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Aria lowered her shoulders. Ella had taken the car to work that morning, and getting a ride definitely beat taking the Rosewood Day bus, which was filled with elementary school boys who never got tired of farting contests. “Okay,” she agreed. “Thanks.”
Twenty minutes later, Aria was shrugging into the black bouclé coat she’d bought at a vintage shop in Paris and stepping out onto the front porch. Xavier’s car, a pristinely restored, late-sixties BMW 2002, chugged in the driveway. Aria slid into the front seat, admiring the sleek chrome interior. “Now this is how an old car should look.” She whistled, impressed. “Have you seen my mom’s ancient Honda? There’s mold growing on the seats.”
Xavier chuckled. “My dad had one of these when I was growing up.” He began to back out of the driveway. “After my parents divorced and he moved to Oregon, I missed the car more than him.”
He glanced at Aria, giving her a sympathetic look. “I really do know how weird this is, you know. My mom started dating right away after she got divorced. I hated it.”
So that’s what he’d meant. Aria stared pointedly in the other direction, watching a couple of younger public school students crunch clumsily over the quickly melting snowdrifts at the bus stop. The last thing she wanted to hear was another I’ve been there story. Sean Ackard, who she’d gone out with for about a minute this fall, had earnestly revealed his struggles with his mom’s death and his dad’s remarriage. And Ezra had bemoaned that when his parents divorced, he’d smoked tons of pot. Woo-hoo, everyone else’s lives sucked ass too. It didn’t really make Aria’s problems any easier.
“All my mom’s boyfriends tried to bond with me,” Xavier went on. “Every single one of them brought me sports equipment, like baseball gloves, basketballs, once even a whole hockey uniform, complete with pads and stuff. If they’d really attempted to learn anything about me, they would’ve known to bring me a handheld mixer. Or Bundt cake pans. Or muffin tins.”
Aria looked over, intrigued. “Muffin tins?”
Xavier smiled sheepishly. “I was really into baking.” He hit the brakes at a crosswalk, waiting for a bunch of little kids to pass. “It helped to calm me down. I was especially good at meringues. This was before I discovered art. I was the only guy in my school’s home ec club. Actually, that’s where my Match.com nickname comes from—Wolfgang. I was obsessed with Wolfgang Puck when I was in high school. He had this restaurant in L.A. called Spago, and this one time, I drove down there from Seattle, where I went to high school, thinking I could just walk in without reservations.” He rolled his eyes. “I ended up eating at Arby’s.”
Aria looked at him, noting his serious expression. She burst out laughing. “You are such a girl.”
“I know.” Xavier ducked his head. “I wasn’t very popular in high school. No one really got me.”
Aria ran her fingers through her long, black ponytail. “I used to be really unpopular too.”
“You?” Xavier waved his hand. “Nah.”
“It’s true,” Aria said quietly. “No one understood me at all.”
She sat back in the seat, thrust into thought. Aria had always tried very hard not to dwell on the lonely, friendless years before she’d become friends with Ali, but seeing that black-and-white photo of her the other day—the one from when Time Capsule was announced—had jostled a whole bunch of memories free.
When Aria was in fourth grade, everyone in her Rosewood Day class was friends with everyone else. But in fifth, things suddenly…changed. Tight-knit cliques cropped up literally overnight, and everyone knew their place. It was like a game of musical chairs: after the music stopped, all her classmates easily found a seat, while Aria was still floundering around, chairless.
Aria tried to find a group of friends. One week, she dressed in black and Doc Martens and loitered around the hooligans that shoplifted from Wawa and shared cigarettes behind the dragon-shaped slide before school. But she had nothing in common with them. They all despised reading, even fun things like Narnia. Another week, she dug out her frilly vintage clothes and tried to hang with the prissy girls who loved Hello Kitty and thought boys were gross. But they were so high-maintenance. One of the girls cried for three hours because she’d accidentally stepped on a ladybug at recess. No group fit her, so Aria eventually stopped trying. She spent a lot of time by herself, ignoring everyone else as best she could.
Everyone, that was, except Ali. Sure, Ali was a Typical Rosewood Girl, but something about her fascinated Aria. The day Ali strolled out of the school and announced she was going to win Time Capsule, Aria couldn’t help but sketch Ali’s beautiful, heart-shaped face and stunning smile. She envied how effortless Ali was around boys—even older ones like Ian. But the thing Aria liked most about Ali was Ali’s gorgeous, sensitive older brother.
The day Jason strutted up to Ian and told him to leave Ali alone, Aria had already developed a full-blown, unbridled, very painful crush on him. For weeks, she’d been sneaking over to the high school library during her free periods to watch him studying with his German class. She would hide behind a tree that overlooked the soccer fields to spy on him as he stretched near the goalie pen. Sometimes she would leaf through old yearbooks in the yearbook room to find out all the information she could about Jason. It was one of the few times Aria was glad not to have any friends. She could enjoy her unrequited crush in peace, without having to explain it to anyone.
