Forever for a Year(10)

My mom was waiting for the three of us in front of school to drive us to club practice in Highland Park. I totally forgot I was mad at her about having Dad spend the night when I saw her. Maybe that’s because I just needed to tell someone about my first day of school.

After practice, my mom drove us back home, dropping off Kendra first since her house was farthest from mine. She lived in the nicest area of Riverbend, in a development called Covered Bridges. It was for rich people. The houses were really big, and the streets looked newly paved even though Covered Bridges was built almost five years ago.

Once Kendra was gone, my phone beeped with a text. It was from Peggy, who was in the back seat. For a second I wondered why she didn’t just speak actual words, but then I read it:





PEGGY


My parents are going to the lake

this weekend. Katherine is throwing

a big party at our house Friday and

said we get to come!

I glanced back. She was so excited that I texted back:





ME


Yay!!

Even though the idea of going to a big high school party with upperclassmen made me queasy, stressed, and miserable. Peggy and I never got invited to parties in junior high. Obviously, we wanted to be invited; who wants to not be invited? But guess what? We usually spent the weekend watching movies or talking about a hundred million things, and never once did I think we would have more fun at some party. But now that Peggy’s sister went to the same school and made us be friends with Shannon Shunton, we would have to do things like go to parties. Being cool would be hard and not always fun, I imagined.

Then I wondered if the new boy would come to the party.

No, I didn’t.

Okay, yes, I did. But I hate that I did. I hate that I broke my vow.

Nothing is going as I planned it. Nothing. It’s all ruined.

Possibly.





6

Trevor figures it all out

Even though I despised Henry and sort of despised myself for agreeing to never like Carolina Fisher, my brain must have followed what he said since I didn’t think about her again until I saw her in seventh-period health class.

Mrs. Maya had organized the room in a circle, boy-girl-boy-girl. The way it worked out, we were across the room from each other. Carolina didn’t look at me the entire class. Me? I didn’t look anywhere else. Like barely blinked, I bet. I was trying to figure out how I could have been wrong about her being pretty. I must have been, since all the guys were so sure. I didn’t care if Carolina caught me staring. Maybe I wanted her to. Now that I knew everyone thought she was a loser, I didn’t worry about her judging me. Did I just really think that? Maybe I’m an * just like Henry. I hope not. This world sucks. It does. But I don’t want to make it any worse than it already is.

So the longer I looked at Carolina, the more some really deep stuff started to come together in my head. Like understanding-the-universe deep. I don’t even know why or how but then it all came apart again, and I wanted to run a hundred miles until it came back to me. But I didn’t. I doubt I even stopped staring at Carolina for more than a few moments. And even though all the really deep stuff vanished from my brain, one thing remained: I think I was starting to understand why someone like Carolina would be so unpopular.

First off, she was smart. Probably really smart. The junior high I went to in Los Angeles (which actually wasn’t in Los Angeles but in this small town called La Ca?ada Flintridge near Pasadena) was super elitist; every parent there was a successful doctor, lawyer, or businessperson. So the cool kids were just as smart or smarter than the not-so-cool kids. But Riverbend was more like the cliché you see on television: the athletes and partiers were popular, the smart kids were geeks, and everybody else fit somewhere in between.

Second thing, she was so serious. More serious than my dad even. Just watching her in health class, while everyone else was laughing at Mrs. Maya talking about sex, she was writing down every note, not smiling once. She had the look of someone who thought everyone else was doing pointless stuff and she was the only one doing important stuff. It was awesome, her giving me those sheets of paper in biology, but to be so caught up in school and being the perfect student that she couldn’t even say one word to me in history? Not that awesome. And probably intimidating to most people, especially the ones making the popular-kid lists.

Third and last thing: Carolina didn’t wear any makeup, she wore these green square glasses during class, and she dressed like my seven-year-old sister. Either she didn’t want to look like high school girls did on TV or she didn’t watch TV at all. So unless you gazed at her like I did, you might think she was plain or boring-looking. Maybe Henry, Jake, and the rest of the freshman football guys at lunch weren’t as blind as I initially thought. Maybe they just weren’t looking at her close enough. Because Carolina Fisher was beautiful. She just was. If experts on faces, with no bias against being smart or serious or not wearing makeup or not being popular, were to come to Riverbend High School and pick the prettiest face, I’d bet every dollar I ever make that Carolina Fisher would be number one. Everything just looked like it was in the right place, and it glowed. Her eyes were so deep. Golden brown. And her eyebrows were so dark, and eyelashes so long. Each eye was like a mini-painting. That sounds lame. But it’s just what I saw. And then she had these cute brown freckles, and this one bigger mole high on her left cheek. Someday, she would look at those girls on TV, realize she was just as pretty or prettier, and learn how to use makeup to highlight what was there naturally. Then everyone who ever saw her would see what I was seeing right now.