Where It Began(18)

But not as turned on as me, the original grateful grinning idiot.

He is so absolutely, undeniably perfect. I go: Why me? Why me? Why me? about six hundred times in the five seconds it takes me to walk across the living room to the front door. And then, by the time we are out the door, by the time his arm is draped around my shoulder, I don’t even care why or how or anything. And the only thing in my mind, arranging myself in the passenger seat of the midnight-blue Beemer, tying my hair back so the wind won’t blow it into the shape of a tumbleweed, is my increasingly insistent mantra, the one about how I’d better not screw this up.

Lisa and Anita are completely nonplussed. Even though I am pretty sure that everyone else kind of wants to have what I suddenly have—cute skintight clothes and a spot in the Class of 1920 Garden drinking wine out of paper cups at lunch with Billy Nash—I have somehow managed to cozy up to the only two friends who are a special case. They seem more amazed than covetous, like they want anthropological field reports of the inner workings of hot, elite circles that they themselves don’t actually want any personal part of.

Sitting in a group study room trying to teach me SAT II math facts, Anita says, “It’s just that I see you with someone more, I don’t know, more arty.”

Before now, the idea that she saw me with anyone at all would have been highly flattering and also highly unrealistic.

I say, “Huey is arty.”

“Someone normal and arty. Someone, I don’t know, more intense.”

“Billy is intense.”

“Not that kind of intense. Not jock intense.”

I’ve barely known him for a month, but I am pretty sure that he’s the perfect intensity. I am pretty sure that even if this is like Zeus coming down from Mount Olympus to frolic with some clueless shepherd maid, I don’t want to wreck the frolic with major analysis or—yay Vivian and the power of positive thinking—think one single negative thought to mess it up.

“It’s not like he’s a dumb jock,” I say. “He is going to Princeton.”

Anita slams her ten-pound AP Bio book down on the table. “Don’t be naive,” she says, as if anyone could stay naive for five minutes at Winston. “It’s not like people who know they’re going to Princeton fall of junior year are getting in because they’re Albert Einstein.”

“Anita!”

“Some people actually have to study and get a four-three GPA and build a nuclear reactor in their basement to get into an Ivy. And some people don’t.”

Which is obviously true. Which is why Peyton Epps, famous for being mean and stupid but whose whole Epps dynasty has large buildings named after them at every high school, college, and hospital in Southern California, is going to Brown instead of Cal State Bakersfield.

“At least Cal doesn’t have a quota on Asians,” Anita says.

Which is why Lewis Wing, who actually got a prize for taking and acing more APs than anybody else in the history of Winston School, is going to Cal instead of Brown.

“Okay,” I say. “I get it. Life is unfair and also sucks. But my life, for once, doesn’t suck and it’s not as if the ticket to Princeton is his fault.”

“I’m just saying,” Anita says. “Don’t go confusing him with Wallace Schaeffer.”

Wallace Schaeffer has been taking engineering courses at UCLA since he was fourteen. There are completely credible rumors that Wallace Schaeffer got a likely letter from MIT when he was still a sophomore. The only reason Wallace Schaeffer is even at Winston and not hanging around with all the other certified geniuses at Harvard-Westlake—which Winston tries to pretend is our crosstown rival, ignoring the tiny facts that (1) it is not across town, and (2) it is better than us in basically everything except equestrian team and cheerleading—is that the Harvard-Westlake middle school carpool line is routed past his house and his mom’s hobby is waging war to make them stop blocking her vast, circular driveway.

But Wallace Schaeffer is not the one driving me around in his midnight-blue convertible:

That would be Billy Nash.

Lisa and Anita try to be nice to him. When we drive past them in the parking lot, they wave while looking at their feet.

Not that there’s any way that I can tell them what I’m doing with him up in his bedroom, when he knocks the homework off the bed with his bare feet and strokes my hair, and my forehead, and my eyebrows, and my eyelids. When he runs his fingers down the back of my neck and down my spine under my blouse and I want more and he wants more and I just want to give him more. Because: Even though getting him off like that might not technically be sex, they would still be completely grossed out.

But there we are, by the side of the bed, his fingers on my shoulders, me unzipping him, me with my clothes still on because every time I think about taking them off, all I can think of is Billy looking down at my naked self going, Jesus, what was I thinking? And the whole time, I’m going, Whoa, Gabriella, this is actually more than somewhat fun. Whoa. This is freaking amazing.

And trying not to look so into it that he’ll think I’m a skank.

Only you have to admit, Billy is Gorgeous Boy from Planet Irresistible.

Eating frozen yogurt together after sculpture, Lisa says, “I wouldn’t mind sculpting that.” That being Billy from behind. Also, not being totally unobservant, she says, “Watch your back, okay? Not that you have to.”