Sitting at that picnic table in the park last night, I’d felt the glow of my friends’ approbation even through the sugar buzz. The three of them had chosen me—almost as if I’d auditioned for the part and been found worthy. Maybe I was a babe in the woods when it came to Real High School, but I had things to contribute, thoughts and ideas of my own. And if my new friends deemed me cool enough to be part of their group, who was I to argue? They were the experts, after all.
“Probably you should let us inspect these girls, before you get in over your head,” Jasper suggested.
I gave him a look that said,In your dreams. “We’re friends. There’s nothing weird or underhanded about it.” Picking up my bowl, I started for the kitchen.
“Running away?” Jasper asked. “Things getting too hot for you?”
“I have a phone call to make. To afriend. Whose name is Arden,” I added, worried my exit line had sounded suspiciously vague.
“You do you, Mary,” Bo called after me. “Don’t let them change you.”
Dear Diary,
I never paid much attention to the age difference between heroines and their love interests until the twins became teenagers, at which point I realized how creepy it would be if a middle-aged guy wanted to marry one of them.
Now that I’m almost sixteen, I can’t believe anyone my age would ever want to be married at all, much less to a person old enough to be someone’s dad. With or without the madwoman in the attic.
M.P.M.
Chapter 10
A few days later, I was shovinga biology textbook into my locker when I sensed a presence behind me.
“Hey—” I started to say as I turned, expecting to see Lydia or Terry, because Arden would have been bouncier. The rest of the sentence evaporated as though I’d shoved a paper towel in my mouth.
Alex Ritter stood behind me, head cocked at a questioning angle. My heart galloped, up and then down again. “You were saying?” he prompted.
I shook my head.
He eased backwards until he was propped against the wall. Today’s shirt was Wedgwood blue, which brought out the dark ring around the paler hue of his irises. Surely he planned these things for effect.
“What?” He looked down at himself. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m trying to decide if you’re a fop.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dandy, popinjay, coxcomb. Fancy man.” I broke off, realizing my mouth had sprinted ahead of my brain. His whole attitude was sofamiliar,as if we were intimately acquainted, that I’d fallen into the trap of talking to him the same way.You did measure his hips,I reminded myself.
“I’m guessing you’ll ace the vocab section of the SAT.”
I braced myself against a rush of warmth; there was bound to be an ulterior motive behind the flattery. “Did you want something?”
He nodded. “You’ve readJane Eyre.”
It was a statement, not a question. I blinked at him, nonplussed. He wanted to talk about the Brontës?
“Phoebe says everyone in your family is like a walking library,” he continued, filling the space where a normal person would have joined the conversation instead of gawping at him like a rube.
“Of course,” I finally managed to say. Honestly, did Ilooklike a philistine?
A girl in tasseled ankle boots grabbed his hand as she passed. “See you tonight, Alex?”
His answering smile sent her off with a spring in her step. “What did you think about what happened at the end?” he asked me, without missing a beat.
“You mean when the ghostly voice is calling ‘Jane, Jane’ across the moors? As in, do I think it was a paranormal event or some kind of Freudian delusion?”
He scratched his chin with a thumbnail. “What about what happens after that?”
