of my high school days the same way I have for the past few months—in a rational, sane, Ryden-free mental state. Yup.
Reasons why I love this part:
1) I never knew Meg had a crush on me before we started going out. She never told me that, even after everything. So I know something I never would have known.
2) I love the “yup” at the end. Like she’s agreeing with herself. It’s really cute.
3) She wrote this entry the day we met. She goes on to document exactly what we said to each other. Which means our crazy conversation in Mr. Wheeler’s class meant something to her too.
I keep reading, and it’s like a play button has been pressed in my mind.
“There’s gum on that chair.” Those were the first words she ever said to me.
I froze, my ass hovering above the seat, and looked over to find myself staring into the darkest pair of eyes I’d ever seen.
I zoomed out from the eyes a little and found they were attached to a girl. Her hair was just as dark as her eyes, but her skin was pale. Really pale. Like, Styrofoam-marshmallow-Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost pale.
She was gorgeous.
And she was smiling at me.
Wait, scratch that. She was laughing at me.
“What?” I asked, starting to feel kind of angry. I wasn’t used to getting this kind of reaction from anyone—especially not girls.
“Nothing.” She grinned. “You just look kind of…confused.”
“Huh?”
She nodded in the direction of my still-frozen-in-midair butt.
Oh. Right.
I guess I did look a little mental, squatting over the chair and ogling this girl like she was a topless supermodel, when all she’d been trying to do was save me from sitting in a wad of Bubble Yum.
I straightened up. “Sorry. And, uh, thanks.”
“No problem.”
I switched my chair with the chair from an empty desk nearby and tore a page out of my notebook to alert any future unsuspecting asses who wouldn’t be lucky enough to have a pair of mysterious, dark eyes looking out for them.
Don’t sit. I wrote. Gum. I was about to tear it out of the book and put it on the chair when a little giggle stopped me. She was laughing at me again. What was with this girl?
I sighed. “What now?”
“What are you, a caveman?” she asked. “Don’t sit. Sit bad. Gum bad.”
She was putting on a kind of gruff voice, her eyebrows pulled together, her shoulders hunched. She was totally making fun of me. I should’ve been pissed. Normally I would have been pissed. But it was funny. She was funny.
“What’s your name?” I blurted out like an idiot.
All traces of humor vanished from her face and she raised an unamused eyebrow. “Really?”
“What?”
“I’ve gone to school with you for four years. And we’ve been in this class together since January.”
I was a complete and total asshole. “Oh. I knew that. Sorry, um…”
“Meg,” she prompted. “Meg Reynolds?”
No way. That wasn’t Meg Reynolds. Meg Reynolds was the girl from my eighth-grade gym class who couldn’t hit a ball or jump a hurdle to save her life. The girl who’d completely destroyed our chances of beating Coach Bell’s class in Downey Middle School’s End-of-Year Olympics.
When did Meg Reynolds get hot? And where the hell was I when it happened?
“Right. Of course. Meg! I’m—”
“Ryden Brooks,” she said. “Star goalie of the state champion Pumas, future prom king and homecoming king, and recipient of the Most Likely to Conquer the World award.” She rolled her eyes. “I know who you are. Because we’ve been going to school together since seventh grade.”
I nodded and focused on the front of the classroom, desperate, for the first time in my life, for class to start early. Where the hell was Mr. Wheeler?
Since my Don’t sit. Gum. sign had been deemed unacceptable, I flipped to a new page and started over. Please don’t sit here. I wrote neatly. There is gum on this chair. Meg wouldn’t be able to object to this one. I used full sentences and everything.
I tore it out and held it up, but she wasn’t looking my way. Her head was down, and she was writing something in a notebook. Her hair was all over the place, tumbling over the desk and obstructing her face, but she kept writing. Her handwriting was really small, like she was afraid of running out of room and was trying to squeeze as much information onto the page as possible.
I watched as her pen moved confidently across her paper. Whatever she was writing, she was really into it.