Page 13 of You Belong With Me

“Do me a favor,” I said, “tell my mom about that next time you see her. She’ll be flying on that cloud for a week.”

“She cares a lot about it, huh?”

“It’s all she cares about,” I said, without thinking. I quickly clamped my mouth shut before I accidentally shared more than I meant to. I never talked about this stuff with anyone but Dean, so I wasn’t used to having tofilter what I was saying. But even if Ainsley seemed sweet and I felt like we were opening up a little now, I wasn’t ready to share everything that went on in my house with her right now.

“We’ll pass this class,” Ainsley said in a confident tone. She held her chin up in the air, which was an unusual pose for her. Normally, she kept her chin tucked in a way that made her face stay hidden by her curtain bangs. “We’ll make sure that your parents get the best report card possible.”

“I think you overestimate my ability to be able to speak in front of a crowd.”

“Eh, don’t worry. If all else fails, I’m really good at forging report cards.”

I wish I had something to offer her, some way to reassure her that it was okay. That everything was going to be okay in her family too. But what could I offer her? I couldn’t bring her dad back—and at this point, I wasn’t sure if any of them even wanted him around—and there was nothing I could do to convince her that it was going to be okay.

“Come to the soccer game with me,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“There’s a soccer game Wednesday night,” she said. “Why don’t you come with me? We’re all going to cheer on Sebastian.”

I stared at her, trying to understand the trick in the words. Five years I’d lived next to Ainsley Novak, and before now we’d never had a conversation that went past“Hey, how’s it going?”or“you did really well in that race.”But now, here she was inviting me to hang out with heroutside of school. And any fear that it was a trick or a joke disappeared when I looked at her and saw how hopeful she seemed. Even though I’d always known Ainsley to be shy, I’d never thought of her as being like me—a girl who just desperately wanted a friend but didn’t know how to get one.

So even though I knew absolutely nothing about soccer and wasn’t sure if watching Sebastian play soccer (aka at his maximum hotness) was a good idea for me and my plan to move on from the kiss, I said yes.

eight

If Dean waslate to pick me up one more time, I was going to kill him. In fact, I might just kill him tonight. I checked my phone for the fifth time, waiting for him to call me back, even though I knew by now that he wasn’t going to. Less than three weeks into the school year and he hadn’t picked me up on time once—and I was pretty sure he had only actually picked me up at all twice. At some point, I should probably just tell my parents that he wasn’t picking me up. It wasn’t really fair that he got full access to the car when he wasn’t doing the one thing that they asked of him. But I also didn’t want to be that sister who tattled to her parents every time something went wrong, so I kept ignoring it and just sat on the wall every day, watching the cars go by.

My solutions of getting home changed day by day, usually ending up with me catching a ride with one of my friends who stayed late. Clementine was always ready to help me out, even though she lived on the other side of town and had to go way out of her way, but she left beforeme today. There was one time I managed to catch the school bus that ran for people with extracurriculars, but it meant running from swim practice without washing my hair and I didn’t want to do that every day, especially when I didn’t know if Dean would bother showing up on any given day. But this was three swim team days in a row that he hadn’t shown up, which was making me wonder if he’d just stopped caring when I didn’t make a fuss about it.

I should have said something on Friday, after I had to get a ride home from Sebastian. I’d been so focused on not making Dean mad about it that I hadn’t thought about how that might actually convince him to start showing up. If he didn’t want me to be alone in a car with his best friend—and I was sure he didn’t—all he had to do was pick me up instead.

I picked up my phone again and searched for the contact that I had never once used:Sebastian Novak (Neighbor). As if there was any way I would forget who he was. The profile picture on his contact was an embarrassing close-up photo that I’d taken of him at his parents’ garden party last year. I clicked the message button then stared at the blank screen, the cursor blinking at me like it was impatiently waiting for me to start typing. But what was I going to say?Hey, Dean abandoned me again, so I need you to pick me up instead? I didn’t want him to think I was pathetic or unable to take care of myself. But he had to know that I only had my learner’s permit and no car to drive anyway, and that the walk from school to our house was insane. And the worst thing he could say was no. At least then I would know that I tried.

Before I knew what I was doing, myfingers were flying over the keyboard, typing out three simple letters.Hey. I pressed send before I could second guess myself. And then I stared at the message, the small blue bubble staring back at me. I held down on it, waiting until the option popped up to undo send. But if I did that, he would get a notification that said I unsent it and that was even more embarrassing, wasn’t it? He probably didn’t even have my number in his phone anyway and so he would think that this was just some random text from somebody. Maybe a girl he had met at a party. Maybe a scammer. Who knew? He probably wasn’t even going to...

Sebastian

Hey Nellie

Okay, so he did have my contact saved. My heart thundered in my chest as I typed out my next message.

Nora

Feel like going for a drive?

Sebastian

You at school?

Nora

Yea

My hands were shaking so bad that I could barely get the letters right. I was texting Sebastian Novak.I was texting Sebastian Novak.How the heck did this happen?

Sebastian

Be there in 15

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