“Really?” I eyed her. She was . . .fascinating.
She sat back and picked up a pencil, ready to ignore me. “Besides,” she muttered. “NSYNC is for old people.”
Chapter 5
Brielle
Had I just said that out loud? I pretended to beveryinterested in my geometry homework, but I knew Brooks had heard me. Too good to be true? Yeah. This day was going from bad to worse. It was one thing to have Brooks Mason show up in school and now have to figure out what to do about my very-much-alive fake boyfriend. But he had to even take a shot at One Direction? Let alone, if hewasa Cubs fan, I was going todie.
There was no theorem in the world that could solve this puzzle. This wasn’t mathematical at all! How had today even happened? I needed an iced caramel latte, like five minutes ago. I needed to think. I needed to pray. Yes. Praying was a good thing. I know not everyone prays anymore, but I do. I believe God takes a special interest in me, but right now? Yeah. I could imagine even God rolling His eyes at me.
That’s what you get for lying.
Ok, so maybe He didn’t say that, but he did saythe truth will set you free.
I gave Brooks the side-eye. He was looking at me with a lopsided smile, his eyes narrowed in some unspoken challenge.
I looked away.
There would be no setting me free today. There was no way I could tell him the truth—or anyone else, for that matter. I could just picture it. The conversation.
Sooooooo….like, I sorta pretended you into existence. Now that you’re real and here, everyone thinks we’re dating.
He’d stare at me like I’d had one too many espressos. I probably had. Then he’d reply,“You didn’tpretendme into existence. I’ve existed since I was born.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know that. So I made you up—or I thought I did—to get people off my back about needing a boyfriend. But now you’re here, and this is a mess.”
“Not really,”he’d say, if he were one of those fictional nice guys I read about.“I got your back. Let’s just date. No one needs to know it’s not for real. That’ll keep girls from being annoying with me so I can focus on baseball, and you can . . . read books or watch me play or whatever it is you like to do.”
Yeah. In my dreams, it’d go that simply. Only it wouldn’t be simple.
“It won’t work,” I mumbled to myself.
“What won’t work?” Brooks whispered.
Darn. I needed to stop talking to myself. It was a terrible habit.
“Nothing,” I retorted.
I was walking a tight rope, and any minute now, I could fall off. I just needed a plan. I needed to figure this out. I needed to talk to Lia. There’d be a resolution. She would know what to do. If Reece didn’t blow it before someone else did.
The anxiety I’d felt in the hall when I met Brooks was coming back. I’d lost it out of sheer indignation that anyone would pit anyone against One Direction. But now it was coming back. This was going to be like a baseball to the face if I didn’t think my way out of this and fast.
There just wasn’t a way to explain to Brooks what he’d accidentally walked into.
There wasn’t.
It was embarrassing, and my perfect plan was going to dissolve, and then everyone would know.
I looked down at my notebook. I’d managed to draw one straight line, and it had nothing to do with my geometry homework.
No. Breathe in. Breathe out. There was a solution, somewhere in all of this. I could make it work. I could explain it. I could—
“I thought you said your boyfriend lived in North Carolina?”
Oh no. No, no, no, no.
If it were the most popular girl in school, I could have figured out what to say. But it wasn’t. It was Mrs. Templeton. The study hall teacher. She was also my Sunday school teacher. Small towns work that way, you know? You can’t get away from school at church or church at school. Unless your science teacher is Mr. Newton, who is convinced the earth is flat, we never landed on the moon, and I evolved from an ape. How is that even complimentary? Like, I wouldn’t actually be proud of that if I believed it.
