Secrets & Lies: Two Short Stories(18)

Okay, so maybe having a boy smile at you doesn’t seem like a big deal, but this was. Brody was a sophomore, and he was on the baseball team and he had these gorgeous blue eyes—but he was smart, too. He was always carrying around books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Lord of the Flies. And he wasn’t reading them because he had to—that’s what he read for fun.

Almost every girl in the ninth and tenth grades had a crush on Brody Frasier. And he’d just smiled at me.

And it only got better.

I was still excited and fluttery as the bell rang, and when I tried to grab my books, I ended up knocking my notebook off my desk.

“I got it.”

I looked up and saw Brody walking toward my desk. He knelt down and picked up my notebook—I was so glad it was a plain blue one and not one of the sparkly pink notebooks I used for some of my other classes.

“Thanks,” I said when he handed it to me.

“No problem.”

I thought he would just walk away then, but he didn’t. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at his feet, like he didn’t want to leave but didn’t know what to say, either. I felt like I was on a roller coaster again.

“So…” I said. “Proofs are kind of hard, huh?”

Lame, lame, lame.

He smiled. “I like them, actually. Math isn’t normally my best subject, but I don’t know. I like the logic part.”

“Oh.” I felt a little embarrassed. Math usually was my strongest subject—that’s why I’d taken Algebra I in middle school and got to be in a sophomore geometry class my freshman year. Why had I just admitted to him that I thought they were hard? Now Brody probably thought I was an idiot or something.

“You know, if you ever wanted help sometime—”

I felt my cheeks go red.

“I’m not saying you need help with geometry,” he added quickly. “But… Well, if you do, I’d be glad to help. We could get together after school or something. Do homework together and… hang out.”

Oh my God. Oh. My. God.

“I—”

“Brody,” Mr. Daud, our teacher, called from his desk. “Can I see you for a second? I’m having trouble reading your handwriting on this homework assignment.”

“Sure,” Brody said. He looked at me again. “Let me know about… proofs.”

“I will.”

He smiled. “See you around, Bailey.”

He walked away and I sighed. I closed my eyes for a second, feeling a little light-headed and a lot euphoric.

“So you like my brother, don’t you?”

Justine Frasier, Brody’s younger sister, was standing by a desk a few rows away, staring at me.

“I… uh… I mean—”

She laughed. “It’s okay. You’re not the first.” She scooped up her books and flipped her long brown hair over her shoulder. “You are the first he’s seemed to like back, though.”

“Really? You think he likes me?”

“Seems likely.” She started walking toward the door and I hurried to catch up with her. “My brother’s not the biggest talker. I’m pretty sure that awkward mess a second ago was his attempt at flirting.”

“Wow. That’s so great. I mean, I—I kind of like him, so—”

“Well, obviously,” Justine said. “It’s written all over your face.”

“It is?” I felt my cheeks flush, then my ears get hot.

“Relax. Brody can’t tell. He’s totally oblivious.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay. Good.”

“Hey,” Justine said, stopping outside of a classroom door. “You should come sit with my friends and me at lunch.”

“Really? I’d love to.”

“Great. See you then.”

She walked into the classroom, and I headed down the hall toward biology in a daze. This day was almost too good to be true. Justine Frasier wanted to eat lunch with me and her brother might like me. It was pretty much the best thing that could happen to a freshman at Hamilton High.

Thank God I didn’t wear the floral dress.

***

By the time the lunch bell rang, my joy had turned into pure nerves. I kept running through scenarios in my head. Every possible way this lunch could go bad and totally ruin my life.

“Hold still,” the lunch lady snapped as she attempted to put a glob of mashed potatoes on my tray.

“Sorry,” I said. But I couldn’t help it. My hands were shaking.

The truth was that lunch periods had been stressful for me since starting at Hamilton High in August. My family had only moved to Hamilton in May, right after I finished middle school. I thought it would be easy to find a group of friends at my new school—we were all freshmen, after all. This was the beginning. We were starting high school together.

But Hamilton is a tiny town. All these kids had been going to school together since kindergarten. They already had their groups of friends. And I hadn’t found one to fit into yet.

Don’t get me wrong. Everyone was nice, but I’d sort of flitted from table to table at lunch, never really cementing my place anywhere or becoming very close with anyone. I couldn’t help hoping that this lunch invitation would put an end to that.