She tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey there.”
When he turned around, any and all composure she had managed to achieve instantly melted. “Hey, tour guide,” he said, a smile lighting up his face. His eyes seemed even larger and bluer than they’d looked the day before. “How are you?”
“You got your wish,” she teased.
“I just hope you’re not a bad influence,” he said, grinning. “Like before.” She felt the blood rise to her cheeks, and her stomach churn. She prayed that she didn’t throw up.
“What do you mean, before?” she asked, trying not to stare at his perfect white teeth.
“You were always the one who wanted to throw water balloons onto Park Avenue,” he said. “You practically got my family thrown out of the building after we hit the doorman.”
“But you loved it,” she countered. “I was just trying to keep you happy.”
“You made me,” he pretended to argue. Then he looked her up and down as if he were seeing her for the first time. “But now I’m finally taller than you so you can’t boss me around anymore.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” she said. She cast her gaze down to his schoolbag. She needed a break from those piercing blue eyes. “Let me see your schedule.”
She watched him open the flaps of his bookbag and reach inside for his schedule. A familiar-looking blue paperback peeked out amid folders and papers.
“Wait,” she said. “Is that The Great Gatsby?”
He paused and then looked up at her with surprise. “Yeah.”
“That’s so funny,” she said. “I’m reading it right now. I’m kind of obsessed with it.”
“Me, too.” He pulled the book out of his bag. His copy was even more wrinkled and battered than hers.
“I finished it a while ago, but I like to carry it around with me,” he said, flipping through the pages. “Kind of like a rabbit’s foot or something.” He gave a sheepish shrug. “I want to be a writer.”
“So do I,” she said.
“You do?” he asked, peering into her eyes. Her heart lurched into a rapid-fire sprint just as she felt someone walk up behind her.
“Todd? Oh my God!”
Ava Elting neatly stepped her Pilates-toned body past Lizzie as if she weren’t even there and threw her arms around Todd’s neck. “I heard you moved back,” she cooed, her voice rising and falling as she hugged him. “It’s soooo good to see you.”
As usual, Ava looked like she’d spent hours getting ready for school. Her perfectly-shaped auburn ringlets were pulled back with a jeweled barrette, her brows were plucked into neat tadpoles, and her fingernails were French manicured. Just looking at her could be exhausting. It had probably taken her all weekend to get that groomed. But Lizzie secretly wished she could be the same way.
“Hey, Ava,” Todd said, pleasant but cautious, returning the hug. “Good to see you.”
“So you had enough of stuffy old England,” she said, tipping her head and batting her saucer-shaped brown eyes. “What happened? Did you miss being around girls with good teeth?” She giggled and swung her Hervé Chapelier shoulder bag up her arm.
“Well, um, my dad made us move,” he said. “But yeah, I guess you could say the girls here have, uh, better teeth,” he said in a resigned voice. “Or whatever.”
“Of course they do!” Ava said, playing with the diamond A that she always wore around her neck. “I’m sure they’re going to miss you.”
Todd just blushed and looked down at the floor.
There was something else Ava excelled at besides grooming, and that was talking to guys. And anyone else, really. Ava Elting was probably the most confident girl Lizzie had ever seen. She had been that way since the third grade, and her constant socializing—and flirting—had propelled her to the top of the New York City private school food chain. There wasn’t a charity committee she didn’t oversee, a party she didn’t get invited to, or a guy she couldn’t talk up—usually to stunning results. True, she was pretty, with her toned runner’s legs and carefully styled hair, but it was the force of her personality—and her shameless flirting—that usually got her any guy she wanted.
“Oh, hey!” Ava exclaimed, turning around and suddenly acknowledging Lizzie’s presence. “I’m so rude! How was your summer, Lizzie?”
“Great,” Lizzie said through a gritted smile. “How was yours?”
“Oh, you know, it was the usual—tennis camp in Florida, and then riding camp in Bedford, and then just lying out in Southampton… wait!” She looked back at Todd. “We should all have lunch today. When’s your lunch period?”
“I don’t know, is it down there?” Todd asked Lizzie.
Lizzie wanted to mention that it had been years since she and Ava had eaten lunch together, but she just looked back down at his schedule. “Eleven forty-five,” she said.
“Oh, I’m twelve thirty,” Ava said disappointedly, tossing one of her curls. “Whatever. You’ll just have to come over after school sometime this week so we can catch up.”
“Sure,” Todd said with an appreciative smile. “That’d be great.”
Lizzie felt her stomach sink. She knew for a fact that Ava had barely even known Todd before he moved away—he definitely hadn’t been one of the popular guys at St. Brendan’s. Now, just because he was cute, she was going to pretend they were old buddies. And flirt with him. Yuck.
The bell rang, signaling the five minutes until homeroom.
“Oh, hey, guys,” Ava said as her three best friends—Ilona Peterson, Cici Marcus, and Kate Pinsky—came to stand in their usual protective circle around her. “Say hi to Todd Piedmont.”
Ilona, Cici, and Kate each gave Todd a deliberately thin smile. Ilona was the prettiest of the three, with her three-hundred-dollar, butter-colored highlights and long, curled eyelashes. She also had the biggest chest at Chadwick. Cici was Ava’s second in command, with freckles and heavy brows and a permanent scowl. Kate was the quiet one, with bright blue eyes and chemically straightened black hair. Using the first letter of their first names, Carina, Hudson, and Lizzie called them the Icks. Around Ava, the Icks were generally harmless. But as soon as their leader was gone, they could be—and usually were—ruthlessly mean. Nothing and nobody was safe. Their preferred weapon was the collective snicker followed by a piercing deathstare, and their preferred target was usually Lizzie, or Carina, or Hudson.
The three weren’t sure how they’d become the Icks’ Number One Enemy, but the only thing they could come up with was their parents. Like some of the girls in their class, the Icks seemed to assume that Lizzie and her friends were wildly conceited—no matter how hard they tried to prove otherwise. The nicer they acted toward the Icks, the meaner the Icks were in return. Lizzie sometimes thought that if her mother had been a murderer instead of a model, the Icks would have probably been kinder to her. Only Carina sometimes escaped their wrath. Her dad’s extreme wealth, and his fondness for the New York social circuit, meant that Carina had one foot in Ava’s world of invitation-only charity dances and Hamptons polo matches. If Carina had really cared to, she could have been even more popular than Ava.
“Hey guys,” Todd said, greeting each of them. “You all know Lizzie, right?”
The Icks glanced at Lizzie with distaste. “Hi,” Ilona said listlessly, flicking her eyes over Lizzie’s pale legs. “Nice tan.” Kate and Cici giggled.
“Hey, Ilona,” Lizzie said curtly. She looked over at Todd to see if he’d picked up on their laugh, but his eyes were on Ava and her unbuttoned-just-a-bit-too-low oxford shirt.
“Well, I gotta go,” Ava said. “I’ll text you later and I mean it, let’s totally hang, okay?” she said, putting a hand on Todd’s arm. “Oh, and Lizzie, good to see you!”
With a quick wave at Lizzie, Ava turned to go, leading the way for her posse down the hall. Todd stared at the back of Ava’s rolled-up kilt, swinging from side to side, until it disappeared around the corner. “She’s nice,” Lizzie said as vaguely as possible.
“Yeah,” Todd answered, turning toward her. His face looked a little vacant, as if his mind was still somewhere else. “She’s a cool girl.”
Did Todd really think a cool girl was someone who knew the entire city and threw parties? Or a girl who loved The Great Gatsby and wanted to be a writer?
She led him down the hall toward the open homeroom door. “We’re right in here,” she said, leading the way inside.
As they walked in together, twenty pairs of eyes watched them weave their way through the desks. Yes, Lizzie thought. Todd Piedmont is going to be a very big deal at the Chadwick School. Even Hudson and Carina were staring.
“Want to sit here?” Todd asked, pointing to two empty desks. As she nodded and sat down beside him, she caught a glimpse of her friends’ excited smiles.
Lizzie rolled her eyes back at them, hoping they’d get the message to stop gawking at them. But she felt a telltale blush creep across her face. From the butterflies dancing around her stomach and the way she almost felt dizzy, she knew that she’d already reached the Crush Point of No Return.
He leaned over toward her, so close she could smell his mint toothpaste. “You’re with me all day, right?” he asked.
Lizzie gulped. “Uh-huh,” she said.
Oh my God, she thought, looking down at her desk. There was no way she was going to make it to three thirty.
chapter 3
Tut-tut-tut-tut-tut-tut.
The last page came rolling out of the printer into the tray, and Lizzie scooped up all twelve pages in her hands. She still didn’t have a title, and she wasn’t sure of the ending, but she was proud of her story. Maybe this would be the one she’d submit to the fiction contest. She hoped Mr. Barlow would think so, too.
The main characters were a little familiar: a gawky teenage girl in the shadow of her beautiful actress-mother decides to get her hair cut just like her, with disastrous results. The girl then ends up realizing she actually likes her hair, and wishes she hadn’t done it. Anyone who read the story, and knew who’d written it, would know exactly what—and who—it was really about. But Lizzie’s real self, complete with her secret thoughts and feelings, always crept into her stories. She couldn’t help it. Mr. Barlow was always telling her that the best writing came from personal experience, anyway. “Only by being yourself can you be more than yourself,” he liked to say whenever he read her drafts. Still, it was a little embarrassing to be exposed like that. Even though there was a certain relief when her characters dealt with something that bothered her. It was almost as if she’d dealt with it, too.
As she walked back to her spot in the computer lab, she heard Ilona, Cici, and Kate start giggling across the aisle. Whatever, Lizzie thought as she sat down and opened her Gmail. They’d been doing this all day, and she knew why. Todd was still hanging around her, three days later, even after it was clear he didn’t need a tour guide anymore. Carina and Hudson, naturally, were convinced that Todd had an insane crush on her. Lizzie didn’t know, but the idea that Todd might actually be into her was way too exciting, and possibly a jinx. Things like that just didn’t happen to her. As for the Icks, Todd’s attention just seemed to be another reason to send some obnoxiousness in Lizzie’s direction. Why she needed to feel self-conscious about a good-looking guy following her around, Lizzie wasn’t sure, but to the Icks, any chance to make her feel self-conscious was apparently worth it.
As she read her e-mail, the giggles got louder. She was just about to say something when she heard someone say, “Hey, Lizzie.”
Lizzie looked up. Hillary Crumple, who was in the eighth grade but dressed like she was in the fourth, stood beside her in the aisle, her gigantic backpack strapped to both shoulders, and the loose hair from her ponytail standing on end around her face. As usual, her heart-shaped face was just a little too shiny and her yellow-green eyes didn’t blink.
“Hey, Hillary,” Lizzie said, fighting the urge to run to the door. “How was your summer?”
“So I saw Hudson on E! last week,” Hillary replied, launching right into her favorite subject. “They were doing this thing on celebrity children style. How does she dress like that? Does she have a stylist? Or does she just find all those things herself? What do you think? Do you know?”
Hillary’s rapid-fire questioning left Lizzie speechless as usual. “Um, I’m not sure,” Lizzie mumbled.
“I saw her mom this summer,” Hillary went on, undeterred. “In concert. Oh my God, she was so amazing. They said that Hudson’s making her own album. Is she? Do you think she’d let me hear a song? What’s her music like? Is she gonna be on American Idol?”
She stepped closer. Lizzie prayed for a stun gun.
“Um, I don’t know,” said Lizzie, turning back to her computer and starting to type a little. “Actually, she’s pretty private about that stuff.” Help, she thought.
“Do you think she’d ever take me shopping?” Hillary persisted, stepping even closer. “She has such great style—”
“Hey? Is this seat taken?”
Lizzie almost cried out with joy when she saw Todd walk up behind Hillary. “Nope!” she chirped, pulling her bookbag off the chair next to her.
“I’m Todd,” he told Hillary as he moved past her.
“This is Hillary Crumple,” Lizzie said. “She’s in the eighth grade.”
“Hey,” he said.
After three days, Todd now looked like a typical Chadwick guy. He’d learned to let the knot of his tie hang just a few inches down from his collar and had traded his European bookbag for an L.L. Bean. As he sat down next to her, Lizzie felt her stomach turn into a Slinky.
“Well, just tell Hudson I said hi,” Hillary said, clearly petrified by Todd, before walking back to her computer.
“What was that all about?” Todd asked as he logged on to his e-mail.
“Oh, she’s Hudson’s stalker.”
“What?” he asked, staring at her.
“She’s tries to be her friend. In a huge way,” Lizzie explained. “Hudson’s so nice to her. But it kind of creeps me out.” Lizzie felt guilty even explaining it.
“Well, you seemed like you were being really nice to her,” he said reassuringly. “That’s the only thing you can do.”
As he typed in his password, Lizzie snuck a sideways glance at him. Todd was so different from the other guys in their class. While Eli Blackman and Ken Clayman constantly drew attention to themselves in class with pranks and jokes, Todd had a calmness to him that made him even more attractive. Somehow that quiet, sensitive kid who’d followed her around their old building had turned into a smart, funny, humble, and down-to-earth guy. Who also happened to be gorgeous.
“Hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing to the story she’d turned upside-down.
“Oh, just something I wrote.”
Todd picked it up and turned it around. “Can I read it?”
Lizzie paused. She’d never given a guy—much less a guy she liked—one of her stories. But right now his interest was so exciting she couldn’t think of a reason not to give it to him. “On one condition,” she said. “You give me one of yours.”
“Only after I read this,” Todd countered with a smile. “Just so I know what I’m up against.”
Across the aisle Lizzie could see the Icks’ eyes fixed on the two of them hungrily. She looked back at him quickly. “Sure,” she said, even more nervous now that she knew they were being watched.
“Oh, let me ask you something,” he said, leaning closer to her so that their elbows bumped. Her heart did a somersault. “If I had a party Saturday night, do you think people would come?”
Lizzie blinked. “Uh, yeah. I think so,” she said, pretending that she wasn’t sure.
“Good, because I’ll have the place to myself,” he said. “My dad’ll be in Southampton and my mom… is still in London.” He gave her a cautious look.
“Really? She’s not here yet?” Lizzie asked.
His jaw muscle popped up and down. “She’s not coming. My dad
met someone back here… that’s why we moved. They’re splitting up.”
Lizzie felt herself blush as she stared at the computer mouse. She felt bad that this was the first she was hearing this. She should have asked about his parents before. “And you decided to move with your dad?” she finally asked.
“He wanted me to,” Todd said. The muscle in his jaw popped again. “Maybe it wasn’t the right thing. I don’t know. I think my mom’s pretty hurt.”
She felt an overwhelming urge to cover his hand with her own.
“And keep this between us if that’s okay,” he said. “You’re like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby. The guy everyone tells all their secrets to.” He grinned at her, showing her his perfect white teeth. “So… maybe you can come over early and help me set up?”
Her heart felt like it might leap out of her chest. “I’d love to,” she said.
“Cool.” He stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder.
He wanted her to come over early. Her mind reeled.
He leaned down and grabbed her story. “Don’t worry. For my eyes only.”
“It better be,” she managed to say, just as Ava Elting glided through the doors of the computer lab. Her auburn curls bounced on her shoulders, and her diamond A necklace glinted in the fluorescent light like a weapon. “I just heard about the party—I’m so psyched! I would have had one but my parents aren’t going to the country this weekend. So annoying.” She wrinkled her nose and pulled her vanilla-colored handbag further up her arm. “Can I do anything? Bring over some music? I just made the most amazing playlist.”
Todd took a step backward toward the door. “No, I think I’m all set. Just bring your people.”
“Oh, no worries. I will,” she said emphatically.
Todd looked at Lizzie and waved just before he ambled slowly out of the lab.