Wrong About the Guy(20)

“Well, you know how I feel about dating in high school. It’s always a mistake.”

“But if you and Aaron fell in love—”

“That’s a big if.” I tried to picture the two of us kissing. The thought wasn’t repulsive. I shrugged. “We’ll see. Hold on—I want you to help me pick out what I’m going to wear tomorrow.” I got up and walked into my closet, which was the kind of closet you can walk into, and pulled out a pair of skinny jeans and a long-sleeved transparent top. I brought them over to the computer so she could see them. “How about this? I’d wear a tank underneath, of course, and boots.”

“It’s going to be hot tomorrow,” she said.

“So? There’ll be air-conditioning.”

“You’re lucky. My stupid school doesn’t have air-conditioning. Or a pool. Or a library. Or anything good.”

“I wish you could go to Coral Tree with me.”

“Yeah.” A couple of years ago, I talked Heather into asking her parents if she could transfer there. They couldn’t afford the tuition, but I thought maybe she could get financial aid. But the school rejected her application before money even got discussed. Heather said it was because she hadn’t gotten very good scores on the private school entrance exams. “But it’s probably just as well,” she said now. “Everyone’s so smart there. I’d be at the bottom of the class.”

“You’re a lot smarter than you think you are. And definitely a lot smarter than most of the kids I know there.” I studied the outfit. “I don’t know . . . should I go more summery? I have this new Alice and Olivia dress. . . .”

Heather wanted to see it, so I got it out and showed her. It was a simple yellow shift dress with a seventies kind of vibe.

“Wow,” she said. “You’d look amazing in that.”

“You don’t think it’s too dressy?”

“Wear it,” she said firmly. “It’s the last first day of high school ever. That’s huge.”


I got a lot of compliments on my dress at school on Tuesday. Also a lot of compliments on my hair. And on my brilliant comments in class. And on my smile and my shoes and my makeup and my car and my bag and, well, you can pretty much name it, and someone was complimenting me on it.

A new school year. The same old pattern.

I realized years earlier that I could be annoyed by the fact that people were so desperate to be my friend that they’d say anything to make me like them, or I could just shrug it off. I chose to shrug it off. It wasn’t malicious and might not even have been entirely conscious; they just couldn’t separate me from my connection to Luke Weston.

So I accepted the compliments without believing them and tried to use my social power for good. I wouldn’t be friends with anyone who was mean or cliquish and I rallied people to join the Gay-Straight Alliance and Diversity Council and things like that. Teachers called me a “natural leader,” which only made me realize that the adults were as likely to fawn over me as the kids were. It didn’t go to my head: I knew people weren’t following me because I was so wildly charismatic; they were following me because I was Luke Weston’s stepdaughter and they all wanted to meet him.

I was most proud of having increased student participation in the Holiday-Giving Program by like tenfold or something ridiculous like that. My freshman year, I signed up to help out with the annual Christmas party at the shelter our school supported, and my closest friends all signed up too. Then the next year, I volunteered to head the gift drive, and got Riley to do it with me—of all my school friends, she was the most organized and reliable.

Luke and Mom came with me to that year’s Christmas party, which totally freaked people out—everyone who went was giddy with delight at being at the same event as Luke Weston, and everyone who didn’t go regretted it. Junior year, I ran the Christmas party and everyone assumed Luke would show up, so literally half the school signed up to bring presents and help out with games for the kids. Luke actually didn’t come that year—he was in Chicago, shooting a remote segment for the show—but with all the help and donations, we had an incredible party, and I ended up being asked to co-run the entire program with another rising senior named Ben Simmons, who had run that year’s gift drive.

Ben and I had texted a little over the summer and agreed we’d get together after the first day of school, along with Riley and Skyler, who I’d coaxed into co-running this year’s Christmas party, and a junior named Arianna Hawley, who Ben had put in charge of the gift drive, since she’d helped him the year before.

Ben took the meeting seriously, which I appreciated. He was there on time, was focused on making a plan, and had some good ideas.

Riley had briefly had a crush on him in eleventh grade—he was darkly good-looking in a sort of Joaquin Phoenix kind of way—but after she had spent some time with him at a party, she lost interest and said he was boring. He definitely didn’t have much of a sense of humor, which would have been a deal breaker for me in a romance but was fine in someone I only needed to work with. We were pretty efficient as we put together a calendar of deadlines and events based on the previous year’s schedule and this year’s available dates supplied by the vice principal.

It all went smoothly except for one awkward moment, when Arianna suddenly said, “Oh, I was thinking we should get a celebrity parent to come to the party—I hear that one year Luke Weston showed up and people went nuts. If we could promise that he or someone like that would be there, everyone would sign up. How’d we get him?”