“Amazing and wondrous,” Ramona said.
“Oh, here we go.”
“Wondrous and incredible. Astonishing. Staggering and stunning. Confounding. Breathtaking.”
“Okay, okay, can we pick a new word already?”
Ramona laughed, ran her hands through Olive’s straight brown hair. This was a game they’d played since Olive was little. One of them would lock on a word and then rattle off as many synonyms as they could think of. It was a teaching strategy their dad brought home from a seminar he’d been taking when Olive was around four, and Ramona had to admit, it certainly helped develop her own vocabulary along with Olive’s.
She turned Olive around, set her hands on her shoulders. “I’m just proud of you,” she said. “Don’t forget that, yeah?”
Olive’s expression dipped a little, but she nodded, looking down as she swallowed. Ramona started to ask what was wrong, but Olive’s phone buzzed on her desk, and she slipped out of Ramona’s hands to grab it.
“Wait, what?” Olive said, frowning at her phone.
“What is it?” Ramona said.
Olive didn’t say anything, just flew out of her room and bounded down the stairs.
“Olive, hang on,” Ramona said, following her.
“Marley says there are a ton of—”
But she didn’t finish as she flung open the front door to a flurry of flashes and shouts.
“Ramona!” the voices called, at least a dozen people gathered on the Rileys’ lawn. “Hey, Ramona, can we get a quote? When did you and Dylan start dating? Is it serious?”
Olive blinked, open-mouthed, Ramona right behind her, completely agog. It took her a good five seconds—which felt like an eternity with all the noise and clatter and clicking—to realize she should close the door.
She slammed it shut. Locked it.
Olive and Ramona stood in the foyer, breathing heavily, Ramona’s back pressed to the door.
Finally, Olive broke the silence. “You’re dating Dylan?”
“What?” Ramona said. “No.”
Olive clicked around on her phone. “But you’re all over the internet.”
“I’m what?” Ramona dug her phone out of her back pocket, checked the same sites that were quiet last night.
They weren’t so quiet anymore.
Pictures of her and Dylan at Dickie’s were everywhere, particularly the one where Dylan was holding Ramona’s hand to pull her away, but in this shot, it just looked like they were holding hands period.
“Oh my god,” Ramona said. Her heart felt huge, as though it had left its spot in her chest and was zooming through her whole body.
“Ramona,” her father said, ambling from the kitchen into the foyer. He was looking down at his phone. “Why am I getting texts from fellow teachers that my eldest is dating Dylan Monroe.” He glanced up finally, eyes wide. “As in Jack Monroe’s daughter?”
“Jesus,” Ramona said, closing her eyes, but then her own phone buzzed.
And buzzed, and buzzed, and buzzed.
April:RA
April:MONAAAAAA
April:WHAT THE FRESH HELLLLL???
