Publication date: September 8th, 2015
Katie thought she knew where her life was going. She was dating the captain of the football team, had a BFF for life, and everyone at school wanted to be her. But then her pregnant teen sister’s pregnancy changes all that. Everyone dumps her, including her friends and boyfriend.
Hey, Katie, welcome to life at the bottom of the high school food chain. This is how the other half lives.
Then there’s Nick. He’s a straight-A student and self-professed geek who’s had a thing for her since middle school. He needs a date for the winter formal, and Katie needs something to keep her busy. Nick’s plight becomes her personal pet project. She will help him get over his insecurities and get a date. Besides, she was popular once. She knows how to get dates.
But Nick has other plans. He’s going to use these “dating” lessons as a way to win Katie’s heart.
EXCERPT
Chapter One
Katie
A cry pierced the five-second silence that could’ve raised the hackles on a cute baby seal. If cute baby seals had hackles … I didn’t know. Pulling the worthless, spongy ear plugs from my ears, I jotted down a note on an empty page in the notebook I’d left open the night before. To Google: Do baby seals have hackles? What exactly are hackles anyways?
The lined notebook paper was hard to see in the dim light of my room, let alone the soft pencil marks I was scribbling. Hoping I’d be able to read the quick, exhausted lines in the morning when the world stopped punishing me, I pushed it aside and sat up.
Fluorescent teeth glared at me like a lighthouse beam from the corner of the room. As the peacefulness of sleep retreated further, a ghost of a face appeared around the mouth along with the rest of the lanky but fit, and relaxed yet somehow staged form. More bodies came into focus next to him with equally radiant, ten-minute, glow-in-the-dark smiles.
It was a poster of a boy-band I couldn’t even remember the name of anymore. Pretty sure I was in love with the boy in the middle once upon a time, but that had to have been at least two years ago. His name started with an H. Henry, maybe? No. Harry. No. Horny? Yes. That was it. Had to have been Horny.
The poster was a pre-niece poster. Pre-sixteen-and-pregnant episode going on right in my own house. The only thing I’d never have to write down in my musings notebook: Should I have a kid?
Second of all, my mom would probably disown me, but first of all—the biggest first ever—I would never find out if my mom was that heartless because I’d never let it get that far. I was never getting pregnant. Like never. Because what came from a pregnancy? Babies. Or hell spawn. Or schizoid minions, if you wanted to be exact about it.
Sure, babies could be cute at times. However, I was convinced my niece had horns that slid out of her blond curls in the middle of the night. Hanna had this thing where she liked to scream her head off at the most inappropriate times. Mostly sleeping times. Like right now. The clock confirmed it was only four thirty in the morning. Four thirty! Alicia wasn’t even home from work yet, which meant Mom was most likely trying to calm the baby down in the baby/Alicia’s room. My sister gave up all rights to her own room when she allowed herself to get knocked up.
I picked up a rolled sock at my feet and threw it at Horny’s happy-go-lucky face. I’d be happy too if I was rich and hung up in every adolescents’ bedroom for them to fawn over … and didn’t have a sister who couldn’t keep her legs closed … and could ace school without the necessary hours of sleep.
A shrill scream from the other room punctuated my thoughts with a gigantic exclamation point. My own house was a sideshow. No need to travel to Nowhere, Ohio to see oddities like the Biggest Ball of Yarn. A quick drive down Clamberry Lane would do.
Untangling my legs from the sheets, I stood and tiptoe-ran from the room. The soles of my bare feet allowed the cold from the hardwood floors to seep through my skin and ice its way from my chipped toe nail polish all the way to my mousy brown hair. There was no time to put slippers on even if I could remember where my puppy ones were, or remember where anything was lately. If Mom and I wanted any more sleep tonight, we had to put Hanna back to bed. Immediately.
The door to Alicia/Hanna’s room was slightly ajar. Before pushing it open, I took a huge breath. What was supposed to calm me did the exact opposite. The smell of baby powder only served as a reminder that I wouldn’t get a full night’s sleep until I left for college in another year and a half. Distracted, and now thoroughly annoyed, I pushed the bedroom door open.
Mom stood in the middle of the room doing this bopping up and down swinging thing she thought Hanna liked, never once realizing it hadn’t ever put her to sleep since day one. She turned, her wild, snaky hair knotted around her face, her eyes a mix between sadness, exhaustion, and relief. It was always the relief that bothered me.
“I got her,” I said.
She plopped the devil-crier into my arms. Hanna looked up for a brief second and I thought her wails might subside, but no, she was just gearing up for another ear-piercer. Why was it she always looked so good, even when she was ensuring I’d need hearing aids when I was sixty? Sure, she was red from screaming and snot was dripping from her nose, but it was always Mom and me who looked like we were dragged through thorny bushes and tossed into a manure patch to wilt. Hanna always looked adorable. Angelic. Her tousled curls perfectly framing her face.
I made soothing noises and leaned down to sniff her head. She smelled awesome too. Not fair. I wanted to be mad at her but it was just so dang hard when she was so perfect.
Mom put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Thanks—”
I flinched away. “Just go to bed, Mom. Get some sleep.”
She dropped her head to the side. A flicker of wanting to say more shone in her eyes. I’d noticed the look more often lately. Thoughts were rising to the surface and threatening to spew out. They were practically on her lips, but I didn’t want to get into it. Not right now. Not ever.
“Go to bed.” I said, patting Hanna’s back. “You’re going to make her start crying again.”
Her eyes widened, more from hurt than surprise. Slowly, she turned and I watched numbly as she walked away, her plaid pajama pants twisted oddly around her waist. She must have been too tired to balk at my attitude. Though we did kind of have this unspoken agreement that when we were woken up in the wee hours of the morning, we were allowed to be moody.
Alicia and Hanna’s room matched the décor of the rest of the house, which could only be described as baby dump. It was like a parenting magazine threw up in every room. Except mine. Never mine. I barred anything baby from being in my room except the actual baby.
Several Sippy cups sat on the dresser and toys dotted every available horizontal surface, and some vertical ones too. They were everywhere. Just everywhere. Unbelievable places I wasn’t even sure Hanna could get at. A pink-tongued snake half slithered its way from behind the dresser mirror. Hanna was too small to put that there, she couldn’t even reach the top of the dresser let alone the dresser mirror.
The cooing noised I’d been making seemed to work. Her lungs stopped expelling bloody murder and turned to soft cries. But her tiny little fists? They still gripped my tank top and wouldn’t let go.
There was a time when I wanted to be just like my sister. Up until she got pregnant, I tried to follow in her high school footsteps. That seemed like eons ago now. Plush snake heads and baby alarm clocks were not my idea of a good time.
Apparently, the baby in my hands never got the message. When Alicia started working nights, I was the only one who could calm Hanna down. I basically took over all Mommy functions when my sister wasn’t around, which was at opposites with still trying to have a normal life and bringing my grades up.
Good grades and a decent SAT score were essential to me getting into college. Unfortunately, my pre-niece self had been more interested in boys and parties and best friends than thinking about college. I needed good grades so I could get out of here. This lack of sleep thing wasn’t helping, though.
I lifted Hanna from my shoulder to stare at her. Her eyelashes were wet and spiky. They fluttered and then, bam, she was out again.
Just call me the baby whisperer.
I laid her down, zombie-walked back to my room, and threw myself in bed again. A half hour later, Alicia came home. Her car thrummed in the driveway, her key clicked in the lock, and her exhausted feet stomped to her now-cohabitated bedroom. With her arrival, a heavy, acrid, black cloud fell over our house.
I was a miniscule white dot in a sea of dark, and, not for the first time, wished my sister would take her poor decisions and wasted dreams and leave.
***
The alarm clock clicked on at six a.m. and belted out the tune to that new soul-revolting pop song, I’ll love you for the rest of my life. It’s you or die, baby.
Gag. Me. Now. That wasn’t real life. Real life was the fact that my eyes were stinging and tired from being painted wide open, staring at the ceiling, and listening to Hanna get fussier and fussier in the room on the other side of Horny’s smile. Alicia would have a fit if neither one of us got Hannah from the room so she could sleep her night shift away.
When she’d first got the job, she’d tried to lobby for Hanna and I to share a room because we were on the same sleep schedule. Yeah. Nope. Hanna, okay, but Hanna sleeping in my room would require her bed, her bottles, her toys, and pretty soon my room would look like Alicia’s and that sure as hell wasn’t happening.
The baby powder smell hit me again when I walked into Alicia’s room. It used to smell like Tommy Girl perfume and nail polish remover. Hanna stood in her crib, her little fists outstretched, opening and closing toward me. I swung her onto my hip and didn’t bother being quiet as I shut the door. I was pretty sure Alicia mumbled something that sounded like “itch,” but I didn’t care. My being crabby toward her was yet another side effect of her being a teenage mother.
I changed Hanna out of her nighttime diaper, then watched as she clumsily walked around the living room looking for something to do. Finally, she pointed at the television and said, “Tee?”
I turned cartoons on and watched along with her as the writers and illustrators of today turned the perfectly awesome cartoons I’d grown up on into travesties of nature. No wonder why the youth of today were screwed up. What Hanna needed was a good old-fashioned cartoon, not this crap. She needed the antics of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, not this metaphorical nonsense.
When Mom got out of the shower, we switched places wordlessly. This had been our morning routine for about a year and it always felt like a personal victory when I actually made it to the curb on time, with clothes on the right way, my book bag in my hand, and a fake smile on my face to see Nic pull up. The thing about Nic though, what always started out as me faking a smile, turned into a real one when he was around.
Nic was a juxtaposition.
Hmm. Note to self to make note in notebook: Am I using the word juxtaposition correctly?
He dressed like he could never quite make out who he wanted to be and therefore ended up making himself new every day. He wore punk rock T-shirts under Einstein button-up sweaters. He wore loafers with jeans and Nikes with khakis. The only constant about him was his glasses.
As the door swung open, Nic held out a white Styrofoam cup. “Full many a glorious morning have I seen …”
I took it, smiling, and then after taking a long, wonderful sip, I said, “And blessed is thee who brings me coffee made from bean?”
His face screwed up and the glasses slipped a little down his nose. He had on a red and black plaid collared shirt over a Call of Duty T. He fixed his glasses, still squinting. “Made from bean?”
“…sss? Made from beanssss? Would that have made more sense?”
He cracked a smile. “You never make sense. Did they have coffee back in Shakespeare’s day?”
Of course I never made sense. He should try getting interrupted sleep day in and day out. Wait … night in and night out?
See? Proved my case.
I leaned my book bag against my shins and took another long sip of the steaming cup, squelching the need to say what I’d just thought out loud. It upset Nic when I said things like that. He didn’t get mad, only troubled, as if it made him sad to know I wasn’t happy.
I pointed to the cup in my hand. “Thank you. For this.”
He shrugged. “I know you need it to function.”
The word “now” was carelessly left off the end of his sentence. He knew I needed it to function now. I never needed it before. Didn’t even drink coffee pre-niece. I was good with OJ, or milk, or any of the other breakfast drinks. Just not now. I needed caffeine.
“I take it you did the Shakespeare reading we were supposed to do?” I asked. Stupid question. He always did. We were taking the same English lit course. Unfortunately for us though, we’d been put in different classes. It sucked. Big time. “What sonnet is that from?”
“One of the thirties I think. Did you read them?”
Shaking my head, I said, “No. Not yet. I’ve got study hall today first period, though. It’s on my agenda. Do you remember it? The sonnet?”
“The beginning,” he said. He paused and rubbed his chin. “It reminded me of you.”
It didn’t surprise me he’d remembered it. Nic had one of those carbon copy memories when it came to literature. Words just stuck inside him like fly paper. As he recited the poem, I pictured the words catching to the paper and hanging on for dear life. I wished the inside of me looked like the inside of Nic.
I brought out the notebook I’d slipped in the front pocket of my book bag earlier that morning and jotted down: Juxtaposition. Then, I wrote: 30’s. Poem with glorious morning.
I wanted to see what poem Nic thought was like me. Did he see me like I saw me? If he did, the sonnet would be written in a tornado of words and I doubted Shakespeare would have written something so hideous and disorganized.
Nic’s laughter penetrated my thoughts. “Are you even listening?”
I didn’t even have the decency to get embarrassed. He knew me too well.
“Sorry. Say it again?”
He took another breath and, like usual, the words flowed from him like a trickling stream. Though Nic was considered a science geek at our school, his true calling was something artistic. He could be an actor or a writer or something where emotions ruled and not the brain. He felt things more than normal people. At least, the way he said things was as if feelings were pouring from every crevice.
“Full many a glorious morning have I seen, flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, kissing with golden face the meadows green, gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; anon permit the basest clouds to ride.”
Right after glorious morning in my notebook, I wrote down: Anon permit the basest clouds to ride???
What the hell did that even mean? Mentally shrugging, I decided it didn’t really matter. It sounded beautiful coming from Nic.
Chapter Two
Nic
Katie was an anomaly of nature. Always had been, but not in this way.
She used to shine like the dawning of a new sun over the depleted and war-torn dystopian societies I liked to read about in my sci-fi books. Now it was as if she were one of the down-trodden, the hindered, the fighting masses she’d reigned over. It gutted me to see the curve in her back from all the weight when she’d always been a pillar.
Craning my neck to get a better look, the quick slashes of her pen over the lined notebook paper were still impossible to see. She was biting down on her lip again, a look of concentration draining her face of all else. But then, just as quickly as she’d brought it out, she stuffed the notebook away.
I’d been wanting to ask her what she was always writing down, but figured she’d tell me if she wanted me to know. If it was five years ago, when we were still close friends, I would’ve just asked her. If it were two years ago, back in the dark days, I wouldn’t have even known she carried the notebook. Currently, our friendship level was teetering on the edge of skin deep. I wanted to be bone deep. Screw that, I wanted to be marrow deep.
Marrow deep? I liked that. I’d have to file that away.
She pinched me and I yelped. “Ow. What was that for?”
She half-smiled around the Styrofoam cup. “You were gone for a couple seconds.”
“A simple wave of your hand in front of my face would suffice, thank you.”
“You’re driving. I was worried. People do crazy things when they’re scared for their lives.”
The curve of her lips wilted almost as soon as it bloomed and a wistful look blew into her face as she looked out the car window. The leaves were changing early this year. It happened so quick I’d barely noticed, but now that more and more trees were showing off their colors, they were impossible to ignore.
Mrs. Barnes’ fire bush stood out like a road sign as I took a left onto Maple and headed toward the school. Funny how things changed. That bush had always been home base for any game we’d ever played at she-who-must-not-be-named’s house and now I used it as a visual to remind me to turn left to go to school. “You sure you’re going to be able to read all the assigned sonnets in study hall?”
She shook her head and a tiny smile returned to her face. “Don’t worry about me.”
The determination in her face said everything. Sometimes it still shocked me. I didn’t know how far behind she’d gotten herself before, but the fact that she was trying to make it up now awed me. She wasn’t always Miss Gotta Get Into College. She was more like Miss Carefree.
“I think Mr. Henkel is going to give us the big Shakespeare project today. Can’t wait.”
She tapped a finger to her lips. “If we get to decide what to do, you should perform a soliloquy or something. Or get a bunch of people in your class to act out a scene with you.”
My eyebrows crawled up my forehead. Did we somehow beam into another dimension? She knew the dork sign I carried. She helped put it there. No one in class would decide to work with me unless they were made to. “Are you insane? Did Hanna keep you up all night?”
She rolled her eyes. “She keeps me up every night, but no, I’m not insane. I think you’d be great.”
Because she suggested it, I thought about it briefly. Very briefly. Didn’t actors have to hide their true selves and take over someone else completely? Half the time I felt like the me knob was turned on full blast with no power-down button. It’d be impossible to pretend to be someone else.
Katie swirled her cup, peered into the little hole in the cover and frowned like she always did when she noticed how little coffee was left. If I could find a way, I’d make her a never ending cup.
We pulled into the school and as soon as I put the car into park, a knock came on my window. Katie jumped and I reached my hand over her. To protect her? To what? Didn’t know. When I saw who it was, I rolled my eyes and turned the ignition off.
My friend Jackson stared in at us. He had that look on his face that pissed me off. I started to open my door into him when he mouthed, you’re pathetic.
Drawing on Katie’s inclination that I should be an actor, I gave him a you-suck look and hoped the translation was clear. If his laugh and prompt exit were anything to go by, I nailed it.
Katie was smiling out the window, watching Jackson’s tall, lean frame walk away in a shirt that, like usual, looked like it was just a little too small for his long torso. “I think he’s funny.”
I shot her a look and she laughed.
“What? I mean, he’s a weird kind of funny, but aren’t we all?”
Considering she used to make fun of him on a daily basis for his videogame t-shirts, this was quite an upgrade. I studied her softening face. The hard lines I noticed this morning were already relaxing. At home, she was a tight, nervous ball of energy. Away, she could let herself relax. Her comment about Jackson was one-hundred percent proof of it. The way her laughs came more easily and more frequent. What I wouldn’t give for her to smile all the time. “I’d keep that praise of Jackson to yourself. He’d probably die if he heard you say that.”
She shot me a funny look this time. “No one cares what I think anymore.”
I was about to tell her how wrong she was when she did a double take out the window, her face paling.
Reese Barnes walked with Katie’s old friends toward the school. It had always been hard for me to place Katie in the same group as the mean girls. She never quite belonged. It wasn’t really her who called Jackson a “disillusioned gamer hack dork” in ninth grade. Or in eighth, when she taped a feminine pad to Roseanne Gurtle’s bookbag, it must have been her evil twin.
The not-too-distant memories hardened my insides. I hoped she never went back to that clique again.
Reese looked over. When she saw we stared back at her, she curled her lip into a snarl that would’ve wilted a butterfly in three-point-five seconds.
Internally, I shrunk back. I had years’ worth of experience of avoiding Reese. However, fearless Katie flipped her off.
And she thought Jackson wouldn’t die if she paid him a compliment. Who wouldn’t? No one thought of standing up to Reese Barnes and the Skeletal Crew, except Katie. Except the one who had stood with them.
Reese’s eyes flared and, like Cyclops, a red beam lasered through the space between them and hit Katie square in the chest. Katie put the empty coffee cup in the cup holder between us and brought up another unwavering middle finger, all the while a tiny smile crept over her face.
I guessed we weren’t on the subtlety train today.
Reese stopped and about-faced, her hand landing on her hip. Katie was up and out of the car before I could grab her. I’d done some slight research over the past year and her bitch barometer never made it past a point-five on days she had bad nights with Hanna. She usually handled the backlash of being ostracized from the popular clique pretty well by ignoring it, but last night must have been a doozy.
It was weird to see them like this. Enemies. Reese, the mirror image of Katie from two years ago. Katie, a bystander, like me. Back then, they would’ve been on the same side of the pathway, scorching down some guy who happened to like school, or D&D, or anything else that made people uncool. Katie belonged on the other side of that path. Not to be bitch cohorts again, but because she was born to be noticed. She couldn’t be noticed on this side of the path with me. Things just didn’t work like that.
They were already exchanging words, Reese flanked by her crew and an unflinching Katie staring them all down, when I got out of the car. The door banged shut and everybody jumped, even me. I guessed I’d shut it harder than I’d meant to. Reese tried her butterfly-kill stare but when I was next to Katie, I sometimes thought I might be able to stand up to them too. Like her force field automatically expanded to shield me as well as her.
Just like with Jackson, I shot Reese my new you-suck look. But instead of running away, she threw her head back and laughed. It was so Wizard of Oz witchy, but worked for her somehow. My new and obviously faked confidence waned until Katie’s hand grabbed my arm.
This cut Reese short as her bitch radar zeroed in on Katie’s delicate fingers. I knew what was going to come out of her mouth the second her eyes twinkled and her lips curled into a smirk.
“Congratulations, Katie. I’m so happy for you.”
It was the sickeningly sweet voice that threw Katie off for a second, stunning her. I’d swear in front of Congress Reese Barnes was bipolar.
“I think it’s great you two are finally together. It’s been a long time coming.” Reese looked around and saddled up to Katie like they were co-conspirators again. The semi-whisper that came from her was dual-edged. It was supposed to be a whisper, but the kind of whisper that she hoped everyone around us could hear. “I know how much you always talked about it before. Your deepest darkest secret.”
Hope surged inside my chest. Reese wasn’t someone you wanted to trust, but I’d take scraps from anyone.
The thickening crowd around us snickered and everyone switched their gazes between Katie and me that read, She wanted him? How is that possible?
Katie had fallen from the very top of the social ladder rung, but for someone like her, it was impossible to fall as far down as I was.
Reese winked at me. My stomach knotted. She used to do that when we were little, but back then, I was in on the joke. Now I was the joke.
“Careful, Nic,” she said, her voice louder now, “When you do your research about how to have sex, pay close attention to the section on protection. Katie comes from a fertile family and the last thing the school administrators need is another teenage pregnancy statistic to pass on to the state. Disgusting how they’re all from the same family too.”
Katie stepped forward but I clasped my hand around her fingers still circling my arm. Reese wasn’t in front of us still anyway. Once she delivered the final blow, she left. That was her MO. And a good one too. It ensured she always got the last word and, with Reese, it was most likely the last laugh too.
Katie’s eyes were closed when I looked at her. I uncurled her fingers from my arm and brought our hands down between us and squeezed her small fingers. Her eyes fluttered open and her lips curled into a half smile.
Squeezing her fingers again, I said, “Did she just insinuate I wouldn’t know how to have sex unless I looked it up first? She does realize I’m far smarter than her, right? My IQ is probably double.”
Her face broke into a smile that warmed my insides. The first real smile all day. If I had balls instead of brains, I’d pull her toward me and show everyone, including Reese’s crew, just what I really thought of Katie Ross. If she kissed me back, the scene would probably turn into X territory really quick because I’d combust inside.
But I couldn’t shut my brain off and my brain was always telling me what everyone else’s looks confirmed. It was impossible for Katie to feel the same way about me. It would bend the rules of physics and everyone knows physics can’t be bent. Facts were facts. And fact was, girls like Katie didn’t like guys like me. Guys like me were quarantined to the friend zone.
Right on cue, Katie said, “You’re a good friend.”
And though I smiled and nodded, deep, deep down, I wanted to maim the person who invented the word friend. That guy was probably never stuck in the friend zone with someone for years. I wanted outside the zone. I wanted to be so far outside the zone I couldn’t see the property line.
Katie was quiet as we walked toward the front entrance to the school. Somewhere between the showdown and here, she’d dropped my hand, and it was currently wallowing in the empty space between us.
When we walked through the double doors, it was like any other day. Reese and Jer, Katie’s ex-boyfriend, made out near the hallway that led into the cafeteria. The rest of the Skeletal Crew left the first lunch table one-by-one on the arms of guys in letter jackets. Soon, most everyone was cleared from the hallway except for the group around Jackson’s locker. My group.
Katie was an implant to the group since Reese dumped her at the beginning of last year. She still didn’t quite fit in fully, but I got the sense it didn’t bother her that much.
As we walked toward them, Katie said, “Do you have any Shakespeare revenge quotes in your arsenal?”
I waved to Jackson who’d just spotted us. “I don’t know, but it’d probably come from Hamlet. He’s one pissed off character.”
Thoughts seemingly somewhere else, she pulled on my sleeve before we reached my friends. “I’m going to go to the computer lab before homeroom. I’ll see you later?”
I couldn’t keep myself from frowning. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. See you later.”
She pulled her book bag up higher on her shoulder and walked away.
When I turned back, Jackson was smirking. My brain started firing scenarios to me all at once and not one of them left me feeling easy. Jackson would say something about Katie. I would get pissed off. It wouldn’t end well.
Instead of walking up to them, I raised a hand and said, “Check you guys later,” then walked in the opposite direction Katie had gone.
About the author:
She lives in Central New York with her very understanding husband, a stepson, and doggie BFF, Maxie. Preferring to spend her time indoors reading or writing, she'll only willingly go outside for chocolate and sunshine--in that order.
Erin is the author of BLOOD HEX, a YA paranormal novel, HOW WE LIVED, a contemporary NA novel, and the forthcoming YA contemporary romance title, FINDING MR. DARCY: HIGH SCHOOL EDITION. Find out more about her at:
6 comments:
thx u for hosting :)
Seems like a great story!
I would love to read this book. Story sounds like one that I wouldn't mind reading over and over.
Thanks so much for the kind words everyone! And thank YOU for having FALLING FOR SHAKESPEARE on your blog. I truly appreciate it!
Happy Release or Publication Day, I don't know how that's correctly said, lol I felt like I read the whole book in the excerpt. I think it's because it's so demanding to be a teen mom and the girl isn't even the mom! I will definitely have to read this! :)
Sounds like an interesting book.
Post a Comment