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Chapter One
Kylie
"Are you excited to finally see him again?" Mom asks, interrupting my thoughts, and I turn my face from the airplane window to look at her.
She smiles at me, and I feel how my cheeks start burning from embarrassment.
I don't have to ask who she is talking about because she knows perfectly what I was thinking about throughout the long flight from South Africa back home to California.
Of course she figured out my thoughts; she knows me so well. I shouldn't be surprised by that. She's my mom.
But what am I so ashamed of? It's not like I’m thinking about something forbidden. I'm thinking about my best friend. My only friend, to be honest, since I'm still a very private person, just like the day we met for the first time twelve years ago.
Tyler Parish.
We met on our first day of school. He defended me when other boys started laughing at me, saying I was chubby, which I really was, and that's why their words hurt me even more.
He fought with them, saying that it's not appropriate to talk to a lady about her age or her weight. He was a real gentleman, even when he was only six years old. I fell in love right away.
Tyler Parish is still the most handsome and smartest guy I've ever met. He's excellent at sports as well as studying. He swims so well that he’s probably going to represent our country at the Olympics.
And he doesn't love me back...
At least, not the way I want him to. I mean, I know that Tyler loves me, but only as a friend.
While I love him in another, more dangerous way...
I’ve always loved Tyler, but I realized that I was in love with him when he started dating his first girlfriend, Amanda Sheppard—a tall, blond cheerleader—the day he turned fifteen. We both turned fifteen, to be exact. And yes, our birthdays are on the same day and year. We also happened to be neighbors and classmates. That night I cried for six hours and skipped school the next day, pretending I was sick because my face was swollen from crying.
Since Amanda, Tyler has dated so many girls I wouldn't be able to count even if I wanted to. He told me everything about his girlfriends: his first kiss, first sex, first break-up. I listened attentively, pretending I supported him and didn't really care who he dated because I knew Tyler never looked at me as a woman; he always thought of me only as a friend.
Luckily, none of his girlfriends were capable of breaking up our friendship. It is so tight that I don't even know if it can be broken. It wasn't even broken after I left the school.
When my mom received a job offer and told me we were moving to Africa for a year, I cried for two days, lying in Tyler's arms while he calmed me down, telling me that it was gonna be okay, that we were gonna stay friends even if we lived in different countries.
I sobbed on his shoulder, telling him that we'd be on different continents with different time zones, that it was going to be hard for us to communicate, and we wouldn't be able to stay friends any longer. He told me then that even if we happened to be on different planets, he'd still find a way to talk to me, after which he promised to stay my best friend forever.
I didn't believe him—I kept crying and thinking that our friendship was probably over—but he kept his word. He woke up at five-thirty every single day to have time to speak to me before I went to sleep. If he had swimming practice before school, he woke up earlier. Even when it was his day off, he still woke up just to talk to me.
Tyler knew how much I missed home while I was abroad. It's hard to live in a nature reserve and study online while you're a teenager who wants to party with friends. And even though I’d hated our private school, "The Elite Academy," I still missed it.
My mom is a scientist who happened to move to Beverly Hills by coincidence: she started working for a billion-dollar private company in Los Angeles. They paid for our luxury apartment only because it was close to their office.
That's how I happened to end up at "The Elite Academy," which I always called "The Dirty Elite Academy" because of all the spoiled rich kids who went there. All of them were heirs and heiresses of the Hollywood elite, while I was just a scientist's daughter with no father and a mother who worked twenty-four-seven. I went there for eleven years, right up until we went to Africa.
And today, we're finally going home.
Tyler Parish is also rich—moreover, he has it all.
Tyler is wealthy: his father is the owner of one of the biggest production companies in Hollywood.
Tyler is talented: he's going to become a swimming star one day, I know it.
Tyler is smart: his grades are second in our class, right after mine, while I work really hard to be the first.
And, last but not least, Tyler is gorgeous. He's not just handsome; he's divinely beautiful, dirty blond hair and mesmerizing clear blue eyes. He's hotter than Zac Efron. Yes, even after Zac grew his famous beard.
Sometimes I ask myself if we could have become friends if we hadn't known each other since childhood, but I know we're too different. He's a school star, while I'm a school ghost.
