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Rachel, who stood on her tiptoes to look on her closet’s top shelf, said, “Could be.”
“I could help you clean your room, you know. For a fee.”
“Let me guess—all I’d have to do is ask Reed why he quit the football team?”
Now that she brought him up, I realized it wasn’t a half-bad idea. “Where is he?” I asked, casting my gaze once more to my screen. “I haven’t heard his monster steps in the house yet.”
“Connor’s, I think.” Rachel gave a little sigh. “I can’t believe my brother’s friends with Connor Bray. The wrong twin really got all the popularity and saved nothing for me.”
“It’s because Reed’s prettier than you.”
Rachel flipped up her middle finger.
The webpage I’d been designing for the past two days was almost finished. Two new moms had bought a web address to announce their new baby, and their theme was woodland animals. From the instruction email, they wanted a mix of script fonts for the headers and a cute, rounded font for the details. I’d done a handful of baby announcement pages since offering web design, but this was my first woodland theme.
Babble was one of my biggest accomplishments, and it’d been what had led me down the web design path in the first place. Finding the perfect color palettes, creating the prettiest loading screens, even down to creating a custom cursor—I loved it all.
“Rach.” I maneuvered the laptop to face her. “Yea or nay?”
“If I say yea, you’ll put the laptop away?”
Okay, fair enough, thishadbeen taking up most of my concentration since coming over to her house, but it was mostly a desperate distraction attempt. However, now that Rachel’s words created a crack in the dam I’d carefully crafted, there was no stopping the flow of thoughts.
The overdue payment notice. When I’d gotten home from school, it was gone from the entryway stand, disappearing to wherever Mom put it. It wasn’t the first of its kind. The first had been Mom’s credit card bill. The next had been a notice from the mortgage company. This one, if I was remembering the company name correctly, would’ve been her car payment.
I wasn’t sure if Mom forgot about the bills or if she didn’t have the money. Either option made me feel sick.
“It’s the first client I’ve had in two months.” I shut my laptop and laid it on her nightstand. I had to shove aside cables and random scrunchies, but it fit. “I was hoping if I finished a few days early, they might leave a tip. It’s nice side income, you know? But I’ll put the finishing touches on it tomorrow.”
I fell against her pillows, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars she’d stuck on her ceiling in the eighth grade. Whatever tape she’d used clung on faithfully. It’d probably survive World War III. She’d gone as far as to put them up into actual constellations, and I eyed the medium-sized Dipper, thoughts quickly devoured by the absolute insanity consuming my email inbox.
Earlier, I’d finally gotten up enough courage to peek at the Babble submissions. Finally worked up the energy to write an article, even though I’d typed it up mindlessly. I remembered mentioning the new labels—Marry A Math Book, Stay A Prude,and Peak in High School—and touched on a few of the relationship ones, but the specifics of my phrasing muddled together like alphabet soup.
As I’d written, there was no escaping the hypocrisy that itched at my skin like fire ants. I tiptoed around a truth that everyone knew, but was too embarrassing to talk about. “Are you sure I can stay the night?” I asked.
“You know my mom doesn’t care. As long as we’re sleeping by eleven. Or at least looklikewe’re sleeping by eleven. Areyousure your mom won’t care about you staying over on a school night?”
It was a legitimate question, since this wasn’t something my parents allowed too often. Maybe once a quarter. They definitely would’ve said no, given how fresh we were into the school year and the fact that I was already three tardies in, but Dad was no longer around to ask for permission, and Mom had been swept up in her own little world. She’d been out most nights with her best friend, Lindsey, while I stayed home, unable to fall asleep until her car pulled into the drive. When I’d texted her to let her know my plans, I was surprised I even got an acknowledgement. “She’s cool with it.”
Rachel glanced back, taking in my expression in all its complicated glory. “Are you thinking about the Most Likely To list again?”
For that brief second, Ihadn’tbeen, but that conversation seemed a lot easier than the truth. “Yeah.”
“Look at it this way—yours isn’t the worst label on there. You could’ve gotten voted Most Likely To: End Up Alone. That’s brutal.”
I couldn’t even remember who’d gotten that title. Someone had pressed thedeletebutton on all the information in my head once I saw my own name. It was a surprise I remembered how to breathe. “I need to focus on building Babble,” I said to her ceiling. “Who cares that I’ve never been kissed? I’m a nobody. I need to focus on other people’s love lives. To hell with mine.”
“You’re being melodramatic. I’m glad it’s just me seeing this side of you. I’d be getting secondhand embarrassment.”
It was my turn to flip her off, but only her shoulder blades saw it.
In all honesty, I couldn’t even pinpoint why the label bothered me so much. The probability—Maisie would’ve loved me taking this from a mathematical perspective—of me never having my first kiss was practically nonexistent. I was only seventeen, after all. Plenty of time for these lips to get to business. From a realistic standpoint, being on the Most Likely To list was something I should’ve rolled my eyes at.
But being on the list for that specific label felt like someone pressed their fingers into a bruise on my side. It was embarrassing, yes, but also highlighted a new insecurity.
“Ah! Found it!” With a little hop, Rachel yanked something off the top shelf of her closet, falling to the floor with a thud. She brushed the dust off, and when she turned to me, I realized she held a book. “Scooch over.”
I wiggled to the very edge of her bed, giving her ample room to flop down on her stomach beside me. “Are you going to read me a bedtime story?”
