Wrong About the Guy

And I did. The next day.

Hi said the first text.

Hi! I texted back.

I’m so depressed

My heart sank.

George came by that evening.

“Wondering about my scores?” I said when I opened the door to him. “You could have just texted me.”

“This may come as a shock, but not everything’s about you,” he said calmly. “I’m here to help your mom organize her office.”

“So you’re not even curious about what I got?”

“She already told me.”

“Damn it!” I said. “She ruins everything. I was going to tell you I did horribly just to make you feel guilty.”

“Why would that make me feel guilty?”

“Because you were my tutor. My doing badly totally reflects on you.”

“You didn’t do badly,” he pointed out.

“But if I had, it would have been your fault.”

“So I get to take credit for your doing well?”

“No. That was because I’m smart.”

He rolled his eyes. “This may be the stupidest conversation I’ve ever had with you, and that’s saying a lot. Where’s your mother?”

I wasn’t sure, so I led him into the kitchen, where I hit the intercom on the wall monitor and blasted a message through the entire house that he had arrived.

“Thanks,” he said when I had done that and Mom had called down a “Be right there!” He leaned against the counter. “I’m a little scared even to ask, but how did Heather do? Do you know?”

“Yeah.”

He studied my expression. “Uh-oh.”

“Not as well as I’d hoped,” I admitted.

“So—”

I cut him off. “She’ll take it again and do better. And even if she doesn’t, I’ve already looked online and there are plenty of people who got into Elton College with similar scores. Well, not plenty. But some.”

“A lot of people are extraordinary in ways that have nothing to do with test taking,” George said. “But I’m not sure—”

“Don’t.” I put my hand up to stop him from finishing his sentence. “You don’t know Heather the way I do. People love her. She’ll probably have the best teacher recommendations in the world. And she’s really well-rounded.” And Luke will call and make them take her. “The scores are only one small part of this whole thing. I promise you, she and I will end up at our first-choice college together.”

“Make sure you’re not assuming it’s her first choice just because it’s yours.”

“I’m not,” I said, and he just shook his head and went back out into the hallway.

I got a text a little while later from Aaron asking if I wanted to run out for boba. I said sure, and he offered to pick me up.

I buzzed him through the gate about twenty minutes later. When I opened the front door, he pulled up in a Porsche convertible, which he parked behind George’s Toyota. He got out and bounded up to the front door with his usual show of energy and enthusiasm. “Hello!” he cried out, and hugged me tightly. “It’s been way too long. Why have you been denying me the inspirational sight of your beauty?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re the one who’s been too busy to get together.” We’d tried making plans a few times, but they kept falling through.

“I blame you. And those rat bastard SATs.”

“At least they’re over.”

“And at least you did well.”

“You too, right?” I didn’t know the exact numbers, but he’d said he wouldn’t have to retake them.

Mom called down from upstairs, “Who’s that, Ellie?”

Aaron and I moved deeper into the foyer and tilted our heads back so we could see her; she was leaning over the banister, George a few feet behind her, in the shadows.

“Aaron’s here,” I said. “We’re going out to grab some boba.”

“Boba?” Mom repeated. “Okay.” She was wearing yoga pants and a zippered hoodie and had her hair in a ponytail, so either she’d been exercising before George came or was pla

“I want to get out of the house.”

“You’re not going to be drinking, are you?”

“We just said we’re going out for tea,” I said. “We either have to drink it or shoot it into our veins.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do your parents do this to you when you’re leaving?” I asked Aaron.

“Only if I flunk the urine test.”

We said good-bye to her and headed out the door and toward his car. “Since when have you had a Porsche?” I asked.

“Three—almost four—hours.”

“Seriously?”

“Dad made a deal with me that if I got over a certain number on my SATs, I could get one.”

“We only got our scores yesterday. You move fast.”

“Yeah, I was desperate—I’ve been driving their minivan. Do you know how hard it is to look cool behind the wheel of a minivan?”

“If anyone could manage it, it would be you.”

“True enough.” We got into the car and he said, “So . . . that place on Sawtelle? Whose name I can never remember? Or the one in Westwood?”

We settled on the Sawtelle place, and I sat back in my seat as he peeled out through the gate and onto the street. “You know what’s weird?” I said. “I smell new-car smell but I also smell perfume.”

He sniffed. “Oh yeah. Eau de Evil Stepmother. Crystal made me drive her to the market before I came over here—she was almost out of the blood of virgins to bathe in. Which reminds me: What are you going to be for Halloween? You’re coming to our party, right?”

“Yes! We’re all going.” Michael threw a big a

Aaron proposed coordinating our costumes, so we spent the rest of the evening discussing what we’d go as, finally settling on the two kids from Moonrise Kingdom.

He dropped me off at home around ten. I gave him a quick peck on the cheek and then jumped out of the car. I didn’t want a long good-bye—these things can get weird, and Aaron and I were definitely in uncertain territory. We were old family friends—theoretically, at least, since we’d never spent all that much time together—so it made sense that we’d want to get together to complain about our families and just hang out.

But . . . this evening wasn’t exactly not a date either. I mean, he texted me, picked me up, and took me out to a quiet place where we sat and talked alone for a couple of hours. He even paid for my tea. (It cost a whopping three bucks—and his father was richer than the entire universe—but still. He paid.)

We got along incredibly well. We were practically the same person: we both had to deal with having ridiculously famous fathers, and we’d also both spent a lot of our lives alone with our unfamous mothers. We both considered ourselves Californians, but had lived in other states. We both had these much-younger half siblings who were equally adorable and a

Our personalities were similar, too. We were both outgoing and quick and impatient and greedy. We got each other.

So in a lot of ways you could say we were soul mates. Which maybe meant we were destined to be a couple.

But I wasn’t feeling it. Friends, yes. But nothing more. Yet.

seventeen

I flung open the front door. “Heather’s coming,” I told George, who had appeared, at my mother’s request, to help me with my college essay. “Only not for another hour, so you can focus on me first. But then you have to focus on her.”

“Okay. Where do you want to work?”

“Where do we always work?” I led him to the kitchen and he sat down and took his laptop out of his bag.

“Your mother said you’d send me your essay ahead of time but I never got it.”

“I forgot.” Which wasn’t entirely true—I had remembered a couple of times (mostly because Mom kept reminding me) but never when I felt like ru