“Okay, then we’ll stay.”
There’s more awkward silence. I want to ask him why he came. Why he wanted to see me. But I don’t. I don’t think I should be asking him any questions, or even giving him anyinformation, unlesshe’sthe one asking. There. I just decided. I’m not going to try to make him remember or push memories onto him. Because so far, it’s only led to disappointment.
I tuck the diary beneath one of my legs. It was probably a silly idea anyway. As if reading the words of my thirteen-year-old self would somehow cause him to remember.
“What’s that you brought with you?”
I shake my head. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. I heard you go upstairs. What is it?”
Well, heisasking. So I put the diary on the table. “My diary.”
“Why did you go upstairs to get it after seeing me?”
“Because…” I huff out a blast of air. “Because when I saw you sitting in this booth it reminded me of that day, and it’s a day I wrote about, so I thought…” I shake my head again. “It was stupid. Forget it.”
“Let me see it,” he says curiously.
My eyes widen and meet his.
He holds up his hand and waves his fingers toward himself. “Come on. It’s why you brought it, so what did you want me to read?”
I inhale deeply, push the diary across the table, and open it to the very first page.
Chapter Eighteen
Dear Diary,
This week I met the boy I’m going to fall in love with.
This week is also when I got my first diary.
I’ve always wondered why people have diaries. Why they feel they have to write down stuff they did. Things they ate. How they feel.
After meeting Trevor Jordan Criss—oh my gosh, I just got goosebumps writing his name—I finally get it. People have diaries because their feelings are just so big they have to have someplace to put them.
Well, my feelings are gigantic. I haven’t gone an hour, a minute, even a second without thinking about him. So, Diary, here I am telling you all the stuff swirling around in my head because I just know I’ll burst if I don’t get it all out.
It isn’t as if I didn’t know who he was. At Calloway Creek Middle School, everyone at least knows about everyone, even if they aren’t friends. I knew stuff. Like how his parents own a coffee shop on McQuaid Circle. And that he runs track and swims. And that he’s friends with Jaxon Calloway.
We’d pass in the hallway and sometimes even make brief eye contact, but that was the extent of it.
Until Monday. Until we ended up in the same geometry class. I’m sure we’ve been in classes together before. I think he was even in Mrs. Milam’s second grade class with me for an entire year.
But, Diary, here’s what I didn’t know about him until this week. I didn’t know how blue his eyes were until after class, when he picked up the contents of my spilled backpack, put everything inside it, handed it to me, and said, “You’re really smart, Ava.”
You’re really smart, Ava.
Four words. The first words he’s ever spoken to me. And it’s like they burned into my soul along with those blue eyes of his.
I’d never been called smart by a boy before. Teachers have called me smart. My mom, of course. But never a boy. And here’s the thing, Diary, it wasn’t even the actual words that seemed to send some kind of arrow right into my heart—an arrow with his name on it—it was the way he said them. Like they were meant to be the best compliment in the entire world.
“Thanks,” I said shyly, because I was sure he could tell that in that moment, I decided every crush I’d ever had on any other boy was child’s play compared to what was going on inside my body and my brain.
“I’m not nearly as good at math,” he said.
I shrugged, trying to look way more calm and collected than I was feeling, and said, “It’s only the first day. And a lot of people find geometry to be easier than algebra. I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
