“Good,” she said, matching my tone. “I don’t want you getting caught up in the glamour of that kind of lifestyle. You can’t be distracted from school or your dreams. Stanford.”
All right, now my mom was being weird. What did she think I was going to do? Drop out of school and become a groupie? How had we gone from discussing a picture in the tabloids to talking about college?
“I’m not Rose, Mom,” I said.
I hated that every time we talked about my future, it was as if she thought I was going to make some colossal mistake that would ruin my life. As if I would turn into my sister. And that was a slap in the face. I wasn’t the daughter who got a nearly perfect score on my ACT yet didn’t graduate from high school because I was too busy partying and wasting my potential. I worked hard for my grades, and I would never, ever abandon my family.
“Honey.” The bedsprings squeaked as my mother stood, and two seconds later, her warm arms wrapped around me. “You know I’m incredibly proud of you, right?”
I nodded, and she kissed my forehead.
“You don’t have to worry about Alec Williams, Mom,” I mumbled into her shoulder. “I doubt I’ll ever see him again.”
Chapter 5
Five days later, when I hadn’t received a call or text from Alec, I knew what I’d told my mom was true. I’d never see him again. Which, while disappointing, wasn’t the end of the world. Don’t get me wrong. I would have enjoyed hanging out more with him, but it wasn’t like I had some delusional fantasy that we were soul mates and would live happily ever after.
But the issue was—because there was always some kind of issue, wasn’t there?—that Alec Williams had taken over my life. He was everywhere, and no matter how hard I tried, there was nothing I could do to return to my pre-Alec existence. Since the ball, a whole slew of tabloids had printed pictures of us together, which I only knew because Asha made it her goal to track down every single one. According to her, this was a moment I needed to remember forever, and her pile of magazines was quickly taking over my desk.
More annoying were the celebrity news sites that reported fictional stories about who I was and how we met. Their articles always seemed to quote some mysterious “insider” who not only knew me but was willing to spill details of my life. And each story was more ridiculous than the last. Girls from school who’d never spoken to me before were suddenly messaging me on Facebook,wanting to know all about Alec, and every time I turned on the radio, one of the Heartbreakers’ songs would come on.
It was all quite exhausting, but the worst of it was the reporters. They came from all the big gossip blogs and entertainment magazines to ask questions about Alec, me, andAlec and me. The first one showed up the evening after the ball. I had no clue how she figured out my name or address, but I was quick to turn down an interview. Talking to her would’ve felt weird. Besides, I didn’t get what all the buzz was about anyway. It wasn’t like I was dating Alec. We’d been seen togetheronce.
“Wouldn’t it be easier if you talked to one of them?” Asha asked when I stepped back inside my bedroom. Two minutes earlier, the doorbell had rung, and I’d had to refuse yet another reporter.
“I don’t know,” I said, not looking at her. She was probably right, but I wasn’t interested in sharing something personal with the rest of the world. Our time at the ball was a moment that belonged to me and Alec alone. As soon as I gave an account of what happened, it wouldn’t be just ours anymore. Ninety-eight percent of teenage girls would know the story by the end of tomorrow.
I sat back down, returning to the project on my desk. I was in the middle of creating a pattern for what would become a beaded necklace of a bird. Most of the design was done, but I had yet to figure out the challenging part, the wings.
“I think you should do it,” Asha said, paging through the edition ofUs Weeklyshe’d brought over to add to my collection. “Once you tell your story, they’ll go away. Right, Boomer?”
We both glanced at my other best friend, who was sprawled inmy beanbag chair with his Game Boy. It was a hand-me-down from his brother, who’d gotten it in the early 2000s. Boomer was addicted to the damn thing. He only had one game, a Pokémon something or other, but he never went anywhere without it. We’d met freshman year when he showed up in beginners’ metalworking and took the only available seat in the room—the empty stool next to me.
“Hey, pssst.” He had leaned over so I could hear him. Not that he’d needed to; his voice was so loud it was like he came with a built-in megaphone. “Why am I the only guy in this class? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Personally, I rather like this ratio, but it still strikes me as odd.”
I’d stared at him for a few seconds before saying, “Probably because this is a jewelry-making class.”
“Jewelry?” He frowned and rubbed his chin. “I thought metalworking meant welding. You know, where you melt shit together?”
I laughed. “We might do some soldering.”
“Does it require a blowtorch?”
“Nope. No blowtorches necessary.”
“Well, that reallyblows.” He’d offered me a full-faced grin. “Pun definitely intended.”
We spent the rest of the semester goofing off. After that, we decided to take every obscure art class our school offered together, from photography—can you say snooze fest?—to cartooning, where Boomer entertained me by drawing inappropriate cartoons of dicks. When Asha first met him, she said he was childish, but I often wondered if her aversion stemmed from the fact that shelikedhim. With curly, ash-brown hair and chocolate eyes, he had the boy-next-door look that was totally Asha’s type. It only took a week of lunch periods for her to warm up to him.
“Right, Boomer?” she repeated, her sigh heavy with exaggeration.
“Right, what?” he asked Asha without looking up.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you agree that Felicity should do an interview?”
He frowned, his thumbs moving at rapid speed. “No, no, no!” he exclaimed, and his shoulders slumped. He tossed the Game Boy to the side. “Goddammit, Chansey is impossible to catch. All the gaming forums say it’s Tauros, but I caught that sucker right away. Chansey, on the other hand, has the lowest encounter rate of the game and—”
“Hello? Trying to have a conversation here.”
