Page 1 of Sure, Pal

1

Sienna

Ava chewed on her lower lip and lazily doodled on a sheet of notebook paper with her hot pink gel pen. When she finished, she wiggled her eyebrows at me and tilted her notebook so I could see. Ava + Evan.

I grinned at her and shook my head. God, she was such a girl.

Ava shrugged, smiled, and closed her notebook. Then she twisted a lock of her golden blonde hair around her index finger as she pretended to listen to Mrs. Kline’s lecture about Shakespeare. I studied Ava for a minute — her ridiculously big blue eyes, her petite fairy-like frame, and her adorable slightly upturned nose— and recalled the way she crashed into my life two years ago.

I was sitting outside of our middle school on a chilly autumn afternoon. The scratchy orange brick dug into my back, and my ass was getting cold from sitting on the sidewalk. My mom was late picking me up, again.

She was a sculptor, and she often got lost in her projects. When she got like this, she tuned out the entire world and didn’t answer her phone. She probably forgot all about me, which she did more often than not. I was used to it and debating just walking home when suddenly, some bitch literally came out of nowhere and stepped on my hand!

“Ow!” I yelled, yanking my hand out from under her stupid pink flats. “What the hell?” I shook my hand as the pain seared through it and glanced up at my new mortal enemy. Yep. She looked like the worst kind of girl — perfectly curled blonde hair, gobs of mascara and lip gloss, and a short skirt on a freezing cold day. We were not going to be friends.

“Oh my god!” She covered her mouth with perfectly manicured hands. “I’m so so so so sorry! I didn’t even see you there!”

“Obviously.” I glared.

She didn’t take the hint that I already hated her. She actually sat down next to me in her short little skirt. I thought my ass was getting cold.

She smiled at me and started chattering. “Hi, I’m Ava! I moved here from LA, and I walked down here to see the school. I’m starting on Monday, and I’m really, really nervous! Are kids nice here? Do you think they’ll like me? Kids at my old school were so so mean. I had a bunch of friends, but they weren’t really friends, you know? They were like mean girls that would stab you in the back the second you weren’t looking. Like, there was this guy I liked, and one day…”

Ava was still talking, and I stared at her with my mouth slightly open. She was annoying the hell out of me, but I hated her less and less as she talked. Fine. We didn’t have to be mortal enemies, but we still weren’t going to be friends.

“K, you are super pretty, by the way! I’m so jealous of your eyes! Are they green or brown or gold?”

I blinked slowly at her, unsmiling. “Um. Hazel?”

Ava laughed. “Duh. I forgot about Hazel. Oh my God, your hair is so shiny, too! What kind of hair products do you use?”

“Dollar store shit.”

Ava gaped at me. “Are you serious? K, if you used some of my stuff, your hair would be like show-stopping! If your hair looks that good covered in garbage sulfate and paragons, then just imagine how you would look with salon-quality products!”

I stifled a grin. “Paragons?”

“Yeah. The bad stuff that they put in like all of our beauty products!”

I burst out laughing. “Parabens!”

I was full-on laughing at this dumb bitch, but she didn’t get mad. Ava burst out laughing, too, and said, “God, I’m so dumb! Help me!” She laughed so hard that tears started to roll down her cheeks.

I didn’t want to like Ava Mills, but she was a persistent little thing, and here we were, two years later, best friends forever.

The bell rang, and a mass of antsy high school kids rushed out the classroom door while Mrs. Kline yelled after us to study for the test on Monday. Right. Like anyone heard or cared about that. I turned the corner and ran smack into Evan. Shit. His chest felt all hard and chiseled. He smelled so good.

“Geez, Sienna! Watch where you’re going!” He grinned at me and brushed his light brown hair out of his eyes. His hair reminded me of the color of damp sand.

“Sorry, dude.” I shrugged.

Evan laughed. “Sure, pal.” He’d started calling me “pal” in the eighth grade, before Ava. I hated it. It meant he only ever saw me as a friend.

Ava exploded around the corner next — she always made her presence known — and squealed when she saw her boyfriend. She flung herself into Evan’s arms and burrowed her head into his chest. He had to lean down almost a full foot to kiss her. “I missed you!” Ava gushed.

Evan laughed. “I just saw you at lunch.”

Ava rolled her big blue eyes and then batted her eyelashes at him. She’d ditched the mascara over the summer and opted for eyelash extensions. They made her even more beautiful. Was that why Evan started dating her? Was it the eyelashes or the killer C-cups that she’d also sprouted over the summer?

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