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I ran into Ben on the way to my car at the end of the day. We were talking about whether we should cap the amount people could spend on gifts for the holiday donations, when Aria
“You look so cute!” she said to me, shaking my arm in a friendly way. “I love love that outfit! You have to take me shopping—I’m such a clothing loser.”
“You always look good,” I said.
“That was so much fun the other day,” she said. “Going to your house. It’s such a great house. Ben was just saying we should wrap the donated gifts there.”
“It’s a good location for everyone,” Ben explained.
“Let’s just meet here at school,” I said. “Keep it easy.”
“But then we can’t do it on a weekend,” Aria
I turned to Ben and lowered my voice. “Look, I don’t want to sound mean or anything, but Aria
Ben’s jaw tightened. He said icily, “Yeah, okay, whatever. We can just do everything at school from now on.” He took a step away and turned his back on me.
Ugh. I was hoping he would agree that Aria
“Whatever.”
Aria
“Nothing.” Ben bit off the word like he was going to chew it for a while. “Good-bye, Ellie.”
I scurried to my car, relieved to get away and a
I felt u
I almost crashed the car. “What? Are you serious? Of course I didn’t know. Neither of them ever said. No one told me!”
“It’s been all over her Instagram recently—tons of photos of the two of them together, kissing and stuff. It’s only been official for like a week, but she’d been working on him for a while.”
“Crap,” I said. “No wonder he took her side.”
“Don’t worry. She’s desperate to be friends with you. She’ll probably let it go.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Someone who’s desperate to be friends with me won’t mind at all that I said I never wanted her in my house again.”
Riley laughed like I’d said something fu
twenty-eight
The second I got home from school, Grandma was on top of me, asking me to tell her all about my day, pushing some pockmarked quinoa cookies on me—“no eggs, no gluten, no sugar, just a bit of agave!”—and asking me what we should do for fun. I said I needed to get some homework done before I did anything else. She told me I was a good girl and let me escape to my room, where I had every intention of keeping my word and doing homework . . . as soon as I had talked to Heather and flushed the cookies down the toilet.
“I just found out that three other kids from my school applied early to Elton,” Heather moaned the second we could see each other’s faces on our laptop screens. “And they’re all smarter than me.”
“Don’t let it worry you. It’ll be fine. Plus I have something really important to tell you.”
“Something good?”
“Not really. But it’s intense. You have to promise not to tell anyone else.”
“What is it?”
“Seriously. No one can know. This isn’t one of those Tell everyone you tell not to tell anyone else kinds of situations. This is a You will never be my friend again if you tell anyone deal.”
“I promise,” she said. “Seriously. No one hears anything from me. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m more worried about you.”
Her eyes grew big. “Why? What?”
I took a deep breath and ripped off the Band-Aid quickly. “Aaron Marquand is having an affair with his stepmother. His father found out last night.”
Her mouth dropped open. She snapped it shut. “Are you serious? Oh my God!”
“Crazy, right? I had no idea. I mean, obviously or I would have told you.”
“Wow,” she said. “You hear about these things but you don’t think they happen in real life.”
“I guess they do.” I studied her face, relieved to see that she looked more bemused than upset. “So you’re okay? I was nervous about telling you.”
“Why? Am I that big a prude?”
“No. I just meant . . . you know. Because you liked him and I kind of encouraged you. I swear I had no idea about this.”
She blinked. “What are you talking about? When did I ever say I liked Aaron? He’s cute and nice and all but I’ve never thought about him all that much. He’s a little manic for me.”
“You don’t have to feel embarrassed about it. You had no way of knowing.”
“I’m not embarrassed,” she said, almost irritably. “I just never said I liked him.”
“Yes, you did! In my kitchen! We were talking about Aaron like a week ago and you asked me whether I liked him and when I said I didn’t, you said you did but you were worried he was too sophisticated for you. Remember? And I said—” I stopped. “Why are you laughing?”
“Because you totally misunderstood me!” She was almost helpless with giggles. “That’s so fu
“You said something about how cute he was, and he’d just left the room—”
“So had George,” she said. “That must have been why you got confused! That’s so fu
“You said he was cute,” I repeated. “So I thought—”
“I happen to think George is cute, even if you don’t. I like nerdy guys. I thought you knew that about me.”
“I guess.” I was too bewildered to argue. I was having trouble processing this.
“Why would I ever say that Aaron was too sophisticated for me?”
“I don’t know.” I tried to collect my thoughts. “I guess it does make more sense the other way. George probably is too sophisticated for you. He’s definitely too old for you.”
“He’s only a couple of years older. My dad is six years older than my mom.”
“It’s different when you’re middle-aged.”
“But they were like eighteen and twenty-four when they met!”
“Oh. Right.”
“A lot of girls date older guys,” she added. “I feel the same way you do about high school boys. They’re lame. George is like a real person—that sounds stupid, but you know what I mean. And he’s so nice. We text sometimes, you know.”
I shook my head slowly. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“You were the one who told me I should text him!” She put her hand to her mouth, laughing. “Oh, wait—I guess you meant I should text Aaron. Well, I thought you meant I should text George, so I did. Just a couple of times, telling him how worried I felt about college stuff and how my college counselor is totally burned-out and overwhelmed.” She gri