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“You look great too.”
I send her an appreciative glance, loving her for lying to me, because while I may wear glasses, I’m not completely blind. I know what my reflection looked like staring back at me this morning. Wavy black hair left wild and untamed because after much effort I’ve come to terms with the fact that it will always refuse to be tamed, my blue eyes tired after staying up reading half the night. Having slept in—damn you, Jenny Han and your masterfully addictive stories about teenage love triangles—I’d thrown on the first thing I could find that was both warm and comfortable. Hence the baby blue knitted sweater and blue denim jeans. Which I now suspect looks, unfortunately, like I am wearing double denim (a huge no-no), but at the time of bolting out of the door, I hadn’t thought to care about it.
Now, watching Matthew Barkly float down the hallway, an invisible spotlight shining on him, I wish I’d taken at least an extra five minutes to pull some sort of look together today. Not that he’d ever notice me; our spheres have never, ever overlapped.
“Hey, New Girl,” Matthew winks at me as he walks past and I faint. OK, not a literal faint, but on the inside I’m not conscious. Barely breathing. Catatonic.
“Did he just…say hi to you?” Bianca’s eyes are bugging out of her head as the rest of the student body stares at me, mouths agape. “And wink?”
My body feels like it’s on fire. Like an army of fire ants is crawling all over me, making me their breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“That can’t be right?” I mumble, my eyes still following Matthew’s progress down the hall. “Bianca, what just happened?”
She grabs my arm and pushes me through the closest door, which, luckily for us, is to an empty classroom.
“I can’t believe that just happened.” She looks both thrilled and jealous at once.
I move to squash both emotions. What played out just then was a weird blip in the cosmos, not one worthy of any time, energy or emotion and Bianca needs to know that, right now. “B, he called me New Girl. He doesn’t know who I am.”
Embarrassment courses through me. I’ve been co-existing with this boy—man, whatever—for over three years and he’s never seen me before. I could die right here on the spot.
“But he said hello,” she argues in her squeaky, high-pitched voice. The one she reserves for when she’s about to lose it. “And he winked.”
OK, that part has me stumped. Why would he wink? At me? Unless…
“Maybe he got me mixed up with someone else?” That must be it. A classic case of mistaken identity.
“Yeah, maybe…” she sounds less convinced.
“Either way, he wasn’t saying hello to me, Natalie Henderson. He was saying hello to some random new girl who he’s got me mixed up with.”
Bianca’s next words are drowned out by the morning bell, followed by the groans of about five hundred students, not ready to start the day.
“We’ll talk about this later,” she remarks as I pull on her arm, urging her to move so we won’t be late for class.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I insist.
And it’s true. Matthew freaking Barkly saying hello to me, ‘the New Girl,’ cannot mean anything. His sports-raddled brain got me confused with someone else, someone worthy of his winks. And we all know that someone is not me.
*****
The rest of the morning passes in a blur of classes and people whispering about me behind their hands when they think I’m not looking. Contrary to what I believed, apparently Matthew acknowledging someone in the hallway is a big deal. Especially when that someone is a no one like me. By lunchtime, I’ve had enough, thoroughly cross that this boy has derailed my day with so little effort.
“Stupid jock, doesn’t even know my name after all these years,” I mutter to myself, having escaped to the library to spend my lunch hour away from all the sly looks and the speculative glances.
I’m as confused as you are! I want to yell at them.
“Hey there, New Girl.”
I freeze, the ability to breathe that I’d taken for granted until now completely gone. This is it; this is how I’m going to die. Suffocated by Matthew Barkly saying hello to me. Or to ‘New Girl,’ whoever that may be.
“Can I sit here?”
I risk a glance up and then snap my eyes back down again. Not a good idea. Looking at him up close is like staring at the sun: blinding.
“Ah, sure?” I mumble this to the book open in front of me, feeling the air shift as he pulls out the chair right next to me and flops his giant body into it.
“Thanks.”
