to Grayson that loving to learn didn’t make me a dork, the truth is, I knew I was a geek. I didn’t mind, though. I really did enjoy learning, and I spent my entire life in the blissful world of social obscurity. Grayson Kennedy changed all that in the span of a single lunch period.

Suddenly I was the subject of many rumors—the most popular being that I was Grayson’s new girlfriend. Everyone in school knew my name. People who’d never spoken to me before acted like we were best friends. It was crazy. Not that I didn’t appreciate what Grayson had done, but I wasn’t sure if he’d made things better for me, or worse.

I missed all of fifth period because I had to go to the nurse to take one of my pills that they keep on hand for when I can’t control my panic attacks. That led to my guidance counselor asking questions as to why I was having such bad anxiety. I threw her for a loop with the unprecedented change in social status. I guess that kind of thing didn’t happen a lot in high school.

The only truly relieving thing that came from all the madness was that Grayson and his friends had given me an idea for a science fair project—a project that I technically already had a decent start on, so even without a partner, I had a good chance of getting it done on time. By the time school was over that day, I had a full outline of my project scribbled down to show Mr. Walden in science club.

I’d been so busy putting my project outline together that I managed to block out all the whispers and stares. I hardly noticed when Aiden changed seats and completely ignored me in Honors English. Okay, I noticed, and it killed me, but thanks to the outline (and the very powerful medication), I’d been able to live through it and not have another breakdown.

I was the last one to arrive in the science lab after school because Grayson’s friends Pamela and Chloe found me and tried to convince me to go with them to Chloe’s for a makeover. I said I had science club, but they wouldn’t leave until I’d promised to go with them the next day.

When I got to the science lab, Libby, my friend who’d been with me at lunch when Grayson hijacked me, tackled me. Since I’d missed fifth period, we hadn’t seen each other yet. “Oh my heck, Avery!”

Libby was my best, and only, girl friend. She was brilliant and nice and very spunky. She was very outgoing and so funny that anyone who gave her a chance loved her; but because she wasn’t as thin as the majority of girls in our school and had a tendency to wear pictures of cats on her clothes, most people didn’t give her a chance. Most people were shallow idiots.

She threw her arms around me and forced me to jump up and down with her. “Can you believe that happened?”

“What exactly are we talking about? Aiden getting a girlfriend? Or Grayson almost killing him in front of the whole school?”

“I’m talking about how your romantic, hot new boyfriend came to your rescue in front of everyone! Seriously, Avery. Didn’t you just die?”

I flushed at her phrasing. “Grayson’s not